Higashiyama culture
The Higashiyama culture ( Japanese 東山 文化 , Higashiyama bunka , literally: "Ostberg culture") describes a cultural heyday in the Muromachi period of the 15th century under Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa . The Higashiyama culture was instrumental in the development of numerous traditional Japanese arts. Their influence can still be felt today.
From 1483 Yoshimasa devoted himself fully to his life as an esthete, far from politics. Under his patronage, a new artistic culture developed according to his aesthetic ideas. The Zen concepts of wabi ( 侘 び ) and yūgen ( 幽 玄 ) were particularly influential . The center of culture was Yoshimasa's retirement home in the Higashiyama Palace , today's Jishō-ji . The name goes back to the location of the palace on the eastern mountains of Kyoto . The importance of the new arts is clear from the fact that they have all survived to the present day. They have had a strong impact on Japanese culture and now often stand for "Japanese".
An overview of the arts that developed:
- New forms of poetry: Renga ( 連 歌 , German "chain poems") and Kanshi ( 漢詩 , German "Chinese poems")
- Flower arrangement , called Ikebana ( 生 け 花 ) or Kadō ( 華 道 , dt. "Path of Flowers")
- Tea ceremony , called Sadō ( 茶道 , dt. "Way of tea") or Cha no yu ( 茶 の の , dt. "Water of tea")
- Suibokuga pictures ( 水墨画 )
- New forms of theater: Nō ( 能 ) and Kyōgen ( 狂言 )
- Kare-san-sui gardens ( 枯 山水 )
- Shoin architecture ( 書院 造 り , shoin-zukuri )
literature
- John Whitney Hall (Ed.): Japan in the Muromachi Age . University Press, Ithaca, NY 2001, ISBN 1885445091 (reprinted from Berkeley, Calif. 1977 edition).
- Donald Keene : Yoshimasa and the Silver Pavilion. The Creation of the Soul of Japan . Columbia University Press, New York 2003, ISBN 0-231-13056-2 .
- Herbert Paul Varley: The Ōnin War. History of its origins and backgrounds . Columbia University Press, New York 1967.