Furusato (home, hometown, and/or place of origin) is a revered and idealized concept in Japan. On an individual level, it plays a central role in personal identity; in a broader social and cultural milieu, it is constitutive of a sense of nostalgia for a romanticized and impossible past; and in the political and legal realms, it connects with ideas of Japaneseness and the construction of foreign others. While the specific forms it takes in context provide a Japanese veneer to the idea of furusato, it in fact finds close analogues in ideas of ‘home’ and ‘origin’ around the world. This volume collects essays exploring furusato and its cognates in other languages and regions. 14 scholars from Japan and Europe employ a diverse array of disciplinary tools, drawing from history, philosophy, literature, anthropology, religious studies, and art history, to map out the contours of home and elucidate the meanings contained within it.
Christopher Craig is Associate Professor of Japanese History at Tohoku University in Japan. Enrico Fongaro is Associate Professor of Italian and Western Aesthetics at Tohoku University in Japan. Aldo Tollini is Retired Professor at the Department of Asian and North African Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
Editors’ PrefaceFurusato in Japanese Buddhism as a spiritual place PART IFURUSATO IN IMAGE AND IMAGINATIONDutch art theory at home in Japan: an abridged historyof Gerard de Lairesse’s Groot Schilderboek’s presencein Japan and its influence on Japanese Art The Great East Japan Earthquake and Furusato/Home.Towards furusato as a Sacred Space The Rediscovery of Furusato and the Inheritance of Folklore:A Case Study of Yamashiro, Tokushima Prefecture PART IIBEING AT HOMEThe Place and the Way: Heidegger, Matsuo Bashō,and Art as Being-at-Home Building a Home in the World: Belonging in the Wilderness Transience and the Promise of Home: ReconceptualisingHomelessness through Heidegger and Nietzsche PART IIIFURUSATO ACROSS SPACEQiaoxiang and Furusato: A Comparative Study of Homes ofOverseas Chinese and Japanese Emigrants Escaping home, Finding Home: The Search for Identity inRecreational Travel in the Late Edo Period From Ibaraki to Edo/Tokyo: How the Earthquake CatfishFound a New Home in the Capital PART IVFURUSATO IN LITERATUREFurusato in the first Japanese translation of the Song ofRoland by Ban Takeo “Homeland” in the Discourses of Collective Identity ofthe Early 19th Century in Japan and Central Europe Reasoning about Furusato as the Origin of Life (生命) and Spirit (心) Modern Yucatec Mayan Literature and the Concept of Home, Mayab