Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I address the sixteenth-century transformation that we observe in Genji studies by recasting it in the bibliographical terms through which it was actually manifested and experienced, seeking in the contemporary proliferation of textual forms the site of the tradition’s new vitality.

Paper long abstract:

While the exegetical history of the Tale of Genji may have wended its way across a millennium without break, as a narrative in its own right this continuity is not without its share of bends and turns. Particularly notable is the curious arc spanning the long sixteenth century, when, against a background of rampant national disorder, the then already long-established field of Genji studies experienced its first great period of consolidation. Not only in their number and unprecedented pace are the commentaries of this period distinguished from those of prior eras, but also in their evident integrative drive. This is most obvious in massive omnibus commentaries like nobleman Nakanoin Michikatsu’s Mingō nisso (1598), longer than the target work itself and exuberantly comprehensive of its predecessors to the point of sometimes otiose repetition. Yet just as indicative of the overall trend (albeit in a different sense) are learned opuscules like renga master Sōgi’s Broom Tree Commentary (1485), which sought to take the eponymous chapter as sufficiently thematically encompassing of Murasaki’s work to stand for it, part for whole.

Giving due weight to the range of factors previously adduced as explanatory of Sengoku-era classicism writ large, foremost among them the concomitant spread of both literacy and warzone-fleeing literati, it seems clear that a more proximate context for this Genji boom should first be sought in the textual environment in which it took place. Yet even in specialized studies of this era’s exegetical history, such bibliographical context has been left largely fallow as a field of inquiry, perhaps precisely because these developments precede the advent of mass printing that might otherwise have explained them.

In this paper, I address this dimension of the sixteenth-century exegetical transformation that we observe thus clearly, though hardly exclusively, in the case of Genji studies. Recasting the phenomenon in the bibliographical terms through which it was actually manifested and experienced by all contemporary publics, I seek in the contemporary proliferation of textual forms a site of the tradition’s new vitality, those simultaneous processes of sedimentation, diffusion, anthologization, and disintegration that marked the fractured florescence of late-medieval Genji studies.