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An Introduction to Japanese Society provides a highly readable introduction to Japanese society by internationally renowned scholar Yoshio Sugimoto. Taking a sociological approach, the text examines the multifaceted nature of contemporary Japanese society with chapters covering class, geographical and generational variation, work, education, gender, ethnicity, religion, popular culture, and the establishment. This edition begins with a new historical introduction placing the sociological analysis of contemporary Japan in context, and includes a new chapter on religion and belief systems. Comprehensively revised to include current research and statistics, the text covers changes to the labor market, evolving conceptions of family and gender, demographic shifts in an aging society, and the emergence of new social movements. Each chapter now contains illustrative case examples, research questions, recommended further readings and useful online resources. Written in a lively and engaging style, An Introduction to Japanese Society remains essential reading for all students of Japanese society.
In terms of the history of kanshi composition the Edo period is appropriately divided into two parts, with the first ending around 1780, when kanshi poets start to show a significant level of concern with national affairs and with Japan's growing contacts with the outside world. At the same time, other relatively well established trends begin to intensify, notably an interest in writing about mundane matters and popular culture. In any event, during Ogyu Sorai's lifetime kanshi production increased steadily, partly through his school's efforts to promote and liberate the genre but also because of social and demographic changes occurring in Japanese society. Private occasional poetry, typically composed in solitude, makes up a large segment of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century kanshi, remaining a staple well beyond the Edo period. The principle of harnessing kanshi for political ends, espoused by the Tokugawa regime in the early seventeenth century but eventually eclipsed, had returned ones that were unimaginable a generation before.
The Heike monogatari or The Tales of the Heike is a long medieval narrative, extant in multiple variants, about the rise and fall of Taira Kiyomori and the Heike warrior house in the course of the twelfth century. The first half of the Heike narrate the rapid rise and consolidation of Kiyomori's power, alternating praise with censure. The second half of the Heike narrates the defeat of the Heike by the Genji forces, first led by Kiso no Yoshinaka, who drives the Heike into flight and exile from the capital; and then by Minamoto no Yoshitsune, who defeats them in two battles. As the Heike variants circulated throughout the fourteenth and into the fifteenth centuries, copied and recopied by multiple hands, the story continued to propagate and gain ever larger audiences across all classes of Japanese society, reaching a peak of popularity in the golden age of Heike performance in the fifteenth century.
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