Authorizing the Shogunate : ritual and material symbolism in the literary construction of warrior order / / by Vyjayanthi R. Selinger.

• Author: Selinger, Vyjayanthi Ratnam.
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Brill's Japanese studies library, v. 44; Brill's Japanese Studies Library 44.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (211 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

The Genpei War of 1180-1185 signaled a crucial shift in Japanese history because it gave birth to the shogunate, or government run by warriors. How was the emergence of this new polity following a contentious civil war explained in literary texts? This book argues that political authority is made visible in the variant texts of the Heike monogatari corpus through rituals that map the ideal social-cosmic order, overwriting untidy historical realities. Artifacts of material culture likewise provide the social and political codes to authenticate warrior power and manage its violence. Through its focus on ritual and material practices, this book offers a new perspective on how texts from fourteenth century Japan harnessed symbolic understandings of authority to evoke order and contain rupture. Equally significant is its analysis of the Genpei jōsuiki a Heike monogatari variant that played a critical role in the retrospection of medieval Japan through the early modern period.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- 1 T he Genpei jōsuiki and the Historical Narration of the Genpei War -- 2 Fictions of Emergence: The Symbolic Regulation of Violence in the Battles of 1180 -- 3 Gastro-Politics and the Shifting Geography of Medieval Japan: Famine, Feasts, and the Court’s Appointment of a Shogun in 1183 -- 4 Converging and Diverging Doubles in 1185: Sword Replicas and the Locations of Martial Power -- 5 T he Cultural Shift from the Carriage to the Horse: Portending Historical Change -- 6 T he Past in the Present: Troping Warrior Power in the Muromachi and Tokugawa Periods -- Works Cited -- Index.