Session 205: What Do You Expect from a Woman?: Building and Bending Genre Conventions in Heian and Kamakura Literature

Organizer and Chair: Stefania Burk, University of Virginia

Discussant: Edith Sarra, Indiana University

Keywords: pre-modern literature; modern literary history; gender; genre.

The category of "woman" has been a central organizing feature of the generic and social categories through which classical Japanese literary scholarship operates. Whether in defining a genre, a mode of authorial subjectivity, or a form of textual practice, expectations of what a woman could or should express have rarely been questioned. For example, memoirs written in the vernacular tend to be associated with women writers or with "feminine" concerns; women poets tend to be more "passionate" than "practical"; and women have been on the margins of literary critical activity. While such distinctions can be both useful and necessary, retrospective evaluations often tend to overlook the influence of specific historical contexts and social positions.

The papers in this panel examine four literary figures from the 10th to the 14th centuries whose works and activities ask us to reconsider some of the standard links between gender and genre that have constituted classical Japanese literature. The first two papers deal with Heian writers (Ki no Tsurayuki and Sei Shônagon) who are now often viewed as the progenitors of unique genres but with a gender twist: Tsurayuki as the "mother" of nikki bungaku and Sei as the "father" of zuihitsu. The last two papers deal with female poets of the Kamakura period (the nun Abutsu and ex-Empress Eifukumon-in) who chose to or were given the opportunity to participate in what had increasingly become "masculine" domains during the Kamakura period: exegesis on Heian tales and the patronage and compilation of court poetry.

Poetic Literacy, Textual Property, and Gender in the Tosa nikki

Gustav Heldt, Bard College

The Tosa nikki looms large in modern Japanese literary history as the mother of diary literature and the modern I-novel. Its combination of native script with the daily-entry format of a kanbun nikki is often seen as an experimental attempt at writing a "feminine" form of literature. Treatment of the diary has almost entirely been limited to discussions of how and why its author’s gender differs from that of its narrator. So universal are the commonplaces surrounding this discussion, that to read the Tosa Diary otherwise entails revising several long-standing assumptions about gender and writing in early Japan. Contrary to most such formulations, this paper will argue that the relations between femininity and diary writing within the Tosa Diary comment on the latter’s social status as a form of property rather than its linguistic status as a vernacular text. In doing so, this paper will attempt to contextualize the Tosa Diary through a more general consideration of the ways in which the circulation of texts produced social, economic, and political distinctions at the Heian court.

Of Questionable Lineage: Makura no sôshi’s Experiments with Hybrid Form and Language

Naomi Fukumori, Ohio State University

Sei Shônagon’s early-eleventh-century text Makura no sôshi (The Pillow Book) serves as a useful case study of the literary significance that is made to accrue upon a canonical text. Makura no sôshi has been used to rationalize within Japanese literary histories a linear development of the zuihitsu (literally, "following the brush," roughly equivalent to essay or miscellany) genre within the vernacular tradition, as well as the position of female writing within the history of Japanese literature. As a result, Makura no sôshi plays an uneasy role of heading a group of male-authored texts of largely didactic nature, of which it, the female-authored text, appears to be the primitive prototype. Placed within the larger context of its literary heritage, however, Makura no sôshi can be seen to experiment playfully with various mid-Heian literary traditions, of both high and low contemporary cachet, such as the waka, kanshi (poetry in Chinese language written by Japanese), Chinese classical learning, uta monogatari (poetic tales), imayô (popular songs) and setsuwa (anecdotal narratives). Furthermore, it exploits and subverts the marginal subject position of a mid-ranking lady-in-waiting to an empress to bring together volatile social dynamics (gender, class, political differences) and wide-ranging registers of language—all of which contribute to the creation of a sui generis work. Ultimately, this paper will question the traditional lineages created by genre and gender-focused readings of literature, and attempt to provide alternate methodologies for factoring in issues of genre and gender in literary analysis.

The Oral Transmission of Literary Expertise by Women: Abutsu and the Art of Reading Genji monogatari

Christian Ratcliff, Yale University

When, in the late twelfth century, Genji monogatari is identified as a work waka poets must know in detail, texts designed to preserve such detailed knowledge appear: treatises such as Fujiwara no Teika’s Okuiri, and annotated manuscripts like the Aobyôshi-bon. As was largely the case with the older genre of poetic treatises, expertise concerning Genji was recorded by men.

Yet Genji monogatari was just as important to women who aspired to poetic excellence. It was important also for women in service: the work of cultured ladies-in-waiting, though somewhat splintered and diverse, had after all not ended with the Heian period. Genji was read and understood in detail by these literate, educated women. Where is that knowledge written? Only a single text, the Mumyôzôshi, comes to mind. If the expertise of women was not written, by what avenues did it travel?

In his 1269 diary Saga no kayoiji, Asukai Masaari records listening to the nun Abutsu as she reads and discusses Genji monogatari. Masaari is entranced by the way Abutsu reads, like nothing he has ever heard before. This episode reminds us of Mumyôzôshi, in which another nun—like Abutsu a veteran of long court service—is asked to recite Genji by an audience of younger, active ladies-in-waiting. Abutsu’s performance suggests that the setting of Mumyôzôshi is more than a convention of contemporary historiography, and allows us to consider that women at court, eschewing the written treatise for whatever reason, orally transmitted—elder to younger, mother to daughter—the literary expertise that could aid a career in service.

Alone above the Clouds: Gender and Rank in The Personal Poetry Contest of Eifukumon-in

Stefania Burk, University of Virginia

As schisms plagued and finally brought down the Kamakura establishment, Empress Eifukumon-in (1271–1342), Emperor Fushimi’s widow, became the senior member of her court and its innovative poetic salon. During her reign as matriarch, Eifukumon-in compiled a collection of two hundred of her poems. She chose an unusual format: the personal poetry contest or jikaawase. This genre is modeled on "real" contests in which the poems of two teams are pitted against each other and judged. In a personal poetry contest, a poet arranges his poems into an "imaginary" competition. A minor but prestigious genre, the jikaawase format flourished at the hands of prominent male poets (e.g., Teika, Saigyô) and patrons (e.g., Go-Toba) over a century before Eifukumon-in chose to use it. And Eifukumon-in seems to have been the first (and only?) woman to do so. Why did she choose this arguably "masculine" form over more traditionally "feminine" or neutral modes of compilation? Her chosen format, with its implicit elements of performance, competition, and polyphony, begs such questions as: Is she taking refuge (and from what?) behind the fiction of this contest? Who is meant to evaluate? Extant manuscripts of Eifukumon-in’s jikaawase contain no judgments; however, it asks to be appraised—not only because of the poetry’s quality but also because of the format she chose for presentation. More generally, a discussion of this work reminds us how considerations of gender and rank complicate common categories such as "woman writer/poet" and "patron."