Late Heian Period Research Articles

Study on the Formation of Japanese Kaniarare Textiles

Kaniarare pattern (窠に霰文), a typical and representative design among the Japanese Yusoku patterns (有職文樣), becomes stylized at least during the 11th to 12th centuries in the late Heian period. The design of kaniarare pattern became stylized at least during the 11th to 12th centuries in the late Heian period, while the earliest known stylized kaniarare-mon silk fabric could be dated from late 13th century during the Kamakura period. Although the study of the trade and cultural exchanges between Song and Liao Dynasties and late Heian to early Kamakura Japan became more distinctive in the past decades, the transmission of silk art and relative impact on Japanese silk design have not been fully studied. By comparing with a few groups of extant and unearthed silk relics and connecting their relevancy, this article attempts to analyze the possible influence of silk design from the Liao to Song dynasties on Japanese silk design then and later.

Authority over Death: Two Tales Related to the Lord of Mount Tai in Konjaku Monogatarishū

Tales of Times Now Past (Konjaku Monogatarishū 今昔物語集) is a Japanese setsuwa (anecdotes) collection dating from the early twelfth century. Originally contained in 31 volumes, it includes more than one thousand systematically arranged tales from India, China, and Japan. Despite the fact that Daoism was rejected by the Japanese imperial court as an organized religion, Daoist philosophies and practical systems found their ways into Japan, having a significant and profound influence over Japanese esoteric cosmology and folk beliefs. This article takes the Lord of Mount Tai (CN: Taishan Fujun; JP: Taizan Fukun 泰山府君) as the focus and examines two pertinent stories in Tales of Times Now Past. By placing the texts in a broader historical, religious, and comparative Japan–China perspective, I examine the reshaping of Daoist elements and traditional Chinese philosophical principles in these two stories and thus demonstrate how the Daoist fragments transmitted to Japan were transformed into an integral part of the orthodox structure by the time of the late Heian period in the pursuit of a more organized form of government.

일본 메이지유신(明治維新) 이전의 지적조사(地籍調査)에 대한 고찰

The purpose of the study to understand the cadastral survey and ownership management of land prior to the Meiji period. The temporal scope of this study is limited to the Nara period from 710 to 1868. A cadastral investigation is a survey conducted mainly by municipalities to survey the land owner, parcel number, and purpose of land use and to measure the location and area of ​​the boundary for each parcel. However, there was no term for cadastral research at that time, but the same applies in terms of content. As a result of the study, manors and land subject to public authority in the late Heian period are divided into two types: manors, which are private lands controlled by aristocrats or temples, and public domains, which are controlled by public officials dispatched from the state. The manor and public land in the Kamakura period are changed by the invasion of the manor and public land by Jidu. And in the Muromachi period, the power of the nobles and monks who ruled the manor and the government officials dispatched from the state, who ruled the territories, weakened, and disputes over land became more and more complicated. In Taehap Geomji, first, the person who cultivates the farmland became the owner of the land. Second, the people had to pay taxes according to the amount of agricultural production. Third, samurai and peasants were completely separated, and farmers were only obligated to pay taxes as ownership of farmland was recognized. After such a cadastral survey of Taehap, it is suggested that the development of small agriculture and the increase in agricultural productivity in Japan served as a great foundation for a smooth transition from medieval feudal society to modern society.

일본 메이지유신(明治維新) 이전의 지적조사(地籍調査)에 대한 고찰

The purpose of the study to understand the cadastral survey and ownership management of land prior to the Meiji period. The temporal scope of this study is limited to the Nara period from 710 to 1868. A cadastral investigation is a survey conducted mainly by municipalities to survey the land owner, parcel number, and purpose of land use and to measure the location and area of ​​the boundary for each parcel. However, there was no term for cadastral research at that time, but the same applies in terms of content. As a result of the study, manors and land subject to public authority in the late Heian period are divided into two types: manors, which are private lands controlled by aristocrats or temples, and public domains, which are controlled by public officials dispatched from the state. The manor and public land in the Kamakura period are changed by the invasion of the manor and public land by Jidu. And in the Muromachi period, the power of the nobles and monks who ruled the manor and the government officials dispatched from the state, who ruled the territories, weakened, and disputes over land became more and more complicated. In Taehap Geomji, first, the person who cultivates the farmland became the owner of the land. Second, the people had to pay taxes according to the amount of agricultural production. Third, samurai and peasants were completely separated, and farmers were only obligated to pay taxes as ownership of farmland was recognized. After such a cadastral survey of Taehap, it is suggested that the development of small agriculture and the increase in agricultural productivity in Japan served as a great foundation for a smooth transition from medieval feudal society to modern society.

