Project MUSE®: Monumenta Nipponica - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Monumenta Nipponica.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 60 (2005) through current issueLatest Articles: Monumenta NipponicaTWOProject MUSE®Monumenta Nipponica1880-13900027-0741Latest articles in Monumenta Nipponica. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Shibukawa Sachiko and Ki no Yoshiko: Reconstructing the Lives of Two Ashikaga Shogunal Wives
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984604
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For over two hundred years and across fifteen generations, Japan was under the sway of a single lineage of military rulers: the Ashikaga 足利. But while the shogun themselves have been the focus of considerable research, little attention has been directed to their wives. In particular, the two official wives of the second Ashikaga shogun, Yoshiakira 義詮 (1330–1367; r. 1358–1367)—his primary wife (seishitsu 正室) Shibukawa Sachiko 渋川幸子 (1332–1392) and his secondary wife (sokushitsu 側室) Ki no Yoshiko 紀良子 (1336–1413)—have garnered no scholarly attention beyond short mentions in histories about their husband or their sons.1 Although they lived at the center of a new political order with the shogun and his heirs, little is
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallShibukawa Sachiko and Ki no Yoshiko: Reconstructing the Lives of Two Ashikaga Shogunal Wives2026-03-11text/htmlen-USShibukawa Sachiko and Ki no Yoshiko: Reconstructing the Lives of Two Ashikaga Shogunal Wives2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®1202872026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11Medicine, Fiction, and Metaphor: The Medical Body, Health, and Disease in Late Eighteenth-Century Japanese Graphic Narratives
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984605
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The Buddha had his evil foil in Devadatta,1 and the Prince Shōtoku his in the nobleman Mononobe no Moriya;2 in the same way, medicines find their antagonists in diseases. Yet evil is never a match for the forces of good. Hence famous medications and moxibustion formulas eradicate illnesses, and people live healthily and happily, just as they do in our current era of the Great Peace. In this print, I have left it to the artist's brush to commit this battle between medicines and diseases to paper. …It is indeed a glorious fight that the publisher promises the audience in this colorful mid-nineteenth-century woodblock print triptych (see figure 1), vividly executed by Utagawa Yoshitora 歌川芳虎 (active ca. 1830s–1880s)
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallMedicine, Fiction, and Metaphor: The Medical Body, Health, and Disease in Late Eighteenth-Century Japanese Graphic Narratives2026-03-11text/htmlen-USMedicine, Fiction, and Metaphor: The Medical Body, Health, and Disease in Late Eighteenth-Century Japanese Graphic Narratives2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®2392892026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11Inscribed Objects and the Development of Literature in Early Japan by Joshua Frydman (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984606
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Since the 1960s, archaeologists in Japan have unearthed over 200,000 inscribed wooden tablets known as mokkan (p. 19). Historians typically examine these objects to gain insight into economic and political history, research that has revolutionized our understanding of seventh- and eighth-century Japan. A small subset of these tablets called uta (poem) mokkan speaks to the formation of Japanese literature. Joshua Frydman's exciting new monograph is the first book-length study in English to take up uta mokkan. It also delves into other objects inscribed with Japanese poetry and Chinese literary works. Through Frydman's research, readers learn how poetry circulated before its canonization and discover new ways to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallInscribed Objects and the Development of Literature in Early Japan by Joshua Frydman (review)2026-03-11text/htmlen-USInscribed Objects and the Development of Literature in Early Japan by Joshua Frydman (review)2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®256672026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11Kings in All but Name: The Lost History of Ōuchi Rule in Japan, 1350–1569 by Thomas D. Conlan (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984607
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This engaging and ambitious book argues that we should re-periodize Japanese history so that the Warring States era begins in 1551 rather than the traditional 1467—the start of the Ōnin War in Kyoto. Author Thomas Conlan makes this case by centering the story of the Ōuchi clan, which had its capital at Yamaguchi (at the western end of Honshu) and also ruled over parts of northern Kyushu during much of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Ōuchi controlled the Straits of Shimonoseki and a large portion of foreign trade and were often the main sponsors of rites in the capital of Kyoto. Conlan's new periodization is for Japan as a whole and is not an argument that the region around Yamaguchi should have its own
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallKings in All but Name: The Lost History of Ōuchi Rule in Japan, 1350–1569 by Thomas D. Conlan (review)2026-03-11text/htmlen-USKings in All but Name: The Lost History of Ōuchi Rule in Japan, 1350–1569 by Thomas D. Conlan (review)2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®190232026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11The Dutch Language in Japan (1600–1900): A Cultural and Sociolinguistic Study of Dutch as a Contact Language in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan by Christopher Joby (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984608
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For centuries, the formative role of the Chinese language in shaping Japan's intellectual heritage has been well known. Yet the story of how Dutch—among several other Western languages—reshaped Japanese knowledge and culture remains less explored. In The Dutch Language in Japan (1600–1900), Christopher Joby offers an in-depth perspective on Japan's adoption of Dutch and how it influenced early modern and modern society.Joby's transnational, linguistic-historical approach builds on Japanese studies while adding a sociolinguistic dimension, casting fresh light on Dutch in contexts of language contact—that is, sustained interaction in which Dutch and other languages influenced one another. He traces how it was
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallThe Dutch Language in Japan (1600–1900): A Cultural and Sociolinguistic Study of Dutch as a Contact Language in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan by Christopher Joby (review)2026-03-11text/htmlen-USThe Dutch Language in Japan (1600–1900): A Cultural and Sociolinguistic Study of Dutch as a Contact Language in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan by Christopher Joby (review)2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®331822026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11Rethinking Japan's Modernity: Stories and Translations by M. William Steele (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984609
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Giving Martin Luther King Jr. a national holiday heightened the civil rights leader's fame but put him into stained glass windows, which deprived Americans of the gritty, human complexity that lay behind his many contributions. In Rethinking Japan's Modernity, M. William Steele does the opposite for Fukuzawa Yukichi, showing that the man lionized as the Meiji era's great modernizer was in fact more contentious, nationalistic, and prone to pettiness—in other words, more human—than the myths suggest.That is just one of the reinterpretations of Japan between the 1850s and the 1930s offered by the longtime historian at Tokyo's International Christian University. In this work, he brings together thirteen of his essays
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallRethinking Japan's Modernity: Stories and Translations by M. William Steele (review)2026-03-11text/htmlen-USRethinking Japan's Modernity: Stories and Translations by M. William Steele (review)2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®184712026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11The Origins of Modern Japanese Philosophy: Nishida Kitaro and the Meiji Period by Richard Stone (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984610
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The uncontested originality of Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945) as the trailblazer of modern Japanese philosophy becomes a major philosophical problem when it is visualized as a mere accidental anomaly in the philosophical vacuum of pre-Meiji Japan. It is surprisingly common, however, for specialists in Japanese philosophy and Japanese intellectual history to take this position for granted, whether in a positive or a negative sense. As Richard Stone rightly observes in The Origins of Modern Japanese Philosophy (hereafter, Origins), so many of us in Japanese studies buy into the cliché that Nishida is the first philosopher of modern Japan while running in two opposite directions. On the one hand, some of us (especially in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallThe Origins of Modern Japanese Philosophy: Nishida Kitaro and the Meiji Period by Richard Stone (review)2026-03-11text/htmlen-USThe Origins of Modern Japanese Philosophy: Nishida Kitaro and the Meiji Period by Richard Stone (review)2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®291422026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11Unthinking Collaboration: American Nisei in Transwar Japan by A. Carly Buxton (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984611
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It is estimated that right after the outbreak of the Asia-Pacific War, thirty-five thousand US-born Nisei, or as many as one-third, resided on mainland Japan. Nisei (literally "second generation") are the offspring of Japanese immigrants to the Americas, and the protagonists of Unthinking Collaboration are those among this group who, though born in the United States, found themselves in Japan living side by side with Japanese citizens from the prewar to the postwar periods. A. Carly Buxton attempts to "unpack the complexities of 'collaboration'" with the governing authorities, the Japanese empire, and the Allied forces by closely analyzing the "daily lives, education, opportunities, social expectations, and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallUnthinking Collaboration: American Nisei in Transwar Japan by A. Carly Buxton (review)2026-03-11text/htmlen-USUnthinking Collaboration: American Nisei in Transwar Japan by A. Carly Buxton (review)2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®150102026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11Comfort Women of the Japanese Empire: Colonial Rule and the Battle over Memory by Park Yuha (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984612
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This book is a translation of a controversial and significant work in the historiography of the "comfort women" that was first published in 2013 in Korean. In that original edition, author Park Yuha—a professor of Japanese literature at the College of Liberal Arts, Sejong University, in South Korea—openly challenged existing beliefs about the comfort women in Korean collective memory, arguing for a more nuanced understanding of them and their varied experiences. She argued against the assumptions that all comfort women were coerced into this role and that all their experiences in Japanese military brothels are indicative of their having been victims of sexual slavery.The response to Park's book was swift. In 2014
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallComfort Women of the Japanese Empire: Colonial Rule and the Battle over Memory by Park Yuha (review)2026-03-11text/htmlen-USComfort Women of the Japanese Empire: Colonial Rule and the Battle over Memory by Park Yuha (review)2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®178862026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11Tokyo Boogie-woogie and D.T. Suzuki by Yamada Shōji (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984613
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The iconic sagely image of D. T. Suzuki (1890–1966; hereafter generally "Daisetz") as a man of Zen and a bridge between East and West has earned him a central position in the history of modern Buddhism. However, both the existence and the remarkable yet tragic life of his adopted son Masaru Alan Suzuki (1916–1971), lyricist for the Japanese smash hit song "Tokyo Boogie-woogie" (1947), have until now been far less known to all but a limited circle of scholars and family acquaintances.Adopted at around the age of one, Alan, the offspring of a Scottish father and a Japanese mother, would have appeared a natural child of Daisetz and his American wife Beatrice Lane Suzuki (1875–1939). However, from childhood Alan's
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallTokyo Boogie-woogie and D.T. Suzuki by Yamada Shōji (review)2026-03-11text/htmlen-USTokyo Boogie-woogie and D.T. Suzuki by Yamada Shōji (review)2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®274172026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11Japan in Upheaval: The Origins, Dynamics and Political Outcome of the 1960 Anti-US Treaty Protests by Dagfinn Gatu (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984614
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In this engagingly written book, political scientist Dagfinn Gatu presents six loosely connected essays on various aspects of the massive protests, which took place across Japan from 1959 to 1960, against revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty (Anpo Jōyaku; in effect since 1952). Although many of these topics have been covered in previously published works, Gatu's book will be of use to scholars and students who seek an overview of certain aspects of the Anpo protests or have a particular interest in one or more of the specific topics under consideration. Other strengths of Gatu's study include its transnational and comparative frame and its grounding in Western social movement theory.After a brief introduction
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallJapan in Upheaval: The Origins, Dynamics and Political Outcome of the 1960 Anti-US Treaty Protests by Dagfinn Gatu (review)2026-03-11text/htmlen-USJapan in Upheaval: The Origins, Dynamics and Political Outcome of the 1960 Anti-US Treaty Protests by Dagfinn Gatu (review)2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®200562026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11Discovery & Wonder—The Harry F. Bruning Collection at Brigham Young University by Jack C. Stoneman and Aaron H. Skabelund (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984615
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Produced by BYU Academic both in print and as an open-access publication (available at https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/books/32), Discovery & Wonder provides a detailed examination of the Harry F. Bruning Collection at Brigham Young University (BYU).1 Originally conceived as a companion catalogue to the eponymous exhibition held at the Harold B. Lee Library from 2020 to 2021, this book displays a well-crafted structure that allows it to stand on its own as an engaging and valuable resource. Jack C. Stoneman and Aaron H. Skabelund guide readers through extensive holdings of Japanese materials, contextualizing these primary sources within their broader cultural and historical framework. The authors offer an in-depth
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallDiscovery & Wonder—The Harry F. Bruning Collection at Brigham Young University by Jack C. Stoneman and Aaron H. Skabelund (review)2026-03-11text/htmlen-USDiscovery & Wonder—The Harry F. Bruning Collection at Brigham Young University by Jack C. Stoneman and Aaron H. Skabelund (review)2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®159102026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls' Comics Artists and Fans by James Welker (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984616
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In Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan, James Welker examines the formation and cultural output of three groups of women and girls in Japan in and around the 1970s and 1980s: the ūman ribu (women's liberation) activists, the rezubian (lesbian) community, and the creators and enthusiasts of queer shōjo manga (girls' comics). Following a historical overview of these three groups in a chapter titled "Trajectories," the remaining chapters, "Terminology," "Translation," and "Travel," examine, respectively, how the terms ūman ribu, rezubian, and shōnen'ai (boys love) developed and how translation to and from Japanese and travel outside Japan influenced these groups. Welker incorporates a variety of texts
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallTransfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls' Comics Artists and Fans by James Welker (review)2026-03-11text/htmlen-USTransfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls' Comics Artists and Fans by James Welker (review)2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®235702026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11Hokkaido Dairy Farm: Cosmopolitics of Otherness and Security on the Frontiers of Japan by Paul Hansen (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984617
