Tale Of Genji Research Articles

Comparison of Aesthetic Ideas in Chinese and Japanese Gardens from the Aesthetics of Mono-no-aware in The tale of Genji

Comparison of Aesthetic Ideas in Chinese and Japanese Gardens from the Aesthetics of Mono-no-aware in The tale of Genji

『源氏物語』における「宿世」による 構造化の方法

The three prophecies that tell the story of Hikaru Genji’s destiny in The Tale of Genji come true thanks to his relationship with Fujitsubo and the Akashi clan, but the realization of these prophecies is inseparably connected to the consciousness of the sukuse (destiny). This article examines how the word sukuse participates in the history of Fujitsubo and the Akashi clans, and how it carries over to the history of Hikaru Genji, deciphering the context. This article is an attempt to decipher the structure of the grand story of Hikaru Genji’s rise to fame realized through his relationship with the princess, using the word sukuse as a clue.

‘Literary Heritage’ and ‘Character’：On the Development and the Presentness of the Image of the Classics

In this paper, I analyze the cultural contents of Japanese Classics and their images with adapting the two key terms ‘character’ and ‘literary heritage’, both of which I have become interested in recently. I co-edited Volume 4 of the five volumes’ handbook Nichibunken Popular Culture Research Series (2020-2021), The Popular Culture of ‘Characters’：Tradition, Performing Arts, Worlds. In the preface of that book, I wrote on ‘The Popular Culture History of “Characters” and “Worlds”’, where I re-examined the key concept of “characters”. In other academic context, I studied the concepts of ‘cultural heritage’ and ‘textual heritage’ in some joint researches, with a particular focus on ‘literary heritage’. By introducing and adopting both these key terms, here I attempt to analyze the development and the presentness of the classic image and its cultural contents in premodern Japanese literature. As some examples of the above, I shed the light on The Tale of Genji, The Tale of Heike and the work of the poet Bashō in order to identify their relationship with their surrounding literary heritage. As a result, and by reconstructing the concept of ‘readers’, I outline the imaging and development of Japanese classic literature and its modernity.

A Proximate Remove: Queering Intimacy and Loss in the Tale of Genji by Reginald Jackson (review)

A Proximate Remove: Queering Intimacy and Loss in the Tale of Genji by Reginald Jackson (review)

The Tale of Genji in Colonial-Period Public Discourse : A Window on Korean Modernity from 1910 through the 1920s

The Tale of Genji in Colonial-Period Public Discourse : A Window on Korean Modernity from 1910 through the 1920s

La Chine, le Japon et l’« étoffe » de Perse

Abstract in English Pressing past the frameworks of the wa-kan (Japanese-Chinese) and sangoku (“the Three Kingdoms”), this essay explores a border-crossing “geopoetics” in order to espy distant “Persia” in the literary culture of classical Japan. In the “Picture Contest” midway through The Tale of Genji, an illustration supposedly set in far-off Persia is praised not for its exoticism but rather for its adroit synthesis of Japanese and Chinese pictorial elements. It turns out that the Persia made by Japanese persons around the beginning of the eleventh century is connected to the intermixing of all things Chinese and Japanese, especially when it comes to poetry. In other words, the stuff of this artificial Occident is laced through with these twin poetries from Asia’s easternmost extremities. We can see this interlacing in vernacular fictions, such as The Tale of the Tree Hollow (Utsubo monogatari), in which one of the protagonists is a Persian mage reincarnated in Japan obliged to recite passages in bilingual alternation, night by night, before the monarch. Elsewhere, academicians of Chinese “letters” exhibit their boundless knowledge of this “Far West” in such bilingual works as The New Man’yōshū (Shinsen man’yōshū) and The New Collection of Resonant Verse (Shinsen rōeishū). The latter presents itself as a learned sequel to The Collection of Japanese and Chinese Resonant Verse (Wakan rōeishū)—an emblem of the Heian period’s bilingual poetics which, in its turn, attracted the attention of monk-commentators who used the anthology to develop their Indo-Buddhist cosmo-cartography, including Persia. Persia, therefore, gets woven out of this mix of poetry in Chinese and Japanese—a mixed arrangement that enjoys an unparalleled display in the scrolls of the Collection of Resonant Verse. In its turn, The Collection itself begins to appear like an altogether “Persian” kind of terrain : a virtual terrain which belongs neither to China nor to Japan, but which is nonetheless made out of both.

