| This dissertation interprets the cultural role of seasonal patterns in nature--that is, ethnophenology--for the Kyoto region of Japan. The first nine chapters concern relations between the Kyoto people and the seasonal patterns of their natural environment, as mediated by their epistemology. The next three chapters examine the anthropogenic flora of South and central Japan, through the use of historical and archaeological Japanese and Chinese documents. Appendices include the author's "Kyoto Ethnobotanical Calendar", a chronological model for early Chinese botanical citation sources, and abstracts of ethnobotanical material in early Japanese and Chinese herbals, collections of poetry, and meditation problems. For comparison, subsistence fauna are documented.;A unifying theme is provided by the concept of East Asian medicine, construed to include not only drug plants but also the role of plants in the diet and in the maintenance of social and spiritual balance thought to be essential to the maintenance of health. The seasonalities of metropolitan horticulture, rural cooperation, the arts, and industrial pollution yield examples. The uniqueness of the example is defended upon the basis of the severity of East Asian winter crop desiccation, and the late spring flooding from the monsoon.;The adaptations seen in the Kyoto region relate to geographical conditions, and over two thousand years of the diffusion of plants, and knowledge associated with them from China, Siberia, and other sources.;Analysis of early botanical references demonstrates two related historical trends. First, the cumulative impact of Chinese plant lore is shown by the increase in the proportion of plants known from early Chinese sources that appear in Japanese botanical inventories of progressively later date. Second, the progressive decrease in the percentage of edible plants in horizons of increasingly recent date suggests that Neolithic Japanese botanical knowledge was at first prone towards edible species, assimilating an increasing fraction of inedible craft stock and materia medica later. Post 7th century A.D. Japanese literary sources reveal a contrary inclination towards edible species, with the exception of interest in a minority of unpalatable decorative or native plants.;In sum, this dissertation brings together a great diversity of material which shows the complex interplay of natural processes and the cultural meanings created by successive human generations in their reflections upon and interactions with nature. |
