2001.02

pmjs logs for February, 2001. Total number of messages: 93

BC Asian Review Call for Papers (Monika Dix)

Talk by Gaye G. Rowley (Nicola Liscutin)

phonology query (David Pollack)

Heian tears... (Royall Tyler) [archived]

Military science-castle building (Matthew Stavros)

Translation of muen (Rolf Giebel)

new members: Samuel C. Morse and Charles De Wolf

Several Questions: index to engishiki; a journal for pre-modern Japanese studies; a papers about early kuge cuisine in general and the use of milk products (Barbara Nostrand)

Engi shiki research (Wayne Farris)

American politics / "netiquette" (Richard Bowring)

Judging the elite; Elites, Genji, etc. (Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen)

places to discuss politics (David Olson)

Looking for ZGR vol 19 (Barbara Nostrand)

Chujohime (Monika Dix)

animals in history (Gregory Pflugfelder)

Cipango No. 9 Table of contents (Philip C. Brown)

reviews of (educational) videos [messages missing]

Lightly edited (see "principles"). Editorial comments in italics.

Note: Near the end of this month pmjs began to be delivered from a new address: p...@...eijigakuin.ac.jp. Most members continued to use the listbot address until mid-March, when we switched over completely. This added to my difficulty in compiling the log for a month for which I had no longer had access to a full collection of messages received.* All the listbot messages were recovered from the listbot archives before they were closed down, but not all those sent to p...@...*[Warning to all Outlook Express users: don't let your database grow too large, as a crash can render it forever unreadable, Eudora is much safer in this respect, as messages and attachments are not saved in a single file.]

previous month - next month

Date: Feb 01 2001 18:15:10 EST
From: "Dix Monika" <monika...@...mail.com>
Subject: [pmjs] BCAR-Call for Papers

Could you please announce the following to your graduate students:
Ý
CALL FOR PAPERS
British Columbia Asian Review (BCAR)
Ý
The BCAR is a refereed on-line journal of research on Asia. Submissions of papers and book reviews by graduate students conducting research on AsiaÝ for the upcoming issue of the BCAR will be accepted until May 2001.
All materials must be submitted on a 3.5" disk in MacIntosh format, as well as a hard copy.
Graphic images must be included in the disk and a clear indication of their location in the text should be given in the hard copy. The editors will not be responsible for inputting Chinese, Japanese, or Korean characters. Articles must follow the Chicago Manual of Style. Also,
please include a brief biographical paragraph with your submission. All materials should be send to :
Ý
ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ BC Asian Review
ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ Ý Department of Asian Studies
ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ University of British Columbia
ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ 1871 West Mall
ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ Vancouver, B.C.Ý V6T 1Z2
ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ Canada
Ý
For any questions or further information, please contactÝ m...@...erchange.ubc.ca
Thank you.
Ý
Monika Dix
Co-editor

Date: Feb 05 2001 01:44:38 EST
From: "Nicola Liscutin" <liscu...@...tokyo.org>
Subject: [pmjs] DIJ Humanities & History Study Group - February Meeting

We would like to invite you to the next meeting of the DIJ Humanities & History Study Group, which will take place on
Wednesday, February 14, from 6:30 pm
at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ), Tokyo. For our address and a map, please consult our homepage (http://www.dijtokyo.org). Those who wish to attend this session are kindly requested to register with Nicola Liscutin (liscu...@...tokyo.org).
The speaker will be
Dr. Gaye G. Rowley (Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University)
who will present her research on
Memoirs of a Real Geisha: Masuda Sayo's "Half a Lifetime of Pain and Struggle"
Abstract:
The enormous and continued popularity of Arthur Golden s 1997 novel
Memoirs of a Geisha has led to renewed interest in geisha, not only in the
West, but also in Japan.Ý The launch issue of Vogue Nippon, published in
July 1999, and the June 2000 issue of the magazine Tokyojin, for example,
both feature photo-spreads of geisha.Ý All these recent accounts of geisha
and their "secret world" focus on the entertainment districts of Kyoto and
Tokyo; the geisha life is depicted as glamorous and aesthetic, devoted to
the pursuit of art.Ý Sex, if mentioned at all, takes place only within the
bounds of a long-term relationship with a patron.
There is, of course, another geisha world, that of the onsen or hot-springs
resort geisha.Ý To the best of my knowledge, only one former onsen geisha
has ever written her memoirs:Ý she is Masuda Sayo, and the world described
in her autobiography is the subject of my paper.
The training Masuda Sayo received in the geisha arts did not become a means
of self-expression, nor a way of supporting herself as she grew older.Ý
Masuda writes against the view that the geisha life is glamorous and/or
aesthetic; and she exposes as fantasy the notion that geisha do not provide
sexual services for payment.Ý She makes clear that in the world she
inhabited, geisha routinely engaged in sex for payment, that this is what
was expected of them, and that a relationship with a geisha at an onsen
required no special introduction or intermediary, only the ability to pay.Ý
Masuda s memoirs reveal the seamy underside of the pre-war onsen and the
desperate poverty disguised by the onsen geisha's arts.

Date: Feb 05 2001 08:59:52 EST
From: David Pollack <poll...@...l.rochester.edu>
Subject: phonology query

I've read nothing about Chinese and Japanese phonology since my hazy
undergrad days (never mind why they're hazy), so asking this group is
taking the lazy way out:

I learned that ancient Chinese finals -p or -t or -k (forming the
rusheng category, absorbed in modern 'Mandarin' to become the fourth
tone) were retained, among other languages, in modern Cantonese and
Japanese -- for example sahp, baat, and luhk, and in the modern
Japanese equivalent of the last two, hat/i and rok/u.

My question is, what happened to the final -p in Japanese -- why
didn't sahp become shippu (!) or something instead of modern shi? Did
it ever exist but get absorbed, or did ancient Japanese phonology
simply never permit a final -p any more than modern could? (That is,
the language has a ka-gyou and a ta-gyou but no pa-gyou). Is there
any evidence of the language trying to cope with it, or was it simply
ignored?

Date: Feb 05 2001 15:43:10 EST
From: monkeygirl <monkey...@...ampunk.intranets.com>
Subject: phonology query

David Pollack wrote: "I've read nothing about Chinese and Japanese phonology
since my hazy undergrad days (never mind why they're hazy), so asking this
group is taking the lazy way out:"

that's why we're here, innit?

"I learned that ancient Chinese finals -p or -t or -k (forming the rusheng
category, absorbed in modern 'Mandarin' to become the fourth tone) were
retained, among other languages, in modern Cantonese and Japanese -- for
example sahp, baat, and luhk, and in the modern Japanese equivalent of the last two, hat/i and rok/u."

this is offtopic, but there may also have been a -c ending (palatalised k, like
'ky') as well, hence the variety of Modern Mandarin endings, both -ao/ou and
-ai/ei, from posited *-k and *-c (for example, Jap. 'haku' = Mandarin 'bai',
not *bao as 'expected' from a -k ending).

Okay: so here's the answer. Japanese has lost the unmarked P: for example,
samurai < OJ verb safurafi 'servant, person in someone's service'. It passed
from archaic p > OJ f > modern #h-, intervocalic [zero], and _a > w. It is
retained in some Ryukyuan dialects and when doubled (-pp-) or voiced (b).
Sometimes, an irregular variation caused the phoneme to be conserved as well, as in safurafi, nasal variation samurafi > mod. samurai.

Hence you have fune 'boat' < OJ fune < archaic puna/e (e-umlaut) and
Sino-Japanese 'haku' < faku, but then Manyo:shu: < OJ *man-yefu-sifu, where the -efu/-ifu > yo:, yu:, so man-yo:-syu:.

I'd be happy to talk about any of this as I am far more conversant with
premodern phonology than premodern history/society: i'm a linguist-in-training and an armchair historian rather than the opposite.

monkeygirl

a.k.a. Brian Betty

Date: Feb 05 2001 17:16:39 EST
From: David Pollack <poll...@...l.rochester.edu>
Subject: phonology query

Thanks, MG (aka?). I realized what I was after when it occurred to me
in the car immediately after mailing this that I had for some ungodly
reason (I forgot my morning coffee) substituted in my mind Chinese
shi for Japanese juu, and that juu had to derive from juFu (or
something - shiYuFu?), and that that likely accounted for the -p,
tossed early for lack of anywhere else into the Fa-gyou and later
vacuumed out by u-onbin (if that's the mechanism that produces
changes like saFuraFu > saburou - I hold to the violent WWF view of
language change).

I'm probably better off not knowing more a possible Chinese final -c,
but where would that have ended up in modern Mandarin? One more
victim of the fourth tone, or something else? This is what I deserve
for not just reading the book.

Date: Feb 05 2001 18:21:10 EST
From: "John R. Bentley" <jbentl...@....edu>
Subject: phonology query

It appears that this query is about finished, but let me add a few points.
As David later realized, if we look at kanji-on in the kyuu-kanazukai form
the -f- appears. Naturally this will go back to an early -p-.

There is some controversy about whether this was -f- or -p- in Old Japanese
(which is the language of the Nara era and somewhat earlier--in broad terms).

Roy Andrew Miller has held that in OJ times this phoneme was -f- (often
written as F for some strange reason, as Japanese has never--to my mind--had an F/f alteration). The answer to this question can be found in Nihon shoki, in which the poetry was written in Late Middle Chinese. By the Late Middle Chinese period Chinese made a distinction between f and p. Early Middle Chinese did not. If one carefully looks at the poetry in Nihon shoki, one
finds an overwhelming number of p- initial graphs for the so-called ha-gyoo.

Marc Miyake's dissertation "The Phonology of Eighth Century Japanese
Revisisted" has a nice discussion with lots of data, if anyone needs something to do this week *-).

Best,

John Bentley

From: Royall.Ty...@....edu.au (Royall Tyler)

Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 19:29:59 +1100

Subject: Heian tears

All right, CJLit fans, we have a zillion passages in GENJI and elsewhere about people wiping their eyes with their sleeves, wringing out sleeves sopping wet with tears (a figurative expression, I know), etc. But did they REALLY use their sleeves to mop up their tears? Silk is remarkably non-absorbent, those sleeves were valuable, water leaves stains on silk, and in any case they were generally wearing makeup, weren't they? What a mess! Didn't they actually used paper? After all, they must have had some handy to blow their noses on. Or did they, for that too, ...? It hardly bears thinking about.

Royall Tyler

From: "Denise O'Brien" <obri...@...ro.temple.edu>

Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 09:54:17 -0500

Subject: Heian tears

Perhaps one of the multiple underlayers was the actual recipient of tears---maybe an older, faded robe---or, if we can't imagine a Heian lady with a faded robe no matter how far down in the layers---then why not think of those commodious sleeves as the holding place for a more plebeian rag? I can imagine a woman--or a man---holding a sleeve delicately to her eyes but doing the actual mopping up with the equivalent of a handkerchief. Do tears stain silk badly? Perhaps we should conduct an experiment. Certainly present day silk---most kinds---washes easily (no matter what the label says).

