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Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the gap between the "accuracy" of the Kakaishō commentary’s own methodology and more straightforward readings of the Genji text itself. Comparing the KakaishŌ with its predecessor the Shimeishō, I focus on their different uses of historical sources and administrative documents.

Paper long abstract:

This paper takes up the Kakaishō, a major commentary on the Tale of Genji produced during the Muromachi period (1336-1573), and explores the complicated process by which it was composed. In particular, through careful comparison with the earlier Shimeishō commentary by which it was so greatly influenced, I investigate how the Kakaishō received/accepted the interpretive substance and method of its commentary predecessors, and how nevertheless in contradistinction to these it successfully forged a path of its own.

A survey of Genji commentary history reveals that, already in the early Kamakura period (1185-1333), there existed exegetical trends focused on determining the precise sources consulted by Murasaki Shikibu in her writing. Against such a background, this paper examines a number of different works of commentary in interdisciplinary perspective, considering above all the potential gap between the assumed “accuracy” of interpretive results attained by a given commentator's trusted methodology and more straightforward readings of the narrative text itself.

Attempts to clarify the precedents and historical facts upon which the Tale of Genji is based are a chief feature of the Kakaishō. Indeed, with its plentiful citations from historical sources and administrative documents, alongside its balanced integration of earlier commentaries’ research, the Kakaishō’s analysis is characteristically meticulous. The earlier Shimeishō shared such concerns, and together it might be said that these two commentaries promoted a reception of the Tale of Genji as a work based on history, grounded ultimately in phenomena of social fact.

There remain, however, significant differences between the two. Whereas the Shimeishō refrains from citation of sources that would imply a particular date for the Genji’s historical setting, in contrast the Kakaishō cites even sources dating clearly to periods after the Genji’s composition. Moreover, while the Shimeishō ventures no clear opinions on the various ancient documents it cites, in the Kakaishō one finds citation examples that seem indeed to display contemporary legal and political understandings. Parallel, in other words, to its painstaking efforts to grasp the meaning of its distant Heian subject, the Kakaishō was also distinguished by its reflection of the times in which its own author lived.