Cultural Astronomy Of The Japanese Archipelago

Goto introduces the diverse and multilayered skylore and cultural astron- omy of the peoples of the Japanese Archipelago. Going as far back as the Jomon, Yayoi, and Kofun periods, this book examines the significance of constellations in the daily life of farmers, fishermen, sailors, priests, and the ruling classes throughout Japan’s ancient and medieval history. As well as covering the systems of the dominant Japanese people, he also explores the astronomy of the Ainu people of Hokkaido, and of the people of the Ryukyu Islands. Along the way he discusses the importance of astronomy in official rituals, mythol- ogy, and Shinto and Buddhist ceremonies. This book provides a unique overview of cultural astronomy in Japan and is a valuable resource for researchers as well as anyone who is inter- ested in Japanese culture and history.

For the SEAC conference in Graz (2018) and for the Proceedings the motto "Harmony and symmetry - celestial regularities shaping human culture" was chosen. There were at least two strong reasons for this motto: First, the connection between astronomy and human culture has an extremely long tradition, and one of its absolute high points is the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who spent his entire life searching for the relationship between the movement of heavenly lights and ideas about harmonious structures and regular bodies. Kepler started his scientific career and authored his first book, the Mysterium cosmographicum, in Graz. Kepler argued in his first publication for the twelve-fold partition of the zodiac with arguments derived from the monochord, anticipating the procedure he developed in his Harmonices mundi. Five contributions deal with Kepler, including the harmony in musical theory. The second reason was the Eggenberg Castle. This palace, built for the nobleman Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg (1568-1634), is a remarkable piece of symmetry and harmony and an outstanding example of a strong connection between astronomy and culture. Seven contributions have the topic astronomy, astrology and architecture with the emphasis on astronomical orientation, symmetry and harmony in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The Proceedings with ten chapters and 44 contributions range besides the mentioned "Middle Ages and beyond" and Johannes Kepler from Prehistoric Times, Bronze and Iron Age, Mythology and Ethnoastronomy, Babylonian Astronomy, Greek and Roman Astronomy, Meso- and South America, Middle East and Eastern Asia and Computational Astronomy. The celestial sphere, regarded as the sky of astronomy, as well as the heaven of divine numina, from Antiquity to Copernicus and Kepler was equated with symmetry, harmony, and beauty. Until today, this has been reflected in the structure of cultural creations, from architectural objects to musical forms.

As the first book in English on the origins of Japanese historiography, using both archaeological and textual data, this book examines the connection between ancient Japan and the Korean kingdom of Paekche and how tutors from the kingdom of Paekche helped to lay the foundation for a literate culture in Japan. Illustrating how tutors from the kingdom of Paekche taught Chinese writing to the Japanese court through the prism of this highly civilized culture, the book goes on to argue that Paekche tutors guided the early Japanese court through writing, recording family history, and ultimately an early history of the ruling family. As the Japanese began to create their own history, they relied on Paekche histories as a model. Triangulating textual data from Kojiki, Nihon shoki, and Sendai kuji hongi, the author here demonstrates that various aspects of early king genealogies and later events were manipulated. Offering new theories about the Japanese ruling family, it is posited that Emperor Jitō had her committee put Jingū in power, and Suiko on the throne in place of original male rulers to enhance images of strong, female rulers, as she envisioned herself. The Birth of Japanese Historiography will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Japanese history, historiography, and linguistics.

This book examines the emergence of imperial state in East Asia during the period ca. 400 BCE–200 CE as a network-based process, showing how the geography of early interregional contacts south of the Yangzi River informed the directions of Sinitic state expansion. Drawing from an extensive collection of sources including transmitted textual records, archaeological evidence, excavated legal manuscripts, and archival documents from Liye, this book demonstrates the breadth of human and material resources available to the empire builders of an early imperial network throughout southern East Asia – from institutions and infrastructures, to the relationships that facilitated circulation. This network is shown to have been essential to the consolidation of Sinitic imperial rule in the sub-tropical zone south of the Yangzi against formidable environmental, epidemiological, and logistical odds. This is also the first study to explore how the interplay between an imperial network and alternative frameworks of long-distance interaction in ancient East Asia shaped the political-economic trajectory of the Sinitic world and its involvement in Eurasian globalization. Contributing to debates around imperial state formation, the applicability of world-system models and the comparative study of empires, The Imperial Network in Ancient China will be of significant interest to students and scholars of East Asian studies, archaeology and history.

For hundreds of years until the 1900s, in today’s China, Japan, North and South Korea, and Vietnam, literati of Classical Chinese or Literary Sinitic (wényán 文言) could communicate in writing interactively, despite not speaking each other’s languages. This book outlines the historical background of, and the material conditions that led to, widespread literacy development in premodern and early modern East Asia, where reading and writing for formal purposes was conducted in Literary Sinitic. To exemplify how ‘silent conversation’ or ‘brush-assisted conversation’ is possible through writing-mediated brushed interaction, synchronously face-to-face, this book presents contextualized examples from recurrent contexts involving (i) boat drifters; (ii) traveling literati; and (iii) diplo- matic envoys. Where profound knowledge of classical canons and literary works in Sinitic was a shared attribute of the brush-talkers concerned, their brush-talk would characteristically be intertwined with poetic improvisation. Being the first monograph in English to address this fascinating lingua-cultural practice and cross-border communication phenomenon, which was possibly sui generis in Sinographic East Asia, it will be of interest to students of not only East Asian languages and linguistics, history, international relations, and diplomacy, but also (historical) pragmatics, sociolinguistics, sociology of language, scripts and writing systems, and cultural and linguistic anthropology.

Using archaeological evidence, the author investigates the prehistories of Austronesian migrants to Taiwan and their connections to contemporary peoples in Taiwan. Due to its unique geographic location, Taiwan has played a significant role in various peoples’ maritime migrations and the process of cultural interactions for tens of thousands of years. Within the history of humankind, Taiwan has also evidenced a high degree of cultural continuity. Paleolithic people had already settled on the island at least 30,000 years ago, but Taiwan only entered the historical period as recently as the 17th century. Before this, there was a long and continuous development over the prehistoric period. To this day there are at least 20 different indigenous ethnic groups on the island, totalling over half a million people, all of whom speak Austronesian languages. Investigating the archaeology of abandoned villages, Kuo takes the Paiwan and Sanhe cultures as key case studies of these groups. This book provides valuable insight for historians and archaeologists of Taiwan, and scholars of prehistoric Austronesian migration.