Paper short abstract:

The paper analyzes the close relationship between “A Long Tale for an Autumn Night” and the military epic Taiheiki in terms of similarities in motifs, prose, and verse. It examines the original intention for making the painting, that is, to depict the armed conflict that ravaged the Tendai school.

Paper long abstract:

The oldest manuscript of “A Long Tale for an Autumn Night” (Aki no yo no naga monogatari) was written on the backside of a 1377 edition of the military epic Taiheiki ("Record of the Great Peace"). As this suggests, there is an intimate relationship between Aki no yo and Taiheiki, and previous studies by Gōtō Tanji, Kōjō Isao, and Hirasawa Gorō have pointed out such similarities in terms of literary motifs and poetic verse.

The paper explores in detail the common philological and visual ground, and points of similarity found in the verses and prose between Aki no yo and Taiheiki. The narrative preface of the variant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art shows similarities to the Eiwa 3 manuscript more than any other recension, and it is also the oldest text of the story. The variant at the Met includes many beautiful illustrations, especially the battle scenes, which are expansive and elaborate. The paper examines whether the original intention behind the painting was to depict the armed conflict between Miidera temple and Enryakuji temple over the construction of a Buddhist ordination platform, a battle that appears in the earlier work Sanmon mii kakushitsu ki and other texts.

Specifically, the scene where the monk Keikai peeps beyond the fence (kaimami) and gazes at the boy Umewaka, is similar to the scenes of Taiheiki in chapter 18, “On the Matter of Ichinomiya and Miyasudokoro,” and chapter 21, “Regarding the Slander and Death of Enya Hangan.” However, the similarities do not end here; there are commonalities in vocabulary as well. For example, the words used in the scene in which Umewaka commits suicide through drowning, conform to the terminology in the passages of chapter 34 “Regarding Cao’e and the jingwei bird” of the Taiheiki. Moreover, the description of Keikai in the battle between Mt. Hiei and Miidera temples closely resembles that of Wakiya Yoshisuke (1306-1342) in chapter 15 of Taiheiki, “Regarding the War with Miidera.” Therefore, a comparison of visuality and textuality will take the center stage in this paper.