Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Asian - Japanese

Literary critiques of Murasaki Shikibu's eleventh-century The Tale of Genji have often focused on the amorous adventures of its eponymous hero. In this paradigm-shifting analysis of the Genji and other mid-Heian literature, Doris G. Bargen emphasizes the thematic importance of Japan's complex polygynous kinship system as the domain within which courtship occurs. Heian courtship, conducted mainly to form secondary marriages, was driven by power struggles of succession among lineages that focused on achieving the highest position possible at court. Thus interpreting courtship in light of...

As an especially beautiful and pure example of the archaic epic styles that were once current among the hunting and fishing peoples of northern Asia, the Ainu epic folklore is of immense literary value. This collection and English translation by Donald Philippi contains thirty-three representative selections from a number of epic genres including mythic epics, culture hero epics, women's epics, and heroic epics. This is the first time, outside of Japan, that the Ainu epic folklore has been treated in a comprehensive manner.

Originally published in 1979.

The Princeton Legacy...

In Tokyo in the early 1990s, an indie band called Flipper's Guitar were at the forefront of a new direction in Japanese popular music known as Shibuya-kei. The band's founder, Keigo Oyamada, would go on to produce a series of albums under the name Cornelius which are among the most innovative in Japanese popular music of the past two decades. Oyamada's third album under his Cornelius alter ego, Fantasma (1997) played a key role in putting J-pop on the world map of Western music fans, while Oyamada himself is today one of the most respected figures in the Japanese music industry....

Under the mastery of Basho,...