The Battle of Ichi no Tani Its Influences on the Genpei War and Japanese Culture

In year 1184, the Battle of Ichi no Tani broke out between the two major samurai clans in late Heian Period, the Minamoto Clan and the Taira Clan. In this paper, the impact of this battle is examined from the aspects of its military significance in the Genpei War and its influences on the Japanese Culture. The author would argue that from these two aspects, the influence of the Battle of Ichi no Tani could be shown on its heavy blow to the Taira Clan, leading to their final defeat and the heroic figures like Minamoto no Yoshitsune and Taira no Atsumori who fought in it. Through studying this topic, a better understanding towards the military history of medieval Japan and the Japanese culture of sympathy towards the failed side can be developed.

The Development of <i>Shuzen</i> during the Late Heian Period

The Development of <i>Shuzen</i> during the Late Heian Period

Buried Scripture and the Interpretation of Ritual

Inference to religion and ritual does not require scripture. Since the early twentieth century, archaeologists have identified hundreds of deposits containing Buddhist scriptures, images and ritual objects throughout the Japanese archipelago, the majority dating to the late Heian period (794–1185 ce). Previous research suggests that scripture was the central feature of these deposits. This article argues that these deposits resulted from a range of highly variable contexts of religious and social practice, not limited to a focus on scripture. I survey early excavations and interpretations of sutra burial and then turn to two main case studies. These examples show that these deposits were complex assemblages that implicated diverse religious meanings, time frames and social actors. Scripture deposits can demonstrate how religious ritual illuminates, underwrites and interweaves variant scales of agency, time and social practice.

The Ōshū Fujiwara-An interdisciplinary study on the history, culture and medical assessment of the oldest known mummified human remains in Japan (late Heian, 12th century AD).

This study documents a rare case of mummified human remains from Japan, dating to the late Heian period, 12th Century AD. The remains have only been scientifically investigated once in 1950 so far. The results of this investigation were translated, analyzed, and interpreted using methods of the 21st century. The remains have been traditionally identified as the four ruling generations of the Ōshū Fujiwara clan, who built a cultural and economic center in Hiraizumi. Accordingly, this paper will first examine the historical and cultural significance of Hiraizumi and its ruling class before re-evaluating the findings of the 1950 investigation. This study is the first in the Western scientific literature to provide a comprehensive historical, cultural, and medical evaluation of these mummies.

Shūzen 修善 During the Late Heian Period

Shūzen 修善 During the Late Heian Period

狭衣物語における異本発生の基盤 : 狭衣物語の方法と改作者( 平安後期物語)

狭衣物語における異本発生の基盤 : 狭衣物語の方法と改作者( 平安後期物語)

