Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe main text upon which these notes are based (Muen, kugai, raku) was first published as a chapter in a book of essentially the same name in 1978. When the revised edition of the work was published in 1996, voluminous notes were added as an appendix, as a way for Amino to reply to his critics. The present article consists of three notes, one on raku, one on kugai and one comparing the three raku, kugai and muen with the idea of "liberty" (Amino's preferred translation for the Japanese term jiyū). To recapitulate the main text (whose translation appeared in IJAS 4:1), all three terms, originally Buddhist, were used as secular concepts in medieval times to denote people and places outside the control of the political authority. All were characterized by certain "freedoms" or "liberties", but such connotations disappeared in the course of the seventeenth century with the unification of the country.

The terms muen, kugai, and raku appear in medieval documents and invoke the idea of places which exist outside the reach of the secular power, such as shrines, temples, bridges and markets. They can also be extended to refer to people who are without worldly ties. Such places highlight the limitations that applied to political authority in medieval Japan, and they were characterized by such "freedoms" as limitations on the right of entry, exemptions from rents, taxes and corvée labor, rights of free passage, asylum from conflict and the civil law, non-recognition of serfdom or slavery, non-application of collective punishment, and authority based on seniority. The terms themselves defy clear individual definition. All three can be traced to Buddhist texts, though they were appropriated in the medieval period to secular use. Muen refers to being "unattached" (that is, without karmic ties), kugai to the realm of temples (the abodes of those who have cut secular ties), and raku to the ideal realm (or "paradise"). Though these terms were associated with liberty in the medieval period, they lost their positive connotations once the country was unified at the end of the sixteenth century.

L'archipel japonais compte plus de 3700 îles, grandes et petites, et possède un littoral de près de 28 000 kilomètres. Son relief est extrêmement tourmenté : les zones montagneuses, souvent volcaniques, occupent 60 % du territoire, les collines couvrent 11 % du pays et les piémonts 4 %. Plateaux et basses terres ne représentent guère plus de 25 % de la superficie du pays. Les rivières sont nombreuses et dévalent souvent les montagnes à une allure torrentielle. Les vallées sont encaissées et le terrain particulièrement accidenté. Les montagnes, les rivières et la mer occupent une part importante du paysage et, pour ceux qui vivent sur cet archipel, les surfaces cultivables n'ont jamais été très vastes.