Locating culture beneath the moss
Heshikiya Chōbin (1700–1734), the Ryukyu Kingdom, and eighteenth-century Japan
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6195236 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Valerie Barske (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 487-510 |
| Publication date | 2019-10-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Japan Forum (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0955-5803 • E-ISSN: 1469-932X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09555803.2019.1594338 |
| OpenAlex | W2998343636 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 15 |
This article examines playwright, performer, and political dissident Heshikiya Chōbin (1700–1734) as a lens for complicating cultural imaginings of the place of the Ryukyu Kingdom within the broader historical time and geographical space of eighteenth-century Japan. I examine how Heshikiya employs local places, historical times, and polyvalent culturescapes to construct the Ryukyu Kingdom as intertwined with, yet separate and culturally equal to, the Qing and Satsuma/Tokugawa. More specifically, I provide a close reading of Heshikiya’s novel Koke no shita (Beneath the Moss). The subsections of this article trace the place-based and time-specific strategies featured in Heshikiya’s work including: (a) reimagining historical figures as a synecdoche for gendered places; (b) referencing local ritual seasons to ground the action and move the novel through time and space; (c) resituating the city of Naha as a multivalent site; and (d) redefining Ryukyu and Japan through literary techniques that invoke a dialectical return to Heian era aesthetics. In the end, my analysis of Heshikiya seeks to challenge overly simplified narratives of early modern Ryukyu as a space historically trapped between Japan and China under nisshin ryōzoku (dual subordination) to highlight more complex place-based imaginings for locating cultural meaning in the eighteenth century
Art · Dialectic · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Financial Crisis of the 21st Century · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy
State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan
Visions of Ryukyu
Shinkokinshū (2 vols)
Medicine Master Buddha
State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan
Selling Songs and Smiles
Translating The Tale of Genji
Ambiguous Boundaries
Geography and Japanese Knowledge of World Geography
A History of Japanese Literature, Volume 3
Allegories of Desire. Poetry and Eroticism in Ise Monogatari Zuino
Okinawa
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |