Reviews for Phoenix

The average rating for Phoenix based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-12-12 00:00:00 Joanna Carmel I got interested in 10th and 11th century Japan after reading The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon. The poetry! The mid-night romantic rendezvous! The snarky gossip! I had to learn more and Ivan Morris� short social history was the perfect way to add to my knowledge. It was compulsive reading. The royalty of the Heian imperial court were seriously weird�and not just because the women painted their faces chalk white and their teeth black. �There were many occasions in daily life -- a visit to the country, for example, or the sight of the first snowfall of the year -- when the failure to compose appropriate poems was a grave social solecism.� The wrong color note paper, badly folded, could doom you to social exile, as could poor penmanship. A vast array of superstitions and taboos ruled Heian daily life along with melded Confucian, Buddhist, Shinto and Taoist beliefs and ceremonies. The imperial city was moved three times because of fears of ghosts and ill-luck. The third of the cities, Heian Kyo, was planned in perfectly systematic fashion: streets and very wide tree-lined avenues crossed each other at right angles. Only patrician families could live on the avenues. �To the north-east, a great mountain range proudly defended the city from evil influences--as well as furnishing the aristocracy with an excuse for excursions. The Kamo and Katsura rivers provided the second essential female element." The emperor was barely more than a figurehead; one great family, the Fujiwaras, held the real power.By the 10th century the Fujiwaras had imposed on the emperor a life cycle that was bound to keep him under the family's thumb. He came to the throne as a callow youth and was promptly married to a Fujiwara girl [often an aunt]; their son would be appointed crown prince, and when his father was obliged to abdicate [and take vows as a monk], usually at age thirty, the crown prince would succeed him and the cycle begin anew.Members of the upper class were almost all related and were totally uninterested in anyone outside their own charmed circle which represented about 1/10 of 1% of the population. Landholders in the provinces were scorned as too boorish to be admitted to court system. The upper ranks looked with particular scorn on military men. Ordinary peasants were viewed as members of a different species. A small pool of eligible nobility coupled with a policy of marriage politics meant inbreeding and eventually sterility, weakening the system from within.Even as early as 981 soldier-priests were marching through the capitol making demands. The fossilized, impotent capitol police and bureaucracy were increasingly unable to keep order and, while a separate warrior class had yet to develop, provincial military and manorial families were developing into a 'second aristocracy'. These unpolished provincials would ultimately bring [the Heian] world down in ruins.An essential guide for anyone who wants to understand the marvelous literature of the period, such as the epic novel,The Tale of Genji, or diaries like Sei Shonagon�s. This is a good introduction to the Heian Period. Concise, but not as much fun as this book.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-07-30 00:00:00 David Esfandi The Tale of Genji is a contender for World's First Novel, a contest that will never be settled because "novel" is sortof a subjective term and who cares, but Genji was written around 1000 CE which is a very long time ago indeed. It's super good, read it, and the thing is that Japan in 1000 CE was balls weird. So you're going to need some explanation of it, and what will you do, friend? Honestly, look, you're going to read the introduction in whatever edition of Genji you pick, that'll do it, you don't really need a whole book. You almost never need a whole book. You know what you do when you want to know more about something? See if someone wrote a New Yorker article about it. (They did.) If you want a whole shitload more, though, here it is, in the consensus best nonfiction book about the World of Genji. Does it contain spoilers? Yes. I mean, I don't feel like Genji is one of those books that's hurt a great deal by knowing the plot, but I don't know how you feel about shit like this. It's thoroughly spoiled. The other book that gets a lot of play is The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagan, which I haven't read. Anyway I mentioned that right around 1000 CE when this book was written, over in Europe someone was coming up with Beowulf, and it would be 100% accurate in every way to say that the Heian Period in Japan is basically Beowulf except with poetry instead of swords. Its closest analogue in Western Civ is, I don't know, maybe the 1700s - Dangerous Liaisons is a fair comparison, with all its letters and intrigues and its many fuckings. What will you learn in this book that hasn't been covered by my last two amazing sentences? You'll learn about the Fujiwara, who were sorta the Medicis of Japan. Genji's buddy To No Chujo is a Fujiwara. You'll learn that Japan at the time was basically just China's hick cousin, always less civilized and impressive and constantly ripping off all their cool styles. There's lots and lots of other stuff, yeah - I mean, look, this was a super interesting time. It's cool to learn about. I was so interested that I wanted to know way more about it. Even more, believe it or not, than I could get out of a New Yorker article.