1.
Japan
–
Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
2.
E-hon
–
E-hon or Ehon is the Japanese term for picture books. It may be applied in the sense, or may refer specifically to a type of illustrated volume published from at least the mid-Edo period onwards. In English, it is this second usage which is the more common, extremely popular during the late Edo-Meiji era. The modern Japanese manga format was created as a combination of ehon chapter-books with western-style comic books, e-hon production was a significant part of the Japanese publishing industry during the 19th century, most Japanese woodblock print artists of the period produced e-hon designs, as commercial work. However, the publication of e-hon dates back as far as the Muromachi Period, toward the end of the 19th century, e-hon chapter-books were eclipsed in popularity by the new western concept of literary magazines. These were larger books which contained more, and a range of material per-issue. They often used more modern printing methods, the increase in costs was offset by increased efficiency, larger-scale printing and distribution. Typically, a magazine would include one large folded, polychrome illustration referencing some feature story in the volume, such pictures, woodblock-printed in colour, are known as kuchi-e. The new format also absorbed most of the talent and market for ukiyo-e style prints
3.
Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki
–
Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki is the second book of Japanese artist Toriyama Sekiens famous Gazu Hyakki Yagyō series, published ca. These books are supernatural bestiaries, collections of ghosts, spirits, spooks and these works have had a profound influence on subsequent yōkai imagery in Japan. The three volumes were titled 雨, 晦, and 明, from this book, Toriyama added captions. Gazu Hyakki Yagyō Konjaku Hyakki Shūi Gazu Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro Toriyama, Toriyama Sekien Gazu Hyakki Yagyō Zen Gashū. Kon-jaku ezu zoku hyakki Yōkai Taikan Hyakki Yagyō, Mae Kōjō
4.
Gazu Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro
–
Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro is the fourth book in Japanese artist Toriyama Sekiens famous Gazu Hyakki Yagyō series. The title is a pun, hyakki, normally written with the hundred and oni, is instead written with hundred. This hints that the majority of the yōkai portrayed in its pages are of the variety known as tsukumogami, published in 1781, it was inspired in part by Tsurezuregusa, a 14th century essay collection by the monk Yoshida Kenkō. The book takes the form of a supernatural bestiary of yōkai, also unlike the other books in the series, Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro has a rudimentary narrative framework, described as the record of a strange dream in early printings. The book is compiled in three sub-volumes, Jō, Chū, and Ge The imagery below is from the printing of the book. Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro, National Diet Library of Japan, Gazu Hyakki Yagyō Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki Konjaku Hyakki Shūi
5.
Bestiary
–
A bestiary, or bestiarum vocabulum, is a compendium of beasts. Originating in the Ancient world, bestiaries were made popular in the Middle Ages in illustrated volumes that described various animals, the natural history and illustration of each beast was usually accompanied by a moral lesson. This reflected the belief that the world itself was the Word of God, for example, the pelican, which was believed to tear open its breast to bring its young to life with its own blood, was a living representation of Jesus. The bestiary, then, is also a reference to the language of animals in Western Christian art. Following the Physiologus, Saint Isidore of Seville and Saint Ambrose expanded the religious message with reference to passages from the Bible and they and other authors freely expanded or modified pre-existing models, constantly refining the moral content without interest or access to much more detail regarding the factual content. Nevertheless, the often fanciful accounts of these beasts were widely read, a few observations found in bestiaries, such as the migration of birds, were discounted by the natural philosophers of later centuries, only to be rediscovered in the modern scientific era. Mediaeval bestiaries are remarkably similar in sequence of the animals of which they treat, bestiaries were particularly popular in England and France around the 12th century and were mainly compilations of earlier texts. The Aberdeen Bestiary is one of the best known of over 50 manuscript bestiaries surviving today, bestiaries influenced early heraldry in the Middle Ages, giving ideas for charges and also for the artistic form. Bestiaries continue to give inspiration to coats of arms created in our time, two illuminated Psalters, the Queen Mary Psalter and the Isabella Psalter, contain full Bestiary cycles. The bestiary in the Queen Mary Psalter is found in the decorations that occupy about the bottom quarter of the page. In fact the bestiary has been expanded beyond the source in the Norman bestiary of Guillaume le Clerc to ninety animals, some are placed in the text to make correspondences with the psalm they are illustrating. The Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci also made his own bestiary, a volucrary is a similar collection of the symbols of birds that is sometimes found in conjunction with bestiaries. The most widely known volucrary in the Renaissance was Johannes de Cubas Gart der Gesundheit which describes 122 birds, Medieval bestiaries often contained detailed descriptions and illustrations of species native to Western Europe, exotic animals and what in modern times are considered to be imaginary animals. The description was then followed with an artistic illustration of the animal as described in the bestiary. Bestiaries were organized in different ways based upon the text, the descriptions could be organized by animal groupings, such as terrestrial and marine creatures, or presented in an alphabetical manner. However, the texts gave no distinction between existing and imaginary animals, descriptions of creatures such as dragons, unicorns, basilisk, griffin and caladrius were common in such works and found intermingled amongst accounts of bears, boars, deer, lions, and elephants. This lack of separation has often been associated with the assumption that people during this time believed in what the modern period classifies as nonexistent or imaginary creatures, however, this assumption is currently under debate, with various explanations being offered. To state that the animal in question didnt exist was to defy the truth of the word of the Church, the contents of Medieval bestiaries were often obtained and created from combining older textual sources and accounts of animals, such as the Physiologus, with newer observations and writings
6.
