Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 19:37:55 +0900
From: Michael Watson <........@...eijigakuin.ac.jp>
Subject: [pmjs] Re: 'soushi'

Lewis Cook wrote:
A tangent: I'd appreciate suggestions on how to translate "--shou" ?

As I was looking today at an Edo commentary on Heike called
"Heike monogatari shou" [平家物語抄]
the question interests me too. The title is one thing--"Notes"or "Treatise" seem to be common
renderings--but how would one translate the opening words of each book (maki)
"shou iu..." -- The Treatise says... ?

Looking at works entitled -shou in my translation database
http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~pmjs/trans/transj.html

I find "notes" or "treatise" often used, or "Collection" when that reflects the nature of the contents better. A list of titles (there must be others, remember that the database is only to ca. 1600).

竹林抄 / 夫木和歌抄 / 愚管抄 / 十訓抄 / 無名抄 / 奥義抄 / 梁塵秘抄 / 撰集 /
為兼卿和歌抄 / 歎異抄 / 和歌小学抄

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Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 08:56:41 -0500
From: "Lewis Cook" <.......@...centric.net>
Subject: [pmjs] Re: waka in rituals

Not sure this is on topic or not but Vol. 399 of the 古典文庫、「和歌威
徳物語」 ("Tales of Waka Power" roughly) is a kinsei collection of setsuwa
concerning poems which exerted telekinetic, telepathetic, and other
preternatural forces. (There's another, somewhat earlier collection in the
Koten Bunko of the same genre, sorry I can't find it right now but worth
looking for.) Also the voluminous literature of the Kokindenju on
sacramental / cryptographic waka waiting to be explored.

Lewis Cook

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Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2002 09:11:41 +0000
From: "Michael Wachutka" <.....haelwachu...@...mail.com>
Subject: Re: kitsune nyoubou

.....

and if your German is better than your classical Japanese, you might want to look at Hermann Bohner's detailed synopsis in _No: Die einzelnenNo_ (1956), pp. 607-8.
[There Bohner describes and encyclopaedically discusses every single of the 240 Noh as given in the 7 volumes of Sanari Kentaro's 佐成謙太郎 _Yokyoku taikan 謡曲大観_]

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Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 15:41:06 +0900
From: Michael Watson <........@...eijigakuin.ac.jp>
Subject: frog Buddha

I have just received the following query from a scholar not on the list. I assume that "frog Buddha" refers to the detail of the frog/Buddha worshipped by the monkey/priest in the "Choujuu jinbutsu giga" scroll of Kouzan-ji, Kyoto.
(鳥獣人物戯画/高山寺)

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Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 00:12:48 +0900

To: Michael Watson <........@...eijigakuin.ac.jp>

Subject: Kadokawa kogo daijiten


The five-volume Kadokawa kogo daijiten has just been released on CD-ROM. The price is a princely 120,000 yen (excluding tax). Sigh...theregoes next year's library budget.
I would be be very interested in hearing from anyone who has used the dictionary.

角川古語大辞典
ISBN4-04-908106-7-C3881
http://www.kadokawa.co.jp/game-video/contents/200202/200000000486.html
(No information here about operating system requirements).

The dictionary is the largest Japanese kogo dictionary, with 95,000 entries.According to online information, searches with the CD-ROM will permit one to look for all examples of citations from a certain work orauthor--much as with the Oxford English Dictionary CD-ROM. The print edition was published between 1982-1999.

Up to now, the only kogo dictionary on CD-ROM known to me is the more affordable
Zenyaku yourei kogo jiten (ed. Kindaichi) 全訳用例古語辞典 -金田一春彦監修

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Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 12:15:48 +0900

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

Subject: [pmjs] katakana names


Where does authority lie when establishing the "correct" katakana form of names of non-Japanese?

For common-as-mud names like "Michael Watson" or "Lewis Cook" (sorry Lewis!), the "owner" of the name has little choice but to follow the usual Japanese ways of rendering common personal names and surnames. But in other cases, I wonder.

The reason I ask is that I'm just finishing up the "de aru" form of a talk I gave at a Handai symposium organized by Ii Haruki (I was impressed to see how many of you had sent in written papers).

Discussing the work of the late Helen McCullough, I wrote her name
ヘレン・マカロー (Makarou)
as I have always heard it pronounced, but Fukuda Hideichi writes it
ヘレン・マッカラー (Makkaraa)
in a survey of Western work on GUNKI (in Kajiwara Masaaki, _Gunki bungaku to sono shuuen_, Kyuko shoin, 2000, p. 275).

When I asked Professor Fukuda about this a number of years ago, he said that William McCullough wrote it this way. Can anyone confirm this?

A great variety of katakana forms are found on Webcat to represent *other* authors called McCulloughs --and surely none with the W.H. and H.C.McCullough's command of Japanese.
e.g.
デーヴィッド・マカルー (David McCullough, makaruu)
コリーン・マクロウ (Coleen McCullough, makurou)

http://webcat.nii.ac.jp/webcat.html

Those of you with a "V" (or German "W") in your names have presumably hesitated over whether to go with H-gyou (B-) or"U chon chon". Webcat was my authority to find how Paul Varley writes his name. A translation of "Japanese Culture"(Nihon bunka shoushi) came out under the form:
ポール・ヴァーレー (Vaaree, in other words U chon chon). But would it be completely wrong (or rude to Paul Varley) to write it as I would (mis?)pronounce it in Japanese: ポール・バーリー? (Baarii)
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From: John R Wallace <.....ll...@...i.com>

To: Multiple recipients of pmjs <......@...eijigakuin.ac.jp>

Subject: [pmjs] Re: katakana names

Status: RO


I do think Fukuda's rendition is closest to the way I generally hear her
name pronounced. Mack Horton probably knows exactly how she wrote her name.
It would be interesting to know if she and her husband agreed on what
katakana to use for their last names. I have a similar problem with Wallace
(ウォレース or ウォレス--both have been used for people who have made it
into history books and reference works).... back


Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 21:00:26 +0900

From: "Lewis Cook" <.......@...thlink.net>

Subject: [pmjs] Re: katakana names


I'd second Fukuda's version of "McCullough" here without hesitation (and would avoid "makarou" even if it were closer to the American pronunciation, which it isn't, to my ear).