Regards, Denise O'Brien

From: David Pollack <poll...@...l.rochester.edu>

Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 10:23:31 -0500

Subject: Heian tears

Royall,

I'm providing some information from a silk website that might be of interest since it seems to run counter to some of what you write. However, the information is written in the context of modern silk production, so we don't know if these statements apply to silk in general, or only to the modern variety -- I suspect the former, but I'm not sure. Also you will notice there is nothing here about the question of tears with their high salinity <http://www.fabrics.net/silk.htm>:

"Silk absorbs moisture, which makes it cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Because of its high absorbency, it is easily dyed in many deep colors . . . All silk is washable. Silk is a natural protein fiber, like human hair, taken from the cocoon of the silkworm. The natural glue, sericin, secreted by silkworms and not totally removed during manufacturing of the silk, is a natural sizing which is brought out when washing in warm water. Most silk fabrics can be hand washed. Technically, silk does not shrink like other fibers. If the fabric is not tightly woven, washing a silk with tighten up the weave.... thus, lighter weights of silk (say a crepe de chine of 14 mm) can be improved by washing as it will tighten up the weave. A tightly woven silk will not "shrink" or will "shrink" a lot less. Silk garments, however, can shrink if the fabric has not been washed prior to garment construction . . . A good shampoo works well on silk. It will remove oil and revitalize your silk. Do not use an alkaline shampoo or one which contains ingredients such as wax, petroleum, or their derivatives, as these products will leave a residue on your silk and may cause "oil" spots. If static or clinging is a problem with your silks, a good hair conditioner (see above cautions) may be used in the rinse water. "

As I recall, the long Tang poem 'Changhenge' by Po Zhu-i is awash in tears -- may even be a locus classicus for wet sleeves for all I know (though it sounds more like a Six Dynasties trope: 'is it tears or snot that wets my sleeves?,' etc). One implication of all this copious lachrymosity is that the wretched emperor and his concubine could care less if their precious silks get stained. Heian courtiers may have adopted a similar conceit of heroically abandoned misery.

Finally, though it doesn't appear to come up in Genji, one suspects that they had people who knew how to get pretty stubborn stains out of silk -- though it sounds from the information above that heavily-dyed silk material in fact stains only with difficulty. Once the material had been dyed and the proper mordant applied to make the process fast, I suspect it would be pretty much impervious to mere human tears. Its ability to "absorb moisture" sounds more a matter of its weave or fibers permitting the passage of humidity and sweat (the early Gore-Tex effect) than of actually absorbing moisture into itself permanently.

Wot wot,

David Pollack

From: Janine Beichman <jani...@....vc-net.ne.jp>

Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 00:14:17 +0900

Subject: Heian tears

not sure silk is so non-absorbent--it's one of the 'natural' fabrics women who get hot flashes are told will be comfortable to wear, as it absorbs the sweat better than a synthetic. Also, rather than 'mopping up' their tears, perhaps they were dabbing at their eyes, or patting them dry.

From: Rose Bundy <bu...@...o.edu>

Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 13:52:44 -0800

Subject: Heian tears

I agree [with Janine Beichman]. It seems to me that silk is marked in fitness catalogues/shops as capable of absorbing several times its weight in moisture--and so suitable for runners, and others who work up a sweat. Plus it dries pretty quickly. But we're talking light-weight silk, not heavy woven materials. BTW, many of the "high-tech" synthetics don't absorb but pull the fluid to their outer surface, away from the skin, which would have been helpful in those hot, Kyoto summers, I'm sure.

Rose Bundy

From: Barbara Nostrand <nostr...@....org>

Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 14:25:33 -0500

Subject: Heian tears

Isn't the nose/eye wiping problem much more simply solved by wearing on or more layers made out of linen or hempen cloth instead of silk? As I recall, they had linen, hempen cloth, and ramie (sp) as well as silk.

Barbara Nostrand

From: Noel John Pinnington <no...@...rizona.edu>

Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 14:10:27 -0700

Subject: Heian tears

Just to bite the bullet, I have always wondered whether tears were not the only fluids that left their traces on clothes after a night of love; and hence taken it that tears were metonymic, or else synechdochic. Something like: "my damp pyjamas as I left your room..." Maybe not. When I was studying with a swami in India, he routinely blew his nose on his robes, and nobody seemed to mind.

On another point, I have always imagined the common image in which teardrop on the sleeve contains the moon to refer to some property of liquid on silk to resist the material and form a near spherical shape - hence reminding the poet of dewdrops and beads. If silk is so absorbent then bang goes that set of connections. Noel Pinnington

From: Roberta Strippoli <rober...@...nford.EDU>

Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 23:40:48 +0100

Subject: Heian tears

Wait a second, were they really weeping? I thought that was a figurative expression too...

Roberta

From: Wayne Farris <wfar...@....edu>

Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 18:59:57 -0500

Subject: Silk and aristocratic tears

Dear all, Speaking from the bottom of the social pyramid, I'd like to know how all that silk got produced. Technology? Marketing? Labor? There's a good book waiting for someone who wants to study the development of the silk industry in Japan, 700-1800 (or later). But it doesn't focus exclusively on samurai or the aristocracy, so it won't be addressed. (Excuse the needle!) Personally, I prefer hemp!

Best wishes, Wayne Farris

From: Matthew Stavros <mstav...@...nceton.EDU>

Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 19:22:46 -0500

Subject: Heian tears

Dear List,

I'm with Roberta. If indeed they were crying, this is an excellent exchange. If not, however... Someday, a thousand years from now, people might just be debating about now we regained our faculty of sight after each time we "cried our eyes out." This undoubtedly will trigger a long discussion about our tendency to "cry a river" on occasion.

Maybe we should take the expressions of Genji and friends more literarily than literally.

Best, MGS

From: "Alexander R. Bay" <fuge...@...and.stanford.edu>

Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 18:58:42 -0800

Subject: tear-drops

Here is another question to throw to the group: Do allusions to wet sleeves and the like have similar expressions in Chinese traditions, i.e. were themes and motifs in Chinese literature and poetry adopted and adapted into "native" Japanese poetry, literature, and aesthetic traditions? (for the tenuous nature of these terms as applying to Heian poetry practice see Smits, "Pursuit of Loneliness") And if so, do we need to ask what these allusions meant in the continental context, and how weepy Chinese dried their tears, and avoided staining their robes with tears? Or, akin to Noel's inquiry, how they alluded to various wetspots on the sheets. An even more interesting question would be: did previously non-existent tears in Chinese poetry then appear in the kanshi that Japanese courtiers wrote? To push the envelope even further, (thanks to Wayne's encouragement) we know that Japan grew, and made clothing out of, hemp, but did they smoke it pre-Meiji Japan? Alex Bay

From: David Pollack <poll...@...l.rochester.edu>

Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 22:27:12 -0500 (EST)

Subject: tear-drops

TEARS REDUX I have already suggested that, while the Changhenge (Chougonka) of Po Zhuyi is awash in tears, Helen McCullough's now-ancient HJAS translation of Konishi Jin'ichi's seminal 1949 essay on the Chinese origins of much of the rhetorical strategy of the Kokinshu style (was it?), tells us that tropes of 'elegant confusion' (is it tears on my sleeves or dew?) were a hallmark of the Six Dynasties (ie, pre-Tang) style of poets like Yu Xian. I'm not certain how much of that poetry actually dealt with teary sleeves, but I believe there was quite a bit of it. I also believe that the trope stuck in certain Tang modes, typically love poems of the 'palace-mode' (gongti) style. Some of this is rehashed in Brower & Miner, though without specific references.

Alas, the years have not been kind and it's too late at night to drive over to the library to check all this out. I hope someone will take up the gauntlet, or is it the sleeve. I did check Rimer & Chaves' translation of the Wakan roueishuu, but found no wet Chinese sleeves under "Love."

HEMP
Tribute from Southeast Asian lands listed early on in the Chinese dynastic histories included, to my recollection, something called "bowstring hemp," and I remember one desultory seminar day devoted to arguing whether the stuff was for shooting with or for smoking. As I recall, the distinction between the inert 'industrial hemp' and the potent other sort came up, a distinction revived in the US today by tobacco farmers looking for legal remunerative alternatives to the evil weed (tobacco that is). So far they seem not to have had much luck convincing the FDA that the inert variety really is inert. The Chinese were interested in all sorts of mushrooms, especially the Daoists who revered the lingzhi fungus that is a standard item of Daoist iconography even today; but there never has been any evidence that the ancients were doing doobies, not even Laozi et Cie. Their loss.

David Pollack

From: "Lewis Cook" <lc...@...centric.net>

Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 00:05:14 -0500

Subject: Heian tears

A number of responses to this intriguing query have argued that silk is not very susceptible to tear-staining, and is indeed absorbent. My impression (from the 'older' literature) is that tear-stains on otherwise precious silk sleeves might well have been valued as a proof of the wearer's 'sensibility.' I'm hoping to hear more.

Off on a tangent, are tear-sodden sleeves really _just_ "figurative"? I vaguely recall having been advised that to dismiss these floods of Heian tears (in particular those attributed to men) as so much 'rhetoric' was to reveal one's culture-boundedness. A text such as IseMonogatari 107 -- the man complains of a river of tears swelling his sleeves, and the woman (or her male ghostwriter anyway) responds that she will be persuaded of his affection only when she hears that he has been swept downstream by that river -- seems to be enough to establish that Heian writers were aware that a good measure of overkill was involved in these proofs of sensibility, but can a figure like this evolve into hyperbole without at least one one or two real tear-stained sleeves, somewhere along the line?

A further tangent: going back a bit, a few memorable lines from one of Hitomaro's poems on the death of a wife (in the pre-war NGS English translation of Manyoshu) concludes: "I thought myself a strong man, / But the sleeves of my garment / are wetted through with tears." Does this mean that as of the 7th c., at least, strong men weren't (yet) supposed to wet their sleeves with tears, or is it (more) rhetoric?

A yet further tangent, re: Noel Pinnington's "damp pyjamas" hypothesis -- at least one ("esoteric") medieval commentary on Ise Monogatari No. 6 takes the mysterious "beads of white dew on the grass"(after which the woman inquires) to be (_figuratively_, of course) droplets of semen on a field of public hairs ("tsuyu" / tears / bodily fluids of all kinds)

Back to you, Royall.

From: "Lewis Cook" <lc...@...centric.net>

Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 00:32:21 -0500

Subject: Heian tears

Uh, corrigendum to my previous: for "public," kindly read "pubic."

(I once found myself presiding, at a provincial college in Japan, over an English "Pubic Speaking Contest" and couldn't refrain from laughing out loud. I guess this was the retribution.)

Lewis Cook

>... droplets of semen on a field of public hairs

From: Royall.Ty...@....edu.au (Royall Tyler)

Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 17:28:59 +1100

Subject: Heian tears

Thank you all for your comments on silk. I stand corrected on silk's absorbency. After years and years of reading about those tears and sleeves, I was struck yesterday when suddenly the whole motif seemed so implausible.

It still does, though. Dabbing at you eyes with a sleeve to dry a tear or two sounds fine, but when you really cry, you have to blow your nose, too. So "sode o shiboru" is not only hyperbolic, it's evasive. They carried tatoogami, and they must have used it. The motif of tears and sleeves must actually be fictional to a degree--more graceful than life.

