Books about Momoyama from Amazon.com

.
Price: $46.34 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Following the destruction of Kyoto during the civil wars of the late fifteenth century, large-scale panoramic paintings of the city began to emerge. These enormous and intricately detailed depictions of the ancient imperial capital were unprecedented in the history of Japanese painting and remain unmatched as representations of urban life in any artistic tradition. Capitalscapes, the first book-length study of the Kyoto screens, examines their inception in the sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries, focusing on the political motivations that sparked their creation.

Close readings of the Kyoto screens reveal that they were initially commissioned by or for members of the Ashikaga shogunate and that urban panoramas reflecting the interests of both prevailing and moribund political elites were created to underscore the legitimacy of the newly ascendant Tokugawa regime. Matthew McKelway's analysis of the screens exposes their creators' masterful exploitation of ostensibly accurate depictions to convey politically biased images of Japan's capital. His overarching methodology combines a historical approach, which considers the paintings in light of contemporary reports (diaries, chronicles, ritual accounts), with a thematic one, isolating individual motifs, deciphering their visual language, and comparing them with depictions in other works.

McKelway's combined approach allows him to argue that the Kyoto screens were conceived and perpetuated as a painting genre that conveyed specific political meanings to viewers even as it provided textured details of city life. His differs significantly from previous studies, which typically taxonomize the screens according to their compositional variations or dwell on the narrow concerns of a single painting considered in isolation. Students and scholars of Japanese art will find this lavishly illustrated work especially valuable for its insights into the cityscape painting genre, while those interested in urban and political history will appreciate its bold exploration of Kyoto's past and the city's late-medieval martial elite..
Price: $48.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Japan's Momoyama period (1573-1615) was brief but dramatic, witnessing the struggles of a handful of ambitious warlords for control of the long-splintered country and then the emergence of a united Japan. It was an era of dynamic cultural development as well, for the daimyos commissioned innovative artworks to proclaim their newly acquired power. One such art was a ceramic ware known as Oribe, which, appearing mysteriously and suddenly, rose to prominence for use in the tea ceremony. Boldly painted and displaying playful new shapes, these dashing wares matched the extroverted world of the warlords. Similar stylistic and technical inventiveness characterized painting, lacquerware, and textiles of the period. Eleven essays by leading scholars and about two hundred catalogue entries present outstanding examples of all these extraordinary works and examine the social and cultural contexts in which they were created..
Price: $44.21 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In 1543 three Portuguese merchants entered a turbulent Japan, bringing with them the first firearms the Japanese had ever seen: simple matchlock muskets called arquebuses. They proved a decisive addition to the Japanese armoury, as for centuries the samurai had fought only with bow, sword and spear. In 1575, one of the greatest original thinkers in the history of samurai, Oda Nobunaga, arranged his arquebusiers in ranks three deep behind a palisade and proceeded, quite literally, to blow his opponent’s cavalry to pieces, marking the beginning of a new era in Japanese military history..
Price: $7.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]