Author: Haruo Shirane File Type: epub Elegant representations of nature, explicitly the four seasons, fill a wide range of Japanese genres and mediafrom poetry and screen painting to tea ceremony, flower arrangement, and annual observances. Haruo Shirane shows, for the first time, how, when, and why this occurred and explicates the richly encoded social, religious, and political meanings these representations embodied. Refuting the long held belief that this phenomenon reflects agrarian origins, this book demonstrates how elegant representations of the four seasons first emerged in an urban environment among nobility in the eight century. They became highly codified and then spread to different social classes, eventually settling in popular culture and the pleasure quarters. Shirane accounts for all types of manifestations textual (poetry, chronicles, tales), cultivated (gardens, flower arrangement), material (kimonos, screens), performative (noh drama, festivals), and gastronomic (tea ceremony, food rituals). He reveals how this kind of secondary nature, which flourished in Japans urban architecture and gardens, frequently fostered a sense of harmony with the natural worldjust at the point at which it was receding. Eventually, alternative representations of nature derived from farm villages and elsewhere began to intersect with these elegant representations in the capital, creating a complex web of competing associations. Anyone with an interest in Japanese visual arts, literature, cultural history, and social customs will relish this book, which illuminates the deeper meaning behind Japanese aesthetics and artifacts. Shirane explicates natures complex codification, especially the use of images, the seasons to which they were attached, and the changes in cultural associations across history, genre, and community. His fascinating research shows these seasons to be as much a cultural construction as a reflection of the physical world.**

Author: Denise R. Beike File Type: pdf Noted scholars from a broad range of sub-disciplines in psychology discuss the ways in which the memories of our lives come to influence who we are, our personalities, and our emotional functioning. Other topics covered include how our personalities and self-concepts influence what we remember from our lives, and the notion of memory and the self as interdependent psychological phenomena.ReviewIt is remarkable that past theories about the empirical study of the self have ignored the fact that the self has a history. This history, which we now call autobiographical memory (memory of the events and facts of our lives), grounds the self in a rembered reality and forms the content of identity. In this important and significant collection, Beike and her colleagues bring together definitive statements by leading autobiographical memory researchers that explore many aspects of the relations between memory and the self. This highly valuable collection makes a powerful case for the intimate relation between our knowledge of our lives and the nature of selves. It will endure as the major reference in this area for many years to come and will help define one of the next great research projects for memory research the role of memory in enabling the self. -- Martin A. Conway, University of Durham.The phenomenion of memory respects no displinary boundaries because rembering is equally significant in personal, social, political, creative, and scientific contexts. Cognitive psychology is, right, at the heart of the sudy of human memory. However, the best psychologist increasingly recognize that their methods and results must be brought into contract with broader inquiries. This impressive volume on self and memory not only successdully integrates developmental, social, and cognitive perspectives, but also incorporates relevant work in personality psychology and the philosophy of personal identity. These substanial essays will be essential reading for anyone interested in emotion, narrative, and time in autobiographical memory. -- John Sutton, Macquarie University .