Il Giappone. Studi e Ricerche

Introduzione

2021-04-20T10:04:18+00:00

Saluto Aistugia

2021-04-20T10:04:15+00:00

Il Giappone. Studi e Ricerche nella tradizione editoriale degli studi giapponesi all'Orientale

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Militarism in Japanese School Songs

2021-05-19T10:05:58+00:00

Shōka, the Japanese term for School Song, is an innovation of the early Meiji Period. Both, the term and the music genre, had become a necessity following the promulgation of the Education Law in 1872 which stipulated that music had to be an obligatory subject in elementary and secondary schools. Its implementation had to be postponed, however, because in traditional Japanese music there were no songs with easily singable melodies and understandable texts suitable for school children. Such songs had, therefore, to be commissioned, composed or authorized by a department of the Education Ministry, called “Music Investigation Committee” (Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari), created especially for this purpose.

Buddha e Gesù in vacanza a Tokyo. Seinto Oniisan come parodia religiosa nel Giappone contemporaneo

2021-05-19T10:05:55+00:00

Seinto Oniisan (Saint Young Men in English) is a manga series written and illustrated by Nakamura Hikaru. The episodes, serialised by Kodansha since September 2006, tell the adventures of Buddha and Jesus, who, after surviving the end of the millennium, take a vacation together and rent an apartment in Tachikawa, a suburban area of Tokyo.

This gag manga (gyagu manga) shares similarities with other texts focused on religious personalities and topics, in particular on the life of Buddha, including the well-known manga Buddha by Tezuka Osamu. However, Seinto Oniisan does not aim at teaching about Buddhism, as in the case of educational manga published by Buddhist organizations. At the same time, Seinto Oniisan does not reiterate dichotomous representations of religion as ‘good’ or ‘evil’ as shown in several manga published after the 1995 sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway. By placing the two religious figures in a contemporary urban context and portraying them as two tourists (or exchange students) discovering Japan, Nakamura avoids representing religion as something ‘dangerous’. At the same time, parody and humor desacralise their authorities by transforming them into light and ‘harmless’ entertainment for her readers.

The description of the interjectional function of wo: from the renga treatises to Yamada Yoshio

2021-05-19T10:05:52+00:00

This paper aims to follow the evolution of the description of the interjectional function of the particle wo, in order to clarify the confusion arisen in its analysis in the Old and Middle Japanese corpus. In fact, in Yamada’s grammar – that influenced the 20^thcentury scholarship – the interjectional particle wo was identified only on a semantic basis, as formally it could follow nouns, verbs or other particles, and its position in the sentence was rather free. However, if we look at the earliest descriptions of wo in the Medieval poetic treatises, we find well-defined grammatical contexts in which it could be identified as interjectional (yasumeji, after ni, to and gerunds). An interesting innovation is proposed by Motoori Norinaga, who distinguishes between a yasumeji ni oku wo, whose distribution is consistent with what stated in the treatises, and a tasukeji wo, whose value overlaps yo and follows mostly nouns. Motoori’s description of the interjectional function seems to have influenced Tsurumine Shigenobu’s and Ōtsuki Fumihiko’s stances, which would in turn serve as basis for Yamada’s study. Thus, it could be useful to trace the history behind Yamada’s description in order to understand the contemporary scholarship dealing with the interjectional function of wo.

Il dibattito sulla sicurezza onnicomprensiva e il problema della dipendenza alimentare in Giappone negli anni Settanta e Ottanta

2021-05-19T10:05:50+00:00

The term “comprehensive security (sōgō anzen hoshō 総合安全保障)” was first created in Japan after the early 1970s international crises (oil, food, monetary and diplomatic). The new concept widened the traditional scope of the concept of “security”, embracing those economic aspects, such as the scarcity of raw materials, that were considered capable of threatening national security. Food security was a central element of the comprehensive security strategy. Since the early postwar years, Japan was heavily dependent on food imports from the United States. The food crisis of the 1970s with the consequent American embargo on soybeans revealed Japan's vulnerability to interruptions in food supplies and raised questions about the US as a reliable supplier. The present work provides a critical analysis of the development of the concept of “food security” in Japan, within the broader debate on comprehensive security in the 1970s and 1980s. In particular, through the analysis of political and academic documents, the article investigates the impact of the American soybean embargo on this debate, in order to understand how “food dependence” began to be perceived as a threat to national security and how this perception influenced not only Japan’s food policies but also its international relations.

Madri che uccidono. Maternità e solitudine in Mori ni nemuru sakana e Saka no tochū no ie di Kakuta Mitsuyo

2021-05-19T10:05:48+00:00

At the beginning of the Nineties, the term mamatomo (mothers’ friend), a popular term used to indicate the friendship between mothers of preschoolers, became central to the study of childcare in Japan. Since the Nineties researchers have investigated the relationship between mum-friends, stressing the positive effects of the mamatomo network on children’s education. However, at the same time, this term carries a negative connotation: on the one hand, it shows the rivalry between mamatomo, often determined by social and financial differences, on the other, it reveals the loneliness of those women who reject this relationship. In either case, women perceive the experience of motherhood in its negative aspects and such uneasiness might result in violence toward their children.

In Japanese contemporary literature, Kakuta Mitsuyo often focuses on female characters depicted in their roles of mothers and daughters. This is why her novels have been analysed in terms of the representation of the mother-daughter relationship conflict. In this paper, I will analyze motherhood in relation to loneliness and violence as depicted in Mori ni nemuru sakana(2008) and Saka no tochū no ie (2016). I argue that these two novels, both narrating stories of infanticide, represent a major change in the way the author addressed the issue of motherhood, in that they stress the role played by society in the creation of the myth of maternal love and the gender division of labour, as well as the effect of fathers’ absence on the well-being of their families.

Olandesi a Edo nell’era Keian (1648-52). Andries Frisius, l’ambasciatore imbalsamato e gli avvisi sull’Europa nei fūsetsugaki

2021-05-19T10:05:45+00:00

In the aftermath of Japan’s closing edicts of the 1640s, the curious episode of the mission of the Dutch agent Andries Frisius to the court of Iemitsu in 1650 was an emblematic case of the new course of the diplomatic relations established by the Tokugawa government with Europeans. Local authorities' occasional contacts with the Dutch still revealed uncertainty in diplomatic and commercial exchanges based on rules set by the central government, not yet fully implemented at the local level. Besides the embarrassment in developing official relations, the few European agents admitted in the archipelago had to satisfy the numerous requests from the authorities, as evidenced by the singular case of Frisius. Agents’ commitments also included the presentation of official reports, the so-called fūsetsugaki, the news on overseas affairs and European historical events that envoys of the Dutch East India Company were asked to present regularly to the shogunal authorities in Edo. These chronicles had implications in terms of the reception of the image of Europe, influencing to some extent the foreign policy of the time.

Poetica di Fujiwara no Kintō: Shinsen zuinō e Waka kuhon

2021-05-19T10:05:42+00:00

Fujiwara no Kintō (966-1041) was one of the most eminent men of letters of his time. Highly appreciated poet of compositions both in Chinese and Japanese, expert in music and court ceremonies, compiler of various anthologies including Wakan rōeishū (Collection of Japanese and Chinese Verses for Recitation), he also contributed to the evolution of Japanese poetics, when the canons established by the first imperial anthology, Kokinshū, were at a turning point. This study will examine two of his writings, Shinsen zuinō (Essentials of Poetry, Newly Compiled) and Waka kuhon (Nine Styles of Japanese Poetry), which constitute the manifesto of new proposals, with a focus on concepts such as sugata and yosei.

“Sorelle d’Oriente”: le donne nipponiche nelle “Lettere dal Giappone” (1929) di Maria Albertina Loschi

2021-05-19T10:05:39+00:00

This paper aims to offer a concise portrait of Maria Albertina Loschi (1888?-1981) – a teacher, journalist, feminist and globetrotter –, as well as to analyse her reportage Lettere dal Giappone (Letters from Japan). It consists of a series of articles written from various Japanese cities and published in the Roman newspaper Il Messaggero in 1929 during her world trip.

In particular, this article aims to investigate the representations of Japanese women presented by Loschi, often depicted with warmth and empathy, in sharp contrast with their exotic and sensual portrayals frequently offered by male writers and travellers. Loschi defined them ‘sorelle d’oriente’ (oriental sisters) to emphasise her closeness to them and her desire to see them more satisfied and independent.

Despite some occasional stereotype, Loschi was able to provide her audience with a gallery of women (e.g. students, nurses, business women), moving beyond the traditional feminine image of ryōsai kenbo (良妻賢母) (good wife, wise mother).

Linguistic Loans from Italian into Japanese: focusing on the Meiji Period

2021-05-19T10:05:36+00:00

The history of cultural exchanges between Japan and Italy can be traced back to the second half of the 16th century. However, it was only in the Meiji era that Japanese and Italian began to come into contact, and that gairaigo (loanwords) of Italian origin began to emerge in Japanese.

Gairaigo of Italian origin can refer both to Italian words borrowed directly from Italian, and to words of Italian origin borrowed indirectly through other languages. The aim of this study is to examine the gairaigo of Italian origin that entered Japanese during the Meiji period, in order to shed light on their characteristics and their borrowing route.

The corpus for this study has been compiled by selecting the words with their earliest recorded use in the Meiji era, drawing from the general lists of Italian loanwords in Koura (1997) and Calvetti (2003). In order to find clues to their route, I examined the first Italian-Japanese dictionary, the Futsu-I-Wa sangoku tsūgo by Magaki Yukinaga, published in 1876, then carried out an analysis of the corpus from a phonetic perspective.

I also traced the history of four words, selected to represent the fields in which the influence of Italian is stronger: “opera”, “madonna”, “chiaroscuro”, and “macaroni”.

The results of this study suggest that these Meiji loanwords entered the Japanese vocabulary through an indirect route and underline the importance of Italian as an international cultural language in the field of the arts, and especially of music.

Sonna kotoba, kodomo no mae de iwantotte. Il problema della imprecazione in giapponese e gli insegnamenti della traduzione

2021-05-19T10:05:34+00:00

B.H. Chamberlain wrote in 1905 that “The Japanese vocabulary […] affords absolutely no means of cursing and swearing”. Japanese paucity of offensive lexicon is surely overstated by the pioneer British Japanologist but it is a fact. The present work deals with the way Japanese translators match the profusion and the remarkably meaningful nuances of Chinese swear words we find throughout the sapid prose of the Jinpingmei examining modern translations of some passes from the Ming novel.

Profilo degli autori

2021-04-20T10:04:13+00:00