Amazon.com: Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature, and the Arts Shirane, Haruo: Books

Amazon.com: Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature, and the Arts: 0884645889776: Shirane, Haruo: Books






Haruo Shirane
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Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature, and the Arts Paperback – Illustrated, March 5, 2013
by Haruo Shirane (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 19 ratings

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Elegant representations of nature and the four seasons populate a wide range of Japanese genres and media―from poetry and screen painting to tea ceremonies, flower arrangements, and annual observances. In Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons, Haruo Shirane shows how, when, and why this practice developed and explicates the richly encoded social, religious, and political meanings of this imagery.

Refuting the belief that this tradition reflects Japan's agrarian origins and supposedly mild climate, Shirane traces the establishment of seasonal topics to the poetry composed by the urban nobility in the eighth century. After becoming highly codified and influencing visual arts in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the seasonal topics and their cultural associations evolved and spread to other genres, eventually settling in the popular culture of the early modern period. Contrasted with the elegant images of nature derived from court poetry was the agrarian view of nature based on rural life. The two landscapes began to intersect in the medieval period, creating a complex, layered web of competing associations. Shirane discusses a wide array of representations of nature and the four seasons in many genres, originating in both the urban and rural perspective: textual (poetry, chronicles, tales), cultivated (gardens, flower arrangement), material (kimonos, screens), performative (noh, festivals), and gastronomic (tea ceremony, food rituals). He reveals how this kind of "secondary nature," which flourished in Japan's urban architecture and gardens, fostered and idealized a sense of harmony with the natural world just at the moment it was disappearing.

Illuminating the deeper meaning behind Japanese aesthetics and artifacts, Shirane clarifies the use of natural images and seasonal topics and the changes in their cultural associations and function across history, genre, and community over more than a millennium. In this fascinating book, the four seasons are revealed to be as much a cultural construction as a reflection of the physical world.


336 pages

Editorial Reviews

Review
Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons provides a compelling account of how Japan has appropriated, interpreted, and valued nature over the centuries. Haruo Shirane's wide-ranging study tracks the culture of nature in Japan and especially the central role of waka in constructing a vision of nature that influenced all the arts. In its breadth, depth, and accessibility, his book is of great value not only to scholars and students of Japan but also to anyone interested in the intersections of art and nature. -- Andrew M. Watsky, Princeton University

A tour de force. Haruo Shirane synthesizes the long and complicated encoding of flora, fauna, toponyms, and annual events of the Japanese landscape and calendar, untangling their synchronic connections and their historical development from the eighth to the nineteenth centuries, from the small cuckoo (hototogisu) as a harbinger of summer in the Kokinshu to the lovemaking of cats as a topic for comic haikai verse in the Edo period. Shirane's book is essential for anyone interested in virtually any genre of the traditional Japanese arts: poetry, costume, painting, noh theater, architecture, tea ceremony, flower arranging―or even Japanese sweets (wagashi)! -- Joshua Mostow, University of British Columbia

'Sensitivity to nature' is one of those commonplaces about Japanese tradition that, because of its all-too-easy association with cultural nationalism, tends to set many people's teeth on edge. This engaging and impressive study provides a welcome antidote. Drawing from literary, visual, historical, and religious sources, Haruo Shirane cuts through the clichés to uncover multiple, evolving, and sometimes surprising dimensions of the Japanese relationship with nature from early times to the present. -- Kate Wildman Nakai, professor emerita, Sophia University

A comprehensive view of the subject, replete with fascinating detail, and full scholarly apparatus. -- David Burleigh ― Japan Times

As accessible as it is erudite, this volume will appeal to those with interest in any aspect of the arts...Highly recommended. ― Choice

A vital contribution to our understanding of the literature, art, and daily practices of Japan over the centuries. -- Elizabeth Oyler ― Monumenta Nipponica

Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons… enables us, for the first time in English, to gain a comprehensive, systematic, and authoritatively scholarly view on how very pervasive this seasons culture is and has been since the Nara and Heian periods. ― Japan Review

Shirane is a reliable guide and reading this book will enrich one's understanding of almost any Japanese artifact. ― Journal of Japanese Studies
About the Author
Haruo Shirane is Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture at Columbia University. He is the author and editor of numerous books on Japanese literature, including, most recently, The Demon at Agi Bridge and Other Japanese Tales; Envisioning The Tale of Genji: Media, Gender, and Cultural Production; Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600; Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900; Classical Japanese: A Grammar; and Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho.


Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Columbia University Press; Illustrated edition (March 5, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages

Customer Reviews:
4.7 out of 5 stars 19 ratings



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Biography
Haruo Shirane was born in Japan and grew up in the United States. He had an interest in writing fiction and started as an English literature major in college, but in his junior year, after a year in London, he turned his attention to Japanese literature. His first book was on The Tale of Genji, which is noted as the world’s “first novel.” The Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of the Tale of Genji looks at both the similarities to the modern European novel and at the very distinct differences, examining the Tale of Genji in a broad social, political, and literary context. His next major book was on Matsuo Basho and haiku. Here he begins with a comparative framework, looking at the North American and European reception of Japanese haiku and then goes on to show the highly unusual manner in which this poetry emerged and the cultural base on which it stands. The most recent book, Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons, continues this trajectory, but carries it into various literary, visual, and artistic genres. He is interested in particular in the major role that nature and the four seasons has in Japanese culture.

In between these books, he has written two books on Japanese classical grammar, edited a number of anthologies of Japanese literature, and edited two volumes of essays on the issues of canonization and popularization of the Japanese classics.

Haruo Shirane is Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, at Columbia University. He writes widely on Japanese literature, visual arts, and cultural history. He is particularly interested in the interaction between popular and elite cultures and the issue of cultural memory. He is the recipient of Fulbright, Japan Foundation, SSRC, NEH grants, and has been awarded the Kadokawa Genyoshi Prize, Ishida Hakyō Prize, and the Ueno Satsuki Memorial Prize on Japanese Culture.
Customer reviews
4.7 out of 5 stars

Top reviews from the United States


Merrily Baird
5.0 out of 5 stars The finest study of Japan's sensitivity to seasonal changeReviewed in the United States on November 21, 2015
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For most Westerners, Japan today is viewed as a mecca of high technology, martial arts, video games, manga, culinary achievement, flower arranging, or fine art and design. But in taking a longer view, one that stretches back well more than a thousand years, it can be argued that Japan's most enduringly important contribution is its exquisite sensitivity to the changing seasons. In previous publications, art historians, specialists in Japanese poetry, and devotees of kimono design, among others, have all touched on this subject.

Never before, however, has such a formidably-talented academic as Haruo Shirane made available in English a rigorous study of the subject. And that study is his 2012 book "Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature, and the Arts." Shirane's chronological approach demonstrates how a focus on the seasons first developed in the poetry of the Nara (710-784) and Heian (794-1185) periods and thereafter permeated ever more aspects of life as Japan itself became more sophisticated, prosperous, and modern.

Readers interested in further exploring how a seasonal sensitivity shapes the lens through which the Japanese view the world may wish to acquire some of the following books: Liza Dalby's "East Wind Melts the Ice," any book of haiku arranged by season, Ivan Morris's "The World of the the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan," and my own "Symbols of Japan: Thematic Motifs in Art and Design." For those wishing to experience the continuing influence of the four seasons in everyday life, even in today's urbanized hi-tech Japan, the following are particularly useful: bakery and sweet shops; tea ceremony venues; restaurants serving bento-box and kaiseki meals; flower shops; and stationery boutiques.

4 people found this helpful

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Jasper
5.0 out of 5 stars A lot of information, has pictures in black & white.Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2019
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It has a lot of information! Many Japanese words and explanations of them. Pictures (blackwhite).


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CHA JAE WOO
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect view of understanding Japanese tea culture that became a root of Wabi- Sabi including screen paintingReviewed in the United States on January 26, 2014
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This book gives you about the understanding of true root of Japanese culture. It comes from practical life of tea culture in terms of humble and sincere attitude of life. And it also shows the true Japanese culture from Muromachi era is better influenced to the ordinary people of Japan than in Edo period.

5 people found this helpful

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Phillip S. Greene
5.0 out of 5 stars Japan is a great place with an aesthetic view worth knowingReviewed in the United States on December 15, 2012
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Explains the relationship of the seasons and the winds and the sun to Japanese Art and literature and I loved it and recommend it to all.

2 people found this helpful

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Hon Takusan
3.0 out of 5 stars A Primer, A Textbook for all current & future students of Japanese Literature & CultureReviewed in the United States on November 1, 2012
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Very disappointed that the beautiful color plates appear in grayscale in the Kindle edition, and that lack of proofreading of the converted file resulted in many typos, especially at the beginning of the book, which was annoying because they were so laughable: ckanoyu, kaski, skibakari, matsumuski, "([agi)" etc -

Also many hyphenated words appearing mid-sentence, a common issue in converting a PDF to ebook, but easily correctable.

Distracting.

There is no question that this is an instant classic. It needs to look like a classic too.

14 people found this helpful

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María Paula Bondoni
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in the United States on October 30, 2014
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Excellent!


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Cliente de Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars ExtraordinayReviewed in the United States on July 11, 2012
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It's not a book for me, it's really a jewel. Gorgeous!!!! I'm delighted when reading it since it shows a very interesting world. I'm learning a lot while reading it.
It arrived in time, and that's something I also value.

3 people found this helpful

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