Steven D. Carter

Traditional Japanese poetry : an anthology

Translators note Introduction 1. The ancient age 2. The classical age 3. The early medieval age 4. The late medieval age 5. The early modern age 6. The modern age Notes Bibliography Indexes.

The origins of Japan's medieval world : courtiers, clerics, warriors, and peasants in the fourteenth century

Part I: 1. Of hierarchy and authority at the end of Kamakura Jeffrey P. Mass 2. Largesse and the limits of loyalty in the fourteenth century Thomas Conlan 3. The Kikuchi and their enemies in the 1330s Seno Seiichiro 4. Bakufu and Shugo under the early Ashikaga Thomas Nelson 5. Peasants, elites and villages in the fourteenth century Kristina Kade Troost Part II: 6. Visions of an emperor Andrew Goble 7. Re-envisioning women in the post-Kamakura age Hitomi Tonomura 8. Warrior control over the imperial anthology Robert N. Huey 9. Cultural life of the warrior elite in the fourteenth century H. Paul Varley 10. The warrior as ideal for a new age G. Cameron Hurst III Part III: 11. Enraykuji - an old power in a new era Mikael Adolphson 12. Muso Soseki Martin Collcutt 13. Kokan Shiren and the sectarian uses of history Carl Bielefeldt Part IV: 14. Ashikaga Takauji and the fourteenth-century dynastic schism in early Tokugawa thought I. J. McMullen 15. The fourteenth century in twentieth-century perspective Oyama Kyohei Notes Bibliography Index.

On a Bare Branch: Bashō and the Haikai Profession@@@On a Bare Branch: Basho and the Haikai Profession

Matsuo Bashos decision to leave his burgeoning practice as a marker in Nihonbashi in the winter of 1680 and move across the river to take up a more solitary and frugal life in Fukagawa has always mystified scholars. Most see his act as evidence of a new seriousness of purpose, a desire to pursue spiritual rather than material goals. However, when viewed as a professional choice, Bashos move was a precedented act with implications readily understandable to those in the world of haikai society. That he stopped working as a marker did not mean that he stopped practicing his profession. Indeed, it is argued here, his action was as an instance of what those in the highest ranks of a profession are always wont to do: to test their competence in a wider arena, and by so doing to claim a transcendent status for themselves and their occupations.

Readings from the Bamboo Grove: A Translation of Sōgi's Oi no Susami (Part 1)

The place of Sōgi 宗祇 (1421–1502) in literary history is secure. The first of the professional masters of renga (linked verse), he was a major force in literary affairs for more than three decades and established patterns of poetic practice and aesthetic values that would prevail for more than a century.1 Furthermore, it was Sōgi’s artistic lineage, from Sōseki 宗碩 (1474–1533) to Satomura Jōha 里村紹巴 (1524–1602), that remained at the center of renga culture until the beginning of the Edo period and beyond. Sōgi’s origins are somewhat obscure, but we know that as a young man he entered one of Kyoto’s premier Zen temples, Shōkokuji 相国寺; that by his thirties, having evidently opted out of a clerical career, he was active in renga circles; and that he studied under the chief masters of the time, first Takayama Sōzei 高山宗砌 (d. 1455) and then Senjun 専順 (1411–1476) and Shinkei 心敬 (1406–1475).2 Sōgi enters the textual record in 1457, when he contributed ten verses at a renga gathering, showing that he was already a figure of great promise. Like many other artists, he spent a good deal of time on the road visiting patrons and plying his trade, especially during the Ōnin 応仁 War of 1467–1477, which laid waste to most of Kyoto. By this time he was a master in his own right, busily building his own roster of patrons and disciples and establishing the social and literary foundation that would support him for the next quarter century.

Waiting for the wind : thirty-six poets of Japan's late medieval age

The only collection in English of these works, Waiting for the Wind presents over four hundred poems by thirty-six poets of Japans late medieval age (1250 --- 1500). The poems are all in the uta form (the thirty-one syllable lyric) that was the major genre of court poetry throughout the classical period in Japan. Waiting for the Wind introduces this much neglected, yet very significant period through works of poets beginning with the courtier Fujiwara No Teika, continuing through the Monk Tonna, and ending with Shotetsu. Most of the works are presented in English for the first time. In his historical introduction Steven Carter describes the period, especially the celebrated literary dispute lasting 250 years between the families of two sons of a court poet, which began over an inheritance and had a lasting impact upon the poetry of the period. Each poet in the collection is introduced by a short biographical sketch that places him or her in historical context and offers a short critical evaluation.