Women Characters in Eleventh and Eighteenth-century Japan: Attributions of Their Differences and Similarities A Comparative Study on Female Characters in the Tale of Genji and Chshingura

This paper aims to explore the differences and similarities of fictional female characters in eleventh and eighteenth-century Japan. Namely, this work selects Ygao in the Tale of Genji and Okaru in Chshingura to represent the typical females in the eleventh and eighteenth century respectively. Through thoroughly examining their feminine personal distributions, suppressed sexuality, and the instrumental fashion in which males treat them, the traditional Japanese aesthetics and the historical trend of increasing female agency are concluded. By extending the observation made from the comparison between the two compositions to the modern period of Japanese history (1868-present), this research remarks the unchanging cultural aesthetics and improving female agency in gender relations.

Violation: Murasaki’s Challenge to the Scholarly Consensus on Sexual Assault in The Tale of Genji

Violation: Murasaki’s Challenge to the Scholarly Consensus on Sexual Assault in The Tale of Genji

Person of Heart

Abstract: A writer reflects on the life, loves, and literary traditions of the title character in The Tale of Genji , noticing the nuances of seasons passing and the complications of lost canons.

The Tale of Genji and Its Chinese Precursors: Beyond the Boundaries of Nation, Class, and Gender by Jindan Ni

Reviewed by: The Tale of Genji and Its Chinese Precursors: Beyond the Boundaries of Nation, Class, and Gender by Jindan Ni Nicholas Morrow Williams (bio) The Tale of Genji and Its Chinese Precursors: Beyond the Boundaries of Nation, Class, and Gender . By Jindan Ni. Lexington Books, 2020. vii, 209 pages. $111.00, cloth; $45.00, E-book. Genji monogatari (Tale of Genji) might seem to be as familiar and well understood as anything in Japan studies, but the volume under review confirms how much within the novel remains opaque and open to further interpretation. Jindan Ni's wide-ranging study offers a fresh appreciation of the novel's bold and even "transgressive" (p. 109) qualities. While the introduction places the study appropriately in the context of previous scholarship on the Genji itself, it already raises the broader perspective of "world literature" in the vein of scholars such as David Damrosch and Wiebke Denecke. Asserting the need for "a shift away from focusing on Japanology to a perspective on comparative literature" (p. 7), Ni promises to examine the novel in relation to a number of comparative issues, such as the restrictions of class or gender on personal identity. Though this compact study may not resolve any of these issues, it demonstrates their pertinence to parallel concerns of modern theorists and within contemporary pop culture, showing the perennial and cross-cultural significance of the novel's themes. The first three of the study's six chapters deal more directly with the "Chinese precursors" of the title. Ni's first chapter compares the use of the moon as the representation of an ideal, alternative world in Taketori monogatari, Genji, and also the poetry of Bai Juyi (772–846). The diffuse argument has to do with the way that each of these uses the moon to represent longing for different modes of existence; the chapter's larger significance lies in how it establishes the framework of Ni's research, examining Murasaki Shikibu and her work in light of concerns beyond the situation of Heian Japan. The second chapter examines the "living phantom" of Lady Rokujō which wreaks such havoc in the novel, comparing its function to the Chinese story of Huo Xiaoyu, whose vengeful ghost haunts her disloyal lover. Unfortunately, Ni fails in this chapter to engage with the well-known monograph on this subject by Doris Bargen. 1 The third chapter is somewhat similar in addressing the issue of "class" in the novel, particularly in relation to the hopes of lower-ranked women to raise their status via marriage [End Page 225] to Genji. Ni shows how these hopes are frustrated and compares these women's fate to several characters in the poetry of Bai Juyi. In the second half of the monograph, Ni expands her scope. The fourth and fifth chapters rely on psychoanalytic concepts of transgression and repetition, respectively, to analyze broader structures in Genji. At the beginning of chapter 4, "Rethinking the Narratives of Fallen Women," Ni mentions AKB48 idol Minegishi Minami, who shaved her head in 2013 to demonstrate her repentance after violating her pledge not to have sexual relationships with men, and uses this contemporary example to lead into a discussion of numerous acts of transgression in the novel, ranging from the acts of kaimami to Genji's clandestine relation with Fujitsubo. Ni also cites poems by Fujitsubo (p. 122) and later the Third Princess (p. 130) that illustrate their conflicted impulses to abandon the world of suffering and remarks: "In Buddhism, every form of attachment to the human world is regarded as an obstacle to reaching peace; therefore, even the bonds of lifelong duty and affection between parents and children are also considered transgressive" (p. 123). It would be valuable to pursue this line of inquiry further and to consider the symmetrical relation between transgressions against the sociopolitical order, on the one hand, and against the ideals of Buddhist emancipation on the other, but of course to do so one would have to compare the original Japanese terms that are used for these concepts, rather than identifying them with the capacious English "transgression." Chapter 5, "Repetition, Substitution, and Tragedy," confronts directly one of the signal narratological features...

