Sengoku/Japanese history Scholarship

As a co-webmaster and translator for the Samurai Archives - who
doesn't have the benefit of studying Japanese history in a university
setting (I'm working on an MBA) I was wondering what sort of
resources students of Japanese history in a university setting
actually get. I'm targeting this at anyone currently studying
Japanese history in a university / college, (particularly A.J.
Bryant). I doubt that the sources used are the 20 - 40 year old
Varley, Sansom, Reischauer, Berry, etc...?
New scholarship in Japan comes out yearly, so are there books in
english (textbooks, etc.) for students currently being written by
professors for these Japanese history students? I have been getting
most of my info from varous books in Japanese, including the Rekishi
Gunzo series, and other sources, by historians such as Kuwada
Nagachika and Kasaya Kazuhiko among others, but would like to find
out what sort of resources 'university students' of Japanese
history / sengoku actually get. I doubt that students are required to
actually learn Japanese, read Japanese sources, including old
japanese, or are they?

As you can tell, I'm particularly interested in the type of (and
availability of) these textbooks, if they exist. Hey, why reinvent
the wheel? if the sort of info I'm getting from Japanese sources is
the same as what is hidden away in University libraries in english,
I'd choose english!

Hi,

I am currently working on an MA and am doing research on buke kakun "warrior
house codes", and am specifically doing a translation of one from the late
15th century. I am enrolled in a program that is officially a "language and
literatures" department and therefore did not have the benefit of a set
course of classes from which to be guided in terms of history books. I can,
however, share the books that I was directed to by my advisor...

Initially, I did look at the older stuff (Sansom, et. al.) While his
perspective may be rightly characterized as outdated, and his choice of what
things (people, events) to include/emphasize a bit suspect, still I find the
Sansom books invaluable as the indexes are extensive and the bibliographies
superb. I usually go there first when heading off on new subjects.

For Kamakura stuff it is pretty much a Mass world. The late Jeffrey Mass,
formerly professor at Stanford, wrote the book(s) on Western scholarship of
medieval Japan. Not only are _his_ books great, but most of the leading
American scholars currently working on medieval Japan are his former
students (Karl Friday, Thomas Conlan, Alex Bay, etc.) I must say that most
of the books authored or edited by Mass have to do with political
institutions and are not really of the military history genre, but much in
the same way as Turnbull has monopolized the warring states period, Mass
(and the Mass-ites) are pretty much the only game in town when it comes to
medieval stuff. Anyway, here are a few books that I have used in my
research.

Mass:
Kamakura Bakufu: A Study in Documents
Medieval Japan
Court and Bakufu in Japan
Antiquity and Anachronism in Japanese History
The Bakufu in Japanese History
The Origins of Japan's Medieval World: Courtiers, Clerics, Warriors and
ZPeasants in the Fourteenth Century
Warrior Government in Early Medieval Japan
Lordship and Inheritance in Early Medieval Japan
The Dev't of Kamakura Rule

Others:
G. Cameron Hurst - The Armed Martial Arts of Japan
G. Cameron Hurst - Insei - Abdicated Sovereigns
William Wayne Farris - Heavenly Warriors
Karl Friday - Hired Swords
Kenneth Grossberg - Japan's Renaissance - The Politics of the Muromachi
Bakufu
Ikegami - The Taming of the Samurai
Hiroaki Sato - Legends of the Samurai
George Perkins - The Clear Mirror
John Brownlee - Japanese Historians and the National Myths
Martin Colcutt - Five Mountains
Marius Jansen - Warrior Rule in Japan
George Elison (now Jurgas Elisonas...hi A.J.) Warlords, Artists and
Commoners: Japan in the 16th century

These are just a few off the top of my head and many major works are
probably not represented. It should also be noted that a lot of what gets
read (even at the MA level) is not in the form of monographs. Lots of the
current research is actually presented as journal articles (Monumenta
Nipponica, Harvard Journal of Asian Studies, etc.) as well as Ph.D theses.
Most of this research eventually makes it to books, but it is usually a
while in the offing. For those in the States, most of the large state
universities (land grant-types) have these journals on-hand or at least can
get you what you need.

I am not sure, but would think that anyone doing research on Japan (at least
pre-modern) would be required to read in Japanese at the graduate level. As
undergraduates it is unlikely, however except in exceptional cases.

Hope this is what you were looking for.

Shannon

As a co-webmaster and translator for the Samurai Archives - who
doesn't have the benefit of studying Japanese history in a university
setting (I'm working on an MBA) I was wondering what sort of
resources students of Japanese history in a university setting
actually get. I'm targeting this at anyone currently studying
Japanese history in a university / college, (particularly A.J.
Bryant). I doubt that the sources used are the 20 - 40 year old
Varley, Sansom, Reischauer, Berry, etc...?
New scholarship in Japan comes out yearly, so are there books in
english (textbooks, etc.) for students currently being written by
professors for these Japanese history students? I have been getting
most of my info from varous books in Japanese, including the Rekishi
Gunzo series, and other sources, by historians such as Kuwada
Nagachika and Kasaya Kazuhiko among others, but would like to find
out what sort of resources 'university students' of Japanese
history / sengoku actually get. I doubt that students are required to
actually learn Japanese, read Japanese sources, including old
japanese, or are they?