中·日의 佛像紋수막새와 關連資料에 대하여

Studies show that of the early ceramic roof-end tiles decorated with Buddha images, only a limited number of convex tiles have been discovered in China and Japan, while no concave tiles have been found at all. Among the ancient convex roof-end tiles with Buddhist motifs discovered in China so far, those made in Northern Wei (386-534) in the early sixth century and discovered in its two capitals, Pingcheng (present-day Datong) and Luoyang, are discussed extensively with regard to the dharmakaya motif placed at their center and surrounded by lotus petals. Historians have also shown a keen interest in the convex roof-end tiles discovered at the nine-story wooden pagoda called Yongning Temple in Luoyang. Certain of these tiles can be classified into six groups according to the motifs decorating their outer surface, including demonic faces, lotus flowers and the palmette, while those with dharmakaya and lotus motifs are categorized into four groups according to the Buddhist concept of the birth of heavenly beings. I believe that the concept played a key role in the construction of the nine roofs of the pagoda with these ornamental roof-end tiles. The primary materials for the study of early Chinese convex roof-end tiles with Buddha images include the cast tiles with dharmakaya and lotus motifs unearthed at Khotan in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region by the Japanese archaeologists of the Otani Expedition in the early twentieth century. These tiles, believed to have been made in the kingdom of Khotan in the early sixth century, were originally used to decorate the Shakyamuni shrine in a Buddhist temple. As for early Japanese convex roof-end tiles decorated with Buddha images, those of Fuki-ji, a Tendai temple in Bungotakada, Oita Prefecture, are the only extant examples. These are closely related with the roof-end tiles decorated with Brahmic scripts, five-ringed pagoda or the “Namo Amitabha Buddha” (南無阿彌陀佛) inscription that were produced between the late Heian Period (794-1185) and the Kamakura Period (1185-1333) in the Kinki and Kyushu regions. The introduction of Tantric Buddhism to Japan by Kukai and Saicho during the early ninth century resulted in a great change in Japanese Buddhism: It led to widespread belief in the ideas of the Latter Day of the Law in the late eleventh century, the spread of Pure Land Buddhism to common people as well as royalty and aristocracy, and the nationwide establishment of Amitabha shrines. Fuki-ji’s tiles are regarded as rare examples which show that they were used to decorate an Amitabha shrine built in the early twelfth century. In the late eleventh century, Emperor Shirakawa established a Buddhist temple, Hossho-ji, in Kyoto based on the ideologies of Mandala, Garbhakosa-dhatu and Vajradhatu in particular, to fulfill his wish for national peace and prosperity and to promote the imperial authority. Japan’s oldest roof-end tiles bearing sacred Brahmic scripts representing Vairocana Buddha of Garbhakosa-dhatu were used to decorate the octagonal nine-story wooden pagoda of the temple. The decorative roof tiles used by the temple in 1122 include those bearing the image of the five-ringed pagoda, which was built to enshrine the Buddha’s sariras. The pagoda was later conferred to ordinary Amitabha worshippers in the Osaka region, who were devoted to building temples and images honoring the Buddha. The roof tiles decorated with the fiveringed pagoda design represent the union of the pagoda symbolizing Vairocana Buddha with the sarira and Amitabha worship. The tradition prospered and was spread widely by Chogen who played a key role in the restoration of Todai-ji in Nara, which was destroyed by fire during a war in 1180. The creation of roof-end tiles related with Vairocana Buddha and the Offering Bodhisattva is a unique heritage of Japanese Buddhism whose prosperity is based on Esoteric Buddhism and the ideology of the Latter Day of the Law.

Lovable Losers: The Heike in Action and Memory ed. by Mikael S. Adolphson and Anne Commons

Reviewed by: Lovable Losers: The Heike in Action and Memory ed. by Mikael S. Adolphson and Anne Commons Linda H. Chance (bio) Lovable Losers: The Heike in Action and Memory. Edited by Mikael S. Adolphson and Anne Commons. University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 2015. xviii, 284 pages. $55.00. What would we do without conference volumes? Although every meeting convener hears that this genre is not welcome at most publishers, when well done, as with the present book, we reap a concrete exemplar of the inter-disciplinary that Japan studies, at its best, aspires to. This book is chock full of useful, definitive essays that display scrupulous scholarship, broad thinking, and interconnectedness. Everyone involved with Lovable Losers deserves huzzahs for sticking to the promise of the original conference in Banff, Alberta, over the four years it took to get to press. The editors/organizers, Mikael Adolphson and Anne Commons, tell us that Banff was an apt setting for “frequent and concentrated discussions in both formal and informal situations” (p. ix); no reader can doubt that was true, nor fail to be glad of it. Research in English on the late Heian period, and specifically that which uses the magnificent Heike monogatari account of the Genpei War between the Taira and Minamoto as a lens, has blossomed over the last ten years. No fewer than three monographs and a dozen new articles mean that scholars and students alike can find answers to almost every question on the Heike. What’s more, we are no longer limited to treatments of the popular edition, the Kakuichi variant; we can immerse ourselves in the early Engyō edition, the Genpei jōsuiki, or the rival Azuma kagami. This volume enfolds and expands on the present critically nuanced field to solid effect. Among many things it does well is to explain such terminological choices as their reference to the “Ise Taira” (to distinguish them from other Taira lineages) until the rise of Kiyomori and his relatives to the elite, when they become the “house of the Taira,” i.e., the Heike. The book seeks to engage two big questions. First, how did the Heike act in their own day? The answers are deeply revisionist, showing that many have misconstrued their impact on the late twelfth century. Second, how have the Heike been remembered (which has naturally had something to do with the blind spots we have about the ways they behaved)? This is only a convenient binary, however, as the volume editors aver in their opening essay, “Blurring the Lines.” How the Taira were and how later generations represent the Taira are bound up with one another, just as the historical disciplines that take the actual as their concern and disciplines that focus on the aesthetics and rhetorics of presentation each cannot do without the [End Page 132] insights of the other. Reviews in a recent volume of this journal (Vol. 42, No. 1; Winter 2016) contained mild grumbling by the historians David Spafford and Bruce Batten about the treatment of history by literary scholars; as a “literature person,” I feel the present book leans heavily toward historical thinking even when taking religion, say, as the subject, while its historians are attentive to literary discourses and play (in the good sense) with literary adaptations. Thus, it comes closer to the successful interdisciplinary parsing of its topics than some monographs. The book clarifies precisely how and why we need to think of the Heike as warrior-aristocrats, marshaling both historical and literary evidence. Contributors make a strong case for the Heike leader Kiyomori’s success in blending conservative strategies that pay due respect to the reigning hierarchy with innovations that gained him attention. Each of the authors seems to have gotten the memos on these overarching themes and gives cross-references, producing a coherent work of scholarship. The first three chapters on “The Heike in Action” serve as a suite on Kiyomori’s decision to move to a new capital at Fukuhara, near the port of Ōwada no tomari. Led off strongly in “Fukuhara: Kiyomori’s Lost Capital” by Adolphson championing the thesis that Kiyomori had ambitions to establish a new imperial line there headed by...

