News from the Association for Asian Studies National Meeting Spring 2022
PhDs and current graduate students of the USC History Department were active at the recent national meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Honolulu (3/24-3/27). There were four panels on which our graduates and students participated, and one more presented an independent research paper.
Dr. Jillian Barndt, PhD 2021, Cressant Foundation Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow, History Department USC
Panel: Re-Centering Men of Letters in Heian and Edo Japan
Barndt’s paper: "Dedicated to Confucius: Fujiwara no Yorinaga and the Ceremony for Confucius"
Dr. Sachiko Kawai, PhD 2015, Assistant Professor, History, National Museum of Japanese History, Sakura Japan
Dr. Nadia Kanagawa, PhD 2021, Assistant Professor, Asian Studies, Fuhrman University
Panel: Chrysanthemum with Nine Lives, Longevity and Diversity in the Japanese Imperial Institution
Kawai’s paper: “Persistence and Resilience: The Nyoin Institution and Female Contributions to the Continuation of Monarchical Power in Early Medieval Japan”
Kanagawa’s paper: “Negotiating Names: A 757 CE Policy Change for Foreign Subjects in Koken’s Court”
Emily Warren, ABD (PhD expected 2023)
Panel: From Kôji to Caramel, Rethinking Japanese History Through Sweetness
Warren’s paper: “Confecting Sweet Hierarchies: Kashi in Medieval Japanese Banquet Culture”
Dr. Michelle Damian, PhD 2015, Assistant Visiting Professor, Pacific University
Panel: Mountains and Seas of Medieval Japan: Commoner Self-Governance and Network Formation in the Peripheries
Damian’s paper: “Administering Maritime Trade at Medieval Ports: The Role of the Warehouse Manager”
Dr. Kristina Buhrman, PhD 2012, Assistant Professor, Florida State University
Research Paper: “Safe as Houses: The Self, Body, and Residence in Classical and Early Medieval Japan”
Paper Details
Jillian Barndt, PhD 2021, Cressant Foundation Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow, History Department USC
Panel: Re-Centering Men of Letters in Heian and Edo Japan
Scholars, intellectuals, literati—at either end of Japan’s premodern history we find intelligentsia whose role was defined by the ability to write. In modern scholarship these men have been lumped together as “intellectuals” because, while their status ranged from marginal to powerful, they used writing to accrue socio-cultural capital, for reasons that were political and personal, aesthetic and intellectual. Members of this panel argue, however, that there are problems with the transhistorical category of “intellectual” (bunjin). Our four papers — two on premodern Japan and two on the early modern period—explore the role of intellectuals in different times and places over a millennium of Japanese history. We investigate aspects of intellectual identities and practices that have contributed to the marginalization of men of letters in Japan’s cultural history, a situation we want to change.
Barndt’s paper, "Dedicated to Confucius: Fujiwara no Yorinaga and the Ceremony for Confucius"
On the tenth day of the eighth month of 1153 the courtier and scholar Fujiwara no Yorinaga (1120-1156) revived the Ceremony for Confucius after several decades of decline. Although the ceremony had survived as a private event performed by eminent scholars such as Ōe no Masafusa (1041-1111), the decline of the Ceremony reflected the deterioration of the official university that had gave it birth and relevance for elite education. As the monarch’s regent, the leading court minister, and a prominent scholar of classical Chinese texts, Yorinaga revived the official ceremony. While many remember him as the rebel who died in a failed coup attempt in 1156, Yorinaga’s court leadership actually reflected his education and self-identification as a scholar and man of letters. His objectives included promoting a return to study of fundamental Confucian classics as a means of reforming what he saw as the corrupted court government of his day. In this paper I explore the Heian Ceremony for Confucius, the reasons Yorinaga wanted it reinstated, and how this intervention should be seen as an important moment in Japan’s cultural history.
Dr. Sachiko Kawai, PhD 2015, Assistant Professor, History, National Museum of Japanese History
Dr. Nadia Kanagawa, PhD 2021, Assistant Professor, History and East Asian Studies, Fuhrman University
Panel: Chrysanthemum with Nine Lives, Longevity and Diversity in the Japanese Imperial Institution
In Japanese popular discourse, the imperial institution is often held up as a symbol of continuity and an argument for the importance of maintaining “tradition.” That the Japanese monarchy has managed to survive over 1500 years in the face of constant and ever-changing existential threats is undeniably remarkable. But what made this longevity possible? Through four case studies ranging from the seventh to the twenty-first century, this panel will focus attention on the contingent and flexible responses to changing conditions that have shaped the Japanese monarchy. Taken together, our papers show that it was precisely because rulers and their associates have been willing to redefine the institution that they have been able to cope with change and maintain their relevance. Nadia Kanagawa considers the role a new policy on names and titles for immigrants in the late Nara period (710-784) played in maintaining rulers’ legitimacy. Sachiko Kawai examines the creation of the nyoin title (the female equivalent of a retired sovereign) in the Heian and Kamakura periods (794-1185), arguing that it was key to royal women’s ability to protect royal power from the rising military class and other threats. Lee Butler focuses on Tokugawa-period (1603-1867) royal villas and their role in securing the court’s position as arbiter of aesthetic sophistication and high culture. Hirokazu Yoshie analyzes political campaigns for restoring the prewar Imperial Rescript on Education in the postwar Showa period (1926-1989), and conservatives’ efforts to reconcile their nostalgia for the prewar sovereign with postwar democracy.
