Year: 2017
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: The Storyteller and the StoriesThe village of Motai in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, is about 2,000 kilometres away from Bishan in China, where Ou Ning and his fellow residents have developed the grassroots social visions described in Chapter Two.As far as I know, these two places have no direct connection with one another.Both suffer from the problems that assail so many small rural communities throughout East Asia and beyond-ageing populations, limited employment opportunities-but other than that, they are not particularly alike.Bishan, which once lay at the heart of the prosperous mercantile Huizhou region, is a place of old stone and brick buildings, some of which are now lovingly being restored.Motai and its slightly larger neighbouring town of Mochizuki-both now merged into the artificial Saku City-were once post-towns on the Nakasendō, one of the great roads that ran like arteries across the landscape of premodern Japan.Their old buildings are wooden-fronted; their warehouses have crumbling earthen walls.But these small places in Japan and China are like springs of water that, although far apart, are fed by the same network of underground watercourses-deep, invisible, complicated watercourses running quietly under the familiar landscape of East Asian history.On the surface sit
Source: ANU Press eBooks
Author: Tessa Morris-Suzuki
Language: English
Topic: Japanese History and Culture
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2595269567