Organizer and Chair: Michael G. Watson, Meiji Gakuin University
The papers in this session will offer four approaches to the puzzle we call the Heike Monogatari, a work whose evolution might be compared to a medieval cathedral. Only fragments remaining of its original foundation, the structure before us today is the product of many architects over a period of centuries, with intimate connections to many arts: music, painting and drama. Yet as all of the presenters will illustrate in different ways, the Heike Monogatari is not one edifice but many, related in content and form, yet distinct. Yamashita Hiroaki argues for the importance of regional factors in its origins and in later developments of legendary material. He sees the Heike in the broad context of political and cultural history. Alison Tokita looks at the Heike in some of its various guises, musical and literary, and at the relation between oral, written and performed narratives over its long history. Sakurai Yoko focuses on the process by which new Heike variants were produced, and the motivation of new redactors. Finally Michael Watson examines the relation between text and image in illustrated versions of the Heike.
Medieval Japan, East and West, and the Heike Monogatari
Hiroaki Yamashita, Aichi Shukutoku University, Nagoya, Japan
The oral narratives that became the Heike Monogatari were originally chanted by biwa hoshi, blind jongleurs, before being set down in writing. The myths that grew up around Minamoto Yoritomo in eastern Japan seem to have played a decisive role in this process. An early version of the Heike Monogatari called Jisho Monogatari praised Yoritomo's defeat of the Heike and the return to power of the Genji. It was written in eastern Japan as a sequel to the narratives describing the Hogen and Heiji disorders in the mid-twelfth century. Meanwhile, however, society felt threatened by the angry spirits of the Heike. It was the biwa hoshi who gave expression to the resentment and transformed the eastern, Genji text into tales for the Kyoto region to pacify the spirits of the Heike.
Subsequently legends about Yoritomo flourished in the semi-autonomous east, while tales about Heike fugitives were wide-spread in the west, reflecting the cultural differences between eastern and western Japan that have continued to the present-day. There are thus two kinds of texts of Heike Monogatari, one for the Genji and the other for the Heike, which will be the focus of this talk.
Reception of the Heike Monogatari as Performed Narrative
Alison Tokita, Monash University, Australia
It is debatable whether a reception of the Heike as performance is still possible, or whether it is such a museum piece that it can only be studied not appreciated.
Originally recited by blind priests accompanying themselves on the biwa (lute), the content of the Heike was constantly recycled in new context: no, kowaka mai, kabuki, bunraku, and television.
The Heike narrative as it survives today has been understood in many ways in the past century: as literature, as music (often called heikyoku), as an epic of national importance. Recently it has become more common to see it as having originated as a performed narrative which evolved into a literary work.
In its long history, the performed Heike has changed from being oral narrative, through being a tightly controlled professional monopoly, a hobby of the intelligentsia, ritual music of the shogunate, and a fossilized relic of traditional music.
Within the context of the overall history of musical and oral narratives in Japan, this paper will attempt to reconstruct the earliest reception of the Heike before it became systematized with a fixed text within a social organization with shogunal patronage. It will compare this putative early stage with the early modern period, when the Heike developed into musical narrative (heikyoku) with prescriptive musical notations.
It will take into account interaction of the Heike narrative with various social groups, such as the Ji sect of Buddhism, dilettante samurai intelligentsia, the shogunate, and the Ministry of Cultural Affairs.
Ways of Closure: The Role of Yoritomo in the Yasaka Lineage Heike Monogatari
Yoko Sakurai, Fuji Phoenix Junior College, Shizuoka, Japan
Heike monogatari variants are broadly divided on the basis of textual features into two types. One type, the kataribon lineage of "recited" texts, is further subdivided in terms of the way the work ends. This paper looks at one kataribon subtype, the Yasaka lineage, and considers how the narration is brought to closure.
The twelfth and final maki of the Heike monogatari describes one by one the deaths of those Taira who survive the clan's destruction. The role of the victor Minamoto Yoritomo is explicitly mentioned much more often in the Yasaka text. It emphasizes his involvement in the deaths of the Taira survivors, and in the destruction of members of his own family, beginning with his rebellious brother Yoshitsune. In the twelfth book of Yasaka Heike, the downfall of the Taira is narrated from the viewpoint of the victorious Yoritomo.
The Narratology of Illustration: Heike Exiles and Recluses
Michael G. Watson, Meiji Gakuin University
Complete texts of the Heike with illustrations survive only from the Edo period. The seventeenth century is both the climax of the period of deluxe hand-painted editions and the most creative period in the production of illustrated wood-block editions. The relations within and between these two iconographical traditions still remains unclarified. Here we will suggest some possible approaches to answer questions such as the following. What does the Heike's reception into the visual arts tell us about the contemporary Edo understanding and appreciation of the text? What can we learn from the selection of episodes to illustrate, and the details of their depiction? Do iconographical details reveal "contamination" from Heike material outside the rufubon (vulgate) text lineage?
Examples will be drawn from illustrations of episodes from the Heike involving exiles and recluses, comparing how their stories are told verbally and visually, with reference to several different textual and iconographical traditions.