Ritsuko Wada and Hirotoshi Kuge, Fujiwara-no-Yorimichi and His World in the Late Heian Period: The Fate of Mature Culture

Ritsuko Wada and Hirotoshi Kuge, <i>Fujiwara-no-Yorimichi and His World in the Late Heian Period: The Fate of Mature Culture</i>

The Buddhist Affirmation of Poetry and Locating a Thirteenth-century Fugen kōshiki in Liturgical Literature

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)There are two important ways that koshiki intersect with Japanese literature. The first nexus is the current recognition that koshiki themselves constitute a distinct genre within the broader category of Buddhist liturgical works.1 The interest of scholars of literature has been stimulated by the dawning realization that the language of these sacred works was shared with other genres of Japanese literature. The second conjunction involves the fact that several important early koshiki concern topics, particularly Japanese poetry (waka ...). The three-part Fugen koshiki in the collection of Todaiji Toshokan is a prime example of a koshiki concerned with waka. This work makes an unprecedented claim that explicitly links a Buddhist justification of poetry with the ritual technology of repentance (sange ...) before the bodhisattva Fugen ... (Sk. Samantabhadra).2 This spiritual technique had been developed in the Tendai tradition as the Lotus Repentance Rite (Hokke senbo ...), sometimes called the Samantabhadra Repentance Rite (Fugen senbo ...).3 This linkage between repentance before Fugen and a justification of poetry is not found in any other of several extant Fugen koshiki, nor is it seen in other koshiki. Indeed, it is not found anywhere in the voluminous corpus of Japanese literature concerned with Japanese poetry. In a leap beyond the bounds of logic, this koshiki strives to fuse faith in the power of Fugen to forgive transgressions with a recognition that the apparently sinful act of artifice can itself be sacred. In so doing, it clarifies a long-standing puzzle in a landmark work that is concerned with the Buddhist justification of poetry: why Fugen appears as the honzon ... , the central object of worship, at the gathering described in the famous Waka mandokoro ippongyo kuyo hyobyaku (hereafter Waka mandokoro hyobaku) of the Tendai preacher Choken ... (1126-1203).4Despite the Chinese tradition, also adopted in Japan, that privileged poetry as a sincere expression of the human heart and a spontaneous response to natural phenonena and human emotions, poetic creation might also be deemed one or another of the ten evil actions-false speech (Jp. mogo ...; Sk. m?sa-vada) or fancy talk (Jp. kigo ...; Sk. sa?bhinna-pralapa), and sometimes both at once, as seen in the plaintive words of Yoshishige Yasutane ... (933-1002) collected in Honcho monzui (snkbt 27, 351). Yasutane's views have been characterized as a truly agonized rejection of the literary (Yamada 2012, 68), and he is also said to have been the first writer in Japan to incorporate Bai Juyi's ... (772-846) dismissal of his mundane writing (Ch. shisu wenji; Jp. sezoku moji ...) as wild words and fancy phrases into Japanese liteature (Ch. kuangyan qiyu; Jp. kyogen kigo ...) (Osone 1998, 321). Evolving Japanese interpretations of Juyi's plea that those sinful words be transformed (tenjite ?) into praise for and propagation of Buddhism (sanbutsujo no tane ... and tenporin no en ...) fundamentally altered the understanding of the role of literature in medieval Japan.As artifice amounted to at best delusion and at worst prevarication and sophistry in the minds of many, it presented a dilemma to pious wouldbe authors of late Heian-period (794-1185) Japan. How were writers to pursue their way (michi ?), which was becoming a practice that provided a livelihood for poetic houses during the twelfth century, without transgressing the tenets of their faith? That century largely corresponds to the historical period known as the Inseiki ... (the period of the rule of retired emperors), 1068-1185. The discourse on the sinfulness of poetry is seen even in the most prolific poets of the era. In responding to a poetic topic taken from a passage in the Peaceful Practices chapter of the Lotus Sutra that warns against associating closely (shinkin sezare ... ) with those who compose worldly letters (sezoku no bunpitsu o tsukuru . …

