Product Description

During Yoshimasa's reign, the aesthetic taste of the Japanese was shaped: the nõ theater flourished, Japanese gardens were developed, and the tea ceremony had its origins in a small room at the Silver Pavilion. Flower arrangement, ink painting, and shoin-zukuri architecture began or became of major importance under Yoshimasa. Poets introduced their often barely literate warlord-hosts to the literary masterpieces of the past and taught them how to compose poetry. Even the most barbarous warlord came to want the trappings of culture that would enable him to feel like a civilized man. This long-neglected but critical period in Japanese history at last has the thorough treatment it deserves.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #585912 in Books
• Published on: 2005-12-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From The New Yorker
This enterprising account by the doyen of Japan studies demonstrates that the quintessential Japanese aesthetic—which characterizes Noh drama, sand gardens, monochrome ink painting, shoji panels, tatami floors, and the tea ceremony—was the creation of a staggeringly incompetent fifteenth-century shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimasa. His military record was dismal and his domestic life a shambles: his domineering wife abandoned him, his nanny (who probably doubled as his mistress) may have intrigued against him, and a favorite concubine took up with his dissolute son. While warfare destroyed Kyoto and the corpses of famine victims clogged the Kamo River, Yoshimasa squandered his treasury, bringing obsessive perfectionism to such matters as perfume blending. He ultimately abdicated to become a Buddhist priest, devoting himself to the development of the restrained, Zen-influenced style exemplified in his famous Silver Pavilion. Keene's multifarious learning and engaging manner illuminate the improbable story of the fastidious aesthete whose taste has been so important in forming the look of the modern world.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

From Booklist
Medieval Japan was a brutal, violent epoch in which local lords strived to carve out their own power niches. The best hope for stability was a strong, ruthless shogun, a type of military dictator who supposedly ruled on behalf of the emperor. Based on that necessity, the fifteenth-century shogun Yoshimasa was particularly ill suited for the job. He seems to have been repelled by the military arts, and he had little taste for the political manipulations required to control the ambitious feudal barons. He presided over the virtual destruction of the power of the shogunate. Yet Keene (Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 2002) is not writing a hatchet job. Rather, he shows how this monkish aesthete sponsored a great flowering and diffusion of Japanese culture, including theater, poetry, and architecture, and the influence of that flowering is still felt in modern Japan. This is a book that requires patience and at least a rudimentary knowledge of Japanese history. But for those who wish to fully appreciate the roots of Japanese culture, it has value. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"Keene's multifarious learning and engaging manner illuminate the improbable story of the fastidious aesthete whose taste has been so important in forming the look of the modern world." -- The New Yorker

"Keene has crafted a small gem that provides a fresh and penetrating study of 15th-century Kyoto and the role of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa.... Keene is a master at placing Yoshimasa in his time and drawing out the cultural influences flowing from the Silver Pavilion. A well-written and accessible essay. Highly recommended [for] readers at all levels interested in Japanese history and culture." -- Choice

"[An] elegant, incisive new biography... Yoshimasa and the Silver Pavilion is a dense little book, packed almost to overflowing with information, and one that richly rewards the careful reader. Keene is a graceful, entertaining companion, writing with a refreshing lack of pomposity.... Yet the book is always authoritative and lucid. Anyone curious about the development of the legendary style of Japan will find it an invaluable and charming guide." -- Time Magazine

"With such admirable industry did then Yoshimasa create "the soul of Japan." And his assiduity has been matched by that of Keene, who in this short and elegant book contributes a popular account of the man and his times." -- Donald Richie, The Japan Times

"Keene has outdone himself with this exceptional book, which is based on the idea that the modern Japanese aesthetic was the creation of an exceptionally incompetent fifteenth-century shogun." -- Colorado Springs Independent

" Yoshimasa and the Silver Pavilion gives this long-neglected but critical period in Japanese history the thorough treatment it deserves." -- Sushi and Tofu

"This is a book not only for all students of Japanese history but also for all who want to understand what Keen calls "the soul of Japan."" -- Hugh Cortazzi, The Royal Society for Asian Affairs

"Keene, the prominent scholar of Japan, brings together a masterful account." -- Yumi Sakugawa, Pacific Citizen

Customer Reviews

Keene brings a chapter of Kyoto's history to life.
This is a brilliant, concise gem of a book that brings certain sights of Kyoto to life unlike any travel guide. When I visited many of the places described here, I'd no idea that any of this remarkable history had occurred.