A Proximate Remove: Queering Intimacy and Loss in The Tale of Genji by Reginald Jackson

Reviewed by: A Proximate Remove: Queering Intimacy and Loss in The Tale of Genji by Reginald Jackson Jindan Ni (bio) A Proximate Remove: Queering Intimacy and Loss in The Tale of Genji. By Reginald Jackson. University of California Press, 2021. xxii, 223 pages. $29.95, paper. Open Access. Scholars of Heian literature will be familiar with the opening of Genji monogatari (The tale of Genji) with its vivid description of the indignation of aristocratic officials at Emperor Kiritsubo's devotion to Kiritsubo Consort. Indeed, the courtiers "could only avert their eyes" ( me o sobame tsutsu). 1 I could not help thinking of "averted eyes" in a different sense when I first saw the word queering in the title of Reginald Jackson's latest study on Genji and guessing the kind of resistance his approach would likely encounter from some scholars. I admire the passion and determination it must have taken for Jackson to ignore those "averted eyes" and present these results of his quite audacious research. Jackson recalls in his preface the criticism he has faced for bringing queer theory into his Genji scholarship, and he believes these concerns originate from disciplinary and political ideologies reluctant to embrace the expanded interpretive possibilities he wants to open up. Drawing upon existing feminist and gender studies in Heian literature, such as works by Kawazoe Fusae, Kimura Saeko, Paul Schalow, and Rajyashree Pandey, as well as queer theories of Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, and others, Jackson boldly takes a step further to exclaim that "Genji is a queer text" (p. 1). In this, he attempts to reveal how the encounter between Genji and queerness can supplement conventional understandings in the fields of Heian literature and queer theory and enable a "transdisciplinary exchange" [End Page 229] (p. 15). The term "queer" in this book, Jackson points out, is not exclusively focused on homoerotic sexual identity. It is about challenging established readings, embracing "indeterminacy" (p. 15), and emphasizing the verb to queer in the broadest terms as meaning "to rework established patterns" (p. 16). For Jackson, queer indeterminacy is an effective lens for examining intimacy and loss in Genji that includes homosocial relationships alongside male-male bonding that is—as seen in Eve Sedgwick's influential study—no longer confined to the realm of eroticism but includes "rivalry, mentorship, paternalism, misogyny, and care" (p. 21). Jackson opens chapter 1 by inviting his readers to ponder the famous scene in Genji in which Tō no Chūjō secretly visits Genji in exile from the court in Suma. The close friends spend one night together exchanging poems, music, and keepsakes. Jackson quickly unsettles this scene as he wonders if something more is shared between them and compares their exchanges to "intercourse" (p. 32). Jackson contends that his method is "to read—and potentially misread" such scenes so as to offer wider possibilities for engaging textually with Genji. Jackson notes that English discourse after World War II downplayed Genji's "queerer facets" in favor of heterosexual romance as Genji ascribed a "cultish aestheticism" to Heian literature (pp. 38–39). This formed part of a U.S. political agenda to redefine postwar Japan as a "harmless" and "benign" nation whose most enduring literary text reflected an "effete" society (p. 39). Jackson's queer approach counters this and aims for a more transgressive interpretation of Genji and of readings such as these, with a particular focus on the issue of translation. By examining how Edward Seidensticker's English translation circumvents the queerness in the original Genji, Jackson effectively theorizes and enables a deviance in the established and well-guarded institutional boundaries set up for Genji and other Heian texts. However, Jackson has omitted a survey of the work of many other scholars who also question the "effete" image of Japanese literature that arose during Japan's modernization and the Allied postwar occupation. More references to this existing Heian literary scholarship would help in situating his claims. After setting up the theoretical grounds for queering Genji, the following four chapters analyze specific scenes in which intimacy and loss intersect with Jackson's queer gestures through which queering the text can "exert interpretive pressure" such that "meanings seem to surge, lapse, or...

Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji. Trans. and abridged by Dennis Washburn. The Norton Library. New York: W. W. Norton, 2022 (2015), xxvi, 821 pp.

As Edward Kamens claims in his article on The Tale of Genji in the Companion to World Literature, ed. Ken Seigneurie, vol. 2, ed. Chrstine Chism (2020), “If the ‘Azumaya’ tale-reading scene is indeed a microcosm and prototype of the monogatari of its mode of performance, the ‘Hahakigi’ ‘rainy night conversation’ is a generating turbine that not only propels Genji (and his progeny) out into the world of love and loss but which also throws out a seemingly limitless current of energy for storymaking and storytelling, giving rise and giving life to the many tales and tales-within-tales that follow in what are, for us, now, the pages of The Tale of Genji . . .” (1083–84).

Poetyka polskiego przekładu Genji monogatari, czyli Opowieści o księciu Genjim Murasaki Shikibu

POETICS OF THE FIRST POLISH TRANSLATION OF GENJI MONOGATARI, OR THE TALE OF GENJI BY MURASAKI SHIKIBU: THE TRANSLATOR’S POINT OF VIEW The article identifies the most important translation strategies and challenges faced by the translator of the first Polish translation of Genji Monogatari, or The Tale of Genji. The work, written in 1008, is a masterpiece of not only Japanese but also world literature and is widely included in the cultural heritage of humanity. Its author, Murasaki Shikibu (?978-1025 or 1031) is considered a forerunner of modern literary fiction with a profound humanistic approach. The work itself has been translated into modern Japanese and many European languages. Originally written in classical Japanese, it is distinguished by the ambiguity of expression, lexical polysemy, elaborate honorific language, and cultural hermeticism. The author discusses how, in light of the above, the Polish translation will balance the goal of making Murasaki’s work intelligible for the Polish reader with the need of preserving the elements of ‘foreignness’ of the old Japanese culture, for the translation is intended to fulfill not only a mediating and communicative function between Polish and Japanese cultures but also a cognitive one.

