Royall Tyler

The war between the Heike and Genji clans in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is among the most compelling and significant moments in Japan’s history, immortalized in The Tale of the Heike. Beyond the events recorded in this canonical text, the conflicts of the surrounding years are crucial to medieval Japanese culture and history. In 1156, power began to slip away from the court nobility in Kyoto. A shogunate was later founded in Kamakura, and in 1221, it won a decisive victory over the court.The three war tales translated in this book tell the story of these critical decades, vividly recording stages in the passage from rule by the imperial court in Kyoto to rule by the warrior government in Kamakura. “The Tale of the Hogen Years” recounts a deposed emperor’s disastrous attempt to regain the throne in 1156. “The Tale of the Heiji Years” narrates a bloody clash between rival courtier factions in 1159. “An Account of the Jokyu Years” records Kamakura’s victory over the imperial attempt to overthrow it in 1221. These works do not simply complete the story of The Tale of the Heike—they are classics of Japanese literature in their own right. Royall Tyler’s lively translation masterfully conveys the nature of medieval Japanese warfare, rendering aristocratic power politics and the brutal realities of violence with equal aplomb. The Dawn of the Warrior Age is an essential book for readers interested in premodern Japanese history and literature.

The war between the Heike and Genji clans in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is among the most compelling and significant moments in Japan’s history, immortalized in The Tale of the Heike. Beyond the events recorded in this canonical text, the conflicts of the surrounding years are crucial to medieval Japanese culture and history. In 1156, power began to slip away from the court nobility in Kyoto. A shogunate was later founded in Kamakura, and in 1221, it won a decisive victory over the court.The three war tales translated in this book tell the story of these critical decades, vividly recording stages in the passage from rule by the imperial court in Kyoto to rule by the warrior government in Kamakura. “The Tale of the Hogen Years” recounts a deposed emperor’s disastrous attempt to regain the throne in 1156. “The Tale of the Heiji Years” narrates a bloody clash between rival courtier factions in 1159. “An Account of the Jokyu Years” records Kamakura’s victory over the imperial attempt to overthrow it in 1221. These works do not simply complete the story of The Tale of the Heike—they are classics of Japanese literature in their own right. Royall Tyler’s lively translation masterfully conveys the nature of medieval Japanese warfare, rendering aristocratic power politics and the brutal realities of violence with equal aplomb. The Dawn of the Warrior Age is an essential book for readers interested in premodern Japanese history and literature.

The Contrast "", has been considered a very important part of the human history, but is currently not available in printed formats. Hence so that this work is never forgotten we have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format so that it is never forgotten and always remembered by the present and future generations. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed.

The seven essays in this book present an in-depth reading of The Tale of Genji. They are entitled "Genji and Murasaki: Between Love and Pride"; "Genji and Suzaku: The Disaster of the Third Princess"; "Genji and Suzaku: The Possibility of Ukifune"; "Genji and the Luck of the Sea"; "Pity Poor Kaoru"; "Two Post-Genji Tales on The Tale of Genji"; and "Feminine Veils over Visions of the Male."

In this annotated translation and study of an early fourteenth-century Japanese devotional picture scroll set, Royall Tyler illuminates the complex relationships between medieval Japanese religion and politics, text, and art. The Kasuga Gongen genki ("The Miracles of the Kasuga Deity") mingles text and painting on silk to tell the tale of miraculous events at the Kasuga shrine in Nara, a site favored by the dominant Fujiwara clan for centuries. The work's values are aristocratic, but the text sheds light on the syncretic nature of the era's religious practices, allowing Tyler to collapse the distinction between high and low forms of medieval Japanese religion. Tyler provides a detailed examination of the scrolls, the shrine, and their history and political role. He also elucidates the scrolls' relationship to literary genre and religious practice, including the interaction between Shintoism and Buddhism. His copious annotations describe the work's historical context, as well as its religious and cultural influences. This study is essential for scholars of religion, art historians, and cultural historians alike.