Organizer: Tomi Suzuki, Columbia University
Chair: Haruo Shirane, Columbia University
Discussants: David T. Bialock, University of Southern California; Mark Morris, University of Cambridge
Japanese literature has often been characterized, both inside Japan and in the West, as being predominantly lyrical. The institutional emphasis on the emotive character of the nation’s literature is in fact not unique to Japan but has been widely observed in modern nation state formation. The persistent—or so it seems—emphasis on lyricism from Tsurayuki’s 10th-century defense of Japanese poetry as growing out of the "seeds of the heart" to Motoori Norinaga’s noted theory of mono no aware in the late 18th century, however, has made this representation (construction) of the national literary tradition appear to be convincing and natural.
What then are the socio-political implications of this ideological construction? In what historical, political, social, and cultural contexts did this construction occur? What impact, immediate and long term, did such an articulation have? Under what historical and political circumstances did this become a persistent ideology?
As we shall see, while this emphasis on lyricism is often seen as the natural result of the centrality of short poetic forms (waka) in Japanese literature and as a matter of apolitical aestheticism, it was in fact deeply embedded in a larger political and ideological nexus involving the issue of value, authority, and power, particularly in relationship to the emperor system and the construction of modern nation state. We will be investigating the implications of gender construction (of femininity and the private versus masculinity and the public) and of national identity (e.g., Japanese-ness versus Chinese-ness), which accompanied the claim that the Japanese literary and cultural tradition was highly lyrical.
Tomi Suzuki, Columbia University
Under the influence of the preeminent 19th century literary historian Hippolyte Taine, who stressed the national character of the English, the French, and the German people (as expressed in their literature) respectively, the first Japanese modern literary histories (published in 1890) characterized Japanese literature and Japanese mentality as "elegant and graceful" in contrast to the "heroic and grand" character of Chinese literature and the "precise, detailed, and exhaustive" nature of Western literature. This characterization derived largely from the phonocentric genbun-itchi notion of a "national language" that institutionally designated Heian kana literature as the prototype of "national literature." The strong association of "national language" and "national literature" with "femininity" generated a deep ambivalence that haunted subsequent modern discourse on the national literary tradition.
This paper will examine the historical context and ideological implications of the genre and gender constructions that inform modern literary histories and criticism since the mid-1880s through the post-war period. Particular attention will be paid to two interrelated axes of this critical discourse: (1) an evolutionist, hierarchical order among genres, the highest position being assigned to "the realistic novel" (even after the introduction of literary modernism in the late 1920s), and (2) the growing emphasis on emotion and lyricism. Both of these axes were strongly associated with the construction and definition of Japan as a modern nation state. This paper will analyze the highly gendered rhetoric of these critical axes and their ideological implications.
Haruo Shirane, Columbia University
This paper analyzes the reception of The Tale of Genji in the context of the various discourses of lyricism and in relation to the larger issues of gender and canonization. While The Tale of Genji was written by a woman and initially appreciated by women, it was, significantly, canonized by male poets and scholars who regarded it as a repository of poetic diction, poetic sensibility, and court culture. The close association of Heian vernacular literature, particularly The Tale of Genji, with feminine ideals, however, created considerable ambivalence among male scholars, particularly in the Tokugawa period. An interesting example is Kamo no Mabuchi (1697–1769), one of the major founders of Kokugaku, who positively associated masuraoburi, or masculinity, with the Man’yoshu and the ancient period, while negatively associating taoyameburi, or femininity, with the Heian period. Mabuchi argued that Japanese culture deteriorated from masculine to feminine as the capital moved from Nara to Heian. Mabuchi’s gendered poetic history was a means of revalorizing waka, which had become associated with Heian women’s literature, as originally male and thus a superior form. By contrast, Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801) positively interpreted the femininity associated with Heian literature, which he valorized as a form of mono no aware, of pathos and true feeling, as opposed to masculinity, which he associated with China and with superficial rationality and intellect. This paper explores these and other discourses of lyricism, both modern and premodern, as they relate to the issue of gender and the canonization of The Tale of Genji.
Joshua Mostow, University of British Columbia
The idea that waka and politics have nothing to do with each other, due to the overwhelmingly "lyric" nature of the former, is accepted as a matter-of-fact by many.
In this presentation I will discuss the recurring political import attributed to the waka form by Japanese thinkers from the start of the modern period (1868) to the 1980s, focusing on four historical moments: (1) the importance of waka in the construction of the image of Emperor Meiji, both at home and in translation abroad, and the consequent survival of waka against the challenge of the so-called "new style poetry" (shintai-shi) associated with modernization; (2) the censorship of waka and its contribution to the war effort during the 1930s and 40s, including the appearance of the Aikoku Hyakunin Isshu; (3) the subsequent rehabilitation of waka—for some time in doubt—after the Second World War, despite its close association with the war-time imperial cult; (4) and finally its renewed importance in the writings of both literary historians and authors such as Mishima Yukio in the 1960s and 70s.