3 The Poetics of Incense in the Lives of Medieval Chinese Officials

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. List of Illustrations vii
4. Acknowledgments ix
5. Introduction: Scents, Sensory Colonialism, and Social Worlds in Asia 1
6. Part I Poetics and Philosophies
7. 1 On a Trail of Incense: Japan and Olfactory Thought 15
8. 2 The Shifting Smellscape of Early Medieval China: Emperor Wu’s Strange Aromatics 41
9. 3 The Poetics of Incense in the Lives of Medieval Chinese Officials 63
10. Part II Making Sensory Boundaries
11. 4 A Whiff of Southeast Asia: Tasting Durian and Kopi 87
12. 5 The Aroma of a Place in the Sunshine: Breathing in Japanese History Through the Fiction of Endˉ o Sh¯usaku 114
13. 6 Words That Smell: Caste and Odors in Hindi Dalit Autobiographies 134
14. 7 Love Is in the Air: A Study of Johnnie To’s Blind Detective 151
15. Part III Bodies—Life, Work, Death
16. 8 Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Smell of Vulnerability in Lombok, Indonesia 171
17. 9 Harnessing the Stenches of Waste: Human Bodies as Olfactory Environmental Sensors in Contemporary China 194
18. 10 The Smell of a Corpse: Olfactory Culture in a Singaporean Funeral Parlor 214
19. List of Contributors 237
20. Index 241