Domesticating Kagerō:A Love That Dares Speak Its Name Joshua S. Mostow (bio) Mémoires d'une éphémère (954-974) par la mère de Fujiwara no Michitsuna. Translation and commentary by Jacqueline Pigeot. Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Japonaises, 2006. Distributed by De Boccard. 342 pages. Softcover €23.00. It often seems these days that there is not much of a "field" of premodern Japanese literature outside of Japan. Perhaps part of the reason is the shortage of dialogue between scholars. This may be partially due to our small numbers: every new book is still often the first treatment of its subject outside of works in Japanese, and so no one else has written on the topic. But I think we have, maybe for good reasons, taught our students to avoid conflict. In any event, even dissertations these days rarely seem to start with a review of the previous scholarly literature. Magisterial works of the past century, Konishi Jin'ichi's A History of Japanese Literature,1 Robert Brower and Earl Miner's Japanese Court Poetry,2 Katō Shūichi's A History of Japanese Literature,3 even Donald Keene's multivolume history,4 are passed over in silence. Book reviews, too, do not often lead to debate. There are not many places to turn to for the dialogue that, it seems to me, is a necessary element for a true "field," let alone a "discipline." Which is why Jacqueline Pigeot's translation and study of Kagerō nikki is such a pleasant change. In addition to the translation proper, Pigeot includes two thoughtful "commentaires" that fully, if not completely, engage the previous scholarship on this and related texts that has appeared in not only French and Japanese, but English and Russian as well. Indeed, their length alone—the two in combination come to over one hundred pages—means that they are the most extended treatment to date of Kagerō in any language other than Japanese. [End Page 137] When speaking with French Japanologists, should the subject of Jacqueline Pigeot come up, one is bound to hear her praised for the quality of her French. Mme Pigeot is a recognized stylist in her own tongue, and it is just such a qualification that led to an invitation to join the Collège de France, an invitation that when she declined it was not offered to any other member of her scholarly cohort. I will therefore not venture to make any comments as to the aesthetic quality of her translation of Kagerō. Instead, I would like to review what Pigeot's work can offer those of us who come to it with research-oriented, "reading knowledge" French. For this reason, I will pay more attention to Pigeot's commentary and her arguments than to the translation itself. The first commentary focuses on the life of Kagerō's author, Michitsuna no Haha , and her epoch, while the second situates Kagerō in the development of Japanese literature, emphasizing its pioneering nature. Especially in English criticism, Michitsuna no Haha and her diary have invited explicitly feminist readings, both through Sonja Arntzen's 1997 translation,5 which aimed for a specifically "feminine" prose style, and through Edith Sarra's Fictions of Femininity.6 As we shall see, Pigeot places her interpretation somewhat in contradistinction to such readings. On the other hand, recent discussions in Japanese and English have endeavored to place Kagerō in its political context, and of this approach as well Pigeot shows herself to be wary. "Commentaire I" starts with the biography of Michitsuna no Haha and what can be told of her life as presented in Kagerō, under such topics as "marriage and conjugal life," "mother and children," "social life," "travels," and "beliefs and skepticism." Interestingly enough, Pigeot's main scholarly interlocutor in this chapter is the American scholar Edith Sarra. The engagement starts when Pigeot, speaking of Kagerō as "unvarnished testimony of the polygamous regime" (p. 210), notes that commentators have attributed women's lack of "serenity" in this system "to sexual frustration, to an insatiable desire for possession, or (let us dare the word) to rejected love" (de la frustration sexuelle, d'un désir...