The Origins of Japan's Medieval World: Courtiers, Clerics, Warriors, and Peasants in the Fourteenth Century

This pioneering collection of fifteen essays proposes to change the way we think about fourteenth-century Japan and what preceded and followed it. Most notable is the search for Japan's medieval beginnings, which are found not in the developments flowing from the establishment of the first shogunate in the 1180s, but rather in the shogunates collapse 150 years later. In this admittedly controversial interpretation, the Kamakura age becomes the final episode in Japan's late classical period, with the courtier and warrior regimes of that era together seeking to maintain the traditional order. But under the leadership of Japan s first truly medieval men (the emperor Go-Daigo and Ashikaga Takauji), the old order was dramatically transformed. In the editor s words, the rules changed, new behavior was everywhere, the past was only one of several competing influences. After the better part of a millennium, the spell cast by courtiers was finally broken.

Table of Contents:
Part I: 1. Of hierarchy and authority at the end of Kamakura Jeffrey P. Mass; 2. Largesse and the limits of loyalty in the fourteenth century Thomas Conlan; 3. The Kikuchi and their enemies in the 1330s Seno Seiichiro; 4. Bakufu and Shugo under the early Ashikaga Thomas Nelson; 5. Peasants, elites and villages in the fourteenth century Kristina Kade Troost; Part II: 6. Visions of an emperor Andrew Goble; 7. Re-envisioning women in the post-Kamakura age Hitomi Tonomura; 8. Warrior control over the imperial anthology Robert N. Huey; 9. Cultural life of the warrior elite in the fourteenth century H. Paul Varley; 10. The warrior as ideal for a new age G. Cameron Hurst III; Part III: 11. Enraykuji - an old power in a new era Mikael Adolphson; 12. Muso Soseki Martin Collcutt; 13. Kokan Shiren and the sectarian uses of history Carl Bielefeldt; Part IV: 14. Ashikaga Takauji and the fourteenth-century dynastic schism in early Tokugawa thought I. J. McMullen; 15. The fourteenth century in twentieth-century perspective Oyama Kyohei; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Review :
"A good selection of the latest scholarship by European, North American, and Japanese researchers... An appealing aspect of the work is its multidisciplinary scope: essays on political history dominate, but the inclusion of several on religion, women, peasants, and literature add considerably to our understanding of the fouteenth century." - Monumenta Nipponica "The work is a valuable tool for the speacialist, for it provides information about a period woefully under-represented by English works... Origins is to be commended for presenting a reevaluation of the relationship between the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, a process that in-and-of itself aids in understanding the complexity that was fourteenth centufy Japan." - Canadian Journal of History "Any specialist in Japanese history or culture should read this book... All of the essays deserve serious attention." - Journal of Japanese Studies "Together, the essays provide a rich and varied perspective on the fourteenth century." - Choice