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CONTEXTS |
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1600–1868 Edo period: Tokugawa family establishes dynasty of
shoguns who rule from Edo (present-day Tokyo)
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1609 Commercial publishing begins in Japan
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1616–1660 Imperial family commissions the Katsura Detached
Palace (icon of modernism for 20th-century architects) 1620 The
Mayflower carries Pilgrims to America
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ca. 1620–1716 Sotatsu and Korin create masterpieces of Japanese
screen painting
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1627 Korea becomes a tributary state of China
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1639 Aesop's Fables translated into Japanese
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1639 Shogun proclaims policy of national isolation, expelling
Portuguese and banning Christianity and foreign travel
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1682 The Life of a Sensuous Man (Ihara Saikaku) launches
comic realism and popular fiction
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1686 The Barrelmaker Brimful of Love published in Ihara
Saikaku's collection Five Women Who Loved Love
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| 1690–1694
The Narrow Road of the Interior (Matsuo
Basho), verse inset in a travel
memoir written by the foremost haiku poet |
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1721 The Love Suicides at Amijima (Chikamatsu Monzaemon),
a masterpiece among tragedies of fatal love written for the puppet
theater
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| 1745
Haiku poet Yosa Buson anticipates modern free verse with
innovative poems in his Elegy to Hokuju Rosen
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| 1748
The Treasury of Loyal Retainers (Takeda Izumo
II), a popular play immortalizing the fealty of samurai
who avenge their master's death |
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| 1758–1801
Studies by Motoori Norinaga revive interest in the
Ten Thousand Leaves, the Tale of Genji,
and other Japanese classics |
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1760s Harunobu inaugurates heyday of color woodblock print
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1769–1800 James Watt's refinements of the steam engine fuel
Industrial Revolution
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1770–1790 Center of literary activity shifts from Kyoto-Osaka
area eastward to Edo (present-day Tokyo)
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1770–1790
Glory days of kabuki with actor Ichikawa Danjuro V |
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ca. 1776 Tales of Moonlight and Rain (Ueda Akinari), a
collection of supernatural stories, including Bewitched
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1776 American colonies adopt the Declaration of Independence
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1790 Utamaro's portraits of women add psychological depth to
woodblock print tradition
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1810–1880 Landscapes by Hokusai and Hiroshige take art of
woodblock print to its zenith
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