May 18, 2012

Collection Name: Drachen Foundation Collection

Collection Number: 2608

Post Type: Book

This item was entered by Matthew Sutton. They assume full responsibility for all content.

Artist or Author: Stewart Culin

Creation Year: 1991

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ISBN: 0486265935 Language: English Description: In this classic study, first published in 1895, a leading anthropologist maintains that games "must be regarded not as conscious inventions, but as survivals from primitive conditions, under which they originated in magical rites, and chiefly as a means of divination. Based upon certain fundamental conceptions of the universe, they are characterized by a certain sameness, if not identity, throughout the world...They furnish...the most perfect existing evidence of the underlying foundation of mythic concepts upon which so much of the fabric of our culture is built..."

Because Culin believed that modern games in the West had almost completely lost their original meaning, and that it was practically impossible to trace them back to their earliest origins, he turned to the East, specifically Korea, where many games still survived that connected the present to the remote past. Nearly 100 Korean games are described: snow-man, doll play, kite fighting, wind-mill, grass gaming, show shooting, five gateways, ets. Over 170 photographs and illustrations enhance the text; most of the illustrations are by native artists.

1895 by Stuart Culin

177 pages

Geographic: Japan, Peoples Republic of China

Materials: Paper

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