The Credibility of the Gangoji engi

The garan narabini ruki shizaicho (hereafter engi) contains entries that cannot be accepted as historical facts, entries that do not fit with the historical period for which they are claimed, and items that raise doubts due to internal inconsistencies in the text itself. The text makes a dubious claim of composition on the eleventh day of the second month of Tenpyo 19 (747), but should be considered a forgery from a later period. The document appears to have been written as an for Toyuradera (Kenkoji) in the late ninth century, the first stage of compilation. It was probably revised and extended into its present form in the late Heian period (late-eleventh to mid-twelfth century) as an of Gangoji, the second and final stage of compilation.KEYWORDS: Daigoji archives-Gangoji engi-Toyuradera engi-Kenkoji-Gisai-transmission of Buddhism(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)WITH REGARD to the date for the transmission of Buddhism to Japan, Japanese who received their education before the war (pre-1945) will identify the date as 552 ce. This theory is based on the records of the Nihon shoki ..., in an entry for the tenth month of Kinmei 13. Those who went to school after the war, including myself, learned that the date was 538 ce. In my case, I remember a large banner showing a chart with a detailed timeline of Japanese history strung across the top of the blackboard at the front of my elementary school classroom. Here it was clearly noted: 538, the transmission of Buddhism. This date was also taught in middle and high school history classes. This is based on two texts, the garan narabini ruki shizaicho ... and the Jogu Shotoku hootei setsu ..., which record that the transmission of Buddhism occurred in Kinmei 7, a bogo ... year in the sixty-year cycle, matching the year 538 in the Western calendar. Many recent junior and senior high school textbooks list both dates, since it is difficult for historians to decide between them.Which of these dates is correct? Or perhaps neither is correct? The report of the transmission in the Nihon Shoki is very problematic, and it is difficult to support the historicity of its account and the date of 552.1 But there are also problems with the 538 date, and one should not simply accept it as a substitute for 552. The main problem with this theory is that both of the documents in which it is found are full of enigmas, authorship is uncertain, it is not clear when the text was produced, and it is not known to what extent we can believe what it says. In short, its credibility as a historical document is suspect. Here I would like to take up one of these texts, the garan narabini ruki shizaicho, and examine its textual characteristics, the possible date of its composition, and the credibility of its content.The engiThe garan narabini ruki shizaicho is not a well- nor long-known text; it is a newly-discovered historical document that came to light in the Meiji period (1868-1912), discovered in the temple archives of Daigoji by the art histo- rian Hirako Takurei. The Daigoji archives included a collection of in eighteen volumes, of which the second volume was labeled Gangoji engi, which included the garan narabini ruki shizai. Hirako came across these documents at Daigoji in Meiji 39 (1906), and introduced them to the scholarly community the next year (see Hirako 1907a and 1907b). This was the first time that these texts (and their contents) became known to the world.The consists of a bound booklet 27.1 cm long and 16.1 cm wide of thick Japanese paper. Including the cover, it is made of thirty-eight pages (cho ...). Each half-page has six lines of text. The cover is light brown with a small chrysanthemum pattern, and Gangoji engi is written on the top left corner. The inside pages use a whiter shade of Japanese paper made from mulberry (choshi . …

