This week, we started by looking at how to make our Show and Tell projects more interactive. I had already heard the presentation from my Modern Chinese History class, but I think that it reinforced the information well. I think that the most important idea that we went over was the concept of a hinge for the presentation. I do not expect to use the tools that we went over to a large extent, but I expect to still try to use the idea of the hinge in my show and tell posts. Outside of basic pictures, I would be interested in putting a video into one of my projects, or even inserting a map.
I really enjoyed the reading for Friday; it struck me as a fairly easy read and also covered very interesting content. In addition, it shed some interesting light on warfare in the early Kamakura period, as well as bringing up some important questions. The text indicated that battles centered around duels between individual warriors on each side; this also raises the question of how long the duels would continue in a battle, since the din of two armies fighting would make it hard for two individual combatants to identify themselves. We also see the opposing forces fighting almost exclusively with either bow or else “wrestling” and “twisting” the opponent’s head off. I find it very hard to believe that the latter fighting is exactly what it appears from the translation, but I would be interested to find out what exactly it was. In the Tale of Heike, the importance of one’s identity, and particularly rank and lineage, is clear, as is the preoccupation with honor and shame. The text presents a retainers as caring as much, if not more, about their lord’s honor as their own. Indeed, the text seems to present episodes, such as Yoshinaka’s retainer committing suicide to get his attention, that show the ideal of total fidelity to one’s liege. The text does not hide the reality that people retainers are not all fanatically loyal, since it relates how retainers desert Yoshinaka at the very end, but the text does not linger on these points, rather it draws attention to the heroic acts of devoted vassals. The text also shows a great deal of Buddhist influence, since the narration is often paused to discuss the moral implications of actions, and the women in the first section often quote Buddhist ideas directly. This indicates the ubiquity of Buddhist beliefs throughout the period.
Genji & Heike: Selections from The Tale of Genji and The Tale of Heike, translated by Helen Craig McCullough. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.
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