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Time in Medieval Japan

Chronopolicy

Chronopolicy is one of the analytical levels that constitute TIMEJ’s bottom-up approach. Chronopolitical analysis relates to the social meaning of time and asks how time shapes human actions and social life.

Eviatar Zerubavel, in various articles, has proposed a broad spectrum of questions associated with the social aspects of time. For example, he points out that there is meaning attached to someone “taking one’s time” to fulfill a task, and that this meaning is socially constructed and thus may differ depending on the specific cultural context. Some societies may hold that this signalizes the person is not taking the task seriously or deems it unimportant, while other societies may assess that it does in fact highlight the importance attached to the task, as the person is carefully thinking it through. Duration is only one aspect of this, the frequency or sequence of actions may have significance attached to them in a similar wayThus, Zerubavel characterizes time as a kind of “language”. This is one matter TIMEJ is investigating: What is being communicated by time, i.e. the various temporal dimensions of actionsZerubavel especially highlights the tension of expectations concerning these temporal dimensions vis-à-vis the reality of them, as well as the distribution of control over them. Anotheraspect we look at are so called “time regimes”. What temporal regimes are imposed on or favoured by a society and how can we explain this?

Finally, on a more abstract level, we draw on a theory formulated by Günther Dux who proposed the idea that the increasingly complex need of humans to coordinate actions within a society has necessitated the development of complex conceptions of time. We thus investigate how different social spheres of medieval Japan coordinated shared activities and what implications this had for time keeping. Also, following Dux’ ideas, we investigate whether time was thought of in terms of the “logic of action” which reduces all changes to the idea of someone doing something, or whether there is evidence of other paradigms, such as the idea of spontaneously changing states, or an abstract concept of time.

Literature on chronopolicy

Dux, Günter. 1992. Die Zeit in der Geschichte: ihre Entwicklungslogik vom Mythos zur Weltzeit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Zerubavel, Eviatar. 1987. „The language of time: Toward a semiotics of temporality“. The Sociological Quarterly 28, Nr. 3 (1987): 343–356.

Zerubavel, Eviatar. 1976. „Timetables and scheduling: On the social organization of time“. Sociological Inquiry 46, Nr. 2 (1976): 87–94.

Weiterführende Informationen

Latest conference:

TIMEJ Online Conference 2021 

August 18–20th 2021

International Society for the Study of Time

 

Yamaguchi University Research Institute for the Study of Time

 

Read more about our joint coference of 2018 here.

Time in Medieval Japan

Prof. Dr. Raji C. Steineck

2017-2022

Time in Medieval Japan (TIMEJ) is a research project of the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies of the University of Zurich.

It is funded by the  European Research Council (ERC) with an Advanced Grant under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 741166)

Read about the outline of the project on the official CORDIS Webpage

Read more about the TIMEJ-Artwork