Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenor:
-
Edoardo Gerlini
(Ca' Foscari University of Venice)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Rebekah Clements
(ICREA Autonomous University of Barcelona)
- Section:
- Pre-modern Literature
- Sessions:
- Saturday 28 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
Inspired by the idea of "heritage as practice", this panel aims to stimulate a general rethinking of the concept of koten (classics), giving evidences of how premodern cultural producers actively used and re-created the "literary heritage" to answer new needs in their contemporary society.
Long Abstract:
In recent years, the concept of cultural heritage has gathered a growing interest from scholars of different disciplines. Openly in contrast with institutions like UNESCO, scholars retheorized heritage in a much wider meaning than that of cultural property. Heritage has been redefined as a process of meaning-making, performed by individuals and communities as a way to engage with the present while imagining possible futures, through the use and re-creation of cultural manifestations from their past, both tangible and intangible. Heritage becomes therefore tightly connected to issues like memories, feelings, identities, and ownership.
Thus far, premodern literature has received little attention from scholars of the interdisciplinary field known as "heritage studies", despite the fact that literary texts undoubtedly represent a valuable source of information about how people of the past engaged with their historical memories and managed their cultural identity. The case of premodern Japan is especially meaningful for two reasons: 1) the vast amount of surviving documents conserved in Japan constitute a sizeable "textual heritage" for both East Asia and the world; 2) the considerable continuity of literary canons until modern times - e.g. the lively longevity of the tanka form - suggests strong ties between new producers and traditional texts, continually charged with new meanings: political, religious, artistic.
Inspired by the idea of "heritage as practice" (Laurajane Smith 2006), this panel aims to rethink historical reuses and re-production of canonical texts, offering a new perspective on the role of premodern studies today vis-a-vis the "crisis of the classics". The papers demonstrate how authors in the medieval and early modern periods actively re-appropriated this textual heritage to answer new needs and problems. Japanese premodern literature, intended not as an object but rather as a social practice of re-evaluation, endlessly performed through the centuries, can be therefore considered a peculiar kind of cultural heritage useful to stimulate the academic discourse on material/immaterial. We hope that this historically informed perspective will foster further discussions about the role of modern technologies - like open-access databases and online resources - in preserving and sharing the "literary heritage" of Japan and East Asia today.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 28 August, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Since medieval times, the Genji monogatari has been a subject of study for the upper classes as a form of "literary heritage". In the mid-Edo period authors of lower extraction made the characters of their novels talk about the Genji monogatari transforming and reusing it as a form of entertainment.
Paper long abstract:
During the Edo period, enjoyment of the Genji monogatari spread among low-ranking samurai and the merchant class: commentaries and summaries like Kogetsusho or Genji Kokagami gained new readers, while scholars of the Kokugaku school launched new views of this classical work. During the 18th century, authors of zenki yomihon novels made their characters talk about the Genji monogatari in a way that imitated the style of academic treatises. Consequently, not only the Genji itself, but also the learning associated with it became a form of entertainment.
In this presentation I will give three examples of how the Genji monogatari has been reused and re-appropriated by Edo period authors, as a sort of Literary heritage.
The first example is Toyotomi Hideyoshi's character at the beginning of Kaidan tonoibukuro by Ōe Bunpa. Hideyoshi claims to explain the meaning of the word «tonoibukuro», one of the "three mysteries" in Genji monogatari, but it is merely a parody of the treatise Gengo hiketsu.
The second is the hermit of Saga who appears in Shinsai Yago by Bairōkan-shujin. The hermit asks Sanjonishi Sanezumi, an eminent scholar, several questions about the Genji monogatari. Sanezumi answered, just to be criticized by the hermit that expressed in turn his own opinions.
The third is Kakinomono no Hitomaro, as appears in Ueda Akinari's Nubatama no Maki. Hitomaro expresses his appreciation for the renga poet Sochin, a devote reader of the Genji monogatari himself, and lectured about his original interpretation of the tale.
In these three examples, the authors express their own opinions about the Genji in the form of a story. Generally, allegories represent the author's thoughts and criticism of reality, but in these cases is the author's view on literature and his interpretation to be expressed. It was this original view and interpretation that attracted new readers. In other words, this are early examples of how canonical texts and the "learning" associated with them have being appropriated and reconfigured as "entertainment".
