Furusato (home, hometown, and/or place of origin) is a revered and idealized concept in Japan. On an individual level, it plays a central role in personal identity; in a broader social and cultural milieu, it is constitutive of a sense of nostalgia for a romanticized and impossible past; and in the political and legal realms, it connects with ideas of Japaneseness and the construction of foreign others. While the specific forms it takes in context give the idea of furusato a Japanese veneer, however, it in fact has close analogues in ideas of ‘home’ and ‘origin’ around the world.
This volume collects essays exploring furusato and its cognates in other languages and regions. 14 scholars from Japan and Europe employ a diverse array of disciplinary tools, drawing from history, philosophy, literature, anthropology, religious studies, and art history, to map out the contours of home and elucidate the meanings contained within it.
Editors’ Preface
Furusato in Japanese Buddhism as a spiritual place
PART I
FURUSATO IN IMAGE AND IMAGINATION
Dutch art theory at home in Japan: an abridged history
of Gerard de Lairesse’s Groot Schilderboek’s presence
in Japan and its influence on Japanese Art
The Great East Japan Earthquake and Furusato/Home.
Towards furusato as a Sacred Space
The Rediscovery of Furusato and the Inheritance of Folklore:
A Case Study of Yamashiro, Tokushima Prefecture
PART II
BEING AT HOME
The Place and the Way: Heidegger, Matsuo Bashō,
and Art as Being-at-Home
Building a Home in the World: Belonging in the Wilderness
Transience and the Promise of Home: Reconceptualising
Homelessness through Heidegger and Nietzsche
PART III
FURUSATO ACROSS SPACE
Qiaoxiang and Furusato: A Comparative Study of Homes of
Overseas Chinese and Japanese Emigrants
Escaping home, Finding Home: The Search for Identity in
Recreational Travel in the Late Edo Period
From Ibaraki to Edo/Tokyo: How the Earthquake Catfish
Found a New Home in the Capital
PART IV
FURUSATO IN LITERATURE
Furusato in the first Japanese translation of the Song of
Roland by Ban Takeo
“Homeland” in the Discourses of Collective Identity of
the Early 19th Century in Japan and Central Europe
Reasoning about Furusato as the Origin of Life (生命) and Spirit (心)
Modern Yucatec Mayan Literature and the Concept of Home, Mayab