ルイス・クック (common as mud?)
lc...@...edu

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Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 12:08:07 -0500

From: Lawrence Marceau <.....rc...@...l.Edu>

Subject: [pmjs] Re: on non-japanese names in japanese


I believe that NII (National Institute for
"Informatics") is charged with creating name
standardization, not only with katakana words from the
"west," but also with kanji terms shared with China, Korea,
etc.

I don't believe they've been entirely successful,
however, as we've seen from Webcat searches...

Lawrence Marceau (francophone マルソー, not Americanized
マーソー) .... back


Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 15:13:27 -0500

From: Lawrence Marceau <.....rc...@...l.Edu>

Subject: [pmjs] Re: Rajo-mon, a P.S.


[...]

I neither have a copy of Kokushi daijiten nor a Middle
Chinese dictionary at hand, but would the pronunciation be
the same whether the character were that for "life/draught
beer" (, sheng1) as it would be if the character were
"walled city/castle" (, cheng2)? .... back



From: "Lewis Cook" <.......@...thlink.net>

Date: 2002.Nov.5 03:39:18 Asia/Tokyo

Subject: [pmjs] Re: Hototogisu, kuma


Royall Tyler writes, quoting an unidentified authority (forgive me for snipping):

"Ura no uta" are waka with distinct and (at least in the
oral tradition) recognized erotic values. [...] there are relatively few "ura no uta" in imperial anthologies;
however, there are some. As a particularly famous example of an "ura no
uta," he cited Teika's "mine ni wakaruru/ yokogumo no sora."

This is interesting news. Terms such as "ura no kokoro" "shita no kokoro" etc., appear in commentaries on HNIS, KKS, etc. from around the late 14th century where they are used mainly to refer to allegorical interpretations (often though not always drawn in Buddhistic or ideological terms) as opposed to "omote no gi" (etc.), but I haven't encountered the term "ura no uta."
re: Teika's poem, Kubota Jun (in a commentary on SKKS) suggests that in addition to the obvious allusion to Genji there is a likely allusion to the story of an erotic encounter with the divine maiden of Wu Shan, the highlight of the Kao-t'ang fu 高唐賦 in _Monzen_ (Would that be enough to qualify this as an "ura no uta"?)
There is a suggestive comment, cited by Kubota, on the Teika poem in _Chikuensho_ 竹園抄 (attributed to Tameaki, one of Teika's grandsons) which I quote for anyone who may be interested: 「これも乱 思病の歌なり、たとはべ、底にはいかなる本文をかまへても、面に理なくは、 乱思病難遁、但、この歌名歌と云へり」.... back


Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2002 18:58:40 +1100

From: Royall Tyler <.......@...aca-s.com>

To: Multiple recipients of pmjs <......@...eijigakuin.ac.jp>

Subject: [pmjs] Re: Hototogisu, kuma


Many thanks to all who have replied to my query, which I agree, I began in too casual a manner. What I must do is get back in touch with my informant (a rather private man, and very senior, which is why I'm shy of mentioning his name) and question him further on the matter. That will take some time, maybe a few months. I find the notion of ura no uta persuasive, and it really would be worth finding out more about it. When he mentioned Teika's poem, it seemed to me that I knew instantly what he meant--in fact, that I had known it all along.

My guess is that an allusion to the divine maiden of Wu Shan, while perfectly plausible, is not enough to identify this as an ura no uta. I'm guessing that an ura no uta is one that, when read from the right angle, so to speak, is wittily, physically explicit. A Gen no Naishi poem in "Momiji no ga" gives an idea of what I mean.
  君し来ば手なれの駒に刈り飼はむさかり過ぎたる下葉なりとも
Of course, there's no real mystery about this, since the context makes it clear what's going on. Even so, though, the words used draw a wonderful veil of deniability over the whole thing, despite the fact that underneath (ura ni?) the poem is startlingly obscene.

One Tachibana no kojima candidate might be Sukehira shuu 29 (Minamoto no Sukehira, 1223-1284):
   たちばなのこじまのくまのいは浪にぬれて玉ちるやまぶきの花
This has real possibilities (though you may suspect I'm hallucinating) when read against the background of Kokinshu 121
  今もかもさきにほふらむ橘のこじまのさきの山吹の花
plus the Tachibana no Kojima scene involving Niou and Ukifune (which, according to Mieko Murase, is the most popular one in the entire history of Genji illustration).

Royall Tyler

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Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2002 12:48:12 -0500

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

Subject: [pmjs] Re: Colors in Genji/"is" magazine


I forgot to include the blurb on the latest issue of IS, which reads as though
they've been watching too much of HBO's "Six Feet Under" (a very popular US
cable tv program about a family of morticians). The theme "How To End It All"
(終わり方) is especially timely for what is apparently their final issue:

ハラキリと終わりの美学、終のすみかとThe end、末期の眼と骨の
ゆくえ──「終わり」の文化もなかなか多彩である。政治体制がゆ
らぎ、社会の保障制度が崩れつつあるいま、人と社会の終わり方に
ついて考えることも必要だ。本誌もこの88号で終了するのだから。

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