3.3.3 Reading Japanese

 

Last update: 23 November 2008

12/3/08 (Week 13)

This will be our last class session, 6-8pm on Wednesday. (Many people have a conference to attend on 12/5.) We will go over "Love Suicides" with Alan.

11/19/08 and 11/21/08 (Week 12)

Did: On Wed (11/19), 6-8pm, we finished Jeannette's article on movies with Alan. Then on Fri (11/21), we finished Kokoro, section 2, with Alan, and then did a tiny short story ("palm of the hand" story), "Love Suicides," among ourselves.

11/14/08 (Week 11)

Did:. On 11/14/08 (Friday), we met 3-7 pm; for 2 hours we went over part 2 of Kokoro with Alan and for the next 2 hours we went over the new reading selection of Japanese movies.

Also, we will cancel class on Friday, December 5, due to a conference to be held that day. Incidentally, with Thanksgiving and cancellation on Dec. 5, our last class would actually be Friday, Nov 21, unless we were to reschedule one more session. The outlook for the rest of the semester would be as follows:

11/7 (F): 2 hours kokoro (pt 2), ourselves
11/12(W): 2 hours kokoro (pt 1), with Alan
11/14 (F): 2 hours kokoro with Alan (pt 2), plus 2 hours something new
11/21 (F): 2 hours going over the final reading with Alan, plus final exam

 

11/5/08 and 11/7/08 (Week 10)

This week we'll meet twice. On 11/5/08 (Wednesday), we'll meet from 6-8pm and we'll go over the mausoleum article. Claire will remind Alan about this class. We are all responsible for at least the first two pages; we might also go a bit further if there's time.

On 11/7/08 (Friday), we'll meet at the regular time, but Alan cannot make it. So we'll go over section two of Kokoro among ourselves, 3-5pm. We'll also select our next reading. Or, did we decide we'd read Orphan of Asia? I forget if we had a decision on this or not. Or, will Jeanette bring something?

Last week, we also discussed the possibility of continuing the class next semester, if Alan can find a GSI to teach it. A few of us also mentioned interest in setting up a similar class for reading French.

Pending issues include the following: (1) what will we read next  week, (2) will we continue this class next semester, and (3) will we have a session with the Japanese librarian.

 

10/31/08 (Week Nine)

Did: 2 hours going over mummy article with Alan (3-5pm); and 2 hours going over Kokoro (pp. 743-744, the first section) among ourselves (5-7pm).

 

10/24/08 (Week Eight)

Class was cancelled on Thursday due to request that several students attend a Friday seminar, "The Emergence of New Media in Premodern China."

 

10/17/08 (Week Seven)

Did: Go over mummy article with Alan, 3-4:30pm. Claire was sick, so we didn't go over her mausoleum article today.

Jeannette is looking into a session with the EAL Japanese librarian at a time outside of class, such as Tuesday 3-5pm.

10/10/08 (Week Six)

Did: Library resources in EAL, 3:00-5:00. Then we read Claire's mausoleum article among ourselves, 5:00-7:00.

Additional thoughts I had: During our next session with Alan, we might want to clarify the class structure (graded or S/U? exam or not? plans to continue next semester?). I found a couple sheets on language proficiency exams (from the UCB grad student handbook) that might be useful to look at, too. Also, if we get any more ahead of Alan in terms of what we have read, I wonder if one week we want to do some sort of grammar review together instead of reading ahead--for example, we could all do certain grammar worksheets, or perhaps divide up different grammatical structures and concepts (say from a grammar dictionary, or textbook) among ourselves and then each person would "teach" the others the structures they were "assigned."

10/3/08 (Week Five)

Did: 2 hours on movie article with Alan, 2 hours on mummy article among ourselves (pages 869 and 870 through line one). We also considered future readings. Next article will be Claire's on mausoluems. After that, we could do articles we bring in, something Alan brings in (such as Kant in Japanese translation), or some kanbun 漢文 (reading Chinese in the Japanese way--learning what the Japanese "markup symbols" on such texts mean), as per Alan's suggestion.

Today the possibility of meeting some weeks with Alan on Wednesday late afternoon/early evening was raised. It seems we are all free at that time. Also, if anyone wants to post technical terms on this website for your article, you can email them to me.

I think our consensus on 9/26/08 was that we’d spend a total of 8 hours on each article: 4 among ourselves, and 4 with Alan. There was a difference in opinion in exactly how we would spend those 4 hours with Alan: (1) going over material we had previously covered line by line, or (2) asking questions about the previously covered material and then moving on to new material, to the extent possible within the 2 hours we have with him. I think we decided that the person who chose the article would decide which method we’ll use each week.

