Suchergebnisse

Considering that it is the world s third-largest economy-with a long and rich history and a sophisticated culture-Japan is surprisingly little-known outside its borders. This book presents a detailed overview of key aspects of Japanese society and culture

S. 57-92: Länderberichte

Abstract
Although published only two years after Eliot's famous modernist poem "The Waste Land" (1922), Miyazawa Kenji's 52-line "Haru to Shura" (1924) is already very nearly as modern. The two poems, examined here using my expanded version of Riffaterre's semiotic theory, have analogous propositional structure. One proposition concerns the faithless majority of mankind; the other involves a heavenly personage of potentially rehabilitating power. In Miyazawa's case, the former is represented by Japanese peasants; the latter is the "Shura" – normally an unruly member of the lowest rank of Buddhist demigods. Miyazawa's modernist message reverses the roles of these two personae: the Shura only wants to be recognized by the peasant he spies below his abode in the clouds. The peasant comes off as the lesser of the two beings because of his obdurate fixation on the soil. Miyazawa enhances the contrast of roles by painting the spring landscape – normally a season of burgeoning nature – in somber colors. This is a spring (haru) in which no birds sing, and the ranks of cypress trees are black. Commentaries by Japanese critics, plus one by one of my students, are examined: none can distance themselves from common sociolectic concepts of the seasons and the peasant population. Miyazawa, a devout Buddhist, is thus expressing a novel view of the people's attitude to religion which they themselves are culpably unaware of. Their attitude is thus very close to that of the various personages in Eliot's poem.

AbstractIn this paper, I would like to examine, within a semiotic framework, two contrasting views of the contemporary culture of Japan – which is still relatively little-known outside its own shores. First, there is theoutsider's view, according to which Japan is firmly situated in the "Far East". This is the usual interpretant of subject-sign Japan, which is taken to refer – as its object-sign – to all that isdifferentfrom the "West": language, culture, society, manners, et cetera. In other words, this is Japan still masquerading as the "Mysterious East". The second view of Japan is that ofinsiders: mostly ethnic Japanese – but with nearly 3 million residents of different ethnicities. Beginning in the mid-1800s, Japan set out to modernise itself. By the mid Meiji Period (1887), the government had adopted the sloganDatsu-A, Nyû-Ô, literally 'Get out of Asia/embrace Europe'. As a result, in many areas (health care and longevity, income distribution, education, public safety, public and personal cleanliness, social politeness, respect for the law, architectural technology, precision manufacturing, and cuisine), Japan is in a league of its own. The object-signs of this newer Japan are all non-Asian aspects of Japanese culture. Their interpretant is the "Far West".

Abstract
This paper applies my expanded version of Michael Riffaterre's theory of the semiotic structure of modern poetry to T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Contrary to Riffaterre, multilingual examples show that modern poetry is built around not one but two central propositions. Moreover, the ability of the modernist work to change the preconceptions of the reader must be accounted for. This involves a triadic system whose interpretant is seen to have a counterpart in the sociolect, which has similar vocabulary but contrasting internal structure – a contrast that produces a change in the mind of the reader. My analysis shows that this long poem is based on just two kernel propositions, which generate two sets of variant images throughout the text. The result is that the poem has the capacity to change the reader's preconceptions along religious lines. This influential poem has frequently been misunderstood as simply reflecting the depredations of post First World War Europe. From my analysis we can conclude that, while one proposition is concerned with the degraded state of faithless post-war European society, the other constitutes a semiotic key to the rehabilitation of that society.

This book examines the cultural, historical, and rhetorical functions of forgery that extend beyond the desire to deceive and profit. Its chapters reach from antiquity to the twentieth century and cover literature and art, the two areas that predominate in forgery studies, as well as the forgery of physical books, coins, and religious relics.

What do forgeries do? This book explores that question with a focus on forgery in ancient Rome and of ancient Rome. Its chapters reach from antiquity to the twentieth century and cover literature and art, the two areas that predominate in forgery studies, as well as the forgery of physical books, coins, and religious relics. The book examines the cultural, historical, and rhetorical functions of forgery that extend beyond the desire to deceive and profit. It analyses forgery in connection with related phenomena like pseudepigraphy, fakes, and copies; and it investigates the aesthetic and historical value that forgeries possess when scholarship takes seriously their form, content, and varied uses within and across cultures.