Paper short abstract:

In order to develop a new approach to researching the human-animal relationship in Edo Japan, a theriotopological look at early modern literature is essential. This paper shows how said methods derived from the new field of Literary Animal Studies could be applied to Japanese literary research.

Paper long abstract:

We encounter animals in Japanese literature across all eras and literary genera; from the origins of the horse and cattle to the mutilated remains of the goddess Ukemochi in Nihon Shoki (720); related to the heroic deeds of the war horses Iketsuki and Surusumi in the war epic Heike Monogatari (1180–1185); over shape-shifting foxes in Tono monogatari (Kunio Yanagita, 1875–1962 to an autodiegetic tomcat in Natsume Sôseki's (1867-1916) novel Wagahai wa Neko de Aru: Animals show themselves as objects or as subjects, as individuals or as stereotypes, as real animals or as symbols, theriothymic or anthropothymic, theriomorphic, anthropomorphic, often only shaped as props, as accessories to people and locations and as “absent referents” in the respective social context of the authors (Kompatscher: 2015).

Although literary animals are actually created by human beings, their appearance can tell us a lot about a historically specific knowledge about them and how the form of such texts speaks not only about animals, but also about the way animals were depicted (Borgards: 2012). Therefore, in order to make well-founded statements about the real human-animal relationship behind the literary animal, the various aesthetic layers have to be removed from it, thus revealing the real animal underneath (Kompatscher: 2005). I claim that the approaches of Literary Animal Studies can also be transferred to Japanese literature and by doing that, in fact a whole new chapter in Japanese human-animal research could be written.

In my paper, apart from introducing the methods of Literary Animal Studies into Japanese Studies Research, I would also like to address the problems which can arise when literary theories that are tailored to European languages and linguistics are applied to Japanese texts. Furthermore, I would also like to establish the approaches I consider the most promising for my own dissertation project, dealing with texts about animals, their respective roles and depiction, by the premodern thinker Andō Shōeki (1703–1762). My aim is to show that a theriotopological look at Japanese literature is essential in order to develop a new approach to researching the human-animal relationship in Japan.