For the 10/3/08 class, Cindy has decided that we will take the “directed questions plus cover new material” approach. So we should have the entire movie article prepared (up to line 1 on p. 225) for our time with Alan. For the following 2 hours, we should all prepare pages 869 and 870 of the Hong Kong mummy article.

Jeannette will check with Alan to see if he knows of any Fridays that he will definitely not come, and then see if she can arrange for us to meet the Japanese librarian at that time.

Some people wanted more information on Buddhist sources; here are four notes:
(1) For a list of 10 words from the article, translated, look on this webpage, below.
(2) For a Chinese-English Buddhist dictionary, try http://www.buddhism-dict.net/ddb/. You have to register as a guest; read the instructions.
(3) For Chinese-Chinese Buddhist dictionary, try http://sql.fgs.org.tw/webfbd/. The diacritics in the Indic words might not come through. And you might have to reset your browser encoding to view this page (to Chinese Big5).
(4) To access the Taisho Canon, go to http://cbeta.org/index.htm. The abbreviation “T” on this website means “Taisho Canon.” To find the first quotation that we have in the original Chinese, select T44, then push 執行.

You get to a page with a long list of texts, each with a number associated with them, starting from number 1835. Unfortunately, no page numbers. You select a text and can see the page numbers inside. Say we choose Text 1839. We go into the first scroll of that text, and the first line, on the left, says:
T44n1839_p0077a01(00)║

This means, “Taisho volume 44, text number 1839, page 77, register (horizontal column) a, line 1.” There are three registers on each page, a, b, and c, (top, middle, bottom, respectively—you can’t see this in the electronic version, though, it’s from the original printed version). We are looking for page 838 in volume 44. So we go back to the previous web page, fish around in different texts looking for page numbers, and eventually find that page 838 is in text #1851. Or, we remember that we are looking for the text titled 大乘義章, in which case we can find that we are looking for #1851 right off the bat. But we still have to fish around a bit in the 20 scrolls that comprise this text. We find page 838 in scroll 19 (oh, right, it told us it’s in scroll 19 in the article, too!). Unfortunately, we don’t have a line number in our article, but we read through the lines in register c and find that the original Chinese is in the following lines:

T44n1851_p0838c28(01)║二真應不同。開分為二。自德名真。
T44n1851_p0838c29(04)║隨化所現說以為應。真則是其法門之身。
T44n1851_p0839a01(05)║應則是其共世間身。是二如前涅槃章中具廣分別。

 

9/26/08 (Week Four)

Did: 1 hour discussion, 2 hours on mummy article among ourselves.

For class today we’ll look at an article on mummy-faith in Hong Kong. The following article in English, outdated and filled with mistakes though it may be, might be useful. It's short and sweet, and it includes a brief description of the same Hong Kong mummy.
Stevens, Keith. 1976. “Chinese Preserved Monks.” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 16, 292-97.

Also, since I selected this Japanese article, I thought I’d give some suggested translations for some technical terms. By the way, the citation for this article is:

永井正之 (NAGAI, Masashi). 1996. 香港のミイラ信仰.  中村璋八博士古稀記念：東洋学論集.

 

真身：true body
肉身：flesh body
禪宗：Chan school
大政藏四四， 八三八c : register c, page 838, volume 44 of the Taishoo canon
大乘義章：Essay on the Meaning of Mahāyāna
阿彌陀如來：the Tathagata Amitabha
盧舍那： Rocana [abbreviation for毘盧舍那, Vairocana]
高僧：eminent monk(s)
舍利： sarira [=relic(s)]
駒澤大學: Komazawa University
仏教学部：　Faculty of Buddhist Studies
(evidently “faculty” translates 学部 and “department” translates 科)

The Faculty of Buddhism, divided into the Department of Zen Buddhist Studies and the Department of Buddhist Studies, has a long tradition. The Department of Zen Buddhist Studies offers students a number of courses for a systematic and comprehensive study of Zen Buddhism. The study is based upon Buddhist thought and the method of Zen Meditation (Zazen). The Department also conducts intensive research on the history and doctrine of Zen Buddhism.

Departments

• Buddhist Studies
  • Zen Buddhist Studies
  • Buddhist Studies

 禅学科
 仏教学科

 

9/19/08 (Week Three)
Did: 2 hours on movie article with Alan, 2 hours on movie article among ourselves
Met in Dwinelle.

9/12/08 (Week Two)
Did: 1 hour of grammar, 2 hours on movie article among ourselves.
Met in EAL for 2 hours, in Dwinelle for 2 hours

9/5/08 (Week One)
Met with Alan Tansman in Dwinelle, EALC library; discussed class format with him.

9/2/08
Met among ourselves, initial planning session.
Met in Dwinelle, in EALC lounge.

Back to Top