Paper short abstract:

Eiga monogatari (c. 1092) tells of a turbulent society punctuated by calamities, some attributed to malevolent spirits. But if stories energized the violence, they also placated. This paper contends that Eiga uses affective tale discourse to exorcise history's hauntings.

Paper long abstract:

Possession by malevolent spirits posed one of the greatest threats to the well-being of the aristocracy in Heian-period Japan. As fearsome as they were, articulated as such, these conditions seized control of otherwise volatile, inexplicable phenomena as the workings of relatable, embittered spirits. And such very human explanations opened the way to a cure: exorcism. Since possession was diagnosed mostly through public acknowledgement of the resentments harbored by that spirit, exorcism and its shamanic storytelling acted as a therapeutic forum through which the court society could exorcize its own regrets and psychic projections. Especially in the language of the monogatari, the roles of victim and perpetrator were blurred as intertwined twists of fate showed how some people's fortunes could turn to death overnight. Although tales could not change what happened in the past, they could rewrite to open possibilities in memory. Such interconnected stories helped to make sense of the world and alleviated anxieties about the future by offering sympathy for all, defusing the negative energy propelling these collective manifestations. To illustrate such effects of tale discourse, this paper analyzes a series of examples from Eiga monogatari (Tale of Flowering Fortunes, c. 1092), a vernacular history that acts as a virtual exorcism, a potent cure and prophylactic for possessions. Because the work has been perceived as an inaccurate history or as an uninspired fictional tale, Eiga has been underappreciated for what it achieved: a new type of history that employed the affective language of tales to move and hence to heal. This paper illustrates such effects through a reading of one such narrative strand, the malevolent spirits of Fujiwara no Akimitsu and his daughter. Links between Akimitsu and other fathers who had ambitions for their daughters reintegrate an alienated, oft denigrated Akimitsu as an integral part of Heian society and restore his dignity. Akimitsu, the minister of the right during much of Fujiwara no Michinaga's tenure as the minister of the left, thus acts as a foil and deflects the much more frightening prospect that Michinaga himself might, despite his immense successes, emerge as a fearsome specter.