Nari Nakamura, A Study on the Literature of the Late Heian Period: Historical Narratives, Kana Dairies, and the Fujiwara Family of the Midō School

Nari Nakamura, <i>A Study on the Literature of the Late Heian Period: Historical Narratives</i>, Kana <i>Dairies, and the Fujiwara Family of the Midō School</i>

Demonology and Eroticism: Islands of Women in the Japanese Buddhist Imagination

The demonic female, an object of male anxiety and desire, has long been a stock character in Japanese Buddhist literature. This article examines two female realms in the Japanese literary and visual imagination: Rasetsukoku, a dreaded island of female cannibals, and Nyogogashima, a fabled isle of erotic fantasy. I trace the persistence and transformation of these sites in tale literature, sutra illustration, popular fiction, and Japanese cartography from the twelfth through the nineteenth century to show how the construction of Japanese identity relies on the mapping of the marginal. In doing so, I argue for the centrality of Buddhism to Japan's cartographic tradition and the importance of cartography in Japanese Buddhist literary and visual culture. keywords: Rasetsukoku-Nyogogashima-Japanese cartography-Buddhist narrative-visual culture (ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) For the male authors of medieval Japanese Buddhist literature, the female body was an endless source of fear and fascination. Women, according to the oft-quoted sutra passage, the emissaries of hell; they cut off forever the seed of buddhahood. On the outside they have the faces of bodhisattvas, but on the inside they have the of demons.1 The popular genres of medieval literature, such as setsuwa, kana hogo, honjimono, and otogizoshi, are full of deceptive, duplicitous, and dangerous women. Attractive and alluring in appearance, they are invariably devils in disguise: ferocious figures of insatiable passion. Conjured by the fantasies and frustrations of celibate ideals, the demonic female, an object of displaced desire and one of the oldest figments of the Buddhist imagination, remained an obsessive presence in the visual and literary culture of the age. Buddhist demonology includes many ferocious females but perhaps few more terrifying than the rasetsu ... (Skt. raksasi), orectic shape-shifting cannibals who seduce men and then literally eat them alive.2 Rasetsukoku ..., the land of these horrific man-eaters, is an isolated realm: an island to the south of the world continent on which we dwell, known in Sanskrit as Jambudvipa and in Japanese as Nansenbush. ... or Enbudaishu ... In Japan, this isle of demonic women appeared first in the literary and visual culture of the late Heian period and for centuries thereafter occupied an enduring and evolving place in the Buddhist imagination. Rasetsukoku represented a conflicted site of desire and denial, of anxiety and alterity: a realm where the boundaries of religion and sexuality were encountered and explored. It lay forever at the margins of the known world, marking the furthest edge of cultural identity. Yet, like a floating island, it remained unfixed. It drifted, both geographically and semantically, until what was once a land of demons south of India was rediscovered as an erotic paradise south of Japan. In this article I examine the inscription and transition of Rasetsukoku in texts, images, and maps in order to locate the demonic feminine in one region of Japanese Buddhist culture. In doing so, I hope to suggest not only how Buddhist views of the world provided maps of meaning for literature and art in medieval Japan, but also how cartography might be understood as a form of fiction. Textual Grounds and Visual Fields Rasetsukoku is first found in Japanese literature among the stories of India collected in the Tenjiku ... section of the twelfth-century Konjaku monogatari shu ... (Konno 1999, 388-94).3 How Sokara and Five Hundred Merchants Went to the Land of the Rasetsu tells of a group of merchants who set sail from Jambudvipa to the southern seas in search of treasure. They are shipwrecked on an island of beautiful women, and lust and passion immediately arise in their hearts (388). They ask the women to take them in and more than willingly follow them back to their compound, an expansive, and exclusively female, gated community where each man takes a wife and enjoys a life of bliss. …

