La mort aux neuf visages. Un essai sur les Neuf Aspects et leur tradition littéraire au Japon

Abstract

Nine-faced Death an Essay on the Nine Aspects and their Literary Tradition in Japan. A beautiful woman's body abandoned on a lonely moor ; her rotten flesh depicted in the gruesomest details; here are some of the potent images associated with the descriptions of the Nine Aspects of the body (or, according to another interpretation of the Chinese characters, the Nine Notions of Ugliness). The seizure of illness, the progression of the decay, the end of the corporeal existence, all these aspects of natural death are assembled into nine steps, which follw the gradual change in the body from death to its utter dissolution. From the middle of the Heian era until recently, these Buddhist conceptions of the cadaver have appeared in numerous literary works, paintings and engravings. Studies of the Nine Notions has until recently been slight ; yet they constitute an enlightening commentary of the persistent claim whereby Buddhist is shown to be more tolerant than Christianity in its view of flesh. In this study based mainly upon Japanese literary sources, I have attempted to show how much these conceptions inherited from Buddhism ( Theravada and the Mahâyâna schools), have influenced the relation to the body ; notably carnal pleasure. The incorruptible flesh of anchorites against the corruptible flesh of decaying sinners. Another illustration of what Michel Foucault beautifully termed " the struggle for continence".