The Origins of Japan's Medieval World: Courtiers, Clerics, Warriors, and Peasants in the Fourteenth Century [Paperback]

Jeffrey Mass (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0804743797 | ISBN-13: 978-0804743792 | Edition: 1

This pioneering collection of fifteen essays proposes to change the way we think about fourteenth-century Japan and what preceded and followed it. Most notable is the search for Japan’s medieval beginnings, which are found not in the developments flowing from the establishment of the first shogunate in the 1180’s, but rather in the shogunate’s collapse 150 years later.

In this admittedly controversial interpretation, the Kamakura age becomes the final episode in Japan’s late classical period, with the courtier and warrior regimes of that era together seeking to maintain the traditional order. But under the leadership of Japan’s first truly “medieval men” (the emperor Go-Daigo and Ashikaga Takauji), the old order was dramatically transformed. In the editor’s words, “the rules changed, new behavior was everywhere, the past was only one of several competing influences. After the better part of a millennium, the spell cast by courtiers was finally broken.”

Among the topics treated are the strange new partnerships within the social hierarchy, the impact of sustained warfare on societal values, the new subservience of women in the post-Kamakura environment, the unprecedented emergence of warriors as the moralists and spokesmen of a new age, and the appearance of a new, more sharply partisan religious sectarianism.

In addition, we are shown the fragility of a history now dependent on battlefield success, the assumption of control of imperial poetic anthologies by warriors, the condition of the old and new Buddhist establishments, the paradox of warrior flamboyance and warrior stolidity, and the imposition of enduring village names.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A good selection of the latest scholarship by European, North American, and Japanese researchers. . . . An appealing aspect of the work is its multidisciplinary scope: essays on political history dominate, but the inclusion of several on religion, women, peasants, and literature add considerably to our understanding of the fouteenth century.”—Monumenta Nipponica

“The work is a valuable tool for the speacialist, for it provides information about a period woefully under-represented by English works. . . . Origins is to be commended for presenting a reevaluation of the relationship between the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, a process that in-and-of itself aids in understanding the complexity that was fourteenth centufy Japan.”—Canadian Journal of History

“Any specialist in Japanese history or culture should read this book. . . . All of the essays deserve serious attention.”—Journal of Japanese Studies

“Together, the essays provide a rich and varied perspective on the fourteenth century.”—Choice

From the Inside Flap

This pioneering collection of fifteen essays proposes to change the way we think about fourteenth-century Japan and what preceded and followed it. Most notable is the search for Japan’s medieval beginnings, which are found not in the developments flowing from the establishment of the first shogunate in the 1180’s, but rather in the shogunate’s collapse 150 years later.
In this admittedly controversial interpretation, the Kamakura age becomes the final episode in Japan’s late classical period, with the courtier and warrior regimes of that era together seeking to maintain the traditional order. But under the leadership of Japan’s first truly “medieval men” (the emperor Go-Daigo and Ashikaga Takauji), the old order was dramatically transformed. In the editor’s words, “the rules changed, new behavior was everywhere, the past was only one of several competing influences. After the better part of a millennium, the spell cast by courtiers was finally broken.”
Among the topics treated are the strange new partnerships within the social hierarchy, the impact of sustained warfare on societal values, the new subservience of women in the post-Kamakura environment, the unprecedented emergence of warriors as the moralists and spokesmen of a new age, and the appearance of a new, more sharply partisan religious sectarianism.
In addition, we are shown the fragility of a history now dependent on battlefield success, the assumption of control of imperial poetic anthologies by warriors, the condition of the old and new Buddhist establishments, the paradox of warrior flamboyance and warrior stolidity, and the imposition of enduring village names.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 524 pages
• Publisher: Stanford University Press; 1 edition (September 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804743797
• ISBN-13: 978-0804743792
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #980,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Collection of Topics & Essays, April 24, 2010

By 

Yusuke Okazaki (Eugene, OR USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Origins of Japan's Medieval World: Courtiers, Clerics, Warriors, and Peasants in the Fourteenth Century (Paperback)

This is an edited volume which contain articles by some of the biggest names in medieval Japanese history. The editor, Jeffrey P. Mass, is of course the most renowned authority on Kamakura studies in the West. The binding thread for this volume is a shift in periodization, whereby the "origins" of medieval Japan is moved forward to the 14th century, rather than the traditional peception which focused on the late 12th century. Mass and the other contributors feel that the Kamakura period, which saw the establishment of the first "shogunate," did no so much mark the end of the "classical" period ruled by a heavily top-down bureacracy and the central aristocrats from Kyoto. Instead, the Kamakura period is now considered to have had more in common with the period that preceded it, and the real watershed moment was the 14th century, when warfare became endemic, new social groups and movements began to appear in the historical records, and the estate system of absentee proprietorship began to disintegrate. This was when Japan fully entered its medieval age. The artilces in the volume cover a wide range of topics and historical subjects, including changes in warrior culture or ethos, gender, peasant/village organization, decline of once-powerful religious institutions, and the "visions" of one idiosyncratic emperor. A must read for anyone serious about premodern Japanese history.