Session 148: Individual Papers: Premodern Japanese Literature

Organizer and Chair: Mariko Tamanoi, University of California, Los Angeles

The Dai Is Cast: Poetic Topic Formation and the Visual Field in Heian Japan

Joseph T. Sorensen, University of Colorado, Boulder

In the composition of traditional Japanese verse (waka) from the tenth century on, the most important consideration for an aspiring poet was the "poetic topic," or dai. Modern scholars such as Kubota Jun and Ozawa Masao have argued that dai served to distance poetic composition from immediate experience and helped raise literary awareness (bungakuteki ishiki), placing waka in the realm of conceptual literature (kannenteki bungaku). Expanding on their arguments, I show how the visual arts played a pivotal role in the early formation of assigned topics in Heian Japan (794–1185) and helped poets mediate direct experience and poetic expression.

Though dai began as merely descriptive titles that facilitated the categorization of poems into pre-existing Chinese typologies of, for instance, natural phenomena, dai eventually came to denote an elaborate matrix of conventional associations surrounding a certain object, idea, or event. I argue that the way poetic topics developed in the period leading up to Kokinshû, the first imperial anthology of Japanese verse (ca. 905), is inextricable from the rise of screen painting and other visual arts during the same period. Poetic compositions by Ki no Tsurayuki (ca. 868–945) that were based on or for painted screens illustrate how poems and paintings worked in tandem to establish the conventions that would define all subsequent poetry in the tradition.

Surviving Criticism: The Role of Scholarly Ambivalence in the Sustenance of "Boring" Texts, as Seen in the Case of Tamakiwaru, a Premodern Japanese Court Memoir

C. Miki Wheeler, University of Colorado, Boulder

In 1224, the poet-scholar Fujiwara Teika (1162–1241) discovered that his sister, Kengozen (1157–1224), had compiled a memoir referred to today as Tamakiwaru. Upon examining it, Teika declared that because of its "unusual content" and "poor writing style," he could neither condone nor condemn the preservation of its manuscript. Over seven hundred years later, Misumi Yôichi published an article titled "Is Tamakiwaru Really That Boring?" Sporadic declarations of disdain toward the text have played a crucial role in its marginalization within the canon of classical Japanese literature, and absence altogether from research in the West.

But in the last ten years, scholars such as Edith Sarra, Shirley Yumiko Hulvey, and Imazeki Toshiko collectively broadened the scope of the critical parameters of research on court diaries written by women. While acknowledging the importance of the philological approaches of traditional scholarship, they incorporated autobiographical, narratological, and feminist literary theory in their discussions, which resulted in an expansion of the common vocabulary among scholars of the genre.

It is in this spirit that I emphasize the importance of investigating the contents of Tamakiwaru in the context of the author’s personal experiences, which were closely tied to the Genpei wars (1180–1185). Cross-referencing internal evidence with other source material, such as contemporaneous court diaries kept by men, historical narratives, and military tales, brings this memoir to life in a way that belies the ambivalence that has characterized much of its scholarship. This finding provides a true glimpse at the stunning breadth of premodern court diaries by women.

One Piece in the Puzzle of Embodiment: The Role of Erotics in Medieval Buddhist Setsuwa

Charlotte Eubanks, University of Colorado, Boulder

As a mode of medieval religious writing, setsuwa ("explanatory tales") are involved in engaging their audiences more at the level of sensation than at the level of logic. This is a dangerous claim to make, for it flirts with the misconception that setsuwa in particular, and medieval Buddhism in general, represent a popularized watering down of classical Buddhism to fit the needs and lowered capacities of the rural masses. Rather than discount the consistent sensational appeals of setsuwa as a necessary evil, required if one wishes to communicate to the masses but far from ideal, this paper will instead take these appeals seriously, evaluating them as that portion of the sermon which often bears the weight of the theological argument being made.

While the relationship between sensual desire and religious faith has been closely, and openly, attended to in the case of medieval European Christianity, this interaction remains largely unaccounted for in Buddhist studies. Thus, this paper will chart new territory by examining the body of the preacher, the believer, and the sinner as sites of tension between the divine and the earthly. Through a close consideration of erotic motifs in medieval, Buddhist setsuwa, this presentation will develop an understanding of the role that the common themes of sexual titillation, predatory threats, and sensual arousal played in the awakening and development of faith.

Yamauba: Japanese Mountain Witch in Literature, Folklore, and Art

Noriko T. Reider, Miami University

To many contemporary Japanese, the term yamauba (lit., mountain old woman) conjures up the image of a mountain-dwelling hag ready to devour humans who happen to cross her path. The witch in "Hansel and Gretel" (Grimm’s no. 15) and Baba Yaga of Russian folktales can be considered Western counterparts of the yamauba figure. However, the yamabua’s image is complex. Indeed, commenting on the medieval Noh play entitled "Yamamba," Karen Brazell calls the yamamba (the same as yamauba) character "an impossible bundle of contradictions." By the end of the seventeenth century, yamauba came to be considered the mother of Kintarō, a legendary child with great strength raised on Mt. Ashigara and to be portrayed by ukiyo-e artists in the eighteenth century as an alluring, beautiful woman humoring her son. Contributing to this changing image are the narratives of Kinpira jōruri, Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s play entitled Komochi yamauba (Mountain Witch with a Child, 1712), and folk beliefs about yamauba. The presentation will study the transformation of the image of the yamauba in the early modern period and its significance by examining the nature of the yamauba from classical literature and folktales. I will also explore how this change is related to the status of Japanese women of that period, its multidimensional reflection of and impact on the Japanese society and psyche.

Humor with Heart: Haikai renga and the Ushin Tradition

Jeremy Robinson, University of Virginia

Haikai renga, the unconventional linked verse that became popular in sixteenth-century Japan, has frequently been relegated to the margins of the larger renga tradition, dismissed as less important due largely to the form’s reliance on colloquial rather than traditional poetic language and the frequent appearance of humorous or vulgar themes. While linked verse had grown from a simple parlor game into a refined art form, praised as ushin or "with heart," humorous renga remained firmly in the mushin tradition, "without heart." However, the fundamental elements of haikai renga—the importance of collaboration, the immediacy of the themes, and the emphasis on creative linking—reveal a strong affinity with the earliest ideals of renga composition. Rather than a product of the degradation of the genre, humorous renga may be seen as an attempt to rediscover the original freshness and appeal of renga at a time in which much linked verse had become formulaic and overly reliant on elaborate rules. This paper examines the conventions of haikai renga in relation to the ideals of linked verse composition espoused by the masters of the renga form, explores the importance of the genre to expanding literary production beyond the upper classes, and attempts to reclaim a place for humorous linked verse alongside more conventional poetic forms in Japan’s literary history.