The Opposition and Continuation Between Life and Death ——A Preliminary Analysis of <The Book of Songs> and <The Tale of Genji>

<The Book of Songs> and <The Tale of Genji> are both literary works [1] that have exerted great influence on the views of life and death of their respective nations. <The odes of bin · July> brings people's inexhaustible expectations for life. <The odes of qin · Wuyi> embodies the courage of facing death when we are obliged to defend our own country [2-5]. As for Japan, after the <Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves> developed the plum chanting culture which was introduced from China to a certain height, the sad thoughts reflected in <Tale of Genji> and the concept of appreciating the beauty of cherry blossom fall matured gradually [6-9]. Whether life and death are distinct or simply reincarnation, the two peoples' general cognition has taken quite different paths.

Blueprints for Making Room: Considering Closure and Hospitality in Anglophone Heian Literary Studies

Blueprints for Making Room:Considering Closure and Hospitality in Anglophone Heian Literary Studies Reginald Jackson Unreal Houses: Character, Gender, and Genealogy in "The Tale of Genji" by Edith Sarra. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2020. Pp. xiii + 341. $68.00 cloth. Flowering Tales: Women Exorcising History in Heian Japan by Takeshi Watanabe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2020. Pp. xvi + 303. $65.00 cloth. How might the field of Heian literary studies become more open and more energizing to inhabit? I was invited to review two new books on Heian literature and soon felt drawn to consider a broader range of monographs and issues, including what it means to inhabit this subfield presently and how we might improve our interpretive and pedagogical work. In a fit of genuine optimism, I initially wrote: "Edith Sarra's and Takeshi Watanabe's new books help me hold out hope for anglophone Heian literary studies. Despite being focused squarely on single texts, both studies add much to our understanding of Heian literature, mining metaphors of exorcism and architecture to expand our sense of how literary texts, historical narratives, and the structures scaffolding them are fabricated." Serving as both departure point and allegorical touchstones for my essay, Watanabe's Flowering Tales: Women Exorcising History in Heian Japan and Sarra's Unreal Houses: Character, Gender, and Genealogy in "The Tale of Genji" highlight literal and symbolic structures [End Page 115] such as tamaya 霊屋 (spirit huts) and Genji's 源氏 vaunted Rokujōin 六条院 mansion (which Sarra deems "The House of Wishful Thinking"). Consequently, notions of mourning and wishing meshed as I pondered which types of thinking, writing, and teaching deserved to fade, and which ones should be amplified. If, like the houses Sarra theorizes, the configuration called "Heian literary studies" also supplies "blueprints of the possible" (p. 262), how might we revise those layouts to excavate and accommodate untapped possibilities? This brief reflection fails to account fully for the capacious landscape of Heian literature or the ensuing sample of scholarly monographs. Still, I wonder how our engagements might reflect more of the breadth embodied by our textual objects themselves. How could we expand our own sense—and students' sense—of how to navigate this terrain in more generative, less grief-ridden, ways? In 2020, a vicious pandemic year in which poor and BIPOC folks' disproportionate exposure to premature death occurred alongside protests for racial justice, on the one hand, and an intensification of racist anti-Black and anti-Asian violence, on the other, a weary hope—for wellness, for justice, for peace—pervaded these endless past months. Amidst this mappō 末法 parade of horrors sure to make Kamo no Chōmei 鴨長明 swoon, Watanabe's emphasis on "a collective, healing history" (p. 155) and contention that Eiga monogatari's 栄花物語 author "could be said to have effectively purged those negative, corrosive energies that not only spawned mono no ke 物の怪 [evil spirits], but also fueled the less overt antagonisms that gradually tore societies apart" (p. 197) resonated for being hopeful and timely. However, what made the year all the more surreal was the jarring gap between daily news coverage of corrosive energies and the discussions of weights and measures, Mongols, birthdays, and "Ox or buffalo?" that occupied the Premodern Japanese Studies LISTSERV.1 Following a pertinent consideration of epidemics in premodern Japan as COVID-19 took hold, as the year wore on, the realm of professional communal exchange stayed eerily remote from the real world. The asymmetry in urgency made me wonder if this strain of disregard was not in fact endemic to what we do: baked into our tiny idyll like a snow globe on some mantle, unfazed as the world around it burns. To what extent does attention [End Page 116] to politics in Heian Japan preclude a reckoning with conflicts animating our own era? Adding to the uncanniness was the resemblance this scenario bore to an earlier period. As Michael Bourdaghs explains, Early Western studies of Japanese culture tended to stress the aesthetic beauty of Japanese art and literature, to the neglect of its intellectual and political content. Politics and abstract theory were supposed to be the domains of Western modernity; Japan was assigned the task of...