The Latter Days of the Genji

spite of what one of contributors to this volume calls the precipitous decline Genji literacy (p. 54; and she is talking just of late Heian period!), The Tale of Genji has been indisputably a dominating presence Japan throughout thousand or so years since it was written. What is more, as Haruo Shirane reminds us at outset, [i]t is also one of few Japanese texts that, modern has had a global reach, coming to be recognized as part of world literature (p. 1). The telling phrase here is in modern period, for The Tale of Genji had scarcely been heard of outside Japan before middle of nineteenth century, let alone translated, and that applies as much to rest of East Asia as it does to world as a whole. It is this abiding presence within Japan, then, that is focus of this book, which is a collection of essays on painterly, literary, and theatrical of The Tale of Genji from twelfth-century Genji monogatari emaki to twentieth-century film and manga adaptations. The essays this volume form a rich corpus of work on long and complex afterlives of what have come to be recognized as key texts Japanese literary tradition, and, as Shirane advises preface, are best read conjunction with pathbreaking earlier volume Inventing Classics, which Shirane edited with Tomi Suzuki.1 In case of The Tale of Genji and of other works discussed Inventing Classics, those afterlives are arguably too intricate to be summed up by term reception. Lewis Cook, who his chapter volume under review takes up medieval commentaries on Genji, describes reception history as a capacious rubric (p. 129). This is certainly apt, not least because of confusion between genres that Cook explores his chapter and that broad category reception history unhelpfully masks.

Householders: The Reizei Family in Japanese History (review)

Reviewed by: Householders: The Reizei Family in Japanese History Roselee Bundy Householders: The Reizei Family in Japanese History. By Steven D. Carter. Harvard University Asia Center, 2007. 515 pages. Hardcover $55.00/£35.95/€50.70. Across the years, visitors to Kyoto have glanced with curiosity at the Reizei family residence on the southwest corner of Imadegawa and Karasuma, on the same block as the modern structures of Dōshisha University. Once surrounded by the homes of many other members of the Kyoto nobility, the Reizei compound remains a visible sign of the family’s centuries-long dedication to the enterprise of waka. The Reizei family traces its ancestry back to the great court poets of the late Heian and early Kamakura periods—Fujiwara Shunzei (1114–1204) and his son Teika (1162–1241) and grandson Tameie (1198–1275)—the Reizei name having become attached to the descendants of Tameie’s son Tamesuke (1263–1328). Twenty-five generations later, the Reizei family still teaches and practices poetry. In addition, their family library has preserved and accumulated poetic texts, diaries, and paintings dating as far back as the late Heian period. Only in the spring of 1980 were select documents published or exhibited to the public at large. (The Reizei library has few works that were previously unknown. However, it contains manuscripts in the hand of such figures as Shunzei, Teika, and Tameie, as well as later Reizei masters.) Steven D. Carter’s Householders: The Reizei Family in Japanese History traces the history of this poetic family from the time of Shunzei, disclosing how across the centuries, the Reizei family “parlay[ed] their social and cultural capital—their pedigree, their rank, their stores of knowledge, texts, and artifacts and the status those things conferred—into financial support to sustain it in the practice of the poetic Way” (p. 8). Carter’s is a history “of a house as a house—rather than just of the various individuals who bear its name—and the poetic enterprise to which that house was dedicated” [End Page 408] (p. 8), and his attention to the larger and shifting contexts of waka practice—social, political, economic, interpersonal—vastly expands our understanding of this art form. Indeed, he challenges his readers to rethink their conception of the nature of artistic creativity itself. As Carter further writes, Moderns may find [curious] this fixation on engagement with a long tradition—especially one that is embodied in a kind of conventionality rather than in a properly sanctified lineage of geniuses. . . . [T]o overlook conventionality, in the case of waka, at least, is to refuse to engage the record of the past as an ongoing project that cannot be reduced to the accomplishments of a few canonized “masterpieces” or sanctified “geniuses”—to allow the reputation of a few individuals and texts, in other words, to obscure the contours of a much larger discourse. (p. 364) The story of the Reizei family from the Kamakura period to the present day is fascinating in its details. Interweaving the activities of the Reizei house with major events in Japanese history during this long span of time, Carter’s narrative discloses the family’s remarkable resiliency and political astuteness in the service of preserving its status as purveyors of their centuries-old art form. Among the more familiar figures is Abutsu-ni (d. ca. 1283), the mother of Tameie’s two youngest sons, who traveled to Kamakura to champion the rights of inheritance of her elder son, Tamesuke, to income from estates and to his father’s manuscripts. The suit precipitated the split between the Nijō, the descendants of Tameie’s sons by an earlier wife, and the Reizei (and Kyōgoku) schools. A pattern of cultivating connections with the warrior class continued until the modern age, as the Reizei heirs sought both to adapt to the changing landscape of power and to maintain their at-times contentious association with the imperial court in Kyoto. By the Edo period, the Reizei also faced serious competition from not only new literary genres but commoner poets (jige), who were ready to challenge the authority of the established noble lineages. Yet the prestige of the waka tradition and of...

