User:LordAmeth/Notes

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NOTES for later articles:

  • In aftermath of 1616 bans on Christianity, loads of Japanese converts who had simply adopted Christianity at the orders of their lord renounced the religion. A written oath was required in many cases. Christianity enjoyed numbers around 300,000 in Japan at its peak around 1615, but by the late 1630s was reduced to only kakure Kirishitan pockets. - Robert Hellyer, Defining Engagements, 47.
  • Fukuoka han lost 2000 soldiers in the Shimabara Rebellion, in which Fukuoka, Karatsu, and Kagoshima together supplied around 700 ships. - Kalland, 214.
  • In his 1771 Naobi no mitama, Motoori Norinaga writes that China is a country of disorder and violence, and the so-called Sages are nothing more than successful practitioners of a special brand of deceit. It might be useful to study Chinese books, but only after grounding oneself firmly in Japanese traditions and values, thus allowing oneself to recognize the full error of the Way of China. (too close - must paraphrase before posting!) - Jansen, China in Tokugawa Japan, 82.
  • Term "bakuhan taisei" coined by Itô Tasaburô　(伊東多三郎). Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain, 22-23.
  • Kangaku: The shogunate was not only concerned about Western books, but also Chinese books coming in through Nagasaki, which might have Christian elements. The shogunate's censorship project began with the establishment of a temple in Nagasaki, and the conscription of two Nagasaki book dealers into the shogunate's service. In 1639, Mukai Genshô, a Saga han Confucian scholar & physician, was appointed chief censor. He was followed by at least seven generations of successors. Book dealers were obliged to issue a pledge of their loyalty to uphold the polity (kôgi), etc., and to report any suspicious printed/written matter - including discussions of Christianity or military matters - which appeared at Edo, Osaka, Kyoto, Sakai, or anywhere else. A list of banned books was also circulated, and a number of prominent intellectuals are known to have possessed copies of the list, indicating their interest in what was censored. (Jansen, China in the Tokugawa World, 72-73)
  • Generally, only samurai, priests, physicians, and a few favored commoners (e.g. goyo shonin) were permitted to have surnames in the Edo period. (Kalland, 28.)
  • Satsuma, Choshu, Hizen and Tosa have together been called the seinan yûhan 西南雄藩, the great southwestern domains which overthrew the shogunate. - Ravina, Land and Lordship, 14.
  • In First and Second Choshu Expeditions (1864, 1866), Fukuoka han contributed 2,000 corvee laborers (fishermen etc who transported troops), who were enlisted away from home for a span of two whole months. - Kalland, 214.
  • Ogyu Sorai's teachings were deemed heterodox by the shogunate in 1790, and removed from being part of instruction at the shogunal academies. - Ravina, Land and Lordship, 133.
  • Roberts draws a distinction between samurai (retainers with the right of audience, the right to bear two swords, and the right of entry into domainal registers of retainers, known as bugen'iri) and other figures such as ashigaru, kachi, and others not possessing such rights. All were bushi (warriors) or hôkônin (military servants), but samurai made up only the top 10 percent of retainer households. - Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain, 33.

Tsushima officials worked with Korean officials to ensure that Christian devotees or materials were not permitted to enter Japan. Satsuma officials, similarly, sent a special envoy to Shuri to speak to the court about the shogunate's concerns that Christians might have fled to Ryukyu and might be hiding out there; also, that Spanish missionaries from the Philippines should not be allowed to land in the Ryukyus (particularly the more remote southern islands) and preach there. Shuri then strengthened its coastal surveillance efforts in the southern islands. Over the course of the entire Edo period, Satsuma conveyed more than 20 anti-Christian directives to the authorities at Shuri. - Robert Hellyer, Defining Engagements, 47-48.

  • English East India Company founded in 1600, by 101 English subscribers who pooled their funds into a joint-stock company (in which each owned equal shares of the capital). Soon afterwards, EIC is granted a royal charter granting it a monopoly on importing goods from the East Indies. Soon displaces Portuguese who had been dominant in Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf. Traded in indigo, saltpeter, pepper, and cotton textiles. Acquired control of ports on both coasts of India, including Fort St. George (Madras, 1639), Bombay (1661), and Calcutta (1690). - Tignor, Elman, Worlds Together Worlds Apart, 473.
  • Though the term chôtei is used quite standardly today to refer to the Imperial Court, the terms used in the Edo period were, much more commonly, kinri 禁裏 and kinchû 禁中. - Watanabe Hiroshi, Luke Roberts (trans.), "About Some Japanese Historical Terms," Sino-Japanese Studies 10:2 (1998), 38-39.
  • David Noble translates 中華 as "central flowering." - Mitani Hiroshi, David Noble (trans.), Escape from Impasse, 38.
  • The population of Okinawa prefecture is around 1.3 million, the same as the State of Hawaii. (Pearson, 8.; Hawaii, Lonely Planet (2009), 52.)
  • In Meiji, as part of trying to make Japan look as civilized as Europe, European titles are adopted - Lord of the Privy Seal is basically just the position of naidaijin, reinvented. - Ben Ami Shillony, "Restoration, Emperor, Diet, Prefecture, or: How Japanese Concepts were Mistranslated into Western Languages," Collected Writings of Ben-Ami Shillony, 67.
  • The word yari is said to appear for the first time in the Miidera chapter of the Taiheiki, and in no earlier literature. - Told Round a Brushwood Fire, 142, 294n180.
  • Samurai were required to provision themselves. Arms and armor were not provided by the lord, but rather each man was expected to show up fully equipped and prepared, or else suffer severe consequences. (see docs read in sorobun class)
  • Scholar-officials came to be known as "mandarins" from a Sanskrit word for "councilor" which entered Hindi, then Malay, where it was picked up by the Portuguese and was then adopted by other Europeans. - Craig, Heritage of Chinese Civ, 109.
  • In the Forbidden City, during the Tang Dynasty, emperors sat together with their grand councilors to discuss matters of state. In the Song, officials stood in the emperor's presence. In the Ming, the emperor sat on a raised dais, and the officials knelt in his presence. Behind the audience hall were the emperor's private chambers and harem. In 1425, the palace had 6300 cooks serving 10,000 people every day. By the 17th century, there may have been as many as 9000 court ladies and 70,000 eunuchs. - Craig, Heritage of Chinese Civilization, 107-108.
  • The Yongle Emperor's rebuilding of Beijing involved 100,000 artisans and one million laborers. The city lay within three sets of walled enclosures; the imperial city lay within the outer walls, and beyond that, within an inner set of walls, was the Forbidden City. The palace itself contained some 9000 rooms, and front courts measuring 400 yards on a side, furnished with impressive marble terraces and curved railings. - Worlds Apart Worlds Together, vol B, 431.
  • The number of county seats in the Chinese bureaucracy remained relatively stable over the centuries, as county boundaries were regularly redrawn to accommodate the growing population. They numbered 1180 in the Han, 1235 in Tang, 1230 in Song, 1115 in Yuan, 1385 in Ming, and 1360 in Qing. - Benjamin Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China, University of California Press (2000), 130.
  • Agriculture began in China in the Yellow River valley c. 5600-4000 BCE. The chief crops were millet, taro, and yams, with rice cultivation first emerging in southern China & Vietnam, and wheat being later introduced from the west. - Craig, Heritage of Chinese Civilization, 2.
  • Bronze appears in China c. 2000 BCE, which is 1000 years later than Mesopotamia, and 500 years later than in India. - Craig, Heritage of Chinese Civilization, 6.
  • Watanabe Kazan, in his Saikô seiyô jijôsho 再校西洋事情書, wrote that the major part of India had become a British possession, and that some coastal areas were Portuguese and French colonies. - Rambelli, Idea of India, 263.
  • The character 士, which comes during the Warring States era to refer to scholar-bureaucrats, did prior to that refer to warriors. (Craig, Chinese Civ, 12) Thus, the Japanese usage, as in bushi 武士、士族, sort of comes back around, referring specifically to the warrior class while also possessing the connotation of the refined, cultured, cultivated scholar-bureaucrat.
  • Hawaii enjoyed most favored nation status, and thus extraterritoriality in Japanese ports. - Masaji Marumoto, "Vignette of Early Hawaii-Japan Relations: Highlights of King Kalakaua's Sojourn in Japan on His Trip around the World as Recorded in His Personal Diary", Hawaiian Journal of History 10 (1976), 62.
  • "Zen," from the Chinese "chan", comes from the Sanskrit dhyan, for meditation. - Francis DK Ching, A Global History of Architecture, 444.
  • The popularity of imported karamono in the Muromachi period, and the need/desire to display them, contributed to the development of shoin architecture, including the chigaidana shelving, tokonoma alcove, etc. - H. Paul Varley, "Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and the World of Kitayama: Social Change and Shogunal Patronage in Early Muromachi Japan", in John Hall and Toyoda Takeshi eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age, 1977, University of California Press, (Berkeley), 192.
  • Heian gardens are viewed from a stationary position from within the palace, versus Zen gardens meant for contemplation – not for beauty or for poetry - , versus Edo gardens which are walking gardens, for moving through.
  • Genghis Khan was his Persian name; Crossroads & Cultures p441 gives his name as Chinggis.
  • The earliest extant record listing the names of kyogen pieces dates to 1464 and is known as the Tadasu-gawara Kanjin-Sarugaku. The diary of Shôjô shônin of Ishiyama Honganji, written c. 1532-1554 indicates some as well, and a volume known as the Tenshô-bon, written in 1578/7, contains synopses of over 100 pieces. Kyôgen no Hon (1642), written by Ôgura Toraaki (d. 1662), 13th head of the Ôgura school, is the earliest real volume of kyogen scripts. In addition to other writings by Toraaki, four other anthologies of kyogen plays were compiled between 1646 and 1660. - Andrew Tsubaki, "The Performing Arts of Sixteenth-Century Japan: A Prelude to Kabuki," Educational Theatre Journal 29:3 (1977), 302.
  • On origins of samurai/bushi, Karl Friday writes that during the Heian period, they were essentially miyako no musha, with much closer associations to their social peers within the Court & aristocracy than to a warrior or bushi identity, and that it was only after the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate and of the gokenin hierarchy that a distinctive bushi identity began to emerge. More details of his argument/explanation can be seen at: Karl Friday, Samurai Warfare and the State in Early Medieval Japan, Routledge (2004), 10.

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Roger Keyes, Ehon, NYPL 2006, p70.

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  • hikime kagihana 引目鉤鼻 - simple line for the eyes, hook for the nose (in Heian/Kamakura emaki, e.g. Tale of Genji.
  • fukinuki yatai 吹抜屋台 - "blown off roof" pictorial technique.

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Jack and Isabella Stewart Gardner visited Kyoto in 1883, and may have stayed at Chion-in.

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Lane p311 for pigments

"As the early Yoshiwara was primarily a place of entertainment and socializing, sex was a discreet and secondary aspect of the business. Indeed, Edward Seidensticker has gone so far as to liken an evening at the Yoshiwara to an afternoon of tea." - Seigle. p152.

Courtesans in the harimise 張見世 of a teahouse would sit in three rows, and perform a concert from roughly dusk (the sixth hour) until midnight (the 9th hour). - Kobayashi Tadashi & Julie Nelson Davis. "Floating World of Light and Shadow." p96

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Tim Clark's article on Kabuki, for bios of Nakamura Nakazo I, Yanagisawa Nobutoki, and other good stuff.

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Many Okinawans served as police, teachers, or otherwise were involved in colonial Taiwan. These people, who had only just "become" "Japanese" a few decades earlier, and who spoke pidgin or creole Japanese, were now the representatives of the Empire, teaching Japanese language, culture, attitudes, civics, to the "colonized" Taiwanese. - Mashiko Hidenori, "The Creation of 'Okinawans' and Formation of the Japanese Nation-State," Social Science Japan 14 (1998), 12.

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  • Several historical figures are believed to have been manifestations of the Guze Kannon, starting with Queen Srimala (勝鬘夫人) who heard the dharma directly from Shakamuni, the Chinese monk Nanyue Huisi 南岳慧思, King Songmyong 聖明 of Paekche, and finally Shotoku Taishi, believed the final living manifestation of Guze Kannon. - Rambelli, The Idea of India, 245.
  • Ataka & Kanjincho take place in Komatsu, Ishikawa-ken
  • Noodles from millet first made in China c. 3000-2000 BCE. (Crossroads & Cultures p379)
  • Tsuruya Shôgen 鶴屋将監 - wakô raider
  • Kaiin Jôko, a monk from Kyoto who became abbot of Shuri Enkakuji
  • Mie and Yarazamui gusuku lasted until the pre-war, and can be seen in a photo from Meiji 24. - Uezato Takashi. Fireweapons of Ryukyu. p86. More on the castle too.
  • Hachisuka clan were not samurai!? but were merchants, arms merchants.
  • Gusuku article needs expansion, from articles, from Kerr, etc. - currently cites only Kitahara
  • Wet rice cultivation in mainland SE Asia by c. 1st century CE, spread to Java by 8th century.

