The Great Mirror of Male Love

The Great Mirror of Male Love
Author: Saikaku Ihara
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1990
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780804718950

Winner of the 1990 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. ---------- "A welcome opportunity for wider comparison of the literary traditions and sexual conventions of Japanese and Euro-American cultures."--Journal of Japanese Studies

The Life of an Amorous Woman

The Life of an Amorous Woman
Author: 井原西鶴
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
Total Pages: 420
Release: 1963
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780811201872

Ihara Saikaku "wrote of the lowest class in the Tokugawa world -- the townsmen who were rising in wealth and power but not in official status."--Back cover.

Male Colors

Male Colors
Author: Gary Leupp
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2023-04-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 052091919X

Tokugawa Japan ranks with ancient Athens as a society that not only tolerated, but celebrated, male homosexual behavior. Few scholars have seriously studied the subject, and until now none have satisfactorily explained the origins of the tradition or elucidated how its conventions reflected class structure and gender roles. Gary P. Leupp fills the gap with a dynamic examination of the origins and nature of the tradition. Based on a wealth of literary and historical documentation, this study places Tokugawa homosexuality in a global context, exploring its implications for contemporary debates on the historical construction of sexual desire. Combing through popular fiction, law codes, religious works, medical treatises, biographical material, and artistic treatments, Leupp traces the origins of pre-Tokugawa homosexual traditions among monks and samurai, then describes the emergence of homosexual practices among commoners in Tokugawa cities. He argues that it was "nurture" rather than "nature" that accounted for such conspicuous male/male sexuality and that bisexuality was more prevalent than homosexuality. Detailed, thorough, and very readable, this study is the first in English or Japanese to address so comprehensively one of the most complex and intriguing aspects of Japanese history.

Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage

Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage
Author: Claude J. Summers
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1742
Release: 2014-02-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1135303991

The revised edition of The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage is a reader's companion to this impressive body of work. It provides overviews of gay and lesbian presence in a variety of literatures and historical periods; in-depth critical essays on major gay and lesbian authors in world literature; and briefer treatments of other topics and figures important in appreciating the rich and varied gay and lesbian literary traditions. Included are nearly 400 alphabetically arranged articles by more than 175 scholars from around the world. New articles in this volume feature authors such as Michael Cunningham, Tony Kushner, Anne Lister, Kate Millet, Jan Morris, Terrence McNally, and Sarah Waters; essays on topics such as Comedy of Manners and Autobiography; and overviews of Danish, Norwegian, Philippines, and Swedish literatures; as well as updated and revised articles and bibliographies.

Early Modern Japanese Literature

Early Modern Japanese Literature
Author: Haruo Shirane
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 1054
Release: 2002-07-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0231507437

This is the first anthology ever devoted to early modern Japanese literature, spanning the period from 1600 to 1900, known variously as the Edo or the Tokugawa, one of the most creative epochs of Japanese culture. This anthology, which will be of vital interest to anyone involved in this era, includes not only fiction, poetry, and drama, but also essays, treatises, literary criticism, comic poetry, adaptations from Chinese, folk stories and other non-canonical works. Many of these texts have never been translated into English before, and several classics have been newly translated for this collection. Early Modern Japanese Literature introduces English readers to an unprecedented range of prose fiction genres, including dangibon (satiric sermons), kibyôshi (satiric and didactic picture books), sharebon (books of wit and fashion), yomihon (reading books), kokkeibon (books of humor), gôkan (bound books), and ninjôbon (books of romance and sentiment). The anthology also offers a rich array of poetry—waka, haiku, senryû, kyôka, kyôshi—and eleven plays, which range from contemporary domestic drama to historical plays and from early puppet theater to nineteenth century kabuki. Since much of early modern Japanese literature is highly allusive and often elliptical, this anthology features introductions and commentary that provide the critical context for appreciating this diverse and fascinating body of texts. One of the major characteristics of early modern Japanese literature is that almost all of the popular fiction was amply illustrated by wood-block prints, creating an extensive text-image phenomenon. In some genres such as kibyôshi and gôkan the text in fact appeared inside the woodblock image. Woodblock prints of actors were also an important aspect of the culture of kabuki drama. A major feature of this anthology is the inclusion of over 200 woodblock prints that accompanied the original texts and drama.

Trick Mirror

Trick Mirror
Author: Jia Tolentino
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2019-08-06
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0525510559

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “From The New Yorker’s beloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television.”—Esquire Book Club Pick for Now Read This, from PBS NewsHour and The New York Times • “A whip-smart, challenging book.”—Zadie Smith • “Jia Tolentino could be the Joan Didion of our time.”—Vulture FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE’S JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY AND HARVARD CRIMSON AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Chicago Tribune • The Washington Post • NPR • Variety • Esquire • Vox • Elle • Glamour • GQ • Good Housekeeping • The Paris Review • Paste • Town & Country • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews • BookRiot • Shelf Awareness Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity. Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly through a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the advent of scamming as the definitive millennial ethos; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the punitive dream of optimization, which insists that everything, including our bodies, should become more efficient and beautiful until we die. Gleaming with Tolentino’s sense of humor and capacity to elucidate the impossibly complex in an instant, and marked by her desire to treat the reader with profound honesty, Trick Mirror is an instant classic of the worst decade yet. FINALIST FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD FOR THE ART OF THE ESSAY

Reflecting the Past

Reflecting the Past
Author: Erin L Brightwell
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2022-03-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1684176182

Reflecting the Past is the first English-language study to address the role of historiography in medieval Japan, an age at the time widely believed to be one of irreversible decline. Drawing on a decade of research, including work with medieval manuscripts, it analyzes a set of texts—eight Mirrors—that recount the past in an effort to order the world around them. They confront rebellions, civil war, “China,” attempted invasions, and even the fracturing of the court into two lines. To interrogate the significance for medieval writers of narrating such pasts as a Mirror, Erin Brightwell traces a series of innovations across these and related texts that emerge in the face of disorder. In so doing, she uncovers how a dynamic web of evolving concepts of time, place, language use, and cosmological forces was deployed to order the past in an age of unprecedented social movement and upheaval. Despite the Mirrors’ common concerns and commitments, traditional linguistic and disciplinary boundaries have downplayed or obscured their significance for medieval thinkers. Through their treatment here as a multilingual, multi-structured genre, the Mirrors are revealed, however, as the dominant mode for reading and writing the past over almost three centuries of Japanese history.

Mirror

Mirror
Author: Ann Sherif
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1999-06-01
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9780824821814

Ann Sherif discusses the life and work of Kòda in light of changes in critical horizons, readerly communities, and especially constructions of gender and the family in the latter half of the twentieth century. Excellent translations of some of Kòda's most provocative short works are included.

The Bloomsbury Reader in Religion, Sexuality, and Gender

The Bloomsbury Reader in Religion, Sexuality, and Gender
Author: Donald L. Boisvert
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2016-11-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1474237819

How do religion, gender and sexuality interact? How have they impacted, and continue to impact, human culture? The Bloomsbury Reader in Religion, Sexuality and Gender brings together, for the first time, the key texts in the field. Designed as a textbook for use in a classroom setting, it offers thought-provoking selections of some of the most compelling and timely readings available today. The Reader is divided into three parts (bodies; desires; performances). Each considers, from a thematic perspective, the ways in which people have made sense of their religious and sexual experiences, the ways they imagine and talk about gender, sex and the sacred, and the multiple meanings they ascribe to them. Traditions represented include indigenous spiritualities, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Asian traditions and new religious movements. Some readings are more theoretical or historical in nature, thereby providing wide-ranging contexts for reflection and discussion. The reader includes extensive introductions to the book as a whole and to each of the three parts, as well as short paragraphs contextualizing each of the readings. Each section includes discussion questions for classroom use; additional readings and resources, as well as a glossary of key terms, are also provided. The Bloomsbury Reader in Religion, Sexuality and Gender is an ideal resource for courses on religion and sexuality, religion and gender, or religion and contemporary culture more generally.

Samurai

Samurai
Author: Constantine Nomikos Vaporis Ph.D.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 457
Release: 2019-03-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 144084271X

Alphabetically arranged entries along with primary source documents provide a comprehensive examination of the lives of Japan's samurai during the Tokugawa or Edo period, 1603–1868, a time when Japan transitioned from civil war to extended peace. The samurai were an aristocratic class of warriors who imposed and maintained peace in Japan for more than two centuries during the Tokugawa or Edo period, 1603–1868. While they maintained a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, as a result of the peace the samurai themselves were transformed over time into an educated, cultured elite—one that remained fiercely proud of its military legacy and hyper-sensitive in defending their individual honor. This book provides detailed information about the samurai, beginning with a timeline and narrative historical overview of the samurai. This is followed by more than 100 alphabetically arranged entries on topics related to the samurai, such as ritual suicide, castles, weapons, housing, clothing, samurai women, and more. The entries cite works for further reading and often include sidebars linking the samurai to popular culture, tourist sites, and other information. A selection of primary source documents offers firsthand accounts from the era, and the volume closes with a selected, general bibliography.