Paper short abstract:
How do archaeological evidences affect our understanding of classical texts? How do literary canons influence the intellectual framework of posterity and instances of "modernity"? The idea of "Projecting Classicism" I suggest may help to reconceptualize the meaning of "Literary Heritage".
Paper long abstract:
According to the preface of Uji shūi monogatari (mid 13th c.), the dainagon Takakuni started to write the Uji dainagon monogatari while he was lodging at Uji's Byōdōin, listening to stories told by people passing by. This account has been always considered just a narrative gimmick, until the discovery of An'yōshū and excavations at Byōdōin demonstrated its historical reliability, posing new questions to the study of this work.
Last year, excavations of the remains of Saiji temple at Kyoto, demonstrated its symmetry to the Tōji temple and confirmed many assumptions about the structure of Heiankyo. These excavations also forced scholars to rethink the meaning of a famous episode in the Uji shūi monogatari, the Bandainamon Yoshio's dream. In light of this archaeological discovery, the Tōdaiji and Saidaiji that appears in Yoshio's dream are not the Nara ones as previously thought, but Kyoto's Tōji and Saiji, suggesting that his ambition was to conquer the imperial power. This misunderstanding that goes back to the Kojidan (13th c.) was reinforced by the absence of the physical remains of Saiji.
On the contrary, the existence of Genji monogatari as a canonical work, drastically affected the historical reception of the scenery at Akashi in later works, for example in the Kakuichi-bon Heike monogatari's last chapter, Kanjō no maki, in which Lady Kenreimon'in, last survivor of the Heike, reviews the story from her point of view, relativizing the gender dimension of the whole work. While in Akashi, she had a dream where her mother Niinoama and her son emperor Antoku were still alive in the Dragon Palace under the sea. In the cultural framework where Kenreimon'in lived, the Genji monogatari was an esteemed canonical work, so I argue that her dream has been influenced by Genji chapters like Suma and Akashi, that have been reused to give shape to her dream, melting the classical text into the new one.
The mixture between literature and history in medieval works raises new questions about reuses and re-creations of "classicity". In this paper I apply the idea of "Projecting Classicism" to rethink the meaning of "Literary Heritage".
Paper short abstract:
After the Great Fire of Tenmei (1788), Emperor Kōkaku restored the imperial palace and its rites imitating emperor Murakami's Heian court, probably using the Hana no en chapter of the Genji monogatari as a model to inform his idea of restoration.
Paper long abstract:
Literary texts have the power to create worlds their readers wish to be real, even if fictional. They are not just the product of their authors' imagination, but are rather the sum of human wisdom, personal experiences and cultural history.
Despite being fictional, literary texts often represent a valuable source that offers answers to people's questions, giving shape to their aspirations and desires. Even if a monogatari is neither a "fact" nor a "history", it is presented by its narrator as a "truth". This ends up conditioning the shared memory of its readers, acquiring a sort of reliability by its own.
We know that rulers in Japan relied on historical texts as a tool to inform and orient their political actions, but what value did they ascribe to literary texts? In this presentation I will consider the case of Emperor Kōkaku (r. 1780-1817) and his reuse of the Genji monogatari. I argue that Kōkaku used the Hana no en (Banquet of Flowers) chapter as a document to inform his attempt to restore the court of emperor Murakami (r. 946-967) with its buildings, rites, and cultural events.
This hypothesis is based on three evidences:
1) After the destruction of the palace in the Great Fire of Tenmei (1788), Kōkaku rebuilt it imitating the shape and size it had during the Heian period. He planted a cherry tree in front of the new Shishinden and held a "banquet of flowers", that has as its only precedent the one held by Murakami, and that inspired the episode in the Genji monogatari.
2) In 1790, Kōkaku chooses to move into the new palace on November 22th, the very same day Emperor Murakami did the same, also restoring the custom of gyōkō (imperial procession).
3) Kōkaku recovered the title of Tennō-gō that had fallen in disuse after Murakami.
If the hypothesis that Kōkaku used the Genji monogatari as a model to restore the imperial palace is confirmed, this demonstrates how literary texts - exactly as other forms of cultural heritage - played an important role to re-creating an imagined cultural past and a shared identity.