| MikeWaters |
06-15-2012 10:01 PM |
Book about Japan
I thought Archaea might find this interesting:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fb20120513a1.html
Quote:
"...a daimyo could be both dead and alive at the same time..."
One of the rewards of studying Japan's past is the chance to imaginatively enter an environment so different from our own that the very words we use to describe it easily become misleading. How can you even begin to discuss a different time without recourse to terms like "country," "government," "power," "submission," "justice," "identity" — to say nothing of "dead" and "alive"? Elementary as these concepts are, a Japanese of the Edo Period (1603-1867) would have been as mystified by the meanings we give them today as we are by what they conveyed then.
That, briefly stated, is the theme of "Performing the Great Peace." Let's start, as the book does, with "dead" and "alive." Luke Roberts, University of California professor of early modern Japanese history, records his astonishment at discovering castle documents pertaining to a succession ceremony that took place in 1792 in the domain of Tahara, in present-day Aichi Prefecture. The daimyo was dying, and the law required that he name his heir in the presence of a representative of the ruling Tokugawa shogun, who would certify that the daimyo was of sound mind.
Everything went smoothly. The succession was finalized. Hours later the daimyo died, and his younger brother inherited his authority. So far so good. But "so far" is not far at all, for the ceremonial narrative was pure fiction. The "dying daimyo" had in fact died 55 days before — as everyone knew. Nor was the heir his younger brother, or the age he was purported to be. This too was well known.
"When I first read the castle diary and the letter recorded within," writes Roberts, "this incident and the letter itself that blithely reported in two paragraphs two conflicting versions of the lord's death puzzled me greatly." His bewilderment launched the research that resulted in this book.
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