Paper short abstract:

The current study aims to identify gender differences in the short poems in The Kokin Wakashu by using a quantitative analysis method known as the collocational network. This allows visualization of collocational relationships between words in the text, which otherwise would have gone unidentified.

Paper long abstract:

The current study investigates the short poems in The Kokin Wakashu, the first imperial anthology of Japanese short poems, by utilizing a quantitative method with the aim of identifying gender differences in the poems. Traditionally, it was considered that there was no gender distinction in grammar or diction. However, conducting a quantitative analysis, Kondo (2005) finds gender differences in the diction of the short poems. She claims that these differences represent gender norms of the “ideal” man and woman in the Heian period, which is the man being active and the woman being passive. Kondo’s research provides a new perspective on text analysis as well as gender analysis on Japanese short poems. However, not only has most previous research been limited to qualitative analysis, but the diction of the short poems has not yet been fully examined from a gender perspective.

This study conducts a quantitative analysis by utilizing data for The Kokin Wakashu extracted from a diachronic corpus, the Corpus of Historical Japanese, the Heian Period Series established by the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics. The corpus consists of 16 classical Japanese literary works from the Heian period (794-1185). The current research aims to identify gender differences in collocational patterns in the short poems of The Kokin Wakashu. Investigating gender differences in the diction of the short poems, I especially focus on the word omou (to think). The verb was traditionally considered to be a non-gendered word. However, based on her quantitative analysis, Kondo (2005) claims that this verb is indeed a gendered word despite not expanding on this notion. In an attempt to develop this idea, I employ the collocation network, which is a quantitative method used in corpus linguistics. The collocation network is an analytical technique and allows visualization of collocational relationships between words in the text, which otherwise would have gone unidentified. As this imperial anthology is considered to represent the norm of the Heian Period, identifying gender ideologies of this period will contribute to examining how lexical items are skillfully used not only in short poems but also in prose of this period.