Projekte Arokay  Projekte

Digital Literary Map of Japan　　日本のデジタル文学地図

The project aims at displaying geographical spots within Japan that convey literary associations and had a significant impact on the cultural landscape of Japan. Names of famous places – called utamakura in Japanese - came to be used in poetry from around the 8th century and had been in use since then, not only in poems but also in prose literature, in the Japanese theater and in pictorial images. Their importance lies in the poetic imagery they convey, as they function as an intertextual reference: mentioning a famous poetic spot by name evokes a series of seasonal, scenic and atmospheric associations. Without the knowledge of this imagery, it is hardly possible to understand premodern texts.

This bilingual (Japanese-English) project aims at a web application with an online database that makes information on these spots easily accessible.

The “Digital Literary Map of Japan (DLM)” started 2016 as a project in the framework of the Marsilius Kolleg in Heidelberg, and has been supported since then by the National Institute of Japanese Literature, the Faculty of Letters of Ōsaka University, and the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (Kaken 2021-25). The collaboration is carried out with Prof. Iikura Yōichi and Prof. Nakao Kaoru from Ōsaka University.

The application is hosted by the National Institute of Japanese Literature.

Direct access: https://literarymaps.nijl.ac.jp.

Bunron

Die Zeitschrift Bunron („Text und Theorie“) erscheint seit 2014 und ist auf literaturwissenschaftlich orientierte Beiträge der textbezogenen Japanforschung spezialisiert. Sie veröffentlicht wissenschaftliche Studien, Übersetzungen, Rezensionen sowie Berichte über Tagungen und laufende Projekte. Die Zeitschrift ist mehrsprachig und publiziert Beiträge auf Deutsch, Japanisch, Englisch und Französisch.

Mitherausgeberinnen: Prof. Dr. Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt und Dr. Barbara Geilhorn.
www.bunron.org