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Paper short abstract:

The paper examines how the concept of mapping influenced the development of visual-verbal narratives in 19th century Japanese print culture.

Paper long abstract:

The prevalence of visual-verbal narratives in late Edo period (19th century) print culture has been widely discussed. There were, however, developing two seemingly contrary tendencies: on the one hand, the literacy levels of the audience were rising; on the other, the publishers and authors were inventing more ways of guiding their readers. The paper addresses how Its convergence became possible and argues that the development of mapping as prevalent mental concept was a pivotal factor in this process. Specifically, the paper explores how punctuation markings and visual signals allowed the reader to piece together complex layers of the narrative, using Inakaori Magae Sagoromo (1850-52, Ryokutei Senryū, Utagawa Kunisada), a gōkan retelling of old Heian classics, as an example. Gōkan, a genre akin to graphic novel, rose to the popularity in 19th century and can be considered the culmination of the trends in early modern popular literacy, not yet having experienced heavy western influence. Inakaori Magae Sagoromo was published after gōkan as a genre became established and well-refined, and it is therefore representative of the genre development at the time. Moreover, the layout of the gōkan reflects how increasing non-verbal types of literacy, including visual and spatial, influenced the method of narrative organization. The acquired taste that favored mapping among the audience, therefore, enabled the publishers to cater to both advanced and novice readership, as mapping guidance would provide playful experience to the former and help to the latter.

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Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I will focus on prosodic features of the Pillow Book, specifically those found in its list-centered chapters. In particular, I argue that such features help explain the key role textual rhythm seems to have played in the reception of the Pillow Book in the Muromachi and Edo periods.

Paper long abstract:

As literary works of art, the kana classics of Heian Japan were, to be sure, the products primarily of written composition, and have continued, in the centuries since, to be passed down primarily as written documents. Frequently, however, throughout the text of such works, over the years a variety of essentially oral phenomena have also been detected, a wide array of prosodic features that have long occupied scholarly attention while yet defying easy analysis.

With regard to the text of the Tale of Genji, for example, its style has long been characterized as one deliberately so designed that, in the words of Shimizu Yoshiko, “at any given point a verse of waka poetry might be introduced with ease.” Yet however distinctive this might be of the Tale of Genji, it is not a style to be observed universally, or even widely, in the remainder of the surviving Heian literary corpus. By way of contrast, in Utsuho monogatari, the Genji’s most notable predecessor in longform narrative fiction, and even more so in the Pillow Book, inaugurator of a fully novel genre of literary prose, one encounters a range of oral and prosodic phenomena quite distinct from that found in Murasaki’s own work.

In this paper, I will focus on prosodic features of the Pillow Book, specifically those found in its list-centered chapters (ruijū-dan). The stylistic nature of these chapters, giving often the appearance of bare lists, has been the subject of much debate. Such a style has tended to be traced to the influence of Chinese encyclopedic texts (leishu), yet some have also discerned therein the echoes of a partly oral composition. This latter view seems ripe for reconsideration, especially in light of recent research adducing the possibility of salon-like elements in the production of other Heian literary works, a factor quite conceivably conducive to greater oral influence. In particular, I argue, this would help explain the reception of the Pillow Book in the Muromachi and Edo periods, where rhythmic elements seem to play a central role, possibly to the point of even influencing the choice among dueling textual variants.

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Paper short abstract:

Edo era Sinitic poets attended to prosody, tonality, rhyme, and other features associated with aurality. Yet such aspects of a poem were usually inaudible in the dominant form of oral performance: interpretive recitation by kundoku. How did Japanese Sinitic poets grapple with this central issue?

Paper long abstract:

Sound is fundamental to most definitions of poetry, a mode of expression often distinguished by the combined emphasis it places upon both sound and sense. But what about poetry written in a language by those who do not speak it? Like their counterparts elsewhere in the Sinosphere, composers of Sinitic poetry in early modern Japan were keenly attentive to prosodic rules, tonality, rhyme, and other features conventionally associated with aurality. Yet such aspects of a poem were usually inaudible in the dominant form of oral performance practiced in Japan at the time: interpretive recitation aloud by kundoku. This paper examines the diverse ways in which early modern Japanese theorists and practitioners of Sinitic poetry grappled with this central issue. It draws predominantly on a range of writings in the “shiwa” genre of “talks on poetry,” including treatises specifically addressing the aural features of Sinitic poetry, such as Akazawa Ichidō’s (1796–1847) “Shiritsu” (1833) as well as “Shayū shiritsu ron” (contents assembled ca. 1820–1832; published 1883), a collection of correspondence focused on the question of the sound of Sinitic poetry that poet Ono Senzō (1767–1832) solicited from contemporary luminaries beginning with his teacher Rai San’yō (1780–1832), and including the interventions of Umetsuji Shunshō (1776–1857), Shinozaki Shōchiku (1781-1851) and several others. It also looks at another type of shiwa, lexicons explicating obscure Sinitic poetic vocabulary such as Katsugen shiwa (1787, 1804), compiled by the Tendai priest and celebrated Sinitic poet Rikunyo (1734–1801), and Suiuken shiwa (1862) by Yamada Suiu (1815–1875), to shed further light on how late Edo Sinitic poets conceived of the sound of Sinitic . Finally, the paper asks what these writings tell us about how early modern Japanese poets conceived of the linguistic status of Sinitic texts. The paper shows that even as these diversely inclined Sinitic poets and scholars advanced a variety of contradictory positions on such questions as the advisability of learning spoken Chinese, the primacy of Chinese aesthetic judgments, or the relevance of contemporary Chinese pronunciation to questions of tonal prosody, they shared a fundamental recognition of the linguistic alterity of Sinitic to Japanese.