Send message to Author

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.