- Convenors:
-
Berfu Şengün
(University of Zurich)
Christina Laffin (University of British Columbia)
Simone Müller (University of Zurich)
Anne Commons (University of Alberta)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Kumiko Tabuchi
(Waseda University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Pre-modern Literature
Short Abstract
This panel aims to explore how women shaped literary knowledge, social conduct, and temporal awareness. Through analyses of narrative space, diary practice, epistolary exchange, and poetic instruction, it foregrounds women’s roles as cultural producers across diverse genres and historical moments.
Long Abstract
This panel examines works written for women in premodern Japan through the analytical triad of writing practices, spatio-temporal processes, and educational written products. The four papers demonstrate how women’s writing functioned as sites of education, social regulation, and knowledge transmission across genres—ancient tales (monogatari), diaries (nikki), letters (fumi), and poetic treatises (karonsho). The sequence of papers transitions conceptually from the narrative organization of spatial and temporal structuring of writing to practices and outcomes, linking modes of formation with their later cultural and pedagogical articulation.
The opening paper centers on regulating space as an aristocratic practice in Genji monogatari by contrasting controlled and uncontrolled places. It offers insights into how the spatial management of these private spaces operated to cultivate aristocratic daughters and their reputations through the rivalry between Genji and Tō no Chūjō’s households.
The second paper traces chronographic shifts in female diaries, focusing particularly on the Oyudono no ue no nikki, a logbook written by court ladies over multiple centuries. It demonstrates the evolution of recording practices and social regulations in a genre that exhibits a general shift from private to public and documentary modes of writing and evolving concepts of authorship.
The third paper turns to medieval epistolary culture and women’s writing practices, examining letters as practical instruments of communication and advice. By revealing the shared motivations behind epistolary writing, it illuminates how the circulation of letters sustained female literary culture.
The final paper focuses on educational products through Toshiyori zuinō, a poetic treatise distinguished by its integration of anecdotes (setsuwa) on famous poets and poems. The paper highlights women’s poetic education as both a process of learning and a product shaped by genre hybridity and intended female readership.
The panel brings together scholars of different academic career stages from institutions in Europe, Canada, and Japan to engage with questions of women’s writing across genre boundaries. The panel closes with comments by the discussant, an eminent expert on court literature and premodern Japanese writing, who will situate these papers within broader socioliterary debates in Japanese literary and cultural history.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) |
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
This paper examines the regulation of space as an aristocratic practice in Genji monogatari, contrasting controlled and uncontrolled places. It explores how spatial management within private spaces cultivates aristocratic daughters through the rivalry between the households of Genji and Tō no Chūjō.
Paper long abstract
Murasaki Shikibu (ca. 973–ca. 1014) masterfully depicts the hardships female characters face and demonstrates how their identities and positions are influenced by the societal norms of the Heian period. Notably, the Hotaru and Tokonatsu chapters of Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji, early 11th c.) provide both pedagogical and political settings, as well as the essential grounding for the cultivation of aristocratic daughters. This paper examines how the management of space functions as a narrative device in raising daughters in aristocratic households. Correspondingly, by forming a case study around Tamakazura jūjō (the Ten Tamakazura Chapters), this paper sheds light on the central households—Genji’s Rokujō-in and Tō no Chūjō’s Sanjō mansion—with particular focus on daughters and their education.
In Heian-period aristocratic society, the household (ie) functioned not merely as a domestic unit but as a crucial political and genealogical apparatus, particularly through the cultivation and placement of daughters as wives or consorts. This social condition repeatedly stages women’s movements into and out of households as occasions charged with political ambition, narrative tension, and plot consequence in the Genji. The protagonist, the Shining Genji, strategically orchestrates his domestic space to cultivate daughters—particularly through surrogate daughters—whose courtly skills, lineage, and reputation function as gateways to securing their placement in the Inner Court (dairi). In contrast, Tō no Chūjō’s unregulated household produces a didactic narrative that represents his failure as an aristocratic father. Moreover, his mismanagement of space and his household responsibilities reflect the power dynamics in the narrative, distinguishing Genji’s superiority and his household’s glory.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines developments in time-recording practices in female diaries, with particular attention to Oyudono no ue no nikki. By tracing shifts from nominal and chrono-emotional to numerical and documentary modes of timekeeping, I highlight changing functions of diary writing and authorship.
Paper long abstract
From the tenth century onward, Japan saw the development of a rich tradition of vernacular diary writing by women. Although the intended audience and purpose of many of these diaries remain uncertain, evidence suggests that they circulated among court women. It is therefore reasonable to assume that they were, at least in part, written by women for women.
Viewed diachronically, works associated with this genre reveal a broad shift from a private and emotionally reflective mode—exemplified by the Kagerō nikki (The Gossamer Years, ca. 974)—to a more public and documentary style, as seen in journals such as the Takemukigaki (From the Bamboo-View Pavilion, ca. 1349). Wakita Haruko has argued that this transformation is linked to women’s increasing responsibility for official diary keeping in medieval Japan. As warfare contributed to the decline of male-authored official records, women assumed this role, while male diaries became more closely tied to the private interests of individual households. The culmination of female-authored official diary writing is arguably the Oyudono no ue no nikki (Daily Records of the Imperial Office of Housekeeping), a logbook produced collaboratively by high-ranking court women for the imperial household between 1477 and 1826. Despite its significance, this work has received limited attention in Western scholarship on Japanese literature, likely due in part to its sheer scale.
The broader shift from personal memoir to official record is also reflected in these diaries’ chronographic practices. Early examples employ dates sparingly and favor aesthetic, emotionally inflected and stylized modes of temporal representation. Later diaries, by contrast, are more systematically dated and display more uniform chronographic features closely aligned with those of Sinitic diary traditions, though individual variation remains evident.
In this paper, I trace these chronographic shifts over time. I begin with a brief historical overview of chronographic practices in women’s diaries, before turning to a closer examination of the Oyudono no ue no nikki. By analyzing changes in its chronography from its inception in 1477 to its conclusion in 1826, I aim to shed light on evolving modes of time reckoning and possible shifts in concepts of authorship across the work’s long history.
Paper short abstract
For medieval courtiers, letters (fumi; shōsoku) were integral to communication and a building block for diaries, tales, and poetry collections. This paper considers motivations for the epistolary form within women’s writing, including in autobiographical and didactic texts.
Paper long abstract
“One marvels how there can be such a wondrous thing as letters in this world,” exclaims a court woman in Mumyōzōshi (The Unnamed Book, ca. 1198–1202), arguing that reading an epistle may be even more pleasurable than an in-person meeting. For medieval courtiers, letters (fumi; shōsoku) were an integral mode of communication and an essential building block for producing diaries, tales, and collections of poetry. This paper will focus on letters as both an ingredient in women’s autobiographical writing and a medium of imparting advice, examining a series of examples to determine the motivations behind the epistolary form within women’s writing.
Letters appear frequently in women’s self writing as means of conveying information and as “proof” of perspectives outside that of the author, such as correspondence quoted in Lady Nijō’s memoir Towazugatari (The Unrequested Tale, 1306) to justify her stature and family history. Letters also serve as methods and models for teaching, as can be seen in correspondence conveying poetic teachings, composed by Shunzei’s Daughter in 1252, and by a guide to court life Nun Abutsu sent in epistolary form to her daughter in 1264. Both Shunzei’s Daughter and Abutsu describe or appear to have modeled themselves on earlier letter writers, including Sei Shōnagon (ca. 964–after 1027) and Murasaki Shikibu (ca. 973–ca. 1014). Letters of advice may thus be interpreted within a long tