Shogun

Abstract: Acknowledgments Archival Sources Introduction: Taming the Dutch Part 1. Diplomacy 1. Royal Letters from the Republic 2. The Lord of Batavia 3. The Shogun's Loyal Vassals Part 2. Violence 4. The Violent Sea 5. Power and Petition Part 3. Sovereignty 6. Planting the Flag in Asia 7. Giving Up the Governor Conclusion: The Dutch Experience in Japan Notes Bibliography Index

Abstract: This is the concluding volume of a three-volume work that culminates the life study of the West's most distinguished scholar of Japanese history. A straightforward narrative of the development of Japanese civilization to 1867, the three volumes constitute the first large-scale comprehensive history of Japan. Unlike the renowned Short Cultural History, it is concerned mainly with political and social phenomena and only incidentally touches on religion, literature, and the arts. The treatment is primarily descriptive and factual, but the author offers some pragmatic interpretations and suggests comparisons with the history of other peoples. A History of Japan: 1615-1867 describes the political and social development of Japan during the two and half centuries of rule by the Tokugawa Shoguns, a period of remarkable development in almost ever aspects of the national life. Under Ieyasu, the first Tokugawa Shogun, a system of checks and balances to keep the great feudatories in order began to be devised. His successors continued this policy, and indeed the essential features of government by the Tokugawa Shoguns was a determination to keep the peace. Freed from civil war, the energies of the nation were devoted to increasing production of goods in agriculture, manufacturers, and mining. Breaches in the traditional policy of isolation began to occur with the arrival of foreign ships in Japanese waters, the first intruders being the Russian in the 1790s. Thereafter, the government struggled to keep foreign ships away from Japanese ports, but before long the pressure of the Western powers, strengthened by the arrival of warships under the command of Commodore Perry in 1853, forced Japan to take part in international affairs.

Abstract: This paper examines the recent hit shōjo manga by Yoshinaga Fumi, Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, which creates a science fiction alternate version of Edo-period Japan ruled by a female shogun. This gender-reversed world is the outcome of the sudden outbreak of an epidemic that kills only male youths in the era of the third shogun Iemitsu. In the inner chambers of Edo Castle, which are the private space of the shogun, 3,000 beautiful men live and work. This alternative world rereads existing historical narratives and also provides a critical space for readers to examine the multiple discourses of gender and sexuality. The paper approaches this re-representation of Japanese premodern history in the genre of shōjo manga from several angles. To provide a fuller understanding of Ōoku, it shows how revisionist presentation of the Tokugawa inner chambers in a 1960s Yoshiya Nobuko novel provided a model for a subgenre of historical period drama in post-war popular culture. It also examines shōjo manga traditions of no...

Abstract: This essay explores the portrayal of the famous shirabyoshi dancer Shizuka in an illustrated, hand-copied book (nara ehon) dating from the late sixteenth century. The text for the nara ehon, taken from a somewhat earlier ballad-drama (kowakamai), describes Shizuka's capture by her lover's brother and enemy, the shogun Minamoto Yoritomo. In the tale, Shizuka and her mother are taken from the capital to Kamakura, Yoritomo's headquarters. Shizuka bravely refuses to reveal her lover's whereabouts, spending her time in captivity defiantly demonstrating her formidable skills and erudition to Yoritomo and his retinue. By contrast, the illustrations of the text provide a counter-narrative stressing the loss and suffering that Shizuka endures during her time in Kamakura, ignoring some of the most famous parts of the narrative, including a defiant dance she performs at the Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine in front of Yoritomo and his men. I focus on the juxtaposition between text and image in this work, stressing the discontinuities between the two, especially in comparison with other, near-contemporary nara ehon versions whose illustrations more closely follow the text. I argue that the increasing enclosure and control of women during the late medieval period is reflected in the portrayals of Shizuka and her mother, whom we see only in captivity or on forced journeys that could end in death. KEYWORDS: shirabyoshi-nara ehon-Kamakura shogunate-Minamoto Yoritomo- Minamoto Yoshitsune-Shizuka (ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) Shizuka ?..., beloved of the great general Minamoto Yoshitsune ..., is among the most celebrated female characters from the early medieval period. A famed shirabyoshi ... performer, she is the subject of narrative, performing arts, song, and image. She represents many things in many contexts: beauty, heroism, virtue, artistry, and female perfection (Nait. 2004, 3.4). Legend has it that her dancing skills ended a drought, her attentiveness saved Yoshitsune from a night attack, and her defiant loyalty to Yoshitsune earned her grudging respect from her lover's brother, the shogun Minamoto Yoritomo ..., as well as empathy from Yoritomo's wife, Hojo Masako .... This essay discusses a nara ehon ... version of the k.wakamai ?... Shizuka, which recounts Shizuka's forced trip to Kamakura and interview with Yoritomo after she has parted from Yoshitsune. K.wakamai, or ?gballad drama,?h was a performing art involving dramatic recitation of a story; its strong narrative element lent it to textualization by the late Muromachi period in works including this nara ehon (a kind of hand-copied book with colorful hand-painted illustrations), dating from the sixteenth century and held by the Library of Congress (hereafter LC). The LC text is one of a number of extant nara ehon versions of this tale, including two others that have been digitized by the Kokubungaku Kenky. Shiryokan ?... (National Institute of Japanese Literature, hereafter NIJL).1 As an illustrated text grounded in a performance tradition, the LC nara ehon is one discrete manifestation of the vast body of works comprising the ?glegends about Shizuka?h (Shizuka densetsu ?...),2 and represents a multidimensional artifact for understanding how tales about Shizuka developed and were reinterpreted as cultural norms changed during the late medieval age. This study argues that the details of the LC nara ehon's images, as well as the scenes chosen for illustration, suggest a recasting of the base narrative that results in a story resonating strongly with medieval revelatory tales while downplaying Shizuka's celebrated identity as a performer. The LC nara ehon is a ?glarge format?h book comprised of two volumes with dimensions of 34 x 25 cm. The covers are of torinoko paper ... with an uchigumori ... (?gcloud-figured,?h meaning color gradation from blue-green at the top to purple at the bottom) pattern (Figure 1). The text is composed on ogami . …