Episode 440 - Tipping the Balance
Added 2022-06-03 16:40:04 +0000 UTCPost available here.
The genesis for this particular episode is, of course, Royall Tyler's excellent translation of the Jokyuki. While I was able to utilize bits of Azuma Kagami thanks to the lovely folks at the JHTI, only parts of said text are available--whereas Tyler's translation is very easy to find. It's also quite good; though as I've mentioned before I prefer McCullough's translation of Heike for scholarship, Tyler's is the one I use for teaching Heike and the other samurai war tales he's translated because I think he's a much more straightforward read.
In general, working more with the war tales is also something I really want to do; I've been debating some deeper dives into the samurai war tales over the summer, so there might be some episodes on that subject coming down the pipe! Hopefully that's of interest to folks.
One aspect of the Jokyuki I didn't have much time for (both due to space constraints and because it didn't fit the framing) is the heavily religious nature of the text. The entire first section is a Buddhist cosmology, and of course the themes of karma and worldly impermanence are present throughout the text. Again, given the framing, it didn't make too much sense to devote space to it in the episode proper, but it's always important to remember how central religion was to the worldview of the main actors in these events. I find that's something that can be tricky for modern students in particular to remember!
