Opis: Before the Nation - Susan L. Burns

Exploring how theories of 'nation-ness' that continue to be evoked in present-day Japan emerged and evolved, Susan L. Burns provides a close examination of kokugaku, a late-eighteenth-century Japanese intellectual movement. Departing from earlier studies of kokugaku (which means 'the study of our country'), Burns considers how three of the more marginalized participants in the movement challenged its principal founder and engaged its fundamental concerns about what defines the Japanese nation and unifies those within it.Central to Burns' analysis is the Kojikiden of Motoori Norinaga, arguably the most important intellectual production of Japan's early modern period. Burns situates the Kojikiden as one of a series of attempts to analyze and interpret the mytho-histories dating from the early eighth century, the Kojiki and Nihon shoki. Nativist scholars like Norinaga saw these texts as keys to an original, authentic, and idyllic 'Japan' that existed before 'flawed' foreign influences, notably Confucianism and Buddhism, tainted it.Hailed in the nineteenth century as the begetter of a new national consciousness, Norinaga's Kojikiden was later condemned by some as a source of Japan's twentieth-century descent into militarism, war, and defeat. Burns looks in depth at three kokugaku writers - Ueda Akinari, Fujitani Mitsue, and Tachibana Moribe - who contested Norinaga's interpretations and produced competing readings of the mytho-histories that stressed community as a basis for Japanese social and cultural identity. Though relegated to the footnotes by a later generation of scholars, these writers were quite influential in their day, and by recovering their arguments, Burns reveals kokugaku as a complex debate - involving history, language, and subjectivity - with repercussions extending well into the modern era. "Highly recommended."--K. Hirano, CHOICE "[I]nteresting and persuasive..."--Thomas Keirstead, The Journal of Asian Studies "Burns rightly argues that scholars of Japanese culture and antiquity during the early modern period were not ideologically united. Although the analyses presented in this book are sometimes demanding, they help to further our understanding of an important yet often misunderstood phenomenon."--Mark McNally, American Historical Review "Susan L. Burns provides an excellent corrective to the impression that kokugaku scholarship of the eighteenth century led almost inevitably to the development of modern Shinto nationalism... Beautifully written for a specialized audience, ... Before the Nation provides provocative insights into the varied logic and concerns of eighteenth-century kokugaku, with welcome summaries of later, less renowned scholars' work as well."--Sarah Thal, Social Anthropology "[A] superb analytical study of the Kokugaku movement before and during the early stages of the Meiji era... [Burns] works from a very broad range of original sources and engages in extensive literary analysis of contemporary texts to support her arguments. Her work is like a brilliant search light that exposes the reader to both the complexity as well as the brilliance of Japanese scholarship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries... Before the Nation is one of those rare feats of scholarship that should become mandatory reading for any student of pre-modern Japanese history and politics."--Daniel A. Metraux, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies "Susan Burns has produced a fine study of a complex and important subject... [T]he book will be read with great profit by historians, linguists, specialists in literature and anyone trying to untangle the many puzzles of Japanese nationalism."--Sandra Wilson, IntersectionsLate Tokugawa society and the crisis of community -- Before the Kojikiden: the divine age narrative in Tokugawa Japan -- Motoori Norinaga: discovering Japan -- Ueda Akinari: history and community -- Fujitani Mitsue: the poetics off community -- Tachibana Moribe: cosmology and community -- National literature, intellectual history, and the new Kokugaku -- Imagined Japan(s).

Szczegóły: Before the Nation - Susan L. Burns

Tytuł: Before the Nation
Autor: Susan L. Burns
Producent: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822331834
Rok produkcji: 2004
Ilość stron: 288
Oprawa: Twarda
Waga: 0.54 kg

Recenzje: Before the Nation - Susan L. Burns