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Book review: A Sense of Place
Jan. 13th, 2014 11:58Bibliographic Data: Spafford, David. A Sense of Place: The Political Landscape in Late Medieval Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013. [read in manuscript as The Persistent Medieval: Land and Place in Eastern Japan, 1450-1525.]
Main Argument: Focusing not on the conflicts that took place in the Kantô plain (Musashino) in the time period but on the Kantô plain itself and "how that 'placeness' was constituted in writings about place" (2), Spafford argues that the sources, if freed from the teleological reading towards reunification, reveal the "persistent medieval," the "continuity, the perception of continuity, and the fiction of continuity" (12) of the medieval order, or at least "of a spatial syntax that was centuries old" (1), that magnates in the Kantô clung to amidst the shattering experience of decades of war and which conditioned their ("inadequate") responses to the changes that war wrought, directly and indirectly. "It is, in the best of Japanese traditions, a losers' history, although, ironically, defeat would only become apparent, and inevitable, in the decades that follow the end of this study" (17). Nor, Spafford insists, is his emphasis on continuities "meant to keep change at bay … both subtle shifts and cataclysmic displacement were part of the experience of regional elites" (28).
Historiographical Engagement: Very, very strongly influenced by Mary Elizabeth Berry's The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto (as one might imagine from one of Prof. Berry's students) and heavily engaged in the "spatial turn" historiography that has overtaken work on premodern Japan over the last ten to twenty years, as well as with a good deal of historiography around comparable periods and concerns on the late medieval/early modern side in Europe.
( Continuity amidst change over time )
Critical assessment: I want to say at the beginning that I marvel at Spafford's ability to convey the notoriously tortured histories of medieval institutions and historical figures with what has to be the maximum possible brevity and clarity. That a few passages remain convoluted is a testament to the labyrinthine nature of the historical record.
This is an excellent, very readable study that very much benefits from Spafford's familiarity with the literature on medieval Europe (indeed, lapsed classicists like me will be pleased by the more than garnish of Latin and Italian references), to say nothing of his familiarity with the Japanese literature on these topics. Although change over time is the historian's stock in trade, Spafford's inversion of that formula here pays off in spades. This is certainly one of the best books I have read about medieval Japan.
Further reading: Thomas N. Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government; Bruce Batten, To the Ends of Japan: Premodern Frontiers, Boundaries, and Interactions.
Meta notes: Don't make your acknowledgments too long.
Main Argument: Focusing not on the conflicts that took place in the Kantô plain (Musashino) in the time period but on the Kantô plain itself and "how that 'placeness' was constituted in writings about place" (2), Spafford argues that the sources, if freed from the teleological reading towards reunification, reveal the "persistent medieval," the "continuity, the perception of continuity, and the fiction of continuity" (12) of the medieval order, or at least "of a spatial syntax that was centuries old" (1), that magnates in the Kantô clung to amidst the shattering experience of decades of war and which conditioned their ("inadequate") responses to the changes that war wrought, directly and indirectly. "It is, in the best of Japanese traditions, a losers' history, although, ironically, defeat would only become apparent, and inevitable, in the decades that follow the end of this study" (17). Nor, Spafford insists, is his emphasis on continuities "meant to keep change at bay … both subtle shifts and cataclysmic displacement were part of the experience of regional elites" (28).
Historiographical Engagement: Very, very strongly influenced by Mary Elizabeth Berry's The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto (as one might imagine from one of Prof. Berry's students) and heavily engaged in the "spatial turn" historiography that has overtaken work on premodern Japan over the last ten to twenty years, as well as with a good deal of historiography around comparable periods and concerns on the late medieval/early modern side in Europe.
( Continuity amidst change over time )
Critical assessment: I want to say at the beginning that I marvel at Spafford's ability to convey the notoriously tortured histories of medieval institutions and historical figures with what has to be the maximum possible brevity and clarity. That a few passages remain convoluted is a testament to the labyrinthine nature of the historical record.
This is an excellent, very readable study that very much benefits from Spafford's familiarity with the literature on medieval Europe (indeed, lapsed classicists like me will be pleased by the more than garnish of Latin and Italian references), to say nothing of his familiarity with the Japanese literature on these topics. Although change over time is the historian's stock in trade, Spafford's inversion of that formula here pays off in spades. This is certainly one of the best books I have read about medieval Japan.
Further reading: Thomas N. Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government; Bruce Batten, To the Ends of Japan: Premodern Frontiers, Boundaries, and Interactions.
Meta notes: Don't make your acknowledgments too long.