- Convenor:
-
Michael Watson
(Meiji Gakuin University)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Joan Piggott
(University of Southern California)
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Pre-modern Literature
Short Abstract
The narrator’s voice in the Taiheiki often expresses strong praise or censure of characters. We examine the narrator's assessments of rulers, warriors, and women. What are the grounds of the moral judgements? How stable are they? How are consistent is the narrator's stance throughout the work?
Long Abstract
In this panel, three specialists in medieval war tales (gunki monogatari) suggest a variety of approaches to reading and understanding the Taiheiki, a work that we argue to have been neglected too long by literary scholars outside of Japan. Covering almost fifty years in the turbulant fourteenth-century era of the Northern and Southern courts, the massive prose work rivals the Heike monogatari in its literary and historical importance and in its later reception. The annual list of related secondary studies compiled by the Gunki Katarimono Kenkyūkai runs to over a dozen pages, second only to studies of the Heike. After the recent upsurge in studies and translations of the Heike in English and other languages, Western scholarship on the Taiheiki has fallen far behind.
Our first panelist argues that the narrator of Taiheiki presents two opposing perspectives on human affairs: the belief that an enlightened ruler can bring peace and the fear that the world is ruled by chance and other forces beyond our control. How can these conflicting perspectives be reconciled in the narrative? The second panelist responds by analyzing what the narratorial voice evaluates as “good death”—a death that is praiseworthy and not a wasteful sacrifice. Of particular interest are passages where the narrator struggles to find a moral meaning in warriors’ deaths resulting from karma or luck. The last panelist examines episodes involving female characters. These are few in number but significant both for their intrinsic interest and for the study of narratorial judgements. Through the presentations and comments by our discussant, we hope to stimulate more research into this major work.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) |
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
The Taiheiki narrator shows overt or covert approval or disapproval of the actions of female characters in the few episodes when they play a major role. Our focus is on cases where judgement is withheld or avoided, such as in a vivid account of the life of a princess (18.7).
Paper long abstract
Women feature prominently in only a small fraction of the hundreds of episodes in the Taiheiki. This paper will focus on the longest and most most successfully narrativized example, the tale of Crown Prince Takayoshi and his consort (Rufubon section 18.7, SNKBZ 18.11). The tone and pace range from dreamy courtly romance in its opening (a biwa played in moonlight, echoing the “Hashihime” chapter) to its long midsection replete with thrilling detail typical of medieval narratives (an abduction, the vengeful spirit of a loyal retainer, dragon god summoned by the woman, a storm at sea) before it ends quietly with a summary of the couple’s short happiness after their reunion and their lamentable deaths after the Kenmu revolt. A striking feature is the lack of overt or covert judgement passed on the characters involved—apart from the abductor. This contrasts with many of the shorter tales of “good” and “bad” wives in other episodes, like the wife who is disloyal to her husband by betraying the conspiracy against the Hōjō to her father (Rufubon 1.7). After another conspirator is executed, his wife takes religious orders and prays for him (2.6). Believing Nitta Yoshisada is facing the danger of execution, his wife begs her uncle to intercede, but he angrily refuses, citing Chinese examples of virtuous wifely behavior (10.2). Much later, when Yoshisada takes his own life, the same lady takes the tonsure (20.11). The narrator seems to suggest that we draw a clear moral judgement on female actions, a possible parallel with the case of “good” warrior’s deaths as argued by the second speaker in this panel. This paper forms part of a study of the development of narrative style in the gunki genre from the tales of the Genpei period to the Taiheiki and beyond.
Paper short abstract
The narrator of the Taiheiki presents two opposing views on the fourteenth-century war, blaming the breakdown of peace in the realm on the sovereign’s failure to govern wisely, but also explaining key events as the result of causality and chance, forces beyond our understanding or control.
Paper long abstract
Alongside The Tale of the Heike, the Taiheiki is one of the representative war tales (gunki monogatari). It is a unique work that vividly depicts the social climate of the fourteenth century—an era of conflict across the country known as the Nanbokuchō period. In the preface to the Taiheiki, it presents an ideal, grounded in Confucian thought, that the world can be at peace only when there is an enlightened ruler who governs superbly, together with worthy ministers who support him. Based on this ideal, the narrator even levels severe criticism at the emperor himself and tells of how he loses his position. In other words, it argues that a ruler’s standing is determined by how he conducts himself in this world. At the same time, the Taiheiki also portrays a world ruled by forces beyond human understanding or control—fortune, causality, chance, and the like—and the narrator acknowledges such a situation as well. How, then, does the Taiheiki allow these opposing perspectives to coexist? By considering this question, I would like to point out distinctive features of the Taiheiki’s expressive world.
Paper short abstract
The Taiheiki legitimates violence by making death morally legible, shifting between Confucian judgment and impersonal causality until the court army/court enemy device breaks. “Exemplary death” is forged through charisma, regalia-sovereignty, and postmortem labor; when these fail, meaning unravels
Paper long abstract
This paper argues that the Taiheiki adjudicates violence, granting it legitimacy by rendering death morally legible. In high-pressure scenes—battle, capture, execution, and the management of bodies—the narration alternates between Confucian evaluation (virtuous rule, loyalty, praise/blame) and impersonal causality (karma, fortune, chance), assigning responsibility while insisting that outcomes routinely exceed human intention. I show how the kangun-chōteki (court army/court enemy) binary operates as a moral sorting device—and isolate the scenes where that device breaks down. At those points, “exemplary death” appears not as a stable virtue but as an effect of narrative labor, secured through three mediations: charisma that binds followers, regalia-centered sovereignty that sacralizes stakes, and postmortem labor that disciplines corpses, heads, rumor, and memorialization so death reads as sacrifice rather than waste. When these mediations hold, the dead become exemplary and politically usable; when they falter, the narrator’s authority wavers, stacking moral verdict, providential logic, and accident without closure. These breakdowns illuminate how the Taiheiki simultaneously authorizes and destabilizes the Wars of the Northern and Southern Courts (Nanbokuchō no dōran), holding ethical accountability and forces beyond human control in productive tension.