Paper short abstract:

My presentation will take the motif of "forbidden gazes" in ancient Japanese mythology and ask what can be gained and what would be lost by analyzing it in a strict sakuhin-ron way.

Paper long abstract:

In my presentation I will focus on the motif of the forbidden gaze, which can be found in a range of mythological stories in Kojiki and Nihon shoki. Starting with Izanaki's and Izanami's encounter in the world of the dead, Hohodemi's glance into the parturition hut, etc., forbidden gazes are usually intertwined with erotic conflicts and lead almost inevitably to the production of "shame", usually by the female protagonist. This phenomenon has of course been analyzed before (c.f. Allan Grapard's "Visions of Excess and Excess of Vision", 1991), but typically in a context that fuses the "kiki" and other sources into one coherent mythological body. I will ask what we can gain if we look at "forbidden gazes" in a sakuhin-ron way, analyzing the various sources separately from each other and pointing out differences rather than similarities.