The Daily Davis

Long story short, my East Asian History instructor is covering the Kamakura period of Japanese history, which is one of my favorite historical periods to study.

Now, I do not consider myself to be a Japanophile, and least not, a “weeaboo”, but there is something inherently fascinating about Japanese history in general. Compared to China, Japan was almost entirely isolated throughout it’s existence. This is not to downplay the importance, and my love of Chinese history, but this aspect of isolation in Japan had created a very interesting, and at times, a little odd, cultural and historical landscape. Note that my judgments of oddness are dictated by my entirely Southern California sensibilities and perspective, and thus must be taken with a grain of salt.

I’ve elaborated before on my fascination with Feudal societies, and the developments of Feudalism in Japan and Western Europe. I find these developments to be more interesting than the developments of similar art and architectural in isolated countries. The most obvious examples of these being pyramids and depictions of “space men” in ancient culture. These concepts have a geometric and deity-conceptual basis, respectively. Feudalism is almost a complete cultural and political de-evolution for societies that were, arguably doing somewhat well. This is of course barring the neglect and abuse of the lowest rungs of society, but what successful society does not do that? Indeed, Feudalism is ultimately the result of societies that are working, who eventually pause to reflect, and then immediately decide to make terrible governing choices and decentralize.

These terrible governing choices almost always boil down into a single concept: don’t let your military personnel become surplus. So much of Feudalism is a response by poor, bored warriors who jump to the logical conclusion that they can change their lot in life by force. Combining these thrill-seekers with a perpetually unhappy lower-class, and you have a powder-keg of decentralized government ready to explode in the face of the society you have built up. Explosions are messy, much like the Feudalistic mess that follows.

I was intending to write more about Japanese history, but it became something about Feudalism. Oh well.

Rough introduction I am working with for a poetry analysis in my literature class. Thoughts are appreciated. I am trying something a little different here. Not going so structured and rigid as I do with most of my academic papers. I still have the thesis at the end, but the text prior to the paragraph should be a little more jazzed up than a lot of my other stuff.

A lone statue stands in the desert, a sign of a ruler from ages prior. It is worn down to just the legs and the head. Separated from each other, the head lies in the sand with a sneer of “cold command”. A traveler describes this sight, and the words of the ruler presented at its base; “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!” (Shelley 590). This is the literal interpretation of the poem “Ozymandias”, written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1817. On the surface, it is simply a second hand description from a traveler of a statue in the desert he once saw, but as with many poems, there is more to it than can be inferred from a literal analysis. In the case of “Ozymandias” a deeper interpretation on the nature of legacies can be inferred through textual evidence and historical context.

This would be the second time in this literature class where I have focused on the historical context of a work. Prior to this, the discussion was about the writings of Langston Hughes during the Harlem Renaissance.

I think this double major in literature and history is a good idea, as I seem to naturally move toward that direction.

Digging through my archives a bit. This paper was done for a History class last year. Got a great grade on it, and was asked to revise it for an Honors conference, but never got around to it. It is a bit dry to read through, but I thought it would be good to share regardless. Probably a lot of minor punctuation and grammatical errors, as my work always seems to have a lot of them. This is probably the paper that got me interested in the honors program, as the instructor is the head of the Honors society for the campus.

Ultimately, I love the subject, as history rocks, but I feel as though my execution is lacking. I hope maybe, one day, to make this much more interesting to read. To those of you brave to slog through it now, however, I give you my thanks. The essay here is presented as a direct paste of my Open Office Document, which I believe was the Final Draft. It is presented without annotations.

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