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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Art Of Emptiness: Buddhist Nature In Picture Books Of Miyazawa Kenji's Donguri To Yamaneko (Wildcat And The Acorns), Helen Kilpatrick
The Art Of Emptiness: Buddhist Nature In Picture Books Of Miyazawa Kenji's Donguri To Yamaneko (Wildcat And The Acorns), Helen Kilpatrick
Helen Kilpatrick
Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933), the author of Donguri to Yamaneko [3], is recognised as one of "the most imaginative spinner[s] of children's stories, of twentieth-century Japan" (Satô xvii). Moreover, Kenji, as he is commonly known, is probably Japan's most renowned Buddhist writer and his work is now taught in schools and universities. [4]He was writing at a time when Japan was undergoing rapid modernisation and much of his work, including Donguri, was created as a protest against the spiritual desolation associated with rampant industrialisation, commodification and consumerism. Donguri should be considered in this context as the story ultimately foregrounds a communion …
Buddhist Visions Of Transculturalism: Picturing Miyazawa Kenji's 'Yamanashi' (Wild Pear), Helen Kilpatrick
Buddhist Visions Of Transculturalism: Picturing Miyazawa Kenji's 'Yamanashi' (Wild Pear), Helen Kilpatrick
Helen Kilpatrick
This paper analyses the interaction between the 1920s narrative of Yamanashi by Miyazawa Kenji and two sets of contemporary accompanying images. Both books challenge centrist ideologies and nationalist Nihonjinron theories of a homogeneous Japan that arose after WorldWar II. Kobayashi Toshiya’s (1985) more representational rendering of the story’s Buddhist significance of co-existence within nature provides the basis for comparison with the minimalist artwork of Kim Tschang Yeul (1984). While Kobayashi’s multiple viewing perspectives demonstrate how a non-Buddhist like fear of death can be transcended in an underwater microcosm, Kim’s non-replicatory rendering of the story extends this signification towards the transcendence …
Review Keyes, Roger S. 2006. Ehon: The Artist And The Book In Japan., Helen Kilpatrick
Review Keyes, Roger S. 2006. Ehon: The Artist And The Book In Japan., Helen Kilpatrick
Helen Kilpatrick
This handsome tome is based on an exhibition of Japanese picture books held by the New York Public Library from October 2006 to February 2007. Despite the more contemporary connotations associated with the term ehon, this is not a catalogue of books for children. The collection is best described as a volume that traces the traditions of Japanese artists’ books. With the inclusion of two more recent works by non-Japanese (American and German) artists, the volume also features international entries that are currently ‘‘contribut[ing] to the living Japanese book tradition’’ (p. 313). Although it excludes neither children’s nor contemporary books …
Beyond Dualism: Towards Interculturality In Pictorialisations Of Miyazawa Kenji's 'Snow Crossing' (Yukiwatari), Helen Kilpatrick
Beyond Dualism: Towards Interculturality In Pictorialisations Of Miyazawa Kenji's 'Snow Crossing' (Yukiwatari), Helen Kilpatrick
Helen Kilpatrick
Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933) is one of Japan's most renowned authors and his many children's stories (dowa) represent a Buddho-animist quest for a more integratcd cosmos. In his desire for this kind of holism, Kenji was largely writing against all the forms of scientific rationalism that, by his day, had cntered Japanese consciousness through intellectual thought and new forms of Naturalist literature. (For further discussion of this prevalcnce see, for example, Keene 1984, Chapters 11 & 16). Such rationalist modes of thought formed the foundation for a society that Kenji saw as responsible for many inequalities. Despite, or because of, Kenji's …