Tales of Idolized Boys: Male-Male Love in Medieval Japanese Buddhist Narratives by Sachi Schmidt-Hori

Reviewed by: Tales of Idolized Boys: Male-Male Love in Medieval Japanese Buddhist Narratives by Sachi Schmidt-Hori Margaret H. Childs Tales of Idolized Boys: Male-Male Love in Medieval Japanese Buddhist Narratives. By Sachi Schmidt-Hori. University of Hawai'i Press, 2021. 254 pages. ISBN: 9780824886790 (hardcover; also available as softcover and e-book). "Tales of idolized boys" in the title of this book is an inventive rendering of chigo monogatari, which might more literally be translated as "tales of acolytes." This subgenre of otogi zōshi (companion novels) from the Muromachi period was defined in hindsight and has seemed an unwieldy designation, but Sachi Schmidt-Hori does a superb job of bringing coherence to the category. Her persuasive analyses of six of the fourteen tales that comprise the subgenre are soundly grounded in their historical and sociocultural contexts and take the field far beyond previous interpretative work done in English by myself and others.1 In the prelude to Tales of Idolized Boys Schmidt-Hori explains that the origins of her interest in the "sexual agency and negotiation of power" in chigo monogatari (p. xiv) stem from her observations of her mother's work in hostess clubs and the "power equilibrium" that was established through the "manifold and multi-faceted" ways in which workers could "exert their power over clients" (p. xvii). This bold self-revelation inspires trust that frank and clear-eyed analysis lies ahead. The introduction lays the groundwork for Schmidt-Hori's analyses of specific chigo monogatari. Schmidt-Hori points out the multiple ways in which teenaged Buddhist acolytes, or chigo, represent a liminal existence that is "neither adult nor child, neither human nor divine, and neither male nor female" (p. 16). By her account, the chigo system worked to the mutual benefit of the priesthood and the youths of elite families who agreed to commitments of four or five years in length. She moreover [End Page 115] traces the history of the terms nanshoku (male-male love) and joshoku (male-female love) to show how "the architecture of the normative male erotic desire" was understood (p. 28) and to outline the relatively affirmative views of sexuality in Shinto and Buddhist discourse. Noting that there is a term for violating the precepts by having sexual relations with a woman (nyobon) but none for violating the precepts by having sexual relations with a man, she demonstrates that nanshoku was viewed leniently in Buddhist communities. She also challenges the prejudice shown alike by previous scholars who were influenced by homophobia and by current-day scholars who assume that transgenerational relationships are inevitably abusive. In chapter 1 Schmidt-Hori reviews how scholars have defined chigo monogatari and examines the extent to which the fourteen extant tales in the category fit that definition, which requires a chigo as a main character, love between the chigo and a monk, the death of the chigo, the religious awakening of the chigo's monk-lover, and the revelation that the chigo had been the manifestation of a bodhisattva (p. 46). She gives close readings of three archetypal chigo monogatari—Chigo Kannon engi (Story of Kannon's Manifestation as a Youth), Aki no yo no nagamonogatari (A Long Tale for an Autumn Night), and Genmu monogatari (Tale of Genmu)—comparing them with themes found in prominent monogatari like Genji monogatari (Tale of Genji), in which arranged marriages tend to be difficult and unofficial wives who enjoy "enchanted love" (p. 73) suffer from insecurity and anxiety. Schmidt-Hori makes the point that while chigo monogatari similarly tend to depict enchanted love, the chigo acts from a position of power because his status derives from his family connections and his position is not threatened by his infidelity. Another interesting conclusion is that insofar as the tales focus on the appealing relationship between a chigo and a relatively young and virile monk-lover, the arranged relationship between the chigo and his master is backgrounded and thus the tales do not challenge the chigo system. One puzzling moment in this chapter is Schmidt-Hori's characterization of the relationship between the chigo and Genmu as platonic: both do express romantic feelings, and the fact that they never...

