Dear customers and friends,
Kon-nichiwa,hello from Ginza,Tokyo
This is Shukado Newsletter No.5 by Japanese-finearts.com
Everyone, how is everything going with you?
Super Duper Tuesday is taking place in the US! Many Japanese people are watching how it is going with great interests. For my personal opinion, I would like to support Barack Obama as a Democratic presidential candidate, but I would like to find out more about him and to make sure whether he is truly a good candidate for US presidency for Asian countries including Japan. Although people in the world including US citizens must be fed up with the current accidental president, news candidates must have both positive and negative faces.
To change the topic, we had a sudden snowfall in wide area of Japan this Sunday.
I was staying at the hotel in the Miura peninsula on my family trip at that time. We had a first heavy snowfall (may be 10-15 cm high) after a while there since early morning on Sunday and I could not drive my car which I drove from home to the hotel. Then I had to leave our car there and returned home with my family by train.
This is the reason of delayed issue of this newsletter. However, never mind, there is a proverb “better late than never”.
By the way, do you know something about “Genji Monogatari” or “The tale of Genji”?
“The tale of Genji” is often referred to as the oldest long novel in the world. This story was written by one Japanese lady about 1,000 years ago. The readers of this newsletter may already know about this.
It is said that the author completed writing this story in 1008 so this year is the 1000th anniversary of its completion. Although I do not know details of them, I heard that various kinds of conferences concerning “The Tale of Genji” are going to be held in Japan and academics from all over the world will meet at the conferences.
”The tale of Genji” deeply takes its root in the Japanese culture. I believe that a “nation” and an “ethnic group” are brought together by some kind of “stories”. As for Japan, “Imperial system” under “the single lineage” is a typical one of those.
Like history of other countries, Japanese history witnessed continuous power struggle wielding military and political power and frequent turn over of samurai regimes. Although substantial reign of Japan had been held by samurai warriors between the 12th century and 19th century, even when bloody conflicts occurred, every head of the regime never tried to override the authority of “Emperor”. Also at the time of “Meiji Ishin” (Meiji restoration) when the samurai regime was replaced by the modern political regime, the revival of Imperial political power was the cause for the new government. Even when Japan was defeated by the US, Emperor Showa who was considered to be responsible for the war was not brought to justice as a war criminal and, in current Japan, the “symbolic Emperor” system still continues.
I feel that since Japan has not experienced annexation by other country, Japanese people do not have strong sense of national identity crisis and do not often
think about what sort of efforts they should make to preserve and strengthen their national identity.
However, from ancient times, politicians know that we need stories that everyone can believe in order to make them share the common philosophy of the nation and become its true “nationals.” Or it may be more precise to say that politicians believed the needs of the stories. The typical of them is the absolute Emperor.
For all of the Japanese people, the significance of Imperial or aristocratic reign can be found in the “Heian period” when the nationals enjoyed 400-years-long peace in Heian-kyo and its Imperial culture.
In my opinion, “Tale of Genji” is the epitome of this Imperial culture.
Although this story said to be written by a court lady called “Murasaki-shikibu”, the original copy of her writing does not exist now. Or even manuscript directly copied from the original does not exist either. From studying indirect manuscripts (copies of such manuscript), people guessed to reproduce the text of “The tale of Genji” that we currently read.
It is said that the story of “The tale of Genji” is divided into three parts: Part one where beautiful son of Emperor “Hikaru-genji” gains his political fame while he experiences love affairs with many ladies, part two where he goes through various predicaments and dies after his hard days and part three which tells the story of his descendants.
To be honest, I believe that only limited number of Japanese people have read all of the story with the book written nearly in the original form. It is a very long novel and various different versions of the same chapter exist. Even more, only one in 10,000 Japanese can perfectly understand old writings and grammar.
Therefore, many different versions of this story were translated in modern Japanese. Since the Edo era, the modern versions had been printed and even in modern times, many novelists wrote this story in modern speech. Even with such modern versions, they are very long so I believe that not many people have read through them. To tell the truth, I am still studying to read the entire story in original speech.
Although only a few people read the entire story, “the Tale of Genji” has a great influence on picture scrolls, ukiyoe, manga and other things representing Japanese culture.
Also, every leader of the Kamakura, Muromachi and Edo shogunate claimed that they are from the lineage of the “Genji” family, therefore the name “Genji” was used as the proof of their legitimacy. In current Japan, although people no longer openly refer to their lineage, “The tale of Genji” is the story of the “blood” which has been passed down for generations in Japanese society.
That is all about the “Tale of Genji” for this week. I shall talk a little more about the story next week.
Before my ending remark, I would like to introduce you this week’s recommended item.
http://www.japanese-finearts.com/item/list2/107006610/
Small sized byobu screens, which depicts some of the scenes taken from “Momiji-no-ga” and “Yuugao” of “The Tale of Genji.” They would look very dainty if they were placed in your room as partitions. They were allegedly created around the mid Edo period. How about decorating your room with those elegant screens?
I will explain the stories of “Momiji-no-ga” and “Yuugao” next week.
When you receive this newsletter, the result of the Super Duper Tuesday may be revealed. What will happen? Keep watching it!
Thank you for reading this newsletter to the end.
See you next week!
Chiaki Tanaka
**Backnumber of Shukado News Letter and president diary
http://japanese-finearts.blogspot.com/
http://www.ichiroya.com/blog/Chiaki/
---------------------------------------------
Japanese Fine Arts.com by SHUKADO
Address: Sone Building 7F, Ginza 6-4-8, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-0061
TEL:(international number)+81-3-3569-3620 FAX:+81-3-3569-3621
email: info@japanese-finearts.com
http://www.japanese-finearts.com/
ONLINE GALLERY SYUKADO (Japanese site)
http://www.syukado.jp
master@syukado.jp
Shukado Co,. Ltd. site (Japanese only)
http://aojc.co.jp
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment