Journal article
Souvenirs for the Capital
Asiatische Studien, Vol.71(2), pp.453-475
06/27/2017
DOI: 10.1515/asia-2017-0023
Abstract
Around 1350, a wandering lay priest called Sōkyū (dates unknown) left his home of Tsukushi in northern Kyushu, and embarked upon a journey through what is now the Tōhoku region of Japan. The “East Country”, as Sōkyū and his peers in the Imperial Palace call it, was considered a remote and wild land. It nonetheless held a romantic appeal for certain place names that had long been famous in the poetic canon. These famous place names, or
, provide the basic structure for
, and it soon becomes clear that one great motivation for Sōkyū’s journey is to view the landscapes of those celebrated places, and to better understand the origins and history of their names. The journal begins by introducing a man who “turned away from the mundane world”, and then shifts immediately to Sōkyū’s first-person perspective. The journey is here within the realm of formal Buddhist practice. Sōkyū’s determination to “follow into the past the tracks left under trees and over rocks” is founded upon the view that wandering supports ascetic practice and facilitates a purposeful rejection of the comforts of the material world. In the translation that follows, each
is rendered into English, followed by its full Japanese name, only when that name’s meaning is highly relevant to Sōkyū’s poetry. Names of provinces, temples, and shrines, as well as
sites mentioned in passing, are left in the Japanese, with an indication of the type of geographical feature they represent.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Souvenirs for the Capital
- Creators
- Kendra Strand - Department of Asian and Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Iowa, 111 Phillips Hall, Iowa City, Iowa 52242-1323, USA
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Asiatische Studien, Vol.71(2), pp.453-475
- DOI
- 10.1515/asia-2017-0023
- ISSN
- 0004-4717
- eISSN
- 2235-5871
- Publisher
- De Gruyter
- Number of pages
- 23
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 06/27/2017
- Academic Unit
- Asian and Slavic Languages and Literatures
- Record Identifier
- 9984002582902771
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