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- Convenor:
-
Jeffrey Knott
(National Institute of Japanese Literature)
Send message to Convenor
- Chair:
-
Tokuro Yamamoto
(Kansai University)
- Discussant:
-
Tokuro Yamamoto
(Kansai University)
- Stream:
- Pre-modern Literature
- Location:
- Torre B, Piso 1, Auditório 1
- Sessions:
- Saturday 2 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
Universalization of classicism in late medieval Japan is attributed to "transmission" from the Capital, especially by itinerant renga masters. We reject a unidirectional model, arguing that records of rengashi activity display instead creative efforts by which a shared high culture was built anew.
Long Abstract:
The unprecedented universalization of court literary culture that we observe in late medieval Japan (15-16c) has usually been attributed to simple diffusion. With the breakdown of order in the Capital, its literati are said to have fanned out into the countryside, each of them a conduit for "spreading" the classicism of the court. Our panel questions such a unidirectional model of cultural "transmission." An examination of the textual record reveals it was often from just such local literary communities that cultural developments began.
This is clearest seen in the case of medieval rengashi (masters of linked verse). From their activities they might appear to embody the "transmission" thesis. Indeed, beyond their duties at renga sessions, many rengashi made a profession of traveling up and down the archipelago as invited experts in traditional court poetics. Yet surviving records of the teachings they provided demonstrate something far more original than mere cultural transfer. The three papers in this panel explore how the varied documents of rengashi activity—lecture notes, treatises, and commentaries on classical literature—reflect a new, creative development in classical studies beyond the scholarship of the Capital.
We begin with Yamaguchi Notes on the "Tales of Ise" (1489) by renga master Sōgi, a rare commentary written explicitly for novices on the literary periphery. Close examination reveals significant differences from others' lecture notes of Sōgi's teachings, demonstrating the originality and range of rengashi literary practices. Next we consider the interpretive consequences of such differences. Taking up rengashi exegeses of the Tale of Genji, particularly the character of Ukifune, we discover a growing concern for the "literary" quite distinct from traditionalist, scholastic approaches to classical texts. Indeed the function of "commentary" itself seems in flux. We conclude with an investigation of hybrid Genji studies like the Rōkashō (1504), which amalgamates various aristocratic and commoner theories of classical exegesis that coexisted at this turning point. The panelists each explore how, in the same period that saw the Muromachi state collapse into countless local conflicts, the rengashi not only facilitated, but actively built anew a high culture in which literary aspirants everywhere would share.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 2 September, 2017, -Paper short abstract:
I examine renga master Sōgi's Yamaguchi Notes on the "Tales of Ise," a unique commentary on that work by his own hand, aimed expressly at novices. I consider the light it sheds, contrasted with other Sōgi commentaries, on the reality of rengashi activity in regional literary hubs like Yamaguchi.
Paper long abstract:
Yamaguchi Notes on the "Tales of Ise" (Ise monogatari Yamaguchi-ki) is a commentary on the Tales of Ise by the renga master Sōgi, composed by him during the Entoku era (1489-91). The text comes with a colophon penned by Sōgi himself. From this we learn that the commentary was drawn up during his sojourn in the Province of Suō (modern-day Yamaguchi Prefecture), where he stayed with the region's preeminent and literarily ambitious warlord, Ōuchi Masahiro. We learn also that his intended audience for the work was expressly one of novices. A text so situated, as preliminary studies by Yamamoto Tokurō have noted, presents something of unique value to scholarship. Multiple other works may preserve Sōgi's teachings on the Tales of Ise, but this text is the only such commentary from Sōgi's own hand. Exact knowledge of why, when, where, and for whom he composed it, moreover, allows us to grasp the nature of its commentary with rare depth and precision.
In this paper, I compare Sōgi's commentary as it appears in these Yamaguchi Notes with other commentaries that represent his teachings on the Tales of Ise. I center my inquiry in particular on the contrast between Capital and province, demonstrating how Sōgi's acts of commentary differed depending on where, and for whom, they were performed. The research of recent years has made it ever clearer how deeply renga masters (rengashi) were involved in the spread of literary works to the countryside. My goal, through a detailed comparison of content across commentaries that builds on the achievements of previous research, is to bring the concrete reality of these rengashi activities to light.
