Japan Studies Review
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JAPAN STUDIES REVIEW Volume XXV 2021 Interdisciplinary Studies of Modern Japan Editors Steven Heine María Sol Echarren Editorial Board Michaela Mross, Stanford University John A. Tucker, East Carolina University Ann Wehmeyer, University of Florida Hitomi Yoshio, Waseda University Copy and Production María Sol Echarren Raul Caner Cruz JAPAN STUDIES REVIEW VOLUME TWENTY-FIFTH 2021 A publication of Florida International University and the Southern Japan Seminar CONTENTS Editors’ Introduction i Re: Subscriptions, Submissions, and Comments ii ARTICLES Selections of Zen Buddhist Poetry in Kanbun Reflecting Early Medieval Cross-Cultural and Cross-Sectarian Trends Steven Heine 3 Embodied Survival and Demythologization in Kirino Natsuo’s Tokyo Jima Juliana Buriticá Alzate 31 Making Movies for the Chinese: Japanese Directors at Manying Yuxin Ma 63 Ishikawa Tatsuzō and Shimazaki Tōson. Two Writers/Travelers to South America in the Eye of Imperial Discourse Matías Chiappe Ippolito 95 ESSAYS Swallowtail Butler Café: Cosplay, Otakus, and Cool Japan in Contemporary Japan Kinko Ito and Paul A. Crutcher 113 Jack London’s Positive Portrayals of the Japanese in His Early Childhood Fiction Defy His Reputation as a Racist Daniel A. Métraux 131 BOOK REVIEWS Dearest Lenny: Letters from Japan and the Making of the World Maestro By Mari Yoshihara Reviewed by Wayne E. Arnold 145 Poetics of Popular Culture: The Hidden Multimodality By Yuki Matsuda Reviewed by Kinko Ito 148 The Gateway to the Pacific: Japanese Americans and the Remaking of San Francisco. By Meredith Oda Reviewed by Daniel A. Métraux 152 Pure Land, Real World: Modern Buddhism, Japanese Leftists, and the Utopian Imagination By Melissa Anne-Marie Curley Anarchy in the Pure Land: Reinventing the Cult of Maitreya in Modern Chinese Buddhism By Justin R. Ritzinger Reviewed by Kedao Tong 154 EDITORS/CONTRIBUTORS i EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION Welcome to the twenty-fifth volume of the Japan Studies Review (JSR), an annual peer-reviewed journal sponsored by the Asian Studies Program at Florida International University. JSR remains an outlet for the Southern Japan Seminar and encourages submissions from a wide range of scholars in the field. The 2021 issue features interdisciplinary scholarly works in traditional and contemporary Japanese studies. This volume contains four articles, starting with a textual and philological analysis by Steven Heine based on his original translations of Zen Buddhist poems written mainly in early medieval Japan in kanbun (Sino- Japanese) style. This article is titled, “Selections of Zen Buddhist Poetry in Kanbun Reflecting Early Medieval Cross-Cultural and Cross-Sectarian Trends.” The following article, “Embodied Survival and Demythologization in Kirino Natsuo’s Tokyo Jima” by Juliana Buriticá Alzate, examines embodied, gendered experiences relating to survival from a feminist perspective, debunking myths in the novel as it disengages from the essentialized, naturalized, and idealized versions of womanhood. The third article, “Making Movies for the Chinese: Japanese Directors at Manying” by Yuxin Ma, surveys the Manying cinema industry of 1937–1945 from the perspective of Japanese directors producing national policy films for Manchukuo with the competing objective of serving Japanese imperialism and entertaining the local Chinese viewers. The last article, “Ishikawa Tatsuzō and Shimazaki Tōson: Two Writers/Travelers to South America in the Eye of Imperial Discourse” by Matías Chiappe Ippolito, compares divergent viewpoints regarding South America from two twentieth-century Japanese writers’ travels to Brazil and Argentina and their respective literary works in light of Japan’s emerging imperial discourse. This issue also has two essays. Kinko Ito and Paul A. Crutcher, in “Swallowtail Butler Café: Cosplay, Otakus, and Cool Japan in Contemporary Japan,” provide sociological observations about the popular themed Swallowtail Butler Café in Tokyo through content analysis of online media resources gathered during the Covid-19 pandemic. Daniel Métraux, in “Jack London’s Positive Portrayals of the Japanese in His Early Fiction Defy His Reputation as a Racist,” offers insight on Jack London’s appreciation for Japanese culture with commentary from two of his stories to argue against race hatred attributed to the author at the turn of the twentieth century. There are four book reviews with varying topics. Mari Yoshihara’s Dearest Lenny: Letters from Japan and the Making of the World Maestro is reviewed by Wayne E. Arnold; Yuki Matsuda’s Poetics of Popular Culture: The Hidden Multimodality is reviewed by Kinko Ito; Meredith Oda’s The Gateway to the Pacific: Japanese Americans and the Remaking of San Francisco is reviewed by Daniel A. Métraux; and