As you can tell, I'm particularly interested in the type of (and
availability of) these textbooks, if they exist. Hey, why reinvent
the wheel? if the sort of info I'm getting from Japanese sources is
the same as what is hidden away in University libraries in english,
I'd choose english!



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Now that I think about it, I had found some journals with excellent
articles, particularly the Journal of Japanese Studies
(http://depts.washington.edu/jjs/). It runs the whole gamut of modern
japan to WWII to Jomon times, but every so often an excellent 12th -
16th century article appears. Here is the abstract of one such
article I came across while I still had a subscription:

Thomas Conlan
The Nature of Warfare in Fourteenth-Century Japan:
The Record of Nomoto Tomoyuki

Although the "rise" of warriors in Japanese history has generated
considerable scholarly attention, the wars that propelled these men to
prominence have not received the same scrutiny. Recent scholarship has
revealed, however, that warfare was instrumental to change rather than
merely expressive of it.
The outbreak of war in 1331 and destruction of the Kamakura bakufu in
1333 were catalysts for profound transformations in Japan; to
understand the changes in state and society, we must first explore the
nature of the warfare that was endemic in this period. This essay
reconstructs the experience of Nomoto Tomoyuki, a fourteenth-century
warrior, in order to examine the nature of warfare.

"S. Lyle Parker" wrote:

>
> As a co-webmaster and translator for the Samurai Archives - who
> doesn't have the benefit of studying Japanese history in a university
> setting (I'm working on an MBA) I was wondering what sort of
> resources students of Japanese history in a university setting
> actually get. I'm targeting this at anyone currently studying
> Japanese history in a university / college, (particularly A.J.
> Bryant). I doubt that the sources used are the 20 - 40 year old
> Varley, Sansom, Reischauer, Berry, etc...?

Oh, Lord, no. You're right about Japanese sources for primary lingo research,
but you've already listed most of the common source texts used in classes.
Depending on specializations, we work with Mass (and the Massites) and Janssen,
as well as Friday and Farris. And Elisonas, of course (Deus Destroyed is a
classic.) Many others have only one or two books out there, but they're really
useful in their areas (Shirane, Barger, Adolphson, etc.).

When people are getting into Japanese, I often send them to Sansom for a
general historical overview to find an area that interests them, but I'd never
rely on it or teach it.

And then there are the Japanese books, both modern scholarship and critical
texts. I love the Japanese; who else publishes books with the near corpus of
the classical language literature in their language? With collections like the
Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei, the Nihon Koten Bungaku Zenshu, the Nihon Shiso
Taikei and so on, I'm in hog heaven.

>
> New scholarship in Japan comes out yearly, so are there books in
> english (textbooks, etc.) for students currently being written by
> professors for these Japanese history students?

Definitely. We see a lot of them in literature, too. Plus theories are
constantly being re-evaluated. I've totally reversed my position on the Emishi,
for example, and have come into line with the current theory that they
*weren't* any different than the regular "Yamato" Japanese except that they
refused to submit to central court rule. The evidence seems rather compelling.

> I have been getting
> most of my info from varous books in Japanese, including the Rekishi
> Gunzo series, and other sources, by historians such as Kuwada
> Nagachika and Kasaya Kazuhiko among others, but would like to find
> out what sort of resources 'university students' of Japanese
> history / sengoku actually get. I doubt that students are required to
> actually learn Japanese, read Japanese sources, including old
> japanese, or are they?

It's good if they can, but it's not a major factor. Certainly for an undergrad
major you need three years in the language, and that's enough to at least work
through popular historical texts. For grad school, of course primary language
research is pretty much required. I have little use for people who do grad work
in an area studies field entirely in their mother tongue.

>
>
> As you can tell, I'm particularly interested in the type of (and
> availability of) these textbooks, if they exist. Hey, why reinvent
> the wheel? if the sort of info I'm getting from Japanese sources is
> the same as what is hidden away in University libraries in english,
> I'd choose english!

I can relate. I can read Mass in a day or so, but if I were reading the
Japanese equivalent of Mass it would take me many days. Frustrating....


Tony

Can anyone tell me when were the samurai first encountered in the japonese history, why and how did they appear?


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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Speaking of Thomas Conlan, has anyone read his book on the Mongol invasions?
Supposed to have come out of Cornell press last year...


Kitsuno wrote:


Now that I think about it, I had found some journals with excellent
articles, particularly the Journal of Japanese Studies
(http://depts.washington.edu/jjs/). It runs the whole gamut of modern
japan to WWII to Jomon times, but every so often an excellent 12th -
16th century article appears. Here is the abstract of one such
article I came across while I still had a subscription:

Thomas Conlan
The Nature of Warfare in Fourteenth-Century Japan:
The Record of Nomoto Tomoyuki

Although the "rise" of warriors in Japanese history has generated
considerable scholarly attention, the wars that propelled these men to
prominence have not received the same scrutiny. Recent scholarship has
revealed, however, that warfare was instrumental to change rather than
merely expressive of it.
The outbreak of war in 1331 and destruction of the Kamakura bakufu in
1333 were catalysts for profound transformations in Japan; to
understand the changes in state and society, we must first explore the
nature of the warfare that was endemic in this period. This essay
reconstructs the experience of Nomoto Tomoyuki, a fourteenth-century
warrior, in order to examine the nature of warfare.



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