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Early modern Japan witnessed new and unprecedented debates surrounding ancient history, including a school of thought that suggested a significant Korean influence upon ancient Japan. This line of thought contrasted sharply with the contemporary school of kokugaku, which emphasized the traditional understanding of Japan as entirely indigenous. Scholars of kokugaku often positioned their work as a polemic against what they perceived as the widespread influence of traditions imported from China, especially Confucianism, for their alleged corruption of an autochthonic Japanese culture. Modern interpreters of kokugaku thereby focused on the issue of their revulsion of Chinese influence. Focusing on Motoori Norinaga, often considered the consummator of kokugaku, this article analyzes Norinaga's responses to interpretations of a possible Korean origin of Japanese culture and customs. By contriving commentaries that eliminated such possibilities, this article argues that Norinaga attempted to defend the traditional understanding of ancient Japan as entirely indigenous and unified ab initio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A t three banquets in 882, 906, and 943, Japanese courtiers gathered to drink wine and write poetry about the deities and heroes enshrined in Nihon shoki , Japan's first official state history. These poems evince how members of the Heian court imagined the origins of the imperial system and demonstrate how the poets related those origins to their own lives. They also tell a very different story about antiquity and the creation of Japan than does Nihon shoki , whose narrative they adapted to conform with the circumstances of their own era. This article examines how and why these adaptations were made and what this shift in meaning reveals about the reading and reception of Nihon shoki during the ninth and tenth centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

T his study brings together archaeological and textual evidence to show how the port and palace at Naniwa, the predecessor of modern Osaka, held more importance for seventh- and eighth-century Japan than is visible from official histories promulgated by the court, with the site possibly having been used as a political center by the mid-seventh-century ruler Kōtoku. Thus the article constructs an alternate reading of what Naniwa meant to the early Japanese court, and it also provides a model for the advancement of historical understanding through the comparison of multiple types of sources traditionally not considered within the purview of a single discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some literary techniques constitute rhetorical devices that are considered to be unique to the history of Japanese verse. Nevertheless, some English translations of Japanese texts lose connotation such techniques, and few studies of this phenomenon have been written in languages other than Japanese. This study applies the insights of two approaches, i.e. morphological and semantic analysis and a hermeneutics interpretation. The result is twofold. It offers a detailed linguistic analysis, providing many insights into the interpretation of these expressions; and accommodates the hermeneutical explanation given by M. Heidegger, showing the very core of makura-kotoba. First of all, I will give a brief review of previous scholarship on the matter, followed by structural and semantic analyses. Finally, I will attempt to use definitions of hermeneutics to speak about rhetorical devices of Old Japanese verse. Translations of Old Japanese songs with glossing and morphemic analyses will be given in the Appendix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Onmyōdō is based on the ancient Chinese theories of yin and yang and the five phases. Practitioners of Onmyōdō utilized Yijing divination, magical purifications, and various kinds of rituals in order to deduce one's fortune or to prevent unusual disasters. However, the term "Onmyōdō" cannot be found in China or Korea. Onmyōdō is a religion that came into existence only within Japan. As Onmyōdō was formed, it subsumed various elements of Chinese folk religion, Daoism, and Mikkyō, and its religious organization deepened. From the time of the establishment of the Onmyōdō as a government office under the ritsuryō codes through the eleventh century, magical rituals and purifications were performed extensively. This article takes this period as its focus, particularly emphasizing the connections between Onmyōdō and Chinese religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]