Royall Tyler

From: Mary Louise Nagata <MLNag...@...puserve.com>

Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 03:05:17 -0500

Subject: Silk and aristocratic tears

Dear All,

My understanding is that silk production came into Japan from Korea with Korean silk weavers settling in what is now the Arashiyama area of west Kyoto. There is a shrine devoted to them dating from before the Heian period. I have silk, paper, ink, sake, and sesame oil production earmarked for future projects if I ever get that far and can dig myself out of my Tokugawa demographic projects. I would welcome anyone else doing the work. Certainly the quality of Heian paper was excellent and documents from this period are much less worm eaten than later (presumably cheaper) papers. Or is this a case of the survival of the fittest? Moreover, documents and documentation were certainly important suggestion a thriving paper, ink, brush, etc. industry not to mention clothing and other products. There is obviously a lot to be done.

Mary Louise Nagata

From: Janine Beichman <jani...@....vc-net.ne.jp>

Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 17:06:12 +0900

Subject: Heian tears

speaking of hitomaro, what about his tears of blood, mentioned in the title of a choka i don't have time to look up right now? i recall once seeing something in english that suggested that there is actually such a phenomenon.

From: Richard Bowring <rb...@...mes.cam.ac.uk>

Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 08:28:33 +0000

Subject: Heian tears

Being somewhat bemused by all these tears and having always thought that it was all just overblown rhetoric, I have refraining from joining in the fray but Royall brings up paper for the second time. I find this very odd. Surely paper of all kinds would have been precious and expensive. Or was there a kind of material that went by the name kami but that was actually just some sort of rag? What is tatoogami, Royall.

Richard Bowring

From: David Pollack <poll...@...l.rochester.edu>

Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 05:42:22 -0500 (EST)

Subject: Heian tears: lit or fig?

I am reminded of the image, in literature and chronicles of both China and Japan, of great battles in which corpses floated on "rivers of blood." I don't think anyone would try to argue that this was meant literally, bloody though some battles undoubdtedly were. I think the idea of bedewed bushes as a metaphor for 'public' affairs is a much more, uh, seminal one.

David Pollack

From: Michael Watson <wat...@...eijigakuin.ac.jp>

Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 23:10:47 +0900

Subject: Heian tears: lit or fig?

Tatoogami (written tatami-gami "folded paper") was made of "tori no ko" i.e. "egg shell" paper, so called because of its colour, a "superior type of washi made from GANPI" (wikstroemia gampi, a deciduous tree) [Nihon kokugo daijiten].

Dictionaries say that tatoogami was used both as notepaper and as tissue paper, however all twelve examples in GENJI are of its use for jotting down waka, the first being in "Utsusemi" (S 55, old Zenshu edition 1:203). Other functions go unmentioned.

Another term for paper to wipe tears and other bodily emissions ("namida nado") was "hanagami/hanakami" but this is attested only from the Edo period according to the NKD. (For bodily fluids, clothing, and stains thereon, see Timon Screech, _Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Images in Japan 1700-1820_, p. 121.)

Taking up another point, I concur with Lewis Cook against the skeptics--

I vaguely recall having been advised that to dismiss these floods of Heian tears (in particular those attributed to men) as so much 'rhetoric' was to reveal one's culture-boundedness

--but wonder if it is not a failure of *historical* imagination.

Even within one's own culture and own lifetime, one experiences changes in when and how much it is considered appropriate to shed tears. (Or am I the only man to compare himself with his father in such matters?)

Within European culture history there are extravagantly "weepy" ages and relatively dried-eye ones. The change from one age to another is often dramatic (one recalls Oscar Wilde's oft quoted remark about Dicken's _Old Curiosity Shop_: "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing").

This is a problem for those teaching earlier European texts as well. Chaucer's _Troilus & Criseyde_ is full of the most extravagant descriptions of weeping. The Cambridge *School* Shakespeare edition of _Romeo and Juliet_ suggests that pupils reading scene III.3 (Romeo lamenting his banishment) should "talk together about where you think Romeo's feelings and language are genuine and where you think they are 'over the top'."

Johan Huizinga has a memorable passage in the opening chapter of _The Waning of the Middle Ages_ (now retranslated as _The Autumn of the Middle Ages_) describing the extraordinary expressions of grief at court funerals in the 1420's. Not only frequency of weeping and the quantity of tears, and also the social valuation of tears are factors that vary from era to era. He points to the period of "sentimentalism" in the 18th century as another lachrymose era when tears were seen as ennobling and beautiful. Quoting the Japanese translation, the only edition to hand: "rakurai wa hito no kokoro o takameru, namida wa utsukushii" (Chuo Koron, 1.22).

Enough from me, except for a list-master's apology for the return of advertisements. This enthusiastic exchange has used up our monthly "ad-free" quota of messages in a single week.

Michael Watson

From: "Ford, Barbara" <Barbara.F...@...museum.org>

Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 11:07:12 -0500

Subject: Heian tears: lit or fig?

Michael, you have had the last word, and as could've been expected, it is a most illuminating one [or so]. THANK YOU!

Barbara

From: Janine Beichman <jani...@....vc-net.ne.jp>

Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2001 02:50:03 +0900

Subject: Heian tears: lit or fig?

Enlightening, Michael! Reminds me again of how important it is to inspect our own history and literature at the same time as we are looking into those of other cultures/countries.

From: Leila Wice <lr...@...umbia.edu>

Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2001 05:25:23 +0900

Subject: soggy silk

First, a few strands to tangle the silk thread, from one of the fiber wonks who's been giggling offstage:

Royall Tyler wrote:

Thank you all for your comments on silk. I stand corrected on silk's absorbency.

But silk is not always absorbent, although it can be. And it can be water repellent, and it can either resist or be susceptible to stains... As David Pollack implied, we can't get very far with speculations about the general properties of a fiber as versatile as silk. These characteristics depend on all sorts of other factors, such as whether the cocoons have been broken and spun or reeled into threads as a monofilaments; whether or not the core thread has been degummed of its sericin outer layer; the ply,twist and thickness of the yarn, the densities and structures of the fabrics made of those yarns... These were all permutations that would have been technically feasible where silk was being made during the Heian period.

I was astounded a few years ago when textile manufacturers, in a grand gesture of snobbish postmodern irony, managed to craft silk into something precious that looked, felt, and acted very much like polyester.

Indeed, the topic is so vast that the Textile Society of America is devoting its entire biennial meeting to the topic of "Silk" in 2002...

Wayne asked about previous scholarship on silk manufacture. Oota Eizou is one scholar who, although mainly concerned with the transfer and development of weave technologies, also offers insights into the early history of sericulture. He uses everything from emaki and extant textiles to monjo and mulberry trees to learn about various stages of production. See his chosakushuu (Bunka Shuppan-kyoku hen, 1986)
1986

Although the period is a bit off, I would also recommend: Bray, Francesca. Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: Univ. California, 1997. This book is about the continent, but it reminds us that the work of textile production work was often actually quite priveledged. Let's also remember that hemp is not always humble.

FLUID ASSOCIATIONS
On another note, I wonder if our group's preoccupation with the paradigm of bodily fluids mightn't be anachronistic, maybe even informed by rhetorics of "safer-sex" from the late 1980's/early1990's? Or are tears, semen, blood, snot and other excretions grouped together in the imagery of the day as they are in our anatomical imaginary? The "tears of blood" cite was an interesting example--is it exceptional?

--Leila Wice
Columbia University Ph.D. Candidate
University of Tokyo Historiographical Institute Foreign Research Fellow

Date: Feb 08 2001 10:00:41 EST
From: Mary Louise Nagata <MLNag...@...puserve.com>
Subject: Heian tears: lit or fig?

For all those who can't see courtiers using expensive paper to wipe their
noses, consider that likely they also used paper that had poetry drafts on
them. At least I have seen documents from the Edo period with a serious
document on one side and kanji practice by children on the other. There is
more than one way to recycle.

From: Royall.Ty...@....edu.au (Royall Tyler)

Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 05:40:02 +1100

Subject: Heian tears

Wait a second, were they really weeping? I thought that was a figurative expression too...

Roberta

Well, surely SOMETIMES. But one does wonder.

Royall Tyler

From: William Bodiford <bodif...@...a.edu>

Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 13:28:51 -0800

Subject: rivers of blood (WAS Heian tears: lit or fig?)

David Pollack wrote:

Eye-witness accounts of U.S. civil war battles state that the water of rivers next to the battlefields literally turned red from the vast amounts of blood. It is not impossible.

William Bodiford

From: Royall.Ty...@....edu.au (Royall Tyler)

Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 05:40:04 +1100

Subject: Heian tears

[Lewis Cook writes]

A yet further tangent, re: Noel Pinnington's "damp pyjamas" hypothesis -- at least one ("esoteric") medieval commentary on Ise Monogatari No. 6 takes the mysterious "beads of white dew on the grass"(after which the woman inquires) to be (_figuratively_, of course) droplets of semen on a field of pubic hairs ("tsuyu" / tears / bodily fluids of all kinds)

FINALLY an explanation of that line that makes sense!! One giant leap for a dewdrop, so to speak.

Royall

From: Royall.Ty...@....edu.au (Royall Tyler)

Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 08:06:51 +1100

Subject: Heian tears

Richard Bowring

Michael has answered this far better than I could have done. It is interesting that some of us have simply dismissed these tears as false or meaningless, just because the imagery associated with weeping (ama are fishing below my pillow, and so on) can be so obviously over the top. One might as well decide that no blood was shed in battle, just because "rivers of blood" sounds exaggerated. According to a medieval chronicle, at the battle of Poitiers in 1356, "Men trod in their own guts and spat out their teeth...the blood of serfs and princes flowed in one stream into the river." I believe it. And I believe Heian courtiers wept.

More of us, like me, have probably assumed that if the text says she (or he) wept, she did (or would plausibly have done so if real), and if it says her sleeves needed wringing out, they were probably at least pretty wet, at a scale plausible for tears. I had never thought of the problems of silk, makeup, and above all of the ghastly need to blow one's nose, until a couple of days ago. From what I gather so far, none of us can do more than guess how they got around this problem, but I am certainly not surprised that it was not written about, and I refuse to believe that they blew their noses on their sleeves. A picture in Kasuga Gongen Genki shows monks at a ceremony blowing their noses on squares of paper.

So literary weeping is not a simple matter. Yes, of course people wept and felt the need to dry their eyes--although some of us, it seems, may feel that they had no right to indulge in such luxuries while others suffered for real. But while tears had valued social meaning (as in Europe sometimes too, as Michael showed), and eyes were fine, some of the business associated with crying was not something one talked about. That seems natural. And since the meaning of tears WAS valued, some people even faked them, like Heichu with his little bottle of water; and novelists attributed them to their characters perhaps (who knows?) more frequently or more copiously than one might otherwise expect.

Royall Tyler

From: David Pollack <poll...@...l.rochester.edu>

Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 17:57:08 -0500 (EST)

Subject: rivers of blood (WAS Heian tears: lit or fig?)

Sorry, that's true -- I was imagining blood itself flowing to form rivers, not blood turning rivers red. Obviously I haven't the stomach for these warrior images and should stick to courtier bodily fluids.

David Pollack

From: Wayne Farris <wfar...@....edu>

Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 18:04:45 -0500

Subject: Hemp

Dear all,

Hemp was, of course, what most cultivators wore at least back to the Yayoi period, and was a tribute item (you) in the ritsuryoo tax system. The workers who built Todaiji,etc., were often paid in hemp cloth. There are others who know much more about this than I, but for those of you who are interested, Nagahara Keiji has an old but good article comparing the strengths and weaknesses of hemp vs. cotton clothing. Apparently hemp was not only scratchy, but also much cooler to wear than cotton. That's why the introduction of cotton in the Muromachi era was so important. I wasn't sure how to take Alex's comment. I thought he was poking fun at me, implying that I preferred hemp TO SMOKE. While I have smoked it, I never inhaled.

Regards, Wayne

From: Wayne Farris <wfar...@....edu>

Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 18:12:43 -0500

Subject: Paper

Dear all, Paper was obviously very dear in the Nara period, thus one gets the use of mokkan and such things as shihai monjo. What was tatoogami, Royall? By the way, my old sensei, Kishi Toshio has a good article entitled "Ki to kami." I would think that would be a good place to begin reading.

Regards, Wayne

From: Wayne Farris <wfar...@....edu>

Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 18:33:29 -0500

Subject: Blood and guts

Dear all, It is easy to dismiss the gory descriptions of battle (or famine or epidemics), and much of it is undoubtedly exaggeration. But I recall a description appearing in no less reliable source than the RIKKOKU SHI, in which guts are described as strewn all over the place. So there may be a kernel of truth in some of these descriptions, just as there are such kernels in Homer. Discussion, samurai experts? Regards, Wayne Farris

From: "Amanda Stinchecum" <ama...@...dion.ne.jp>

Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 08:57:31 +0900

Subject: silk stains

To add a note to Leila's:

Some forms of silk are particularly susceptible to staining or other kinds of disfigurement (extreme shrinkage, for example), even with water. Not all weave structures or finishes result in a washable product, and even when the entire cloth is washable (crepe de chine, for example), if liquid is applied in spots it will stain. Proteins are a different problem. Proteinaceous liquids (blood, semen, snot) will stain silk (and other cloth) if not washed out immediately, before the protein coagulates (think of egg whites).

The use of mordants in dyeing does not assure the colorfastness of a textile when immersed in water.

Even in Japan today, when clothes are kept fastidiously clean and discarded when that is impossible, kimono are rarely laundered. To do so requires taking apart the entire garment, washing each piece, stretching it back to its original dimensions and sewing it all together again.

A curator at a Japanese museum, who would now be in her 70s if she were still alive, pointed out to me that before the war people here (in Japan) were not s fastidious. A few stains on a sleeve or hem were tolerated far beyond what would be considered acceptable today (she said). Many silk kimono are never washed.

The question of "hemp" (I use quotation marks because other plant fibers, such as ramie, were also used for clothing in the Nara/Heian periods) underrobes or other undergarments is intrigueing. If anyone has references on this subject I would greatly appreciate them.

Amanda Stinchecum
Taketomi Island, Okinawa

From: Alexander R. Bay <fuge...@...and.stanford.edu>

Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 18:44:44 -0800

Subject: Hemp

I wasn't sure how to take Alex's comment. I thought he was poking fun at me, implying that I preferred hemp TO SMOKE. While I have smoked it, I never inhaled.

Regards, Wayne

By writing about "Wayne's encouragement", I only meant that since Wayne had mentioned hemp, it opened the door to the hemp issue, which I, with an admittedly counter-culture bravado, asked a seemingly logical next question. That is all. Maybe I should have posed the question differently: "On the subject of hemp products, which Wayne touched upon, were the species that grew in Japan smokeable?" Sorry to infer anything.

Alex Bay

From: Alexander R. Bay <fuge...@...and.stanford.edu>

Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 18:52:41 -0800

Subject: Blood and guts

Concerning guts, the work that Andrew Goble is doing on wound medicine in the medieval period is quite explicit about the matter. When a wounded samurai had his guts literally hanging out, the doctor was to get some warm horse dung, smear it all over his hands, and then gently push the guts back into place. Why horse dung? and Were they crazy? are the common reactions. I cannot comment on them, but maybe there are some medical properties to this method that our modern minds cannot understand. If someone is interested in the matter try and contact Goble at the University of Oregon
"Andrew Goble" <platy...@...kwing.uoregon.edu>

Maybe Tom Conlan has looked at some wound reports from the Nanbokucho period which attest to warriors losing their guts, but I doubt they were so descriptive. Again, Karl Friday might have something to say about different technologies for removing the guts of the opponent with swords and like weapons. I would be eager to hear from both scholars.

Alex Bay

Date: Feb 08 2001 10:27:28 EST
From: Matthew Stavros <mstav...@...nceton.EDU>
Subject: Military science-castle building

Dear List,

Years ago, I visited Himeji Castle and read a display placard about the
rise of military science during the peaceful years of the Edo Period. An
important component of the curriculum was apparently castle building
science. I am trying to find more on this but frankly can't remember what
it was called (contemporarily). It was something like chiku-jo gaku
[kanji] ), but that doesn't seem to show up in any dictionaries (so far).

Might anyone know?

Thanks,
Matthew Stavros
Princeton

Date: Feb 08 2001 11:09:23 EST
From: "Luke S. Roberts" <luker...@...anitas.ucsb.edu>
Subject: Military science-castle building.

I have a book called Nihon no bijutsu vol. 54 _Shiro_ (Shibundou 1970). I
can't find reference to an older term for what they call "chikujoujutsu" but they do mention on page 40 that both Ogyuu Sorai and Yamaga Sokou wrote treatises on castle construction. Perhaps a look at their zenshuu might turn up something. In Tosa the head of such construction was called the anou or the anouyaku (hole, birth, post). The Kokushidaijiten entry on chikujoujutsu says the word is a bakumatsu or Meiji term. The entry has some interesting references to Edo period literature in it.
Luke Roberts

Date: Feb 08 2001 21:43:33 EST
From: Rolf Giebel <rolf.gie...@...adise.net.nz>
Subject: [pmjs] Translation of _muen_

Dear List,

For some time I have been wondering how to translate into English the
term _muen_ [kanji] as used in particular by Amino Yoshihiko. Is there a
"standard" translation? I have seen it translated as "estrangement," but
this hardly seems appropriate. A more literal equivalent might be
"unconnectedness," but this doesn't seem entirely satisfactory either.
(_Muenjo_ [kanji] appears to correspond to "asylum" in the traditional
sense of the term.) Any suggestions or pointers to relevant literature
in Western languages would be much appreciated.

Rolf Giebel

Date: Feb 09 2001 03:44:15 EST
From: U.Undmark <katsujin...@....net>
Subject: Military science-castle building. ]

Matthew,

I believe that the Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto ryu, a tradition of military
arts dating from the second half of the 15th century, still contains some
knowledge of chikujojutsu. I am not sure, though, if they still study this
subject, but it is listed, along with heiho/gungaku, among their teachings.
I'm sure William Bodiford or Karl Friday would know much more about this.

Regards
Ulf Undmark

Date: Feb 09 2001 10:09:23 EST
From: "Thomas Conlan" <tcon...@...doin.edu>
Subject: Translation of _muen_

Dear Rolf,
Regarding 'muen' I have resorted to the prosaic, if somewhat clunky
translation of 'unattachedness."

This term is tricky because, as you well know, it can refer to locations as
well as individuals. And although it may denote certain judicial
immunities, I believe that Amino overemphasizes the significance of muen in his work (I address this in my "State of War: The Violent Order of
Fourteenth Century Japan" (PhD dissertation, Stanford University, which is to be published by the University of Michigan's Center for Japanese Studies in 2002).

By the way, on unrelated issues of castle walls, I should emphasize the
work of Murata Shuzo, who has explored the construction of medieval castles as well as anyone. (His three volume Chusei jokaku jiten is a great source for all castles buffs). Save for a few regions in western Japan, stone fortifications first appear in castles dating from the 1530s or 1540s. I had the opportunity to view Shorakuji, one such mountain castle abandoned by 1540, and only a few large stones were placed at some of the weakest points of the earthen fortifications. Over the next few decades, one sees noticeable improvements in stonework for castle walls, and a shift from the sporadic use of boulders, to the construction of continuous stone walls. I recommend any visitors to Shiga province to compare Shorakuji with Kannoji (which is conveniently located next to Azuchi). This involves much hiking through brush, but provides an invaluable means of actually viewing transformations in sixteenth century construction techniques.

Tom Conlan

Date: Feb 12 2001 20:26:09 EST
From: Elizabeth Oyler <eaoy...@...sci.wustl.edu>
Subject: Job Posting in Art History [at Washington University in St. Louis]

Text omitted, as is home change of address notice from another member.

Date: Feb 13 2001 23:43:52 EST
From: Michael Watson <wat...@...eijigakuin.ac.jp>
Subject: list announcements

We have been joined by Samuel C. Morse and Charles De Wolf (profiles below).
We also welcome back two members at new addresses:

Sonja Arntzen <sonja.arnt...@...ronto.ca>
Tvzetana Kristeva <tzvet...@...-tokyo.ac.jp>

Samuel C. Morse <scmo...@...erst.edu>
Department of Fine Arts, Amherst College, Amherst, MA 01002

My research focuses on the Buddhist sculpture of the Heian and Kamakura
periods as well as the ritual use of Japanese Buddhist art. With Anne
Nishimura Morse I am author of Object as Insight--Japanese Buddhist Art and
Ritual (Katonah, NY: Katonah Museum of Art, 1996). I also serve as chair of
the Board of Directors at the Ruth and Sherman Lee Institute for Japanese
Art at the Clark Center in Hanford, California.

Charles De Wolf <cmdew...@...hway.ne.jp>
Professor, Keio University

This is a long-winded jiko-shoukai. My only excuse for sending it is that it
may interest the genuine experts to see how a sometime linguist has found
himself wandering from grammatical theory to the practice of translation and
on into the thicket of Japanese literature, where he may deservedly be
devoured.. In the illustrious company of the names I see on the list, I feel
all the more like a brazen intruder, but I look forward to learning from you
all.

My undergraduate degree is in comparative literature (German, French,
Latin), but by the time I entered graduate school I wanted to study
something about which I could feel more detached -- history or linguistics.
On the advice of a friend, I chose the latter and wound up writing a
doctoral dissertation entitled "Sentential Predicates: A Cross-Linguistic
Analysis". Having spent two years in Korea and three years in Japan, I
naturally devoted a major chapter to the grammar of those languages,
focusing on the ...wa...ga... construction and its equivalent in Korean. The
development of particle "ga" from genitive to subject marker happened to fit
into my ideas quite nicely (nothing like rediscovering the wheel!), but in
the process I found myself picking up some Classical Japanese, using
Sansom's Historical Grammar of Japanese and Ikeda's Classical Japanese
Texts. By the time I was at the end of my graduate studies, I was a raging
rebel against transformationalist grammar and felt particularly scornful of
what I saw as the Procrustean analysis of Japanese. Relearning Japanese
grammar in historical perspective was eye-opening.

My interest in Japanese literature has always been that of an amateur.
Except for one course at Waseda back in the early '70s on Heike Monogatari,
I haven't taken a single course in the subject. (I remember writing an essay
in what must have been atrocious Japanese on the death of Atsumori, which,
quite moved, I had first read in translation in Donald Keene's anthology.
The professor seems to have taken it for granted that we could manage the
original, but I could barely understand how it was that a word could begin
with "wo"!)

