Organizer: Samuel Hideo Yamashita, Pomona College
Feminine Ambivalence in Japanese Literature: The Case of Sei Shonagon
Linda H. Chance, University of Pennsylvania
Women writers, the female subject position, an overtly gendered script and style of composition-the Japanese literary tradition has long recognized different feminine elements in writing. Broadly speaking, the vernacular was labeled "feminine" while Chinese or heavily Sinified Japanese was considered the proper "masculine" writing space. It has been usual to employ dichotomies-female/male, Japanese/Chinese, private/public-when theorizing about literature, yet these compartments seem inadequate to account for the tensions that exist. Women do not always dominate the vernacular with which they are associated; men do not avoid it. The potential for transgression across the boundaries of the feminine vernacular mode by men was enacted early on by Ki no Tsurayuki, the male author of Tosa Journal, who adopted a woman's voice for his text. This paper discusses men's and women's attitudes towards writing in terms of ambivalence. The refusal to adhere to gendered roles of expression seems to indicate the culture's ambivalence about literacy more generally.
In Makura no soshi (c. 995), Sei Shonagon both claims to be embarrassed by her activity, and boasts of her literary position and knowledge of the esoterica of Chinese poetry. This paper takes Makura no soshi as a case study of ambivalence toward writing that is styled "feminine" in the culture. It examines Sei Shonagon's self-presentation, and views her through the lenses of later interpreters in order to reimagine the gendered character of vernacular literature and attitudes toward it.
The Child's Hand-and Other Detached Body Parts in Setsuwa Literature
Michelle Li, Princeton University
While scholars have noticed grotesque representations in setsuwa, they have neither defined the Japanese grotesque as an aesthetic nor grappled with questions about its purpose. What, among other things, do we make of all the detached body parts in the tales? In the Konjaku, for example, decapitated heads fight each other (9:21), penises disappear (19:10), a child's hand beckons from a hole in a pillar (27:3), and a flying body-less robe bleeds when pierced with an arrow (27:4). We limit our understanding of setsuwa and classical literature as a whole in failing to explore the grotesque in the premodern Japanese context.
Focusing on tales from the Konjaku monogatari shu and the Uji shui monogatari, I examine detached body parts in terms of how they suggest tension between conflicting ideologies. The paper will show that these representations often undermine the authority of relatively powerful figures-such as government officials, emperors, and priests-and challenge the official discourses of the aristocratic and ecclesiastic worlds. Questions I address include: Which body parts are central and why are they detached? To what degree are they stylized? Who in the tales deals with them and why? How do compilers (or others) attempt to suppress dissenting voices by appropriating these representations?
Literature as Sociology: Representations of the Social Fringe in Early Medieval
Japanese Court Poetry
Ivo B. Smits, University of Leiden, The Netherlands
By the twelfth century, Japanese court poets had notably widened their literary scope. No longer did Late Heian (1086-1185) and Early Kamakura (1185-1249) literature describe a society in which lived hardly any farmers, in which artisans appeared on call out of Aladdin's lamp to repair a palace, and in which someone of humble birth was a courtier who never made it further than the sixth court rank.
Court poets became interested in groups that belonged to the social fringe, such as itinerant entertainers, charcoal sellers, or fishermen, and turned them into poetic topics. Poets did compose poems in Japanese (waka) on these groups, but most texts are written in Chinese (kanbun). The choice of this language, rather than Japanese, indicates one of the origins of the courtier interest: the awareness that Chinese poetry contained an element of social concern with groups of low social status. We shall see, however, that this awareness was put to a different use. Another element of importance is the fact that most poets who composed on these topics belonged to the same poetic circle.
This paper will deal with the ways the Chinese language offered Japanese poets more freedom for thematic innovation than did Japanese, and with such questions as how the social structure of a poets' circle could influence themes and topics of poetry. The question is raised whether these texts should be read as a form of social program or as a form of literary exoticism. Literary history is combined with the findings of such social historians as Amino Yoshihiko in Japan as well as with studies in the "sociology of literature" by Pierre Bourdieu and others in Europe and the United States.
Undercover Objectives: Transvestism in Japanese Literature
Richmod Bollinger, Berlin Academy of Science and Humanities
Firmly rooted in Japanese culture-the onnagata in the Kabuki or his 20th century female equivalent, the otokoyaku of the Takarazuka Theatre, immediately spring to mind-transvestism has figured in Japanese literature for centuries. Examples of literary gender play and gender change range from early times to the present and include No plays, works by well-known authors like Tanizaki Jun'ichiro and Kawabata Yasunari, and a plethora of comic books. The use of transvestism in literature can serve various purposes. It may be used to recapture the presence of a beloved person as in the No play Izutsu, or in the recent best seller Kitchin by Yoshimoto Banana, it may serve to transgress social barriers as in the 12th century Torikaebaya monogatari or in Kawabata's 1929-30 narrative Asakusa kurenaidan, or it may be employed as a means to characterize figures outside human categories often endowed with superhuman powers, as the hero of Takahashi Rumiko's comic Ranma nibun no ichi. Transvestism is often perceived as provocative, threatening to undermine the social order; its subversive potential and the underlying value system will be analyzed by a close examination of some representative examples.