Ise Monogatari Research Articles

Five Portraits of Male Friendship in the Ise monogatari

Five Portraits of Male Friendship in the Ise monogatari

Allegories of Desire. Poetry and Eroticism in Ise Monogatari Zuino

Allegories of Desire. Poetry and Eroticism in Ise Monogatari Zuino

物語の越境と供犠 : 『伊勢物語』のばあい( を越境する)

物語の越境と供犠 : 『伊勢物語』のばあい( を越境する)

The Making of a Femme Fatale. Ono no Komachi in the Early Medieval Commentaries

W ITH their compressed lyricism and the bold simplicity of their visual images, the medieval noh plays have made a lasting impression on the imagination of Japan and, indeed, the world. The noh version of a particular famous character is often the one that has mattered most over the centuries, supplying the defining characteristics and preoccupations by which that character has been understood and known. This is certainly the case with the figure of the ninth-century woman poet Ono no Komachi ,JffJ4'r. The five plays featuring her in the active noh repertoire vividly present the salient motifs for which she has subsequently been known: her poetic talent, her seductive beauty in her youth, her haughty cruelty toward men, and the karmic consequences of that cruelty, an old age of hardship and pain. Until quite recently, scholars both in Japan and the West have assumed that the medieval noh playwrights based their interpretation of figures from the past on direct reading of the classical corpus. Most twentieth-century scholars have taken for granted that, by turning to the texts cited by the playwrights, well-known classics such as Genji Monogatari k4t` or Ise Monogatari S fz12 we have access to the same sources that informed the influential plays.

The Aesthetics of Discontent: Politics and Reclusion in Medieval Japanese Literature. By Michele Marra. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991. x, 222 pp.

This series of interpretations of selected classics examines premodern Japanese literature from the perspective of conflictual ideologies. Professor Marra's analysis of such works as the Ise Monogatari, the Hojoki, and Tsurezuregusa highlights the existence of discontent in the authors of the so-called high tradition and explains the means these authors used to express their social dissatisfaction in literary texts. His aim is to recover the validity of the historicist approach in literary studies by focusing on the importance of the context in the formation of the text. The text is seen as a product of ideological manipulation on the part of those who, by reading, writing or editing, appropriate it according to specific and private concerns. Professor Marra displays both sensitivity to the texts and a comprehensive grasp of Japanese and Western scholarship in making his argument that aesthetics and politics in premodern Japanese literature are mutually defining.

Shunsho's Furyu Nishiki‐e Ise Monogatari (Tales of Ise)

Shunsho's Furyu Nishiki‐e Ise Monogatari (Tales of Ise)

Shunsho's Furyu Nishiki-e Ise Monogatari (Tales of Ise) Introduction of material

Shunsho's Furyu Nishiki-e Ise Monogatari (Tales of Ise) Introduction of material

The Sixth Dan of Ise Monogatari(A Reading)

The Sixth Dan of Ise Monogatari(A Reading)

Translation and Difference—A Review Article

THROUGHOUT HER CAREER Helen McCullough has enjoyed a solid reputation as a meticulous translator of premodern Japanese texts. She has, on the whole, chosen to deal with material that leans toward the historicoliterary, rather than the more strictly literary, spectrum. In Japan such texts are commonly known by the terms gunki monogatari, tales of war, or rekishi monogatari, tales of history. Her numerous publications include a translation of Gikeiki, a text depicting the life of the tragic warrior Minamoto Yoshitsune (1159-89) and more recently, in conjunction with William McCullough, a rendering of Eiga monogatari, a narrative history of tenthand eleventh-century Japan. By 1968 McCullough had turned her considerable energies from chronicles written in prose to a mid-tenth-century text of poetry plus prose, Ise monogatari, an uta monogatari, tales of poems. An exceedingly difficult text to classify in terms of its literary nature and its status in Heian letters, Ise afforded McCullough the opportunity to tackle the thirty-one-syllable tanka and its development in Heian society. Of the 209 poems (according to some versions) that constitute the Ise text, 62 appear in Kokinshz7 (or, as it is known by its full title, Kokin wakashui, Collection of Japanese poems old and modern). Now, seventeen years later, McCullough has again focused her attention on the Heian waka. She has produced not only a complete translation of Kokinshfi (ca. 905), the second to appear in two years (see Rodd and Henkenius 1984), but also her own version of Tosa nikki (ca. 935), Ki no Tsurayuki's diary written in the persona of a woman, as well as the first English translation of Shinsen waka (ca. 940), a collection of 360 waka-282 of which are taken from Kokinshz7-personally chosen by Tsurayuki in accordance with an imperial command.

On the Structure of Ise Monogatari(<Special Issue>Monogatari (Tales) in the Early Part of the Heian Period)

On the Structure of Ise Monogatari(<Special Issue>Monogatari (Tales) in the Early Part of the Heian Period)

A Study of the Ise Monogatari. Vol. I: Introduction, Test and Translation.

A Study of the Ise Monogatari. Vol. I: Introduction, Test and Translation.