| NOTA |
()(In this book, some of the leading American and Canadian scholars of Japan focus on a fascinating century. As the sixteenth century began, Japan seemed to be breaking apart, with central authority powerless, and the populace tormented by incessant warfare among provincial barons. Gradually it became apparent that the old order was doomed, but that the Japanese body politic had an immense resilience ; solid new structures were developing within the society in the midst of seeming chaos. As the century ended, the country was united once again, with the final battle of a century of strife won by a warlord whose successors would rule Japan through two hundred and fifty years of peace. In Japanese institutional history, the sixteenth century marked the waning of the Middle Ages and the coming of a new, Early Modern order. In the arts, the withered and dreamy ideals of medieval aesthetics gave way to an exuberant spirit. Exciting new styles were called into being by a novel sort of aristocracy that sought to bolster their acquired status with artistic glitter. Warlords affected artistry, and artists played politics ; commoners achieved distinction through the mastery of noble pastimes. European traders and Catholic missionaries contributed further novelty to the varied genre scene. The century witnessed a dazzling burst of cultural creativity, crowned by the Momoyama epoch, which chroniclers exalted as a golden age. John Whitney Hall gives an account of the momentous institutional changes which were the sixteenth centuryLs legacy to Japan. V. Dixon Morris discusses the meaning of urban autonomy in the late medieval Japanese context, using the city of Sakai as his model. George Elison devotes one essay to outlining the patterns of Momoyama history, focusing on the dramatic part played by the first of the periodLs LThree Heroes,L Oda Nobunaga ; and he treats the case of another of the LGreat Unifiers,LToyotomi Hideyoshi, in a second essay which concentrates on the aristocratization of that spectacular parvenu. Carolyn Wheelwright visualizes the lost paintings which Kano Eitoku, who transformed Japanese pictorial style, produced for NobunagaLs residential castle at Azuchi. Donald Keene portrays a poet, Satomura Jooha, and the career he fashioned in times of strife. Frank Hoff traces the paradoxical coordinates of city and country in popular songs and the performing arts. William P. Malm writes about the musical activities which reflected and contributed to the dynamic nature of the Momoyama period. H. Paul Varley and George Elison investigate the culture of the tea ceremony, that aesthetic ritual peculiar to the Japanese, from its origins to its sixteenth-century elaboration. The volume concludes with a bibliographic essay by Bardwell L. Smith.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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