IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities (Aug 2012)

Exploring Nagusamegusa (1418): The Semiotics of Encounter and Exchange for a Poet-Traveller in Muromachi Japan

  • Penelope Shino

DOI
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijah.1.1.02
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 1, no. 1
pp. 23 – 37

Abstract

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The paper applies the LibrAsia2012 conference theme of "exchanges and encounters" to a fifteenth-century Japanese travelogue, Nagusamegusa ("Grasses of Consolation", 1418), by the influential poet and Zen priest Shōtetsu (1381–1459). On a number of levels we can find in this work a great richness and diversity of exchanges and encounters; here the paper examines two types of encounters for their encoded significance in historical, social and cultural terms.

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