Paper short abstract:
The recognized role of rengashi in expanding Genji readership is misunderstood as one of mere cultural facilitation. Evidence of rengashi teachings in fact demonstrates their break with earlier Genji tradition. This is particularly clear in their newly "literary" treatment of the Uji chapters.
Paper long abstract:
In the later medieval period, the Tale of Genji became common property of a larger audience than ever before in Japanese history. It has long been recognized that rengashi, itinerant masters of linked verse (renga) of largely commoner extraction, played a leading part in this expansion of readership. For just as long, however, their role has been broadly misunderstood as one of cultural facilitation. In previous studies they figure primarily as pan-regionalist, cross-class mere conveyors of a literary order pre-existing them. Yet such a narrative finds little support in the documentary record of the very Genji lectures through which it was ostensibly accomplished. On the contrary, surviving evidence of rengashi teachings on the Genji--in commentaries, lecture notes, even manuscript marginalia—shows a sharp break with the earlier Genji traditions of the Capital. This degree of thematic and stylistic difference demonstrates, I argue, that rengashi interpretive expansion of the text was in no way less extensive or substantial than any geographic gains they secured for its reading public.
The chief of many points of departure in the Genji as taught by rengashi can be found in a fundamental shift of exegetic stance. Broadly speaking, the Tale of Genji is a work of fiction which earlier interpreters had approached more historically and scholastically, and which their rengashi successors now approached more literarily and analytically. The distinction is never absolute. It is also more opaque for the earlier chapters, where Murasaki Shikibu herself makes the most liberal use of her historical models. As we approach the famous concluding Uji chapters, however, with characters like Kaoru, Niou, and above all Ukifune, whose share of invention far outweighs their historical sourcing, the growing comparative silence of traditional Genji criticism is striking. The venerable Kakaishō (River and Sea, 1367) commentary and Kachō yosei (Lingering Florescence, 1472) display little of the lively interest the many rengashi commentaries abundantly evidence towards these characters, and towards what might today be called the "psychological realism" of their stories. This more "literary" Genji was not conveyed from the Capital by the peregrinations of the rengashi, it was fostered on their road.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I consider the significance of the interpretive complexity we find in some works of Muromachi exegesis like renga poet Shōhaku's Genji commentary Rōkashō. I argue that it accurately reflects dynamic shifts in how what we call "commentary" functioned in the study of classical texts.
Paper long abstract:
The Rōkashō (Trifling with Blossoms, 1504), a commentary on the Tale of Genji, is a text of considerable interest. In origin it was simply the collected "Genji Notes" (Genji kikigaki) of the renga poet Shōhaku. This was a private text, his personal edition of lectures given by his teacher, the commoner renga master (rengashi) Sōgi, whose own teachings harkened back to those of the high-ranking court literatus Ichijō Kaneyoshi. It assumed its final shape as the Rōkashō only after a younger poetic aristocrat, Sanjōnishi Sanetaka, prepared an official version for public circulation. In this way Kaneyoshi's commentary, having once been taken over into the lecture sessions of the rengashi, made its way eventually back to noblemen like Sanetaka. The example represents a pattern of flow within Genji commentary, one which the Rōkashō is an optimal text to observe.
One might ask why renga masters would make such use of Kaneyoshi's Genji commentary. But it might be better, I argue, to consider what exactly in Kaneyoshi's commentary was in fact being used. In his "Ise monogatari" Gukenshō (One Fool's Views on the Tales of Ise), after all, he almost completely rejects Ise commentaries that take a more fiction-centric approach. To what extent, if any, do we ever observe such an interpretive attitude, so characteristically severe of Kaneyoshi, being faithfully adopted in exegesis by rengashi? In this paper I use the Rōkashō to trace these dynamic shifts that took place within commentary from Kaneyoshi to Sōgi, to Shōhaku, and to Sanetaka. Reexamining our ideas about the motivating concerns of commentary activity, I seek to delineate how, in Muromachi commentaries on classics like the Ise or the Genji, what we call "commentary" actually functioned.