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The central question of Hokkaido Dairy Farm: Cosmopolitics of Otherness and Security on the Frontiers of Japan is how to distinguish between, on the one hand, the industry's "actual cows and dairy farmers" and, on the other, popular images of "Milkland Hokkaido" (p. 265), with its black-and-white cows grazing in green fields, delicious ice cream, and refreshing milk. Author Paul Hansen spent nearly two decades researching a place he refers to in the book pseudonymously as "Grand Hopes Farm" (hereafter, GHF) in the town of "Gensan" in the Tokachi region of Hokkaido. He argues that by the start of the twenty-first century, stress and uncertainty had become the norm in a Japanese dairy farming industry in which owners
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallHokkaido Dairy Farm: Cosmopolitics of Otherness and Security on the Frontiers of Japan by Paul Hansen (review)2026-03-11text/htmlen-USHokkaido Dairy Farm: Cosmopolitics of Otherness and Security on the Frontiers of Japan by Paul Hansen (review)2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®151882026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11Fuzzy Traumas: Animals and Errors in Contemporary Japanese Literature by Tyran Grillo (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984618
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Tyran Grillo's Fuzzy Traumas: Animals and Errors in Contemporary Japanese Literature is an ambitious work that toggles between a thoughtful philosophical idiom and a skillful set of close readings of popular and theoretical texts to bring readers' attention to the problems of animal being and human-animal relations. Speaking to audiences both within and outside the purview of Japanese studies, Fuzzy Traumas draws on a variety of approaches from animal studies, feminism, disability studies, and Marxism. A complicated and at times difficult work—the author's philosophical idiom presupposes a familiarity with certain canons and concepts, and his logic is often associative, giving readers a sense of his argument only
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallFuzzy Traumas: Animals and Errors in Contemporary Japanese Literature by Tyran Grillo (review)2026-03-11text/htmlen-USFuzzy Traumas: Animals and Errors in Contemporary Japanese Literature by Tyran Grillo (review)2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®185552026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11Music Generations in the Digital Age: Social Practices of Listening and Idols in Japan by Rafal Zaborowski (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984619
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In Music Generations in the Digital Age: Social Practices of Listening and Idols in Japan, Rafal Zaborowski makes a valuable contribution to media studies, musicology, and Japanese cultural studies, one that is particularly timely in its exploration of digital technologies and their role in reshaping cultural practices. Part of the publisher's Transmedia series and based on extensive research fieldwork conducted by the author in Aichi Prefecture and Tokyo in 2012, the book delves into the intricate relationships between music, technology, and identity in contemporary Japan by focusing on distinct generational listening practices, providing a compelling analysis of how music serves as a medium for personal and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallMusic Generations in the Digital Age: Social Practices of Listening and Idols in Japan by Rafal Zaborowski (review)2026-03-11text/htmlen-USMusic Generations in the Digital Age: Social Practices of Listening and Idols in Japan by Rafal Zaborowski (review)2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®202292026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11Lay Zen in Contemporary Japan: Tradition, Interpretation, and Invention by Erez Joskovich (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984620
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Lay Zen in Contemporary Japan is a very interesting and important examination of a small but influential group of lay practitioners who participate in a modern reform movement known as the Humanistic Zen Society (Ningen Zen Kyōdan; hereafter referred to as Ningen Zen). Erez Joskovich's detailed and thought-provoking analysis is based on years of participant observation fieldwork conducted primarily at one of the movement's main Tokyo centers. Known as the Takuboku-dōjō, the center is located in the neighborhood of Yanaka just across the tracks from Nippori Station on the Yamanote train line; nearby is Tennōji, a capacious Tendai temple featuring a large Buddha statue and cemetery. As explained in chapter 1, which
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallLay Zen in Contemporary Japan: Tradition, Interpretation, and Invention by Erez Joskovich (review)2026-03-11text/htmlen-USLay Zen in Contemporary Japan: Tradition, Interpretation, and Invention by Erez Joskovich (review)2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®213552026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11The Coronavirus Pandemic in Japanese Literature and Popular Culture ed. by Mina Qiao (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984621
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What value do literature and popular culture have in a global crisis? One thing they offer is reassurance. While we may find ourselves cursed to live in "interesting times," we do not live in unprecedented ones—others have been here before us, and at least some of them lived to tell the tale. As Mina Qiao notes in her introduction to The Coronavirus Pandemic in Japanese Literature and Popular Culture, "With the 'unprecedented' disruption of life and work at a global scale, people turn to the 'precedent' of literature [and popular culture] for enlightenment" (p. 5).So what enlightenment will future generations find in the precedent of COVID-19-inspired literature and popular culture when they face their own
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/308/image/coversmallThe Coronavirus Pandemic in Japanese Literature and Popular Culture ed. by Mina Qiao (review)2026-03-11text/htmlen-USThe Coronavirus Pandemic in Japanese Literature and Popular Culture ed. by Mina Qiao (review)2026-03-112026TWOProject MUSE®194432026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-11