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"The magistrate offices of North and South Edo, which took turns overseeing city administration, from fire prevention and publishing activities [i.e. censorship], to the adjudication of civil suits, operated with a staff of about 500 samurai officers. Of this number, only 24 were assigned to 'patrol duties' resembling the function of a modern police officer." - Ikegami Eiko, Bonds of Civility, p307.

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roughly 3000 oyatoi gaikokujin came to Meiji Japan at the invitiation of the government. By far the most of them were employed by the Ministry of Education, and were specialists in engineering and architecture. -Coaldrake, Art and Authority. p216.

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The (a?) Date clan mansion in Edo was located at Shiodome 汐留. (Ryukyu shisetsu, Edo he iku!. Okinawa Prefectural Museum. p36.)

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It is believed that over two thousand travel accounts were composed in the Edo period, including more than sixty relating to the island of Ezo. -- Plutschow Edo Period Travel Reader, p2

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Over 11,000 terakoya were established in the Edo period. - Arts of the Bedchamber exhibition website. Honolulu Museum of Art. (http://shunga.honolulumuseum.org/index.php?page=1)

As the Edo period (1615-1868) progressed, the cleats of a courtesans’ clogs grew in height and their kimono became increasingly heavy, making the choreographed “figure-eight” walk they were required to perform extremely challenging. Occasionally, a courtesan would stumble and fall during a procession, in which case she would be required to retreat to the nearest teahouse, send her attendant home for a new set of clothes, change into the new outfit, donate her previous outfit to the teahouse, and later pay the teahouse staff an additional fee for their assistance. For courtesans whose daily income was unpredictable and who were struggling to meet expenses for their shinzō, kamuro, and themselves, the mere possibility of such an accident must have been a source of intense anxiety. - Arts of the Bedchamber exhibit website

During a daimyo's sankin kotai visit to Edo castle, only the daimyo and a certain number of higher-ranking retainers would actually enter the castle; the remainder of his retinue, some considerable number of middle- and low-ranking samurai, would remain outside the castle, sitting around on the ground, eating, drinking, chatting, sleeping, etc.

Sankin kotai - Tosa generally moved 1,500 to 3,000 people and their baggage each year between Tosa and Edo, a 500 mile journey over mountains, seas, and highway. In 1697, over 2,800 people accompanied the lord. Three years earlier, while the lord was resident in Edo, there were over 4,550 other Tosa people resident there with him. The domain had to pay porters, innkeepers, shippers, and food suppliers for the journey, and then also suppliers of food and other necessities (and luxuries) to this large Tosa population in the capital, as well as carpenters and artisans to service the domain mansion. In 1688, Tosa's total domain budget was 3,953 kan, of which 300 paid for the sankin journey, 1,422 paid for expenses related to the mansion in Edo, and 1,042 went to paying off loans from Osaka and Edo merchants. In total, in general, domains spent between 40% and 70% of their annual budgets on costs related to sankin kotai. (Roberts, Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain, 18.)

  • First day of the 8th month was generally considered an auspicious day for giving gifts. The shogunate claimed the date to be in commemoration of ieyasu's first entry into the kanto in 1509. (Anne Walthall, Hiding the Shogun, p332)
  • See Dusinberre (Hard Times in the Hometown) pp34-36 for effects of Meiji changeover on port towns. after 1871, han are abolished, and local/regional taxes come to be paid in cash, not in kind, eliminating a large sector of the shipping of rice and other goods through the inland sea. Domainal monopolies and monopsonies also come to an end, exposing local industries to international competition – local industries in salt, cotton, etc. suffer or struggle. // most private merchant shippers (kitamaebune operators) cannot afford to purchase steamships, and so lose out to corporations like Mitsubishi, who can afford such investments, and who then come to dominate the shipping industry.
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