finally, Melissa Anne-Marie Curley’s Pure Land, Real World: Modern Buddhism, Japanese Leftists, and the Utopian Imagination and Justin R. Ritzinger’s Anarchy in the Pure Land: Reinventing the Cult of Maitreya in Modern Chinese Buddhism are reviewed in tandem by Kedao Tong. ii Re: Submissions, Subscriptions, and Comments Submissions for publication, whether articles, essays, translations, or book reviews, should be made in electronic formats, preferably Word for Windows via email attachment (please inquire about other formats). The editor and members of the editorial board will referee all submissions. Annual subscriptions are $45.00 (US). Please send a check or money order payable to Florida International University to: c/o Steven Heine, Professor of Religious Studies and History Director of the Asian Studies Program Florida International University Modesto A. Maidique Campus, SIPA 505 Miami, FL 33199 The FIU Asian Studies Program office number is 305-348-1914. Submissions for publication should be sent to [email protected]. Visit our website at http://asian.fiu.edu/jsr. PDF versions of past volumes are available online. All comments and feedback on the publications appearing in Japan Studies Review are welcome. ISSN: 1550-0713 Articles SELECTIONS OF ZEN BUDDHIST POETRY IN KANBUN REFLECTING EARLY MEDIEVAL CROSS-CULTURAL AND CROSS-SECTARIAN TRENDS Steven Heine Florida International University Introduction This paper provides translations of a couple of dozen Zen Buddhist poems from early medieval Japan, accompanied by an introductory essay providing the background for understanding the significance and religious symbolism of this literature. The selections mainly represent a particular faction of the Sōtō Zen sect, which is generally not recognized for its contributions to Zen poetry yet did play a major role that needs to be explored and explained. Some of the material included here appears in my recent book Flowers Blooming on a Withered Tree: Giun’s Verse Comments on Dōgen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye.1 In the intellectual history of Japanese Zen, the Rinzai (Ch. Linji) sect is particularly well known for the production of voluminous poetry written in the kanbun 漢文 (Sino-Japanese) style consisting usually of four- line, seven-character verse that was typical of the religious elite. Although there are many exceptions to the basic form, the Zen poems do follow various intricate rhetorical rules for rhyming, tonal patterns, thematic progression, symbolic indicators, and more. During the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, these poems produced the basis of the great artistic movement known as Five Mountains Literature (Gozan bungaku) that dominated, along with Zen painting and other practical arts such as gardening and tea ceremony, the cultural scene in both Kyoto and Kamakura, which was strongly supported by the shogunate seeking to promote continental learning and the exchange of ideas.2 While some eminent Chinese monks relocated to Japan in order to teach Zen poetry, especially Yishan Yining (1247–1317) who arrived in 1299, 1 Steven Heine, Flowers Blooming on a Withered Tree: Giun’s Verse Comments on Dōgen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). 2 See David Pollack, Zen Poems of the Five Mountains (New York: Crossroad, 1985). 4 STEVEN HEINE dozens of Japanese pilgrims who traveled to the mainland to learn the method of writing in the authentic Chinese fashion returned to practice their craft while residing at Kyoto temples. Today, several prominent collections of Five Mountains Literature containing multiple volumes with hundreds of examples of verse represent but a small sampling of the full amount of Rinzai Zen poetry composed in early medieval Japan. In addition, the monks also generally wrote traditional Japanese waka 和歌 verse with five lines in thirty- one syllables and participated regularly in waka competitions known as uta awase that were often held at the shogun’s elite salons in order to create linked verse (renga) in collaboration with their colleagues. By contrast, the Sōtō (Ch. Caodong) Zen sect that was established by Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253) and significantly expanded by the followers of Keizan 瑩山 (1268–1235) a century later in temples located in the northern provincial territory of Hokuriku (covering the mountains of Echizen, currently Fukui prefecture, and the Noto peninsula, currently Ishikawa prefecture), far removed from the capital, was thought to have eschewed literary pursuits. Instead, Sōtō leaders favored a strict adherence to the notion that “just sitting” (shikan taza) in meditation was the only true path to enlightenment, whereby writing was seen as a distraction that detracted from realizing one’s spiritual goal. After all, Dōgen is often cited for proclaiming in a sermon included