Pathetic Beauty: Mono no Aware in Hollywood Cinema –To Family and Friends in These Estranged Times–

Mono no aware is considered to be one of the central-most Japanese aesthetics and distinctive to Japanese identity (Keene 1995; Miller 2011). This aesthetic standpoint finds wistful beauty in the transient, and is most often translated to ‘beauty in pathos’ or ‘the ah-ness of things’ (Hume 1995), as exemplified in the Heian-era classic, The Tale of Genji (Murasaki 1981). To the outside world, mono no aware is most commonly associated with cherry-blossom viewing, where the short-lived existence of the falling cherry blossom is seen as a metonym for contemplation of the beauty in the transience of life itself. Although this mode of aestheticization shares disinterested and contemplative characteristics with the Kantian pure aesthetic gaze (Hughes 2010), its focus on pathos would seem to be at odds with commonly understood platonic Western ideals of beauty and art (c.f. Clark 1972; Saito 2007). However, the current paper aims to elucidate how perceptions of beauty of the pathetic have also been an aspect of Western thought and aestheticization practices, since early Christian times, more prominently in the Romantic era and even in Hollywood cinema. This is of particular significance to the current paper as Hollywood is often seen as a global metonym for glamour–the apparent antithesis of Japanese traditional aesthetics, such as mono no aware. To this end, an examination will be made of expressions of pathetic beauty in Tom Ford’s (2009) award-winning Hollywood film, A Single Man, and how this relates to parallels in the development of aesthetic thought in the occident and Japan.

Dancing the Dharma: Religious and Political Allegory in Japanese Noh Theater by Susan Blakeley Klein