I read some modern Japanese literature, mostly in translation, though
usually with the original at hand. I must say that I was not immediately
"hooked." As one who had always looked for the "big ideas" in Western
literature, I had a hard time with what seemed to me to be the excessively
large number of morosely self-absorbed characters, especially the suicidal
ones. On the other hand, I was quite enthralled by the aestheticism in
Kawabata's Snow Country, which I first read while on holiday in Japan from
Korea in 1969 and vowed to read someday in the original. A Japanese
philosophy professor later told me that he couldn't understand why "gaijin"
liked Kawabata, whom he found utterly amoral. He said, clearly expressing a
wide-spread view, that I should read more Soseki. All I could think was that
Kokoro's misanthropic "Sensei" was scarcely more inspiring than the feckless
Shimamura in Yukiguni.

Having once been very much hooked on Proust, I had the vague idea, even
though I did not know it to be a common comparison, that the Tale of Genji
would likewise turn me into an all too willing addict. My mother had read it
and been quite taken with it, but all I could claim to have read was
"Evening Faces" -- again in the Keene anthology. I was utterly appalled by
the story and wondered why anyone would want to follow the adventures of a
cad like Genji.

It was only years later, when asked to write an article on the historical
development of the particle "wa", that I again took a look at the tale, and
then only as a linguistic source. I happened to choose a selection from
"Hahakigi"and, in the process of reading it, realized for the first time how
amusing Genji-monogatari can be. (I think I had made the same mistake with
Murasaki Shikibu as I had with Proust. Young men who, like Swann, are
smitten with an Odette, should wait until they are middle-aged.)

In 1986, I started writing a Classical Japanese reader, with Hahagigi as the
text. It's been "almost finished" for some years, and I hope to get it done
at last during a sabbatical year I'm about to launch. The book includes a
long grammatical introduction, intended for both students of modern Japanese
and linguists who may know no Japanese. My approach is eclectic, borrowing
from both kokugogaku and Western linguistic analyses. The part that takes so
much time is the extensive notes for the text. I also discuss the Waley and
Seidensticker translations and then offer my own. (I'll have to think twice
or thrice about that once I see the Royall Tyler translation to which
everyone is looking forward!) I may also include mention of the Benl and
Sieffert translations.

I once heard a lecture by E.. Seidensticker at Chiba University, where I
taught for 15 years and, incidentally, knew the late Prof. Ikeda. Some in
the audience asked Prof. Seidensticker for his comments on people who write
essays about his translations. He paused and then said in his inimitably
amusing way: "Hima no aru katagata desu ne." Well, I frankly enjoy puttering
about with translations. A few years ago, I wrote a paper of my own on the
"cat episode" in Genji. It discusses the two published English translations,
along the German and French renditions.

I've also translated excerpts from Konjaku-monogatari to be published later
this year in a book that will also have illustrations and a translation into
modern Japanese. I enjoy translating Konjaku and would like to do more of
it. In fact, I enjoy translating Japanese literature in general and have
done a small bit (!) of contemporary fiction.

My most recent article, entitled "Glimpses of Go in Japanese Literature",
has been published in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan. The
work most frequently cited is again Genji.

A Japanese literature specialist I've known for some years allegedly once
remarked about me -- in either bewilderment or exasperation -- to a mutual
friend: "Why doesn't he stick to his own speciality, morphology or whatever
it is?" The comment got back to me and for years thereafter I somehow had
the impression that the field of Japanese literature among non-Japanese is a
closed guild. I have since concluded, I hope correctly, that such is by no
means true.

In any case, yoroshiku onegai-shimasu.

Charles De Wolf
Professor, Keio University

From: Barbara Nostrand <nostr...@....org>
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 02:29:57 -0500
Subject: Several Questions

Hi.

1. Is there an index for the complete engishiki published anywhere? Why I want this. I have run across various references to food regulations in the engishiki, but none of them give complete citations. I want to look these regulations up in the engishiki.

2. Is there a journal for pre-modern Japanese studies? A lot of the East-Asian journals that I know about mostly fill their pages with stuff about pretty contemporary stuff.

3. Does anyone know where I can get a copy of:
Sabban 1986
Francoise Sabban, "Un savoir-faire oublie: le travail du lait en Chinese ancienne," Zinbun Kagaku Kenkyusyo, November 21, 1986, Kyoto University.

4. Does anyone know about any other papers about early kuge cuisine in general and the use of milk products in particular?

5. Anthony Bryant mentioned court tea as distinct from daimyocha, temple tea, and aesthetic tea such as that of Sen no Rikyu. I was wondering if anyone knows of references to this sort of tea.

6. There have been various archeological studies of food and food related items found in pre-modern store houses in Kyoto and environs thereof. Does anyone know where reports of these finds were published?

Thank you very much. I am very much the most amateur of list members.

Best Wishes.

From: "Philip C. Brown" <brown....@....edu>

Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 08:00:47 -0500

Subject: Several Questions

There is an interdisciplinary journal for early modern Japanese studies that deals roughly with the mid-sixteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries. Please see http://emjnet.history.ohio-state.edu/ for further information. More generally, Monumenta Nipponica has for many years focused heavily on pre-modern Japan.

Philip C. Brown

Associate Professor
Department of History
Ohio State University
230 West 17th Avenue
Columbus OH 43210

From: Karl Friday <kfri...@...hes.uga.edu>

Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 11:36:51 -0500

Subject: Several Questions

At AM 02:29 02/14/01 -0500, Barbara Nostrand wrote:

>4. Does anyone know about any other papers about early kuge
> cuisine in general and the use of milk products in
> particular?

The best English-language discussion of this topic I know of is Helen McCullough's chapter in volume 2 of the *Cambridge History of Japan*. A truly excellent article!

From: Barbara Nostrand <nostr...@....org>

Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 16:09:25 -0500

Subject: Several Questions

Hi.

I subscribe to Monumenta Nipponica, but it is not quite satiating my desire for articles about pre-modern Japan. While both articles in 55:4 are good, neither are pre-modern.

Best Wishes

From: "Philip C. Brown" <brown....@....edu>

Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 16:48:10 -0500

Subject: Several Questions

Look back at the index of articles in MN over time (http://133.12.17.209/mnindexC.html) and see if you don't get a somewhat different sense. While it may not be completely up to what you'd like, it is still one of the major sources of pre-modern western-language (primarily English) scholarship.

Philip C. Brown

*alternatively: http://monumenta.cc.sophia.ac.jp/mnindex.html

Note that you can search Monumenta from the pmjs top page

From: "Cavanaugh, Carole" <cavan...@...uar.middlebury.edu>

Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 17:25:45 -0500

Subject: Several Questions

Monumenta Nipponica (as well as the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies and the Journal of Asian Studies) is available in full-text with a searchable database on JSTOR [www.jstor.org]. If your institution participates in this service, you can easily uncover all articles on pre-modern Japan.

Carole Cavanaugh
Assistant Provost
Middlebury College
Middlebury, VT 05753
cavana...@...dlebury.edu

From: Barbara Nostrand <nostr...@....org>

Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 19:35:54 -0500

Subject: Several Questions

I know the JSTOR is wonderful.The problem is that my institution does not subscribe to specialized on-line services. I pretty much have to contend with First Search and stuff like that. So basically, I subscribe to it myself or do without. I can get them to get some stuff for me through ILL, but I have to know what it is to go after it.

From: "Philip C. Brown" <brown....@....edu>

Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 19:46:45 -0500

Subject: Several Questions

The indexes at the URL I pointed you to include more than what's on JSTOR. If there are other items you need, what about interlibrary loan?

From: wfarris <wfar...@....edu>

Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 19:35:05 -0500

To: Barbara Nostrand <nostr...@....org>

Cc: p...@...tbot.com

Subject: Several Questions

Dear Barbara,
I have been off in the Midwest for the past week, but I found your e-mail very interesting, and I think I have good news. (You may want to circulate this to the whole list.)
1. There IS an index to the complete Engi shiki. It is a prewar work, but when I copied it, I failed to copy the date of publication or publisher. But I got my copy at the Kyoodai library, and I'm sure it is available at Toodai or elsewhere. It's exact title is KOOTEI ENGI SHIKI SAKUIN. It lists names of kami, offices, people, places, animals, plants, jewels, dress, food and drink, and other items. So it's just what you want.
There is one problem: it is not indexed to the KOKUSHI TAIKEI edition of the Engi shiki. What I did, following the lead of my Japanese grad students friends, was to copy the page numbers from the old edition into the KOKUSHI TAIKEI edition. It didn't take too long. Let me know, and I'll send you a copy of the index at cost.
4. I would second Friday's endorsement of Helen McCullough's article, but there is an even better source. It's a thick brown volume called NARA CHO SHOKU SEIKATSU NO KENKYUU, authored by Sekine Masataka. It is the foundation of all we know about food for residents of the archipelago in the 700s.
Hope this helps.
Best wishes,
Wayne Farris

From: Kate Wildman Nakai <kw-na...@...fman.cc.sophia.ac.jp>

Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 15:02:53 +0900

Subject: Several Questions

Barbara Nostrand's observation that "neither [of the two articles in MN 55:4] are pre-modern" would seem to reintroduce our inaugural discussion of what is "premodern." Of the regular articles, one is indeed on a Meiji topic, but the other (Karen Gerhart's discussion of the patronage relations between Kano Tan'yuu and Hoorin Jooshoo) is focused on early Edo. There is also an extended discussion by Charlotte von Verschuer of Japanese research on ancient and medieval Japanese relations with other countries and a translation by Beng Choo Lim of the inscription for a portrait of Kanze Nobumitsu (a Muromachi text). And Julius Klaproth, the subject of Peter Kornicki's review article, may not have visited Japan, but he wrote about Japan-related matters in the early nineteenth century. 56:1, which is about to be mailed out, has a long piece on a modern subject (extremely interesting, nevertheless!), but the proportions are again 3:1 pre-Meiji.

Thanks also to Phil Brown for calling attention to our online index. It provides a wonderful opportunity to alert readers of the list to a new addition to the indices that just went up formally yesterday: a list of all the translations that have appeared in MN since the first issue. Please take a look. We've made every effort to make it as complete and accurate as possible, but please let us know about any errors or oversights that you discover. I hope you'll find it a useful addition to the bibliographies posted by Michael Watson and Peter Kornicki.

[Bibliography of translations from classical Japanese up to about 1600
www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~pmjs/trans/trans.html
Bibliographies of Japanese history up to the end of the Meiji period
www.oriental.cam.ac.uk/jbib/bibtitle.html]

Kate Wildman Nakai

-------------------
Kate Wildman Nakai,
Prof. of Japanese History, Sophia University, and Editor, Monumenta Nipponica
Monumenta Nipponica, Sophia University
7-1 Kioi-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8554
Tel: 81-3-3238-3544; Fax: 81-3-3238-3835
E-mail: kw-na...@...fman.cc.sophia.ac.jp
Monumenta Nipponica home page: http://monumenta.cc.sophia.ac.jp

Date: Feb 16 2001 15:05:58 EST
From: David Pollack <poll...@...l.rochester.edu>
Subject: hemp again

The following website contains a lot of information on the history of
hemp (both as fiber and as ert substace) in Japan. While it looks
good, I can't vouch for its accuracy:

http://www.olywa.net/uncleweed/newjapan/index.html

David Pollack

Date: Feb 16 2001 16:14:30 EST
From: alba <a...@...mat.ch>
Subject: gu kaizhi

hello
i'm currently working on a presentation of chinese figure painting before
the tang era, focussing on gu kaizhi. does someone on this list have
interesting literature to suggest ? i'm aware my request is not directly
connected to japan and her art, however, i take the liberty to appraoch you
anyhow.
thanks and best reagrds from zurich.
gil schneider
(student, dept of east asian art, zurich university)

Date: Feb 16 2001 18:11:36 EST

From: Barbara Nostrand <nostr...@....org>

Subject: Military science-castle building.

