- Convenor:
-
Machiko Midorikawa
(Waseda University)
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- Chair:
-
Joseph Sorensen
(University of California, Davis)
- Discussant:
-
Judit Arokay
(Heidelberg University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Pre-modern Literature
Short Abstract
This panel explores stages in the long cultural influence of Genji monogatari. What does the Mumyō-zōshi reveal about how readers evaluated courtly tales? How did chapters describing ruin and decay influence later poets? What was the significance of the print publication in 1698 of all Genji poems.
Long Abstract
Genji monogatari has left behind traces in many genres and media. This panel will examine its wide-ranging influence on readers, writers, and editors in later periods. The first paper will focus on Mumyō-zōshi (The Untitled Book, ca. 1200), arguably the oldest example of literary criticism to survive in Japan. In addition to recording how readers evaluated characters and episodes from Genji monogatari itself, Mumyō-zōshi also contains critical reactions to other tales that survive only as titles and fragments: san’itsu monogatari (“lost and scattered tales”). What do these evaluations reveal about how contemporary readers made assessments of narrative tales, both Genji and others lost to us now? The second paper begins with a set of utakotoba relating to ruin and decay that occur particularly in the “Yūgao” and “Yomogiu” chapters. Expressions like tsuyu or mugura no yado become literary tropes that take on new relevance for early medieval readers, as exemplified both in the selection of certain sequences of poems in the Shinkokinshū and in passages of the Mumyō-zōshi that describe people admiring scenes of mugura ("mugwort"). How and why did such tropes of ruin resonate with later readers? The starting point for the final paper is the practice among medieval poets of copying out all 795 poems in Genji monogatari. In the Genroku period, the waka scholar Tōyama Korekiyo produced the first printed text of the complete set of Genji poems in his Genji uta kagami (1698). For the first time, this made the entire set of Genji poems available to a much wider readership. The paper will discuss the significance of this printed text in the long history of Genji monogatari reception. All of the three papers deal with how successive generations of readers engaged with key aspects of Genji monogatari and other narrative tales.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) |
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
The reception of the Tale of Genji through its poetry included a centuries-long tradition of making manuscript copies of all of its waka, to study and appreciate them through textual performance. This paper explores that tradition with a focus on an anomalous print edition of the poems from 1698.
Paper long abstract
The reception of the Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari, ca 1010) has produced an extensive secondary literature, covering a huge range of approaches and interests, with special importance in the arena of Japanese poetry. The 795 poems credited to its characters mean that the Tale is also a substantial waka anthology, one that remained influential until modern times. The most common method of engaging with the Tale through its poetry involved a mere 54 poems: these are the so-called chapter-title poems (kanmeiwaka), with one verse from each chapter serving as representative, mnemonic, and model. But for the serious poet the practice developed -- sometime in the late medieval era -- of copying out the entire set of Genji poems in order, arranged under chapter title headings. The existence of such manuscripts suggests that the act of copying out the hundreds of poems Murasaki Shikibu wrote for her characters served as a form of personal engagement with the tale, an act of apprenticeship through which poets could engage with the great classical text.
Most of the numerous surviving manuscripts of this sort are unsigned and undated, adding a challenge to any systematic analysis of the corpus, and given their general similarity and lack of additional original content they have attracted very little critical attention. Yet they contain vital information both about the practices of reading and composing poetry and about engagement with Genji monogatari in the early Edo era, just when print editions began to displace manuscripts and make texts available to a much wider readership. The appearance in Genroku 11 (1698) of a printed version of the Genji poems -- Tōyama Korekiyo’s Mirror of Genji Poems (Genji uta kagami) -- complicates the picture of this lineage of Genji monogatari reception: what was the goal of such a book, and how did it interact with existing manuscript practices? In this paper I explore the significance of Tōyama’s work in this context, based on an analysis of two surviving editions, and with reference to his other published contributions to waka scholarship.
Paper short abstract
This paper will examine the intertextual nature of The Tale of Genji through an analysis of tropes of decay and ruin which take on new relevance for readers of the medieval age. Keywords: utakotoba, tsuyu, mugura
Paper long abstract
The Tale of Genji continued to be read and appreciated for many years is its status as an essential text for poets to study. For readers of the late Heian and early medieval period, this idea was epitomized by Shunzei's judgment in the Roppyakuban Utaawase: "Composing poetry without knowledge of the Genji is a regrettable thing."
The Shin Kokin Wakashū contains many expressions that are thought likely to be derived from Genji monogatari. In a recent analysis of poetic expressions of the anthology, it has been argued that poems related to the "Yūgao" chapter are found in the sections on the four seasons while those drawing on the "Yomogiu” chapter are contained in sections on love. In this paper, we suggest that these two chapters were chosen for a reason. A set of utakotoba is common to both: tsuyu, mugura no yado, and expressions relating to ruins. These are literary tropes that transcend genres over the course of their reception, taking on new relevance for readers of the medieval age. Some of the literary connotations of mugura no yado and related expressions are revealed in passages of the Mumyōzōshi (late twelfth century?) that describe people admiring mugura ("mugwort") at the residences of Daisaiin Senshi and Fujiwara no Teishi. Why are ruins and weeds held in such high esteem? This paper will examine the intertextual nature of The Tale of Genji through an analysis of tropes of decay and ruin.
Paper short abstract
An assessments of a few key san’itsu monogatari (“scattered and lost tales”) as they appear in Mumyōzōshi (The Untitled Book, ca. 1200) in order to shed light on the attitudes and mindsets of avid readers of fiction in the years following the composition of The Tale of Genji (ca. 1010).
Paper long abstract
My presentation is an outgrowth of my forthcoming fully annotated English translation of Mumyōzōshi (The Untitled Book), an early thirteenth-century work of literary criticism that offers assessments of The Tale of Genji (ca. 1010) and several other monogatari that were in currency at the time. Composed around the year 1200 by the woman known as Shunzei’s Daughter (ca. 1171-ca.1252), Mumyōzōshi has been hailed as the first work of literary (prose) criticism in the Japanese tradition, in part for its pioneering critique of several popular tales and its role in recognizing certain texts, including The Tale of Genji, as part of an emerging classical canon. Furthermore, as a repository of information on so-called “scattered and lost tales” (san’itsu monogatari), Mumyōzōshi is invaluable in identifying not only what monogatari were being read at the time, but also what contemporary readers found praiseworthy and objectionable about them. These tales were familiar to readers in the centuries after The Tale of Genji was written, and evidence suggests they continued to be read throughout much of the medieval period, into the fifteenth century. Most, however, are relatively unknown today. For many of these scattered and lost works, all that remain of them are their titles, sometimes brief descriptions in later works, including in Mumyōzōshi, and one or more poems, often with little or no context. Taken together, they are significant in that they help us reconstruct the literary field at the time and provide a valuable window into the mindset of those readers. What readers thought about what they were reading is necessarily influenced by what else they were reading, and the fact that we, as modern readers, tend to ignore this fact leaves us with substantial blind spots in any attempt to interpret the texts that do remain to us today. My presentation will focus on key poems and scenes from a few select “scattered and lost tales” and analyze some of the critical terminology the women readers in Mumyōzōshi use in their assessment of those tales.