Emily Warren, ABD (PhD expected 2023)
Panel: From Kôji to Caramel, Rethinking Japanese History Through Sweetness
This panel examines the history of Japanese sweets from premodern to modern times by asking, how have different groups used sweets to further political, economic, and cultural goals? Eric Rath draws on premodern culinary texts to examine kōji, Japan's "national mold,” which enabled cooks to create sweetness prior to the introduction of sugar and to brew sake and make pickles. Premodern food culture included a wide array of sweets, as Emily Warren explores in her paper on how medieval noble families used procurement of sweet fruits, nuts, and confections to reinforce political power. Lillian Tsay's paper on the production of sweets in imperial Japan demonstrates the tensions between sweetness and power through Japanese confectionary corporations in colonial Taiwan, showing the significance of the confectionary industry in understanding the colony-metropole relationship. Finally, Tatsuya Mitsuda explores how twentieth-century debates over childhood snacking between experts, companies, and families ultimately conflated motherly affection with homemade confections. By expanding the temporal and geographical range of analysis, this panel analyzes the far-reaching effects of sweetness on Japanese food cultures.
Warren’s paper: “Confecting Sweet Hierarchies: Kashi in Medieval Japanese Banquet Culture”
Sweets (kashi) were a customary feature of banquets at the early medieval court, but certain sweets were not available to everyone because menus were arranged to reflect rank and position. When one sat down at a banquet, servers presented guests with sweets carefully determined based on one’s status. This paper explores how the procurement and preparation of different kinds of sweets were used in banquet and ritual settings to reinforce the hierarchies that ordered courtiers during the Heian and Kamakura periods (794-1333).
Dr. Michelle Damian , PhD 2015, Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater
Panel: Mountains and Seas of Medieval Japan, Commoner Self-Governance and Network Formation in the Peripheries
This panel explores the agency of commoners in maritime and alpine societies of medieval Japan (c.1100-1600) to establish institutions of self-governance and economic networks. They embraced political configurations and connectivity that offered alternatives to and functioned in dialogue with geographical and political models for mountains and seas emanating from the archipelagic core. To expose the malleability and limits of provincial, estate, and military-governor territoriality in elite writing, where nonagricultural spaces appear as the alien habitats of bandits and pirates, we explore alternative visions that made mountains and seas into bridges to the abodes of gods and demons. We also offer thoughts on the application of James C. Scott’s Zomia-type nonstate-society model to the medieval Japanese context by considering ways that alpine and maritime commoners exploited the difficulties of Japan’s cores to, in Scott’s words, “enclose” their geographies, even as denizens of the periphery fed demand for particular resources from the political center. Morten Oxenboell examines how upland forestry communites during the thirteenth century negotiated conflicts locally, establishing judicial bodies and other aspects of self-governance independent from estate proprietors. Michelle Damian traces how fifteenth-century port administrators went from serving as intermediaries between land and sea communities to functioning as key links in maritime trade networks. Peter Shapinsky explores how Tsushima-based seafarers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries institutionalized human trafficking in maritime borderlands by exploiting overlapping Korean and Japanese jurisdictions as well as through raiding, trading, and military service. Suzanne Gay, an expert on medieval Japan's economic history, offers comments.
Damian’s paper, “Administering Maritime Trade at Medieval Ports: The Role of theWarehouse Manager”
Studies of medieval trade in Japan often focus on the center-periphery relationship, exploring the types of commodities produced in the hinterlands that were then shipped to urban centers such as Kyoto. The mechanics of that process, however, are less well understood. Much of medieval trade was conducted via maritime routes, and port towns along coasts formed critical links in that endeavor. The toi or toimaru (sometimes translated as “warehouse managers”) were key figures in facilitating such trade, and they occupied a unique position as liaisons between seafaring and land-based communities. They simultaneously needed to welcome outsiders who brought key commodities, while also considering how best to control outside influences that might threaten their own status. In the early medieval period toi were largely functionaries responsible for collecting rents and dues for estate proprietors, but by the late fifteenth century they had become influential in their own right, taking more direct charge of trade activities conducted at ports. This paper will describe their roles, examining their function not just as facilitators of commercial activity but also as general overseers in the ports. I argue that toi/toimaru were often organized groups with specialized spheres of influence both within their local port areas and in wider commercial endeavors. The gradually increasing specialization of the toimaru likely set the groundwork for the shipping guilds that dominated maritime trade in the early modern era.
Dr. Kristina Buhrman, PhD 2012, Assistant Professor, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Independent Paper: “Safe as Houses: The Self, Body, and Residence in Classical and Early Medieval Japan”
This paper uses the concepts of house societies and the extended self to analyze ritual prohibitions and pollution in the Heian and Kamakura periods (9th–13th centuries). Elite members of court society followed several prohibitions and taboos, including those involved in ritual pollution. In rules concerning ritual pollution (kegare), individuals could become polluted even without direct contact with the originating source of the pollution: if the individual’s residence became polluted, the individual would also become polluted, even without their entering the residence. This was one of a number of ways in which an individual’s body was tied to the place of residence, and how what affected the residence affected the body. This physically extended self opens a window for a new understanding of the complicated structure of Japanese urban court society in the classical and early medieval periods. Alongside extended uji lineage structures and traces of the nascent family house (ie) system, there was a residence-based house system, analysis of which clarifies aspects of kin relationships in the early medieval period.
Other news:
Dr. Daniel Sherer, PhD 2017, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Studies,
Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Sherer recently presented a lecture entitled, “Defending the Lotus, Offending the Lotus: The Rise and Fall of Nichrenist Military Power, 1532-1536,“ at an international comparative history workshop focused on Holy War in Medieval Europe and Japan. It was held at USC on 3/22/22. The event, which included scholars of both medieval Japan and Europe, was jointly organized by the Project for Premodern Japan Studies and the Center for the Premodern World at USC.