Love after The Tale of Genji: Rewriting the World of the Shining Prince (review)

Reviewed by: Love after The Tale of Genji: Rewriting the World of the Shining Prince Margaret H. Childs (bio) Love after The Tale of Genji: Rewriting the World of the Shining Prince. By Charo B. D’Etcheverry. Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge, Mass., 2007. xiv, 220 pages. $39.95. In analyzing Sagoromo monogatari, Hamamatsu monogatari, and Yoru no Nezame, Charo D’Etcheverry treats these late Heian texts not as literature lesser than Genji monogatari as many scholars have, but as efforts to elaborate on issues raised in that great work. Her provocative analyses prove that they are indeed worthy of our attention. In the introduction, D’Etcheverry offers an overview of the history of [End Page 433] the reception of Genji monogatari and argues that these three tales, insofar as they creatively rework certain motifs from Genji, should be taken as part of that reception history. We learn that these tales were once quite popular and only in modern times scorned as derivative. In chapter 1, D’Etcheverry discusses the nature of the “rear court,” where imperial consorts and imperial family members lived and presided over salons in which talent in the literary arts could have political ramifications. As an instructive counterpoint to the dynamics of the salons of the late Heian period, D’Etcheverry gives an account of the eighteenth-century French salon. The salient differences between the two salon cultures are that French writers were guests and could come and go freely, while writers in salons of the rear court were employees and relatively immobile. D’Etcheverry then describes in detail the dynamics of the patronage and politics that supported the salon of Princess Baishi (1039–96), an imperial princess and Kamo Shrine priestess who employed the author of Sagoromo monogatari. Chapter 2 consists of a discussion of Sagoromo monogatari, in which D’Etcheverry focuses on the issue of “midranks romance,” wherein a man of high status becomes enamored of a woman of only middling aristocratic rank. D’Etcheverry begins by asserting that, in Genji monogatari, Murasaki Shikibu demonstrated that midranks romance was a male fantasy doomed to have unfortunate consequences for both man and woman (p. 59) and seems to imply that Murasaki’s treatment of the theme should have concluded any debate on the issue: “Even writers otherwise influenced by Genji reverted to midranks fantasies” (p. 60). It seems to me that the attitude revealed in Genji is that all romance is fragile, fraught with anxiety, and often destructive, and it is, of course, the conflict between practical considerations and untamable passion that makes romance, midranks or otherwise, an endlessly interesting subject. Also, in championing critiques of midranks romance, D’Etcheverry overlooks the fact that the potential for a child born of a midranks woman and a high-ranking noble to enjoy social and political success was reason enough for some women to endure the difficulties of such a romance, as in the case of the Akashi Lady in Genji. D’Etcheverry argues at length that the author of Sagoromo monogatari, Senji, who was an attendant in the service of Princess Baishi, used the story to condemn midranks romance on behalf of the women who suffered thereby. In a subplot, Sagoromo, a high-ranking noble, chances upon Asukai, a woman of midrank, and falls in love with her. However, since Sagoromo does not seem to take Asukai seriously, and Asukai’s love blinds her to reason, Asukai’s nurse, who is presented as kind hearted and sensible, tricks her charge into marriage with a man of modest background but good prospects. The nurse does indeed make a persuasive case for status-appropriate marriage, but authorial intent is ultimately beyond our reach. Such speculation [End Page 434] is provocative, but assertion without qualification is alienating. Furthermore, D’Etcheverry does not take into account the ironic fact that the nurse’s advocacy is counterproductive. Bound and determined to remain faithful to her high-ranking lover, Asukai throws herself into the sea rather than tolerate the promising marriage arranged by her nurse. Much of the material in this chapter has been previously published as an article, but, strangely enough, it is not listed in the bibliography. 1 In chapter...