Hi.

Years ago, I visited Himeji Castle and read a display placard about the rise of military science during the peaceful years of the Edo Period. An important component of the curriculum was apparently castle building science. I am trying to find more on this but frankly can't remember what it was called (contemporarily). It was something like chiku-jo gaku (?w ), but that doesn't seem to show up in any dictionaries (so far).

Really?? I'm surprised. I had always thought that castle building was
generally suppressed during the Edo Period. I would have though that
the word would have been Jochikugaku (?w) just like ? ..
however, no such word appears in Daijirin. One possibility is that
whatever word was on the sign was coined by the curators. Japanese
appears to be rather more receptive to neologisms than English.

Date: Feb 17 2001 18:50:12 EST
From: wfarris <wfar...@....edu>
Subject: Engi shiki research

Dear all,
I presume that everyone knows about Miyagi Eishou's work, ENGI SHIKI NO
KENKYUU? It contains all the statutes in the work, but cites all related
laws, so that it is possible to trace the origins and development of the
various shiki. It's invaluable, although a thick tome. (It was first
published in 1955, but reissued several times since. The publisher is some
company called TAISHUUKAN SHOTEN. TAISHUU is written with the characters for
"big" and "osamu.") It contains an index of the statutes.
Ganbare,
Wayne Farris

P.S. I can't resist: Did you know why George W. took his first foreign trip
to Mexico? To thank them for all those electoral votes?! No! Because he speaks
Spanish better than he does English!

Date: Feb 17 2001 20:47:13 EST
From: "Anthony J. Bryant" <ajbry...@...iana.edu>
Subject: Engi shiki research

wfarris wrote:

> P.S. I can't resist: Did you know why George W. took his first foreign trip
> to Mexico? To thank them for all those electoral votes?! No! Because he
> speaks Spanish better than he does English!

That may be so... Perhaps people with limited English skills won't be debating
on that the meaning of "is" is.... <G>

Tony

Date: Feb 18 2001 21:56:51 EST
From: Robert E Morrell <rober...@...sci.wustl.edu>
Subject: Engi shiki research

>wfarris wrote:
>
> > P.S. I can't resist: Did you know why George W. took his first
> foreign trip
> > to Mexico? To thank them for all those electoral votes?! No! Because he
> speaks
> > Spanish better than he does English!
>
>That may be so... Perhaps people with limited English skills won't be
>debating on
>what the meaning of "is" is.... <G>
>
>Tony

Limited arithmetic skills also seem to be OK -- since they have concluded
that receiving 500,000 votes fewer than their opponent constitutes a
"popular mandate."

Bob

Date: Feb 18 2001 23:04:05 EST
From: Barbara Nostrand <nostr...@....org>
Subject: Looking for a book

hello

I'm trying to track down a copy of:

Zokugunshoruiju vol 19

Pub. Zokugunshoruijukanseikai 1957

Unfortunately, it appears to be out of print and I need a more
complete citation in order for the librarian here to consider
going after it. Has anyone heard of this book?

Thank you very much.

Date: Feb 18 2001 23:11:22 EST
From: Matthew Stavros <mstav...@...nceton.EDU>
Subject: Looking for a book

I believe you are referring to the Zokugun shorui ju series of printed
documents. It's a collection of various primary sources, printed up and
bound into a wonderful set.

More important than the volume number is the document you are looking for
in the set. Nevertheless, I'm happy to get you the exact information for
vol. 19 tomorrow if you would like. Just let me know.

MGS

Date: Feb 19 2001 08:01:09 EST
From: Richard Bowring <rb...@...mes.cam.ac.uk>
Subject: American politics

Dear all.
I would appreciate it if people did actually resist the temptation to
discuss(?) US politics on this list.
Richard Bowring

This motion was seconded by John Bentley

From: Janine Beichman <jani...@....vc-net.ne.jp>
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 22:45:05 +0900
Subject: American politics

i beg to disagree with richard and john. if we are so strict about discourse people will stop talking. it's better to ignore the static if it bothers you, and focus on the content that you find of interest. here's to freedom of speech, long may she reign! best wishes to all, janine

From: David Pollack <poll...@...l.rochester.edu>
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 09:19:49 -0500
Subject: American politics

I would hope that we could agree to observe that awful recent coinage "netiquette" and restrict our communications to more or less professional matters pertaining to pmjs. Even minor sallies in the direction of humorous political eye-poking fall under the category of "flame." I'm sure there are plenty of other sites available for the venting of political opinions (if such, as Richard's question-mark suggests, in fact they be).

Wot wot, David Pollack

From: Barbara Nostrand <nostr...@....org>
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 10:55:07 -0500
Subject: American politics

Would not Japanese politics be more appropriate for this list than American politics?

From: Esperanza R-Christensen <...@...ch.edu>
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 13:21:49 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Judging the elite

Wow! I can't resist responding in praise of Bodart-Bailey's comments below. There is so much self-righteous putting down of old elites in academia these days, while we live on in full knowledge of how our means of killing and exploitation (of other peoples, of natural resources) have become so powerful the old dictators and elites, and their dastardly deeds, can hardly compare. Should not our own moral mediocrity be the first target of our critique?

Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen

P.S. I realize the message below is rather dated; am just now finding a little time to read pmjs.

On Fri, 15 Dec 2000, B.M. Bodart-Bailey wrote:

> Is it really our task to stand in judgement over past generations?
> Personally I prefer to stick with Ranke and will simply attempt to describe
> the past "wie es eigentlich gewesen." (how it really was). The problem with
> this quote is that most people think Ranke was so naive as to think that he
> really could get to the bottom of past events. That is because they haven't
> bothered to read what comes before. There Ranke explains that he is not
> attempting to write "politically correct" history, but simply history free
> from current value judgements.
>
> The problem with value judgements is that they date. Most people involved in
> the burning of "witches" a couple of centuries ago, were as convinced they
> were doing the "right thing", as we are convinced that they were not.
>
> Next time you squeeze yourself into one of those all-too-narrow airline
> seats on a long-haul flight to a conference, feeling morally superior for
> putting up with the tedium of long-distance travel to spread the good word
> about pre-modern Japan, think about the pollution these conferences cause.
> Not just in terms of dioxin emission by the total mileage traveled by all
> participants, but also in terms of trees lumbered to produce vast amounts of
> paper (at least half of which goes into the waste-paper baskets of hotels
> before departure), energy consumed by hotels, the
> well-heated/air-conditioned conference venue etc. Ok, so we provide
> employment for people ranging from fuel truck drivers, lumber jacks and
> cooks, to pilots, accountants and aircraft designers. But so did the Heian
> elite provide employment for spinners, weavers, flute makers etc. Figure out
> the combined budget of the conference's organizers and all participants, and
> imagine what this money could do in terms of restoring polluted and
> otherwise devastated environment that is condemning not just present but
> also future generations to illness and poverty. We all know (or should know)
> that we are exploiting the environment, destroying the rightful inheritance
> of future generations, to maintain the life style we have grown accustomed
> to. But are we prepared to face the rather uncomfortable consequences in an
> effort to stop this exploitation? If we are not, should we expect such
> behavior of past generations?
>
> Isn't there a possibility that future generations might consider the Heian
> elite morally superior to us? At least they only lived on the backs of their
> contemporaries, while we, quite knowingly, live on the backs of future
> generations ....
>
>
> Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey
> Faculty of Comparative Culture
> Otsuma Womens University
> 2-7-1 Karakida, Tama-shi,
> Tokyo 206-8540

From: Esperanza R-Christensen <...@...ch.edu>
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 14:04:16 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Elites, Genji, etc.

Royall, Kai, this is just to say, I find your discussion very enlightening. I myself thought, when reading and translating the poetry of Shinkei (Muromachi poet-priest, did renga, waka, and treatises), that after a while I had a grasp of the configuration of a mind (I mean this in a very abstract yet immediate sense), and the rest of his poetry fell sort of open, I felt that I knew what he meant. All this could be an illusion, of course, and impossible to experience with writers whose surviving verses are not sufficient in number to allow discovery of their kokoro. But let me say that I find this is the wonderful thing about literature, that however old, they are still readable, one senses there is a person/kokoro behind the words, and one has to ask why and where this feeling comes from. And sometimes one will meet a person in the works whom it is good and worthwhile to know, and will compensate for so much of the degradation and stupidity we scholars have to deal with these days. --Esperanza

On Sun, 17 Dec 2000, kai nieminen wrote:

> Dear Royall,
>
> Thank you for your kind comments, and very warm and sincere
> congratulations for finishing your job. I also congratulate myself for
> being able to profit by your work -- and feel sorry that I at least at
> this phase don't have anything in exchange, because:
>
> May I ask you whether you have completed your Finnish Genji? I
> haven't, yet -- but as it happens, I on friday had a meeting with my
> publisher, agreeing that I'm to finish it "within my own schedule".
> The already published parts include chapters from start to Fuji no
> Uraba; years ago I already started from Wakaba on, but at that moment
> the publisher made a commercial halt and said they're delighted to
> publish the rest -- but after Yoshimoto Banana. As I after 2 Bananas
> said I'm not going to do a third one, it appeared they don't have any
> hurry with Genji -- as a matter of fact no hurry this time, neither,
> but a positive will to publish it.
> The publisher also had a surprise for me: they want to publish
> the rest in one volume, reprinting-printing the existing parts in one volume,
> too. So, we agreed of a very liberal schedule of 3--5 years. This also
> gives me the welcome possibility to edit & correct the earlier parts
> -- and in that task, luxuriously to rely on your translation's
> insights.
>
> Speaking of communicating Murasaki's kokoro etc. I think I know what
> you refer to with "That is why I am so surprised to find that by now I
> do not feel anything of the kind." -- I don't know exactly why I feel
> like I do, but I can guess a couple of reasons:
> First, in the beginning of the task, I was only commissioned to
> translate the waka; another translator -- whose name may be known to
> pretty many, he is the present Japanese citizen, politician Marutei
> Tsurunen, then he was an ex-missionary translator Martti Turunen --
> translated the prose. So, my first contacts with translating Genji
> were with poetry -- which I believe is Murasaki's (whoever she/they
> is/are; I'll come to that later) *honne* or at least contains much
> more of *honne* than most of the describing prose. For me the waka
> became a window into what I believe to be the "author's" mind and
> through them I feel I can glimpse what is left hidden or unsaid in the
> prose narration -- which, of course, often is more like prose poem, at
> least technically speaking. But this all is only too familiar to you.
> Secondly: during this halt I also translated Tanizaki's
> Sasameyuki, which opened another window -- while writing it, Tanizaki
> was under such influence of Genji that his book for me became a kind
> of "How to Appreciate Genji" -- What I mean is reading "Jun'ichirô
> Shinshin'yaku Genji Monogatari" was how to read & understand,
> Sasameyuki is how to put it in practice... After reading it I cannot
> undo that reading, and that may also have brought the presence of
> Murasaki more obvious to me: Tanizaki in a way is testing what is
> common to Heian ladies and aka bourgeoisie. But as you say, "a great
> deal else is present there too." -- both in Sasameyuki and in Genji.
> At this phase of the job I cannot state anything definitive, I'm in
> the happy situation where I only can gain from all comments and
> criticism. I also don't as now have a fixed opinion of the authorship.
> The more research I read, the more unconvinced I become. But: while
> I'm working on a text that anyway has a nom-de-plume author, I feel a
> little bit similar to facing the enigma of Lao-tzu, "Old Master": "Tao
> Te Ching was not written by Old Master but by another Old Master".
> This is not the same situation, I know, but not entirely different,
> neither. When I come nearer to the happy day you are facing now, I
> certainly shall have reconsidered the thing again and again, but
> presently I tend to postulate the problem more like "Genji Monogatari
> is not by definition a book by Murasaki Shikibu; Murasaki Shikibu is
> by definition the author of Genji Monogatari" -- anyway I know so
> little of the person(s) whose role name was Murasaki Shikibu that it
> interests me more to seek the kokoro of the poet inside the text than
> the facts about the author outside of it.
>
> About the political and ethical issues, I think we don't forget them
> in the translator's job if not deliberately trying to forget them.
> And no, neither I don't think Genji is "about" mono no aware -- but
> this leads us to another interesting topic: what is poetry, is it X or
> does it describe X. And this may not be the forum for that discussion.
>
> I see this has become a lengthy one, but I hope some points might be
> of general interest, too. From now on I try to be more concise -- it
> is difficult, though, in a tongue not one's own.
> Speaking about tongues: the Finnish version of the mailing
> program unfortunately has "Re:" translated as "Vs:" (from Finnish
> "vastaus", meaning "an answer"), and every now and then I forget to
> manually change it when replying to mail -- it definitely doesn't
> implicate I am *versus* the topic I'm referring to.
>
> Warm regards.
> Kai
>
> Kai Nieminen kaimi...@...abaud.fi

