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Thoreau's Concept of Spring : A Comparative Study with the Japanese 24 Seasonal Periods and 72 Spells (近藤正先生退職記念号)
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Kondo, Tadashi |
| Copyright Year | 2014 |
| Abstract | Introduction What is the concept of spring? You ask this apparently simple question, and you will get a thousand different answers. But I think few of them will clearly explain what spring means. This is in fact a complex question, involving the relation between our life and the Earth. Then let me ask a simpler one: When does the spring begin? The American news media has one answer to this. On the morning of the Spring Equinox all the TV news in America begin with a cheerful greeting: “Hi, folks, this is the beginning of spring...” But do we all agree with this? A Japanese TV broadcaster would declare the beginning of spring on February 4th. I would like to say that the American news media represents the modern concept of spring, while Japanese news media represents the classical concept. This is not an East-West difference, but a classic-modern difference. We know that the Celtic calendar is similar to the Japanese classical calendar. Then how do you define the concept of spring, and when does it begin and end? Apparently, it was not easy for Henry David Thoreau in his Journal and Walden to find a particular day when the season of spring begins. In this paper I will look into Thoreau’s Journal and Walden, and see how he comes out of a series of spring signs. Let me first introduce two kinds of classical Japanese calendars. One is called 24 Seasonal Periods, or simply 24SP, or Nijushi-sekki in Japanese. The other is called 72 Seasonal Spells, or simply 72 Spells, or Shichijuni-ko in Japanese. The 24SP divides one year into 24 periods, each consisting of about 15 days. The 72 Spells, on the other hand, divides one year into 72 segments, each of which consists of about five days. It is fairly close to the Western concept of a week, but the difference is that each segment in the 72-spell system has a unique name which corresponds to a particular seasonal phenomenon. So you can have a chain of seasonal images which spans one year. It is a |
| Starting Page | 9 |
| Ending Page | 32 |
| Page Count | 24 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Volume Number | 45 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://repository.seikei.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/10928/576/1/keizai-45-1_9-32.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
