Japanese Fighting Heroes
Japanese Fighting Heroes

Author: Jamie Ryder

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2024-04-04

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1399057103

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From the demon-killing Minamoto no Yorimitsu to the immortal poet Ono no Komachi, find out about the fascinating world of Japanese warriors and folk-heroes. Japanese mythology is filled with stories of larger-than-life characters that shaped the landscape of Japan. They are the folk heroes who slayed monsters, fought in epic battles and reflected the most complicated emotions of the people who created them. Through a mix of essays, short stories and anecdotes, Japanese Fighting Heroes follows the lives of samurai, warriors, outliers and iconoclasts who forged their own paths. Legendary fighters like the demon-killing Minamoto no Yorimitsu, philosophising samurai Miyamoto Musashi, and the One-Eyed Dragon Date Masamune. Creative heroes like the father of Japanese short stories Ryunosuke Akutagawa, the immortal poet Ono no Komachi, the hilarious Sei Shonagon and her insight into human nature. Trailblazers who broke down barriers like the feminist Hiratsuka Raicho, the statesman Fukuzawa Yukichi, the photographic genius Hiroshi Hamaya. These Japanese folk heroes led fascinating lives that provide insight into our own through the principles and practices they lived by. They struggled with universal ideals of honor, duty, courage and kindness, helping them transcend their culture. Whether you’re looking to learn about Japanese history, fall down a philosophy rabbit hole or pick up new mental health habits, these heroes can teach us timeless lessons. Japanese Fighting Heroes captures the essence of what it means to be human in any culture.

100 Dogs of War
100 Dogs of War

Author:

Publisher: Ukiyo-E Master Specials

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781840683165

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This edition of Yoshitoshi's 100 Dogs of War contains not only Yoshitoshi's full set of 65 completed battle prints, reproduced in full-size and full-colour, but also several fascinating preparatory drawings for unfinished designs. -- provided by publisher.

Haunted Demon World
Haunted Demon World

Author: Tsukioka Yoshitoshi

Publisher:

Published: 2020-09-12

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13:

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Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892), a student of ukiyo-e master Utagawa Kuniyoshi, showed a predilection towards two types of subject in his early work: exceptionally bloody musha-e ("warror prints")1, and supernatural images of demons and ghosts. Yoshitoshi maintained an interest in depicting the haunted realm of Japanese myth right up until his last major series, 36 Ghosts, in 1889 (two years before his death). Like all Yoshitoshi's art, these prints are now considered to be the work of ukiyo-e's last master practitioner.HAUNTED DEMON WORLD collects three complete series by Yoshitoshi which contain 112 of the artist's most striking and disturbing images of spectres, monsters and demons, presented in large-format and full-colour throughout. The three series that are reproduced in full are: 100 Ghost Stories From China And Japan (Wakan hyaku monogatari, 1865 - for which only 26 images were completed); Heroic Beauty From The Suikoden (Biyu suikoden, 1866-7); and New Forms Of 36 Ghosts (Shinkei sanjurokkaisen, 1889-1892).

The Eye of Atrocity
The Eye of Atrocity

Author: Yoshitoshi Taiso

Publisher:

Published: 2012-10-31

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781840683059

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Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, apprenticed to ukiyo-e master Kuniyoshi since his adolescence, was twenty years old when he first began to make sketches of severed heads and dismembered corpses. Soon he would start to incorporate this imagery into his work, and his vivid and bloody battle scenes quickly caught the public eye. All of Yoshitoshi's ukiyo-e series between 1863 and 1870 would include a quantity of his trademark scenes of carnage, in particular Eimei Nijuhasshuku (1866-68), a collaboration with fellow artist Ochiai Yoshiiku. Sometimes referred to as "The Sadistic Collection Of Blood", this series was an unashamed exercise in atrocity which took the concept of muzan-e ("cruelty prints") to new extremes of violence and gore. In 1868, Yoshitoshi was a first-hand witness to the Battle of Ueno, a cataclysmic clash which further inspired him to create new images of evisceration and decapitation. THEe ^EYEe ^OFe ^ATROCITY, edited by Jack Hunter (who also edited the ground-breaking extreme ukiyo-e anthology "Dream Spectres"), collects and considers over 80 of the most blood-drenched and disturbing artworks produced by Yoshitoshi during his career, presented in large-format and full-colour throughout. Second in a dynamic new series presenting the cutting edge of 19th century Japanese art.