From: David Olson <da...@...rdculture.com>
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 11:37:11 -0800
Subject: [pmjs] places to discuss politics

>here's to freedom of speech, long may she reign! best wishes to all, janine

Actually, Janine, some of us believe that "lurking is the better part of valor".

In addition to "freedom of speech," there are also such things as "felicity conditions" (tekisetsu sei jouken, part of speech act theory developed by J.L. Austin).

In about 1987 I read somewhere that the average member of a modern society sees one million words per day in his/her peripheral vision (someone else in the cafeteria is reading a newspaper --- all those words count). One million words without the Internet --- now we go surfing, right? And we're not surfing on water, we're surfing on words. Millions and millions of words.

So, in the "attention economy" the main thing is have a good signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio. In Japanese terms, no NET without NETA.

>> I would appreciate it if people did actually resist the temptation to
>> discuss(?) US politics on this list.

I assume that "discuss(?)" means that, for example,a message with an otherwise acceptable S/N ratio may contain an exuberant postscript, viz:

>P.S. I can't resist: Did you know why George W. took his first foreign trip

This only becomes a discussion when other people respond.

>I would hope that we could agree to observe that awful recent coinage
>"netiquette"

"netiquette" is awful not because it's a linguistic monstrosity, but because it stands for the idea that people who have nothing to say are welcome to say it as long as they maintain a certain level of politeness.

Sometimes rowdiness can co-exist or even foster a good signal-to-noise ratio:

http://www.ukans.edu/~assoc/carrie799.htm
note the paragraphs on HIST...@...NHUTC

However, it's a peculiar and deeply engrained syllogism in American culture that leads millions to the conclusion that "therefore all rowdiness is creative/informative/heuristic."

A brief review of some alternative places to discuss politics (assuming you already know about the H-family of listservs):

LANTRA-L http://segate.sunet.se/listinfo/lantra-l/
The European translator's forum, is pretty focused on translation, but on Fridays they have a tradition of "Friday Humour" (subject line begins with HUMOUR) and CHAT --- the political element is sometimes quite strong.

not_honyaku
This listserv is a spin-off of the Honyaku listserv. Honyaku is for professional Japanese-to-English translators, usually to post terminology questions. It's been going since 1994, very disciplined, very focused on translation issues. But inevitably, many interesting threads emerged during the course of translation.

not_honyaku was often quiet for weeks at a time.

Repeatedly, a thread would be discussed on HONYAKU & reach a point where someone would say "maybe we better move this discussion to not_honyaku," and the HONYAKU discussion would end with that message (Like I say, Honyakkers are very disciplined.) The curious thing is that, after the topic had been moved to not_honyaku, usually there would be a single message ("Hi, we've moved") and then it died.

However, the S/N ratio on not-honyaku became abysmal when a trio of boneheads migrated here from DFS and were allowed to have "freedom of speech". One distinguishing feature of the boneheads is their ability to somehow involve American politics in almost everything else they discuss.

DFS (Dead Fukuzawa Society)
http://www.mail-archive.com/fukuz...@...d.edu/maillist.html
This is the classic "rowdy" listserv. Unfortunately it is now dead because of too much "freedom of speech." It was originally hosted by the University of California San Diego, but suffered from a "brain-dead moderator" (there is no polite way of saying this) who never kicked anyone off the list.

While the DFS was breaking up & there was much discussion of starting an alternative, including many private e-mails relating to invitation-only listservs. I conducted my own poll & was pleasantly surprised to discover that certain people who rarely posted messages were nevertheless at the top of everyone's list ("who to include"). This changed my attitude towards listservs. One can establish name recognition even if s/he posts messages once a year or less, so long as the NETA is there.

SHAKAI http://www.issho.org/SHAKAI/
This was created by former members of DFS who desire not to repeat the mistakes of DFS. The S/N ratio can get very bad when "Gaijin Liberation Front" issues are discussed.

the new Fukuzawa Society for a while there was a resurrected DFS on Yahoo Groups
http://groups.yahoo.com/
However, I can no longer find it there.

interi http://groups.yahoo.com/group/interi
a listserv about the intellectual history of Japan, which has the potential to include politics and included many participants whose primary interest was politics. The list began with great hopes & new-mannered introductory message (a "stellar cast"). Then there was a message from the DFS Master of Netiquette --- someone with a reputation for being exceedingly polite but never had anything to say. The list fell silent.

I think that interi also suffers from the "academic cyberparadox" which is this: (1) the non-academics frequently have nothing worth saying; (2) if the academics have something worth saying (some "NETA"), they'll publish it in a journal or as a book; (2') if the journalists have some NETA, they'll publish it in their newspaper; (3) so the academics & journalists are silent, and its the people with only peripheral NETA who post anything...

Japan Topics
http://dehoog.org/html/japantopics.html
This is another spinoff from the disciplined translator's listserv ("Honyaku"). Not specifically devoted to politics. "Anything related to Japan."

Honyaku http://groups.yahoo.com/group/honyaku
Not a forum for discussing, politics, but since I have already mentioned it twice, here it is. And, behind Honyaku is JAT (Japan Association of Translators), who have their own listserv which is available only to dues-paying members of JAT.

Aside --- it might be interesting to xpost the question about tears & silk to Honyaku and to a similar listserv for medical J-E translation, because there may be people who have translated articles about silk and stain removal (the Japanese doctors on the medical translation list would be very interested). Conversely, I wonder if I could xpost Honyaku questions to this listsev (PMJS) when they relate to premodern terminology. For instance, sometimes we Honyakkers translate brochures for visiting artists, e.g., or other material that uses aesthetic terminology or Zen expressions, and we want to know "what's the precedent" "is there a standard translating of saying wabisabi". Whereas academics are free to invent their own translation at every individual instance of the term, we Honyakkers prefer to use an established term whenever possible (established by western academics writing in English, of course; we hate terms established by e.g. Monbusho e.g. "Chinese herbal medicine" for Kanpouyaku which is 17 animal parts and only 82 herbal).

The way in which the "global village" is populated by families or clans of listservs fascinates me. "murahachibu" (either the "kill file" or the moderator stepping in) is the strongest sanction. And there are secret societies that recruit from the openly announced listservs.

Invitation

I recently started up a listserv called netaline (only 2 other people so far), with the idea of a listserv limited to posting URLs about Japan (any topic, so long as it relates to Japan). No discussion (there are other places for that). Just URLs. Less is more. Please contact me if this appeals to you.

Lest this message contain no thread-grounded NETA about Premodern Japanese Studies...

The "hemp in Japan" library:

http://www.taima.org/en/hemplib.htm

(if you do some surfing on the web, you may find some pages about hemp in Japan written by a David Olson. That is not me, and probably not the David Olson who used to teach history at the Nagoya International School.) (speaking of namesakes, there are two Steven Heines who write about Japan; see them together at:

http://psych.upenn.edu/~heine/stevens.htm ).

and here is a page that tries to make a link between Tachikawa-Ryuu and Towazu-gatari:
http://www2.justnet.ne.jp/~jingu/just-sukeno-tatikawaryunoeikyo.htm
part of a larger site on Towazu: http://www2.justnet.ne.jp/~jingu/genbun-towa-index.htm

and other works as well: http://www2.justnet.ne.jp/~jingu/index.htm

Now, back to surfing/lurking,

David Olson Japanese-to-English translator Carmichael, California

From: "Anthony J. Bryant" <ajbry...@...iana.edu>
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 19:26:02 -0500
Subject: US politics

wfarris wrote:
>
> I apologize if my jokes about Our Prez caused offense. It is true that
> they are irrelevant to premodern Japanese studies. (Although, as no less than
> Robert Bellah has noted, contemporary American society seems to have
> re-invented feudalism.) Shall we make a rule for the list? As a good
> democrat, I shall abide by whatever most decide.

And I can of course do no less, as a good Republican...

My apologies.

Now, if anyone wants to discuss the merits of the postion of the northern court over the southern court....

Tony

From: Barbara Nostrand <nostr...@....org>
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 20:47:47 -0500
Subject: Judging the elite

This is sounding more an more like a flame war in the making. Unfortunately, I have a hard time resisting responding to this business about the ill effects of attending conferences.

Attending conferences does consume resources, but it is mistaken to attribute all resources that you consume at the conference to conference attendance. You will still be using electric lights, you will still be using toilet paper, &c even if you stay at home. Only the change in consumption is environmentally significant. This does include things attached to riding in the airplane &c. Aside from walking everywhere (like Immanuel Kant) you can try to use transport which can utilize renewable or long-term resources like electric trains whenever possible. (Incidentally, you should avoid horse drawn vehicles as horse droppings are a significant sanitation problem.)

On a more serious note. Large chemical related companies currently release worldwide millions of gallons each day of a powerful solvent called dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO), a largely unregulated colourless, odorless, and tasteless substance that kills more than 4,000 Americans (most of them under ten years old) each year. You can find out more information at:

http://www.dhmo.org/ http://www.anacapa.net/~doliver1/chem/dhmomsds.htm

*SIGH* I said I couldn't resist. Why not go back to talking about more interesting stuff like premodern Japanese culture?

Best Wishes.

From: Robert E Morrell <rober...@...sci.wustl.edu>
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 20:15:04 -0600
Subject: US politics

Before someone launches an Independent Grand Jury Investigation, I, too, abjectly apologize to all who were shocked by our seven-line exchange. (Good Grief!)

Bob

From: Barbara Nostrand <nostr...@....org>
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 21:17:23 -0500
Subject: US politics

Hi Tony!

Yes! Yes! As I recall, the faction with the less valid claim wound up getting to hold the title. I suppose this make the current Tenno Heika an usurper. A successful one I suppose, but an usurper none the less.

Incidentally, thank you for indirectly telling me about this mailing list. It has already proven to be highly useful for me.

Best Wishes.

From: Michael Watson <wat...@...eijigakuin.ac.jp>

Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 11:58:45 +0900

Subject: earlier threads / announcements

Enough has been said, I believe. Let's move on. Or back, rather. Both to
earlier messages, as Esperanza has done, and to our field of study.

Concerning the "Heian tears" discussion, Gaye Rowley wrote off list to call
our attention to a book to be published by one of our members on the
"Poetics of Tears":

> I wonder if colleagues might be interested to know about Tzvetana Kristeva's
> recent book about namida? It's advertised in the most recent issue of _Kore
> kara deru hon_ (2001 No. 3, p. 11). The title is _Namida no shigaku--Oochoo
> bunka no shiteki gengo_, Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 512pp. 5500 yen ISBN
> 4-8158-0392-7
> In Japanese:
>
> As the enticing little blurb puts it:
> " "
[Heian-ki no sode wa naze namida ni nurete iru no ka]

Some of you will know Tzetana's earlier work in English and Japanese on
"tears" and "sleeves" including

"A sleeve is not just a sleeve (in Early Japanese Culture)," Semiotica,
vol. 93, 1993 (3/4), Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 297-314.

http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~pmjs/pmjs-db-km.html#Kristeva

Now an explanation about how the list now works:

For time being, two pmjs addresses are both in operation so please send
EITHER to p...@...tbot.com
OR to p...@...eijigakuin.ac.jp

[After a transition period in March 2001, pmjs mail was delivered only by the second address. The listbot service was ended by Microsoft in August, 2001. /editor 2001/08/12]

The new system appears to be working, although delivery times are some
thirty minutes slower--a useful cooling off period when things get heated?
Please do not cc and do not re-send if your message does not come back
immediately.

Having two addresses is a little confusing, but necessary for the time being
as some of you may want to respond to older messages. Technically things are
simple my end, but I also need to make sure that the other servers involved
can handle the load.

To receive mail in form of daily or weekly digests
write to wat...@...eijigakuin.ac.jp
with "pmjs daily" or "pmjs weekly" in subject line
Recipients of digests will be unsubscribed from listbot, but can
continue to post by writing to
p...@...eijigakuin.ac.jp

Pardon the jargon. Back to business.

Michael Watson <wat...@...eijigakuin.ac.jp>

From: "Mark Hall" <markh...@....com>

Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 19:48:20 +0900

Subject: FWD: Not Delivered:

[Wayne Farris wrote]
> And I'm not really interested in condemning the old elites, although
> they lived off the labors and provisions provided by the non-elite as what
> McNeill has called "macroparasites." All I have been advocating is that
> scholars NEED to study the mass of the population and their lives to
> understand the history of a given period.

But having been a student of Jim Deetz, I thought
that was one of the purposes of historical archaeology---to find the
people that seldom got recorded by the various annalists.

>This may anger some people, but if
> for the Heian period, for example, all one knows is the civil aristocratic
> elite, one has failed in a fundamental way to grasp the period. The same
> thing is true of bushi for the medieval period. I guess I'm just a
product of
> the old ANNALES-school thinking and history from the bottom up.

Who said its exclusively the domain of the ANNALES school though?

Best, Mark Hall

From: Hank Glassman <oh...@...and.stanford.edu>
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 06:21:42 -0800
Subject: [pmjs] tears

Hi All,

Since Michael brought up tears (thanks, Michael) and "kore kara deru
hon," here's another book that will surely deal with crying in Heian
Japan (as emotional display, not as potential hazard to silk
garments). It's been forthcoming for some time, I think it will be
out soon.

Gary Ebersole, _Telling Tears: A Comparative Study of Ritualized Weeping_

Sorry for the incomplete ref. What I saw him present of it at the
Cal Berkeley "Medieval Marriage in Japan" conference in 1995 was very
intriguing.

best,

Hank

From: "Dix Monika" <monika...@...mail.com>

Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 16:24:12 -0800

Subject: Chujohime

I am conducting research on Chujohime ( )and I would be grateful for any help with bibliographical references. Although I have various sources on Pure Land Buddhism,Taimadera, Taima Mandara, Taima Mandara Engi Emaki, Elizabeth Ten Grotenhuis' article "Chujohime: The Weaving of Her Legend", as well as a copy of "Chujohime Monogatari" which I picked up at Taimadera a while ago, I am looking for more concrete sources. I found various sources via NACSIS (but unfortunately these books are all in Japan ). Therefore I was wondering if anybody could give me more "accessible" references. Also, I was told that a while ago somebody announced a publication about Chujohime on this list. Any kind of help would be much appreciated.

Thank you,

Monika Dix

Date: Feb 21 2001 22:27:48 EST
From: "William Londo" <...@...ealbox.com>
Subject: Several Questions

I wanted to make a few quick comments on a couple of recent threads. First of all, PMJS list members may be interested to know that the complete index of the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies is available online at http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN (case sensitive) from where you can click on "publications" to get to the journal. Not only is the whole index there, the good folks at Nanzan have made the full text of their journal available online (PDF format) for all issues going back about 10 years, and I believe the plan is eventually have it all available full-text someday. One can get to the full text directly from the index. This is by no means a strictly a premodern Japan journal, but they do publish a good deal of premodern stuff, so it's another place to look if that's what you crave.
Ý
On the issue of popular life in the Heian period, I haven't much to add on the question of how we look back upon elites and the rest, though I do want to echo the sentiments of those who feel a history of the elites does not by itself constitute a satisfactory history of the age. I think finding about what people who were not able to keep records, that is, illiterate non-elites, is difficult, but the clues are there if we think about how to look for them and are willing to do a bit more interpreting than some historians might be. My own research has convinced me that there are a number of possibilities for getting at the shape of popular religion (especially popular Buddhism) in the Heian period, for example. The case of Hasedera, among numerous others, is interesting in this regard, its Hase Kannon having been a magnet for devotees of all social stations from early on in the Heian era. (Brian Ruppert's book deserves a plug on this point as well.) I'd be interested in hearing about potential angles of approach other members of the list might suggest. For example, does anyone know anything about the appearance ofÝ commoners in aristocratic diaries? If/when they do, what do they look like? Do we get to see them bouncing around Heian-kyo at all?

Date: Feb 26 2001 10:24:08 EST
From: "Gregory Pflugfelder" <gm...@...umbia.edu>
Subject: animals in history

The interrelation of human and (other) animal communities has become an object of growing historical interest. ÝChanges and continuities in human-animal relations within the context of Japanese history and culture will be the focus of a one-day symposium sponsored by the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture. ÝThis symposium, titled "Animals / History / Japan" will take place at Columbia University in the City of New York on Saturday, April 21, 2001. ÝMorning and afternoon panels will provide an opportunity for scholars to present their current research and exchange ideas with other participants, including specialists from outside the Japan field. ÝResearch presentations will cover such topics as the institution of the zoo in the Meiji period, changing images and significances of the "Japanese dog" (Nihon-ken) under fascism, and the geopolitics of whaling during the past two centuries. ÝThere will also be more informal opportunities throughout the day to discuss the prospects, promises, and problems of studying human-animal interactions historically. ÝGraduate students are especially welcome to participate, and there is still room on the panels for interested presenters, particularly those working on pre-1868 topics. ÝSome financial assistance may be available. ÝPlease contact Greg Pflugfelder at gm...@...umbia.edu for further information.

Date: Feb 26 2001 12:33:46 EST
From: "Philip C. Brown" <brown....@....edu>
Subject: Cipango No. 9 Table of contents

I would like to call your attention to the recent publication of the latest
issue of Cipango. The table of contents and subscription instructions are
included below.

If you are aware of other Japan-related journals published in languages
other than Japanese and English, I would be happy to distribute notices
similar to this one.

Philip C. Brown
Associate Professor
Department of History
Ohio State University
230 West 17th Avenue
Columbus OH 43210
(614) 292-0904 (direct)
(614) 292-2282 (History FAX)

Cipango No. 9

LIRE KODA AYA I
Anne BAYARD-SAKAI Kuzure -Le desastre et la jubilation
KOOA Aya Cheveux (Kami, 1951), texte original et traduction
HISTOIRE SOCIALE ET ECONOMIQUE
Nathalie KOUAME Un mode de sociabilite singulier dans le Japon des Tokugawa
-La pratique du settai
Pascal HURTH L' Assemblee des brasseurs de sake (1881-1885)
Bernard THOMANN L' entreprise japonaise comme "lieu de solidarire sociale"?
Histoire d'un mythe ambigu

LE JAPON EN GUERRE ET LE MONDE
Patrick BEILLEVAIRE L'opinion francaise et le Japon a l'epoque de la guerre russo-japonaise (1904-1905)
Olivier FIANK La guerre russo-japonaise vue par La Gazette de Lausanne
Franck MICHELIN Les Coreens dans 1 'annee japonaise et les proces de l'apres-guerre
-Un etat de la recherche

NOTES DE LECTURE par G.Garnier, A. Gonon, J. Joly, F. Lachaud, H. Rotermund, E. Selzelet,

ISBN: 2-85831-108-0 383 p.

En vente a I'INALCO
service des Publications
2 rue de Lille 75343 PARIS Cedex 07
v 01 49 26 42 74 -Fax 01 49 26 42 99 Web: www.inalco.fr
PRIX DE VENTE SUR PLACE 100.00F
PRIX CORRESPONDANCE 125.00F (Europe) 137.OOF (Autres pays)
Cheques et mandats en francs francais et compensables en France a I'ordre de l'Agent comptable de I'INALCO
CCP Paris 914243 y

From: Barbara Nostrand <nostr...@....org>|
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 17:48:59 -0500
Subject: [pmjs] Looking for ZGR vol 19

The ILL librarian here claims that ZGR vol 19 is unavailable.
Does anyone have a suggestion on how to borrow a copy?

Is the volume possibly catalogued under a different name?
Could this be what is making it hard for the ILL librarian
to obtain a copy? They tried to get it as "Zoku gunsho ruiju.19(3)"

Thank you very much.

From: "Anthony J. Bryant" <ajbry...@...iana.edu>
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 18:46:18 -0500
Subject: Looking for ZGR vol 19

Barbara-

I checked our library here, and we have it.

If you want, I'll check it out and send it to you; you'll have to photocopy
it and send it back to me.

Tony

from pmjs footers

link of the day: Japanese Text Initiative
http://etext.virginia.edu/japanese/texts.html
Now featuring all eight anthologies in the Hachidaishu,
full text of Heike monogatari, Kagero nikki...

book of the day: Inventing the Classics: Modernity, National Identity, and
Japanese Literature, ed. Haruo Shirane and Tomi Suzuki (Stanford UP, March
2001) pbk