Heather Blair – författare
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2 produkter
2 produkter
Del 376 - Harvard East Asian Monographs
Real and Imagined
The Peak of Gold in Heian Japan
Inbunden, Engelska, 2015
412 kr
Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar
During the Heian period (794–1185), the sacred mountain Kinpusen, literally the “Peak of Gold,” came to cultural prominence as a pilgrimage destination for the most powerful men in Japan—the Fujiwara regents and the retired emperors. Real and Imagined depicts their one-hundred-kilometer trek from the capital to the rocky summit as well as the imaginative landscape they navigated. Kinpusen was believed to be a realm of immortals, the domain of an unconventional bodhisattva, and the home of an indigenous pantheon of kami. These nominally private journeys to Kinpusen had political implications for both the pilgrims and the mountain. While members of the aristocracy and royalty used pilgrimage to legitimate themselves and compete with one another, their patronage fed rivalry among religious institutions. Thus, after flourishing under the Fujiwara regents, Kinpusen’s cult and community were rent by violent altercations with the great Nara temple Kōfukuji. The resulting institutional reconfigurations laid the groundwork for Shugendō, a new movement focused on religious mountain practice that emerged around 1300. Using archival sources, archaeological materials, noblemen’s journals, sutras, official histories, and vernacular narratives, this original study sheds new light on Kinpusen, positioning it within the broader religious and political history of the Heian period.
Gods Make You Giggle
Finding Religion in Japanese Picturebooks from the Postwar to the Postmillennial
Inbunden, Engelska, 2026
805 kr
Kommande
Incisive and fun, The Gods Make You Giggle draws readers into the world of Japanese picturebooks, where the sublime can erupt from the everyday and hell may just turn out to be hilarious. Juxtaposing analyses of folksy retellings, mid-century classics, and avant-garde provocations, this study crafts dynamic new perspectives on religion and history while also showcasing the richness and sophistication of one of the world’s most vibrant children’s literatures. Because Japan’s mainstream picturebook repertoire eschews overt engagement with religious doctrines and institutions, most authors, illustrators, and critics see it as simply and self-evidently non-religious. The Gods Make You Giggle turns that thinking on its head. Taking its cues from picturebooks themselves, it frames religion as a ground for play, open to irreverence, ambivalence, surprise, and transformation. In turn, it shows that religion, reconceptualized in a ludic frame, energizes the picturebook repertoire; in fact, many adults now describe picturebooks as sources of truth, consolation, and even grace. In addition to reimagining what religion might look like, The Gods Make You Giggle intervenes in cultural history, Japanese studies, and the study of children’s literature in distinctive ways. By analyzing the interplay of image and text, which proves fundamental to the operation of picturebooks, it brings methods from the study of both literature and visual culture to bear on historical analysis. By charting a longitudinal account of the years extending from the postwar to the postmillennial, it brings the history of Japan forward, into the very recent past. And by bringing Japanese materials into dialogue with the English-language study of children’s literature, which has to date focused almost exclusively on North America and Europe, it lays the groundwork for future research and responsible comparison.