Japanese Aesthetics, Literature, and Culture

For this project, to showcase my understanding of not only the text, but also the historical context and the author’s personal history under which the piece was written, I decided to adapt Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book into what I believe a modern-day rendition would resemble. All of the writing is completely my own, drawing inspiration from the general work as a whole, as well as specific passages. All images were found online, but were collaged by me. In total I wrote 19 short pieces, each of which can be broadly categorised under six different categories: descriptive image, descriptive lists, non-descriptive lists, opinion pieces, anecdotes, and romantic scenes, though there is obviously significant overlap between these categories, with many pieces fitting into several (which is true also of the original). The following analysis will walk you through my thought process when creating these pieces, as well as the reasoning behind specific stylistic choices, explaining what the intended goals of the pieces were.

As a self-proclaimed military historian, the Battle of Nagashino has always signified a shift in the nature of warfare in my eyes. From the use of unique barricades which provided musketeers the freedom to choose their targets and remain relatively immune to melee attacks, to the advanced level of volley fire said to have been used on the battlefield, Nagashino presented me the opportunity to depict how technology shipped from the Ottoman Empire transformed the Japanese archipelago militaristically, laying the foundation for decades of ruthless combat.

The sky glows a hellish orange, the scent of burning hair permeating the air. A cacophony of snapping wood and collapsing structures overpowers screams as fire whirls engulf those not fast enough. The horizon, similarly aglow, offers no refuge. To all trapped within this burning testament to man’s
power, the world must have seemed to come to an end.

Cultures grow, wilt, and rebloom. China, Japan, and Korea adapt East Asian traditions to their own cultural contexts, developing and drawing from a uniquely interconnected history. Many cultural practices in East Asia are highly coherent across borders.

April at Wesleyan Will Schenck – 2022 When I submitted my essay “Buddhism and Haiku: The International Inheritance of a

How Yokai Adapts to Modern Societies: Differences in Yokai Interactions with Technology and Humans Zaitian (Cara) Chen – 2022 Introduction:

Hōjōki ver. 2021 Riho Kawamoto – May 2021 Situating Chōmei in a contemporary capitalist society (such as those of the

The Philosophy of Wabi Sabi Quentin Rollet – 2021 Introduction: For this project, I have decided to take photographs on