Japanese literature
–
Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the Diffusion of Buddhism in Japan, since Japan reopened its ports to Western trading and diplomacy in the 19th century, Western and Eastern literature have strongly affected each other and continue to do so. Before the introduction of kanji from China, Japanese had no writing system and it is believed that Chinese characters came to Japan at the very beginning of the fifth century, brought by immigrants from the mainland of Korean and Chinese descent. Chinese characters were further adapted, creating what is known as manyōgana. The earliest literary works in Japan were created in the Nara period, one of the stories they describe is the tale of Urashima Tarō. The Heian period has been referred to as the era of art. During this era, literature became centered on an elite of nobility. The imperial court patronized the poets, most of whom were courtiers or ladies-in-waiting. Reflecting the aristocratic atmosphere, the poetry was elegant and sophisticated and expressed emotions in a rhetorical style, editing the resulting anthologies of poetry soon became a national pastime. The iroha poem, now one of two standard orderings for the Japanese syllabary, was developed during the early Heian period. Genji Monogatari written in the early 11th century by a woman named Murasaki Shikibu is considered the pre-eminent masterpiece of Heian fiction, other important writings of this period include the Kokin Wakashū, a waka-poetry anthology, and Makura no Sōshi. The Pillow Book was written by Sei Shōnagon, Murasaki Shikibus contemporary and rival, as an essay about the life, loves, another notable piece of fictional Japanese literature was Konjaku Monogatarishū, a collection of over a thousand stories in 31 volumes. The volumes cover various tales from India, China and Japan, the 10th-century Japanese narrative, Taketori Monogatari, can be considered an early example of proto-science fiction. The protagonist of the story, Kaguya-hime, is a princess from the Moon who is sent to Earth for safety during a celestial war and she is later taken back to her extraterrestrial family in an illustrated depiction of a disc-shaped flying object similar to a flying saucer. During the Kamakura period, Japan experienced many civil wars led to the development of a warrior class, and subsequent war tales, histories. Work from this period is notable for its more sombre tone compared to the works of previous eras, with themes of life and death, simple lifestyles, and redemption through killing. A representative work is Heike monogatari, an account of the struggle between the Minamoto and Taira clans for control of Japan at the end of the twelfth century. Other important tales of the period include Kamo no Chōmeis Hōjōki, despite a decline in the importance of the imperial court, aristocratic literature remained the center of Japanese culture in the beginning of the Kamakura period
7.
Japanese folklore
–
Japanese folklore encompasses the folk traditions of Japan and the Japanese people. In Japanese, the term minkan denshō is used to describe folklore, folklorists also employ the term minzoku shiryō or folklore material to refer to objects and arts they study. Men dressed as namahage, wearing masks and traditional straw capes make rounds of homes. These ogre-men masquerade as kami looking to instill fear in the children who are lazily idling around the fire and this is a particularly colorful example of folk practice still kept alive. A parallel custom is the secretive Akamata-Kuromata ritual of the Yaeyama Islands, many, though increasingly fewer households maintain a kamidana or a small Shinto altar shelf. The Shinto version of the god is the Kamado kami, and the syncretic Buddhist version is the Kōjin. Japanese popular cults or kō are sometimes devoted to particular deities and buddhas, but many cults centered around paying respects to sacred sites such as the Ise Shrine or Mount Fuji. Pilgrimage to these meccas declined after the Edo Period, but recently, the Shikoku Pilgrimage of the eighty-eight temple sites has become fashionable. Popular media and cottage industries now extoll a number of shrines, there is a long list of practices performed to ward evil or expel evil, e. g. sounding the drums. In some areas it is common to place a small mound of salt outside the house, a stock routine in period or even contemporary drama involves a master of the house telling his wife to scatter salt after an undesirable visitor has just left. Contrarily, lighting sparks with flint just as a someone is leaving the house was considered lucky. No one now engages in the silent vigil required by the Kōshin cult, there are certain vestiges of geomancy introduced into Japan from China through Onmyōdō. There is also a Japanese version of Feng Shui known as kasō or literally house physiognomy, closely connected is the Yin-yang path or Onmyōdō, and its concepts such as katatagae also known as kataimi, which was widely practiced by nobles in the Heian Era. A widely known taboo advises against sleeping with your head faced north, as in most developed nations, it is increasingly difficult to find living storytellers of oral tradition. But there is a wealth of folktales collected through the ages, the name mukashi-banashi has been applied to the common folktale, since they typically open with the formula Mukashi. They also close with some set phrase like dotto harai and these tales had been told in their local dialects, which may be difficult to understand to outsiders, both because of intonation and pronunciation differences, conjugations, and vocabulary. Many folktales collected from the field are actually translations into standard Japanese, the versions retold by childrens story author Sazanami Iwaya had a strong hand in establishing the forms usually known today. Two creatures are known for their abilities to transform into humans or other beings and objects