The 47 Ronin
The 47 Ronin

Author: Kunisada Utagawa

Publisher:

Published: 2013-10-31

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781840683158

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This Ukiyo-e Master Special edition of Kunisada's 47 Ronin contains not only Kunisada's complete set of 48 samurai prints, reproduced in full-size and full-colour, but also reference prints from Kuniyoshi's classic series of 1847, complimenting each image. The book also features A.B. Mitford's definitive Legend of the 47 Ronin, the first English-languge version of the story from 1871. This text is illustrated with 47 Ronin prints by varoius other classic ukiyo-e artists, including Yoshitora, Yoshitoshi, and Kunichika, bringing the total number of colour prints in the book to over 100.

Writing Violence
Writing Violence

Author: David C. Atherton

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2023-10-31

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0231558961

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Edo-period Japan was a golden age for commercial literature. A host of new narrative genres cast their gaze across the social landscape, probed the realms of history and the fantastic, and breathed new life into literary tradition. But how to understand the politics of this body of literature remains contested, in part because the defining characteristics of much early modern fiction—formulaicness, reuse of narratives, stock characters, linguistic and intertextual play, and heavy allusion to literary canon—can seem to hold social and political realities at arm’s length. David C. Atherton offers a new approach to understanding the relationship between the challenging formal features of early modern popular literature and the world beyond its pages. Focusing on depictions of violence—one of the most fraught topics for a peaceful polity ruled over by warriors—he connects concepts of form and formalization across the aesthetic and social spheres. Atherton shows how the formal features of early modern literature had the potential to alter the perception of time and space, make social and economic forces visible, defamiliarize conventions, give voice to the socially peripheral, and reshape the contours of community. Through careful readings of works by the major writers Asai Ryōi, Ihara Saikaku, Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Ueda Akinari, and Santō Kyōden, Writing Violence reveals the essential role of literary form in constructing the world—and in seeing it anew.

killing for culture
killing for culture

Author: David Kerekes

Publisher: SCB Distributors

Published: 2016-06-03

Total Pages: 756

ISBN-13: 1909394351

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Unlike images of sex, which were clandestine and screened only in private, images of death were made public from the onset of cinema. The father of the modern age, Thomas Edison, fed the appetite for this material with staged executions on film. Little over a century later the executions are real and the world is aghast at brutalities freely available online at the click of a button. Some of these films are created by lone individuals using shaky camera phones: Luka Magnotta, for instance, and the teenagers known as the Dnipropetrovsk maniacs. Others are shot on high definition equipment and professionally edited by organized groups, such as the militant extremists ISIS. KILLING FOR CULTURE explores these images of death and violence, and the human obsession with looking — and not looking — at them. Beginning with the mythology of the so-called ‘snuff’ film and its evolution through popular culture, this book traces death and the artifice of death in the ‘mondo’ documentaries that emerged in the 1960s, and later the faux snuff pornography that found an audience through Necrobabes and similar websites. However, it is when videos depicting the murders of Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg surfaced in the 2000s that an era of genuine atrocity commenced, one that has irrevocably changed the way in which we function as a society.

Vietnam Past and Present
Vietnam Past and Present

Author: Andrew Forbes

Publisher: Cognoscenti Books

Published: 2012-12-26

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 1300568070

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There can be few people in the world that do not know the name, location and recent history of Vietnam. Yet beyond the period of US involvement in what Americans call the 'Vietnam War' how much is really known?Almost no Vietnamese bear a grudge against the USA, but this is less true for China, Vietnam's close neighbor, mentor and rival for more than two thousand years.For example, Vietnamese like to name their streets after what they consider to have been 'acts of foreign aggression', and in Hanoi no fewer than 119 streets are named after 'acts of Chinese and French aggression'. By contrast, just two are named for 'acts of American aggression'.Based on an intimate personal knowledge of Vietnam extending over two decades, this book explores Hanoi and the North. It leads the reader not just across contemporary Tonkin, but also through its long history, linking the present-day with the distant past.62,000 words, 81 contemporary images, 38 historical images, 4 maps, Glossary, Bibliography