I think this book is an essential addition to any serious Japan library, and as it is a slim text - I think it'd be a welcome and portable companion on a reader's visit to Kyoto.

Keene's study of Ashikaga Yoshimasa, who many historians call the worst shogun in Japanese history, is remarkable for its central theme: that this man was actually one of the greatest Japanese persons ever.

Keene does a decent job of recounting the historical context of Yoshimasa's life: it was an era of unending war and brutality when famine and sickness ravaged the peasantry and rich aristocrats vied for power in the most brutal fashion - beheadings, suicide and betrayal were commonplace. These same aristocrats also lead lives of dissipation - spending their lives drinking and "sporting" while the masses suffered and Kyoto was razed time after time.

But where Keene shows his brilliance is in his interpretation of the life of this failed shogun who embraced religion and the arts as an escape for the 'impure world' and in the process invented many Japanese cultural forms.

When Yoshimasa fumbles the choosing of his successor and a civil war is unleashed, he decides then and there to leave his shogun's life behind and build a mountain retreat - the so called 'silver pavilion' - where he spent his days contemplating the arts.

It is clear that an aesthete such as Yoshimasa was incapable of leading the Japanese nation in war. But Keene shows in this book that Yoshimasa's peculiar taste in art - simple unadorned wood, sliding screen doors, rustic tea utensils, and gardens filled with rare trees and stones, poetry, Chinese calligraphy, flower arrangements, No theatre and so on - served as the template for future Japanese cultural expression.

Yoshimasa's silver pavilion was thus an incubator for 'the soul of Japan,' and a location where visitors can still see the building almost exactly as it looked a half millennium ago. Now I want to visit Kyoto again with newly aware eyes.

This book's only shortcoming is its lack of explanation as to how the culture born at the silver pavilion spread throughout Japan. Yet that might require a lengthy tome, and one of the nice aspects of this history is that it can be read leisurely in a couple of days. It also features some nice color photos. Highly recommended.

Out of War and Chaos The Birth of Japanese Design
Donald Keene's latest contribution to the field of Japan studies is a masterpiece on the development of Japanese aesthetics and kokoro (heart, soul, mind), much of which evolved during the Higashiyama Period at the Silver Pavilion (Ginkaku-ji) under the leadership of Ashikaga Yoshimasa. Shogun at the time of Onin War (1467-1477), which destroyed nearly all of Kyoto, Yoshimasa was a hapless leader who devoted himself instead to the pursuit of beauty. In this Period, Noh and ink painting flourished, the tea ceremony "originated in a small room at Ginakaku-ji where Yoshimasa offered tea to his friends," and with it the Japanese art of flower arrangement was born. Keene acknowledges the judgment of most historians-that Yoshimasa was weak, extravagant, incompetent in affairs of state, and unable to end a meaningless war and its incumbent famine and suffering-yet posits that he has yet to be recognized for his contribution to Japanese arts and taste. In the midst of wholesale destruction, Yoshimasa precipitated a Japanese renaissance.
Though respecting his grandfather Yoshimitsu, the builder of the Golden Pavilion (kinkakuji), he had no interest in emulating either his life or works. Yoshimasa's Silver Pavilion stands in stark contrast to his grandfather's Golden Pavilion, the later coated in gold leaf, the former the epitome of Kyoto cool wabi sabi understatement. "The simplicity and reliance on suggestion of the buildings and gardens at Higashiyama may indicate that a man who had earlier exhausted the pleasures of extravagance had at last achieved a kind of enlightenment," writes Keene.
This concise work is a complex web of murder, chaos, and endless war that destroys everything in its wake. And, simultaneously-amazingly, ironically, unbelievably-the Period gave birth to some of Japan's best-known art forms. As an insight into medieval Kyoto, there is no better place to begin.

Excellent Book on the Soul of Japan
This book was given to me by a friend. Frankly, I wouldn't have bought it based on the back flap. Yet, Donald Keene wrote a great book explaining the importance of possibly the worst Shogun in Japanese history, Ashikaga Yoshimasa. He was a terrible military strategist and his government (especially during the Onin war) was one of the weakest in Japan's history. On the other hand, Yoshimasa was of vital importance to the Arts; calligraphy, Waka and other poetry, the cha-no-yu ceremony and painting all were sponsored by Yoshimasa. He also left the beautiful Ginkakuji, the Temple of the Silver Pavilion, for posterity. Yoshimasa's impact on Japanese culture and the arts is undeniable, even in modern day Japan.