Reading Medieval Ruins
Urban Life and Destruction in Sixteenth-Century Japan

An innovative new study of daily life and urban society in late medieval Japan.

Morgan Pitelka (Author)

9781009069977, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 October 2023

256 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.375 kg

'… vital for understanding urbanization, material culture, and politics in sixteenth-century Japan, as well as modern commemorations of the period.' Peter D. Shapinsky, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies

The Japanese provincial city of Ichijōdani was destroyed in the civil wars of the late sixteenth century but never rebuilt. Archaeological excavations have since uncovered the most detailed late medieval urban site in the country. Drawing on analysis of specific excavated objects and decades of archaeological evidence to study daily life in Ichijōdani, Reading Medieval Ruins in Sixteenth-Century Japan illuminates the city's layout, the possessions and houses of its residents, its politics and experience of war, and religious and cultural networks. Morgan Pitelka demonstrates how provincial centers could be dynamic and vibrant nodes of industrial, cultural, economic, and political entrepreneurship and sophistication. In this study a new and vital understanding of late medieval society is revealed, one in which Ichijôdani played a central role in the vibrant age of Japan's sixteenth century.

Acknowledgements
Prologue
1. A provincial palace city as an urban space
2. The material culture of urban life
3. Late medieval warlords and the agglomeration of power
4. The material foundations of faith
5. Culture and sociability in the provinces
6. Urban destruction in late medieval japan
Epilogue: The excavated nation on display
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Urban communities [JFSG], Society & culture: general [JF], Archaeology [HD], Medieval history [HBLC1], Asian history [HBJF]