Reviewed by: Dancing the Dharma: Religious and Political Allegory in Japanese Noh Theater by Susan Blakeley Klein Paul S. Atkins Dancing the Dharma: Religious and Political Allegory in Japanese Noh Theater. By Susan Blakeley Klein. Harvard University Asia Center, 2021. 424 pages. ISBN: 9780674247840 (hardcover). Susan Klein's new book is a sequel to her previous monograph, Allegories of Desire, which explored the fascination in medieval Japan with searching for secret meanings in classic texts such as Kokin wakashū (Collection of Japanese Poetry from Ancient and Modern Times) and Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise), as well as the "Kokin" denju—the elaborate (and sometimes-lucrative) system of transmitting the secrets of Kokinshū from teacher to disciple.1 In that earlier book, she aimed to recover the importance of allegorical reading, or allegoresis, for understanding how Japanese medieval readers approached literary texts, especially ancient texts with their plentiful aporias. It was quite convincing and left me with the impression, for example, that a proficient allegorical reader might notice when watching the Star Trek series that its protagonist Captain Kirk (Scottish "church") and his ship, the Enterprise, can be interpreted as representing religion and capitalism, respectively. In Dancing the Dharma, Klein turns her gaze from the page to the stage, shifting her focus to dramatic texts and performances. The base texts are still Kokinshū and Ise, but their manifestations are noh plays and treatises. Once upon a time, noh librettos were dismissed as patchworks of quotations from the Japanese and Chinese classics, but the first wave of modern scholars demolished that myth with studies of the playwrights' creative and artful use of earlier literary sources. A second wave proved that the playwrights' engagement with earlier poetry and prose was sometimes mediated by commentaries. Itō Masayoshi showed that in Zeami Motokiyo's (1363?–1443?) play Izutsu (The Well Cradle) the protagonist is identified as the daughter of Ki no Aritsune (815–877) only in medieval commentaries and not in the original story in Ise, while Janet Goff demonstrated that noh plays about Genji monogatari (Tale of Genji) were frequently based on digests and manuals for composing renga (linked verse) instead of the tale itself.2 Klein's work builds upon and extends these previous studies. Part 1, "Allegory and the Commentary Tradition in Poetry and Noh," orients the reader with three introductory chapters. Chapter 1, "Establishing the Frame: Allegory, Commentary, Narihira," outlines the idea of allegory in poetry and noh, introduces key commentaries, and focuses on the figure of Ariwara no Narihira (825–880). To us, Narihira was merely a courtier, poet, and bon vivant who is tightly associated with the mukashi otoko (man of old) in Ise. Not so fast! Medieval readers and writers also recognized him as a deity of yin and yang and a bodhisattva of song and dance who brought enlightenment to 3,733 women by means of sexual intercourse (p. 36). Chapter 2, "The Six Poetic Modes: A Medieval Understanding of Allegory," explores secret understandings of the rikugi, six styles of Chinese poetry adapted [End Page 319] and introduced by Ki no Tsurayuki (ca. 872–945) in his kana preface to Kokinshū. The inapt and somewhat mystifying transfer of Chinese poetic concepts to waka (Japanese court poetry) left a gap that medieval interpreters were all too happy to fill. The noh actor and playwright Zeami composed an eponymous treatise on the rikugi at the request of his son-in-law and colleague Konparu Zenchiku (b. 1405). The most esoteric of all noh actor-playwrights, Zenchiku returns in chapter 3, "Zenchiku, Meishukushū, and Allegoresis," which discusses his mystical treatise Meishukushū (Collection Illuminating the Indwelling Deity), in particular his emphasis on the figure of the okina (old man) and his identification of it with Narihira. In Part 2, "Ise Monogatari Commentaries and Noh," Klein turns to the primary focus of her book, providing thoughtful and provocative readings of three plays and their relations to the Ise commentaries and, in an interesting twist, their contemporaneous political context, as the lines are sometimes blurred between political and religious allegory. Chapter 4, "Early Noh and Medieval Commentaries on Ise monogatari," briefly illustrates the concept with readings of two plays outside the current repertory...

Anxieties of Authorship, Critique of Readership: Mishima Yukio’s Modern Noh Play Genji kuyō

Mishima Yukio's dramatic suicide half a century ago ensured that his name would forever be associated with a certain fanatic imperialism, and largely fulfilled his own wish that he would die as a military man. And yet, he was until the end foremost a literary artist, concerned with the critical reception of his written works and preoccupied with his lasting reputation as an author. This paper examines Mishima’s portrayal of the celebrity writer, as well as the potentials and limitations of literature as presented in his oft-neglected modern noh play Genji kuyō (Devotional offering for Genji, 1962). It positions the play within the long history of prayers for Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji, ca. 1008) that began in the twelfth century in response to the perceived ambiguous morality of the author Murasaki Shikibu (d. ca. 1014). Mishima's Genji kuyō provides a pointed criticism of readers, as well as anxieties regarding a writer's life and literary recognition. Though Mishima himself famously disowned it after its initial publication, Genji kuyō offers critical insights regarding the writing and reading of literature.

Women's fan writing and transformative works in eleventh-century Japan

This exploration of the literary cultures of eleventh-century Japan analyzes the ways in which the writing and reading practices of the period resemble those of modern transformative fan communities. Studying the defining fictional text of this era, The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (ca. 1021), within the framework of fan studies demonstrates how existing so-called canonical material was transformed into a vehicle for female-centric reimaginings of dominant narratives. The circumstances of the work's authorship and its initial reception are examined via the author's own diary and The Sarashina Diary (ca. 1059), a memoir written by an early reader of the Genji, providing insight into both individual fan identity and the extensive female-led fan communities of the period.