What is 'bianxiang'? - on the relationship between Dunhuang art and Dunhuang literature
Article Abstract:
'Bianxiang' paintings from the 5th to twelfth centuries in Dunhuang, China, were thought to be visual aids to accompany 'bianwen' storytelling performances. However, the relationship between 'bianxiang' and 'bianwen' was undoubtedly much more complex. The cave murals were executed for devotional reasons and could not have been used in storytelling performances. Furthermore, examination of a number of murals depicting the 'Subjugation of demons' shows that the visual composition followed its own spatial logic, which later influenced the narrative structure of the 'bianwen' text.
Publication Name: Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
Subject: Regional focus/area studies
ISSN: 0073-0548
Year: 1992
User Contributions:
Comment about this article or add new information about this topic:
Japanese perceptions of China: the Sinophilic fiction of Tanizaki Jun'ichiro
Article Abstract:
Twentieth-century Japanese novelist Tanizaki Jun'ichiro took advantage of the ambiguous cultural hierarchy between China and Japan by writing stories of Japanese travelers' observations of life in China. Tanizaki aestheticized the Otherness of Chinese culture. He objectified Chinese women into erotic, exotic muses while lamenting the plainness and domesticity of Japanese women.
Publication Name: Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
Subject: Regional focus/area studies
ISSN: 0073-0548
Year: 1999
User Contributions:
Comment about this article or add new information about this topic:
- Abstracts: The Meiji woman writer "amidst a forest of beards." (Japanese literature during the Meiji period) The controversy over music and "sadness" and changing conceptions of the 'qin' in middle period China
- Abstracts: State, cultivator, land: determination of land tenures in early modern Japan reconsidered. Who are the Cuyonon? Ethnic identity in the modern Philippines
- Abstracts: "No whining": visitation restrictions in American hospitals and their impact on health care. A note on the origin and meaning of bold hives in the American South