Posts tagged with Japan in Blog Notes from Asia Library

I’m delighted to be able to announce, finally, that all of Asia Library is open for use. Our hours are the same as those of Hatcher Library. Asia Library has undergone a significant renovation: the creation of the Mayumi and Masao Oka Tadoku Room.

This week we introduce another set of texts from the Kamada Collection related to Buddhism. Whereas the sutra showcased last week had no illuminations, the sutra featured below has illustrations alongside the text.

Our final two posts on items from the Kamada Collection will introduce texts related to Buddhism.

In our last post, on poetry-related works in the Kamada Collection, we introduced illustrated manuscripts of the famous poetry collection Hyakunin isshu, or One Hundred People, One Poem Each, an anthology of Japanese poetry from the seventh to thirteenth centuries compiled by the courtier and poet Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241). An incredibly popular collection, Hyakunin isshu inspired numerous alternate versions and parodies. We will introduce two such manuscripts below.

In previous weeks, we’ve showcased manuscripts from the Kamada Collection related to Japanese performance arts and warrior history. Here we introduce texts related to traditional Japanese poetry, specifically the famous anthology Hyakunin isshu 百人一首, or One Hundred People, One Poem Each.

In our last post on the Kamada Collection, we showcased nineteenth-century images related to warriors of the fourteenth century. This week, we will continue with an earlier manuscript of a more practical sort. The following illustrations come from the two-volume Heihō yūkan 兵法雄鑑, sometimes translated as The Paragon of Military Strategy.