Prince Shotoku stand out in Japanese history. During his lifetime, he was even seen as a Bodhisattva, a Buddhist saint, and he was eventually deified in a cult that flourished during the Heian period. Ironically, if Prince Shotoku had lived in China, he would’ve been a normal nobleman for the period. He wouldn’t have stood…
Category: History
I Am a Cat. You Need to Natsume Soseki’s Writing or You Can’t Call Yourself a Japanophile
Japan’s novelist Natsume Soseki remains relevant for us today. Soseki grew up during the upheaval after the fall of the Shogun and the rise of the Meiji period. He numbered among the first Japanese to live in a Westernized Japan. His experiences of modernization mirror what we experience today with our own transition into attentionization,…
Reveling in the Ridiculous: Anime is Tame
Despite how odd anime and manga appears, with their fan service and visual language and odd stories, they’re tame compared to Japan’s literature. I spend a fair bit of time beating up on fan-service, but fan-service doesn’t compare to shunga and the woodblock print books from the Edo period. Manga has roots in ukiyo-e, or…
Income Inequality Lessons from the Edo Period
Income inequality has been a world-wide concern in recent years. But it isn’t anything new. Unequal distribution of wealth has appeared across history, and we can look toward these periods for lessons. For example, the Italian Renaissance was funded by what we would today call the 1%. Families like the Medici lavished their wealth on…