Japanese Culture
Varley, H. Paul
Varley, Paul
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BOOK SUMMARY
An accurate and well-written introduction to Japanese history and culture.
Submit a book reviewBOOK SYNOPSIS
For nearly three decades Japanese Culture has garnered high praise as an accurate and well-written introduction to Japanese history and culture. This widely used undergraduate text is now available in a new edition. Thoroughly updated, the fourth edition includes expanded sections on numerous topics, among which are samurai values, Zen Buddhism, the tea ceremony, Confucianism in the Tokugawa period, the story of the forty-seven ronin, Mito scholarship in the early nineteenth century, and mass culture and comics in contemporary times.
BOOK EXCERPTS
Preface
More than a quarter of a century has passed since the publication of Japanese Culture. With each edition, it has expanded in size. Thus, whereas the first edition ended with World War II, the second edition included a postwar chapter (which remains the book’s longest chapter). When the University of Hawai'i Press published the third edition in 1984, it reset the entire text and allowed me to add material throughout. Once again, in this fourth edition, the text has been reset and I have been able to add extensive new material on subjects such as samurai values, Zen Buddhism, the tea ceremony (chanoyu), Confucianism in the Tokugawa period, the story of the forty-seven rònin, Mito scholarship in the early nineteenth century, and mass culture and the comics in the present age.
As stated in the preface to the first edition, Japanese Culture is intended as a survey, for the general reader, of Japanese culture, including religion, thought, the visual arts, literature, the theatre, the cinema, and those special arts, such as the tea ceremony and landscape gardening, that have been uniquely cherished in Japan. I have in particular sought to relate cultural developments to political, social, and institutional trends without burdening the text with an excess of the names, dates, and other details of those trends.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank my editor at the University of Hawai'i Press, Patricia Crosby, who encouraged me to undertake the revision and expansion of Japanese Culture for this fourth edition and who has supported and assisted me in various projects for the press over the years.
P.V.
Honolulu
February 1999
AUTHOR BIO
Paul Varley is emeritus professor at Columbia University and Sen Soshitsu XV Professor of Japanese Cultural History at the University of Hawai'i.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Major Periods and Cultural Epochs of Japanese History
Chinese Dynasties Since the Time of Unification Under the Han
Author’s Notes
1. The Emergence of Japanese Civilization
2. The Introduction of Buddhism
3. The Court at Its Zenith
4. The Advent of a New Age
5. The Canons of Medieval Taste
6. The Country Unified
7. The Flourishing of a Bourgeois Culture
8. Heterodox Trends
9. Encounter with the West
10. The Fruits of Modernity
11. Culture in the Present Age
Notes
Glossary
Selected Bibliography
Index
BOOK REVIEWS
"Though many books on Japanese culture have appeared in recent years, none has yet matched Varley's for the combined breadth and depth of detail and for his skill at conjuring up the zeitgeist of each period of Japanese history."
--New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies
Praise for the third edition:
"This is a masterpiece of much in little space. It neatly surveys over 2,000 years of the arts, religion, and cultural peculiarities (e.g., the tea ceremony) of one of the most cultivated of nations. It leaves virtually no major individual, religious sect, genre and style of visual art, form of literary expression, variety of theater, or influence of extra-Japanese origin unconsidered. It nonetheless admirably retains its focus, ignoring the temptation to relate history that doesn't impinge on cultural developments. What's more, Varley writes superbly lucid prose.... A superior one-volume introduction to Japanese culture."
--Booklist
FOR RELATED BOOKS
History Books :: Asia Books :: Japan Books
MORE BOOK INFO
ISBN: 0824821521
ISBN(13-digit): 9780824821524
Copyright: 2000
Dewey Decimal: 952
Library of Congress: 99057345
Book Publisher: Univ of Hawaii Pr
Language: ENG
No. of Pages: 383
Paper Weight (lb): 1.6
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