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Creative Nostalgia: Imagining the Heian Past in Medieval Japanese Literary and Visual Culture
Organizer and Chair: Randle Keller Kimbrough, University of Colorado, Boulder
Discussant : Thomas William Hare, Princeton University
The literary, artistic, and architectural achievements of the several centuries preceding the Genpei War of 1185—the era that we now refer to as the Heian period—loomed large in the popular imagination of medieval Japan (1185-1600). Our panel will seek to explore the presence and significance of the Heian past as an idealized construction in the literary and visual arts of the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. We will focus upon some of the disparate visions of Heian culture in late-medieval poetry, painting, drama, and calligraphy as a means of assessing the place of the past in post-Heian aesthetic discourse. Keller Kimbrough will begin by discussing several illustrated tales of Muromachi-period poem-and-fan-matching contests, and the function of those contests, as represented in popular fiction, as a way of establishing connections to the cultural legacy of the ancient court. Paul Atkins will continue by exploring the historical resonances of a famous ninth-century villa in two fifteenth-century noh plays. John Carpenter will examine the role of Emperor Fushimi in the Kamakura-period canonization of mid-Heian calligraphy, and its consequent effect on the development of medieval Japanese aesthetics. Finally, Joseph Sorensen will discuss Kujô Kanezane’s early Kamakura-period uses of poetry, painting, and mid-Heian court precedent for the promotion of his daughter’s fortunes at court. Because of the cross-disciplinary nature of our panel, we expect it to appeal to scholars of literature, history, and art history, as well as to all those with a theoretical interest in issues of nostalgic imagination and historical representation.
Puzzling Painted Fans: Muromachi Contest Fiction and the Cult of the Heian Past
Randle Keller Kimbrough, University of Colorado, Boulder
Poem-and-fan-matching contests (ôgi awase) were a popular aristocratic recreation in Japan from at least the early tenth century. As the game was typically played, a “right” and a “left” team would attempt to match particular painted fans with the famous poems to which they allude. Such contests continued to be sponsored in the centuries following the late twelfth-century decline of the Heian court, eventually giving rise in the Muromachi period to explanatory volumes of poems and fans (ôgi no sôshi) and to sometimes farcical and always lavishly illustrated works of ôgi awase contest fiction. This paper will focus on two such literary works from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: Jippon ôgi (Ten Fans), and Kachô Fûgetsu (The Sisters Kachô and Fûgetsu). The former tells of how a governor of Mikawa Province employed a poem-and-fan-matching contest to find and marry a descendent of the legendary poet Sarumaru Dayû; the latter describes how a group of fourteenth-century Kyoto nobles summoned the “ghosts” of Ariwara no Narihira and the fictional Hikaru Genji as a means of settling their own poem-and-fan contest dispute. I will discuss these works in the context of late-medieval literary, artistic, and recreational trends, exploring in particular the theme of nostalgia in their playful and highly creative constructions of the Heian past. In addition, I will discuss some of the visual representations of poems, fans, and poem-and-fan-matching contests in ôgi no sôshi and several early Edo-period manuscripts of ôgi awase fiction, which I have recently photographed in Japan.
Love Among the Ruins: Depictions of the Kawara-no-in in Medieval Noh Plays
Paul S. Atkins, University of Washington, Seattle
Both Tôru and Yûgao—two superb plays written around the first half of the fifteenth century—are set at the site formerly occupied by the Kawara-no-in (Riverside Villa) of the inimitable aristocrat Minamoto no Tôru (822-95). In Tôru, the ghost of the title character returns to frolic about the grounds of his old estate, recalling with elegant nostalgia the artificial seascape and saltmaking operation that he created at great expense by having seawater hauled to Kyoto from the coast. A very different atmosphere is created at the Kawara-no-in that provides the setting for Yûgao. The title character is the ghost of a young woman, a fictional character from The Tale of Genji, who died at the Kawara-no-in after being taken there in secret by her lover; she was murdered by a malevolent spirit. In that play, the identification of the Kawara-no-in as the site of Yûgao’s death (which does not appear in Genji) allows the playwright to trace the outlines of a Heian past that is frightening, sinister, and ultimately unknowable. These remarkably disparate renderings of the same site represent different historical points in the efforts of medieval noh playwrights to come to grips with the alluring but haunted Heian past. In this paper I will explore the gaps in their respective depictions of those bygone days through close examination of the Kawara-no-in landscape and its dual manifestations.
Rewriting the History of Heian Calligraphy: Emperor Fushimi as Collector and Copyist
John T. Carpenter, SOAS, University of London; Sainsbury Institute, United Kingdom
Emperor Fushimi (1265–1317; r. 1287–98) played a seminal role in defining the cultural significance of the emperor during medieval times. Because Fushimi was already of age when he ascended the throne, and then reigned for over a decade, to a greater extent than many of his predecessors he was able to shape the way the monarchy was perceived. He is also representative of medieval court literati who looked back nostalgically to the mid-Heian period and sought there the embodiment of a vibrant court culture. Through his study and promotion of Heian calligraphic models, he helped redefine the image that future generations would have of the artistic production of that period. Along with his accomplishments as a poet and calligrapher, Fushimi was also a collector of calligraphy. Many works of Heian calligraphy now considered canonical passed through his hands, including manuscripts by and attributed to Fujiwara no Yukinari (972–1027), a high-ranking imperial counselor and confidant of Fujiwara no Michinaga, who came to be recognized as the founder of the Sesonji lineage of court calligraphy. Also, as part of his calligraphic training, Fushimi made meticulous copies of several works of Heian calligraphy. Not only in his scribal accomplishments, but also in his collecting and copying practices Fushimi emulated Chinese emperors of the past who had similarly believed it the ruler’s responsibility to protect the cultural heritage of his realm. In Fushimi’s case, calligraphy of the mid-Heian period was both a source of artistic inspiration and a symbol of imperial legitimacy.
Painting, Poetry, and Politics: Ninshi’s Court Entrance of 1190 and the Michinaga Model
Joseph T. Sorensen, University of California, Davis
Fujiwara no Michinaga (966-1027) strategically staged the court entrance of his daughter Shôshi in 999 in order to eclipse a rival consort and strengthen his daughter’s and his own political allegiances with important members at court. While some accounts praise the decorated screens, the poetry commissioned for the occasion, and the lavish ceremonial dress, other historical records, most notably Shôyûki, the diary of Fujiwara no Sanesuke (957-1046), make it clear that the event was in many ways unprecedented. Ironically, the unprecedented display for Shôshi would serve as a precedent for Ninshi, the daughter of Kujô Kanezane (1149-1207), whose entry into the court of Emperor Gotoba (1180-1230) in 1190 included a similar display of painting, poetry, and politics. While the latter event had a greater emphasis on poetry (six poems from the event would later be selected for inclusion in the Shinkokinshû of ca. 1205, itself a distinctly political act), the conscious patterning after the Michinaga model shows an early-medieval appropriation of the Heian past that enabled Kanezane and his party to take the “unprecedented” as precedence. By focusing upon Kanezane’s creative manipulation (rather than simply idealization) of Heian court mores in the immediate post-Genpei War period, I hope to illuminate an aspect of historical nostalgia as blatant political machination: the commissioning and composing of poems and screen paintings as a means of empowering an aspirant to the imperial court.