5th IMAP in Japanese Humanities Symposium on Pre-­‐Modern Japanese Culture

5th  IMAP  in  Japanese  Humanities  Symposium  on  Pre-­‐Modern  Japanese  Culture  

December  19,  2016
Kyushu  University,  Faculty  of  Humanities   Humanities  Building,  4th  floor,  Conference  Room

The  following  guests  are  funded  by  Kyushu  University’s  World  Premier  International  Researcher  Invitation  Program   (“Progress  100”):

Ivo  Smits,  Professor  of  Arts  &  Cultures  of  Japan,  Institute  for  Area  Studies  (LIAS),  Leiden  University

Torquil  Duthie,  Associate  Professor,  Department  of  Asian  Languages  and  Cultures,  University  of  California,   Los  Angeles

We  are  grateful  for  the  participation  of:

Kyushu  University  Tokutei  Project  visiting  scholar  Judith  Rabinovitch,

Karashima  Tsukasa  Professor  Emerita  of   Japanese  Language  and  Culture  at  the  University  of  Montana

International  Master’s  Program  /  International  Doctorate  in  Japanese  Humanities  (IMAP/IDOC)  in  the  Graduate  School   of  Humanities  at  Kyushu  University  faculty  organizers:  Professors  Cynthea  J.  Bogel  and  Ellen  Van  Goethem

December  19,  2016    

11:00–12:30   Ivo  Smits   “Lotus  Meditation  in  a  Boat:  Renzen  and  the  Landscape  Outside  the  Capital  in  the  1140s”

Abstract   This  presentation  will  center  around  the  travel  poetry  of  a  fairly  unknown  but  quite  prolific  late  Heian  kanshi   漢詩  poet,  known  as  ‘the  monk  Renzen’  or  ‘Lotus  Meditation’  (Shaku  Renzen  釈蓮禅,  1082?-­‐?).    Active  in  the   first  half  of  the  twelfth  century,  he  has  been  nicknamed  ‘the  Saigyō  of  Sino-­‐Japanese  poetry’  because  of  his   extensive  travels.    His  most  substantial  legacy  is  indeed  a  long  sequence  of  kanshi  (Sinitic  verse)  made  on  one   or  more  journeys  to  northern  Kyushu  in  the  early  1140s.   I  will  use  this  sequence  to  illustrate  a  number  of  assumptions  about  Sino-­‐Japanese  poetic  practice  and   networks  in  twelfth-­‐century  Japan.  One  such  assumption  is  that  composition  in  Sino-­‐Japanese  offered  poets   great  thematic  freedom,  a  point  that  is  directly  related  to  the  two  main  templates  of  kanshi:  ‘topic  poetry’   (kudaishi)  and  its  supposed  antithesis,  ‘no-­‐topic  poetry’  (mudaishi).  Another  assumption  is  a  program  of   cultural  codification  of  landscapes  and  their  representations,  which  is  related  to  a  discernible  creative   interest  in  a  world  outside  court  society.    Finally,  a  third  assumption  is  that  networks  of  poets  could  include   poets  who  no  longer  discernably  functioned  within  the  usual  parameters  of  the  scholar-­‐bureaucrat-­‐poet.     12:30–1:00   Lunch  break     1:00–2:30   Torquil  Duthie   “Envisioning  the  Realm:  Place-­‐Naming  and  the  Rhetoric  of  Land-­‐Viewing  in  Early  Japanese  Texts”     Abstract   Kunimi  is  generally  understood  to  be  an  ancient  Japanese  ritual  in  which  the  ruler  climbed  a  mountain  or  high   place  and  gazed  down  upon  the  land.  However,  the  wide  variety  of  references  to  land-­‐viewing  in  extant  texts   of  the  Nara  period  do  not  really  point  to  the  existence  of  specific  kunimi  ritual  but  rather  to  a  multi-­‐faceted   “land-­‐viewing”  motif  that  functioned  primarily  as  a  narrative  and  rhetorical  trope.  “Land-­‐viewing”  may  have   been  a  ritual  practice  in  which  the  sovereign  envisioned  his  or  her  realm,  but  the  sovereign’s  visions   depended  on  literary  language—on  poetry  and  narrative—to  be  described  and  recorded.  In  this  paper  I  will   discuss  the  significance  of  place-­‐naming  in  the  poetry  of  the  Man’yōshū  in  relation  to  the  rhetoric  of  land-­‐ viewing.

For  further  information,  please  contact  cjbogel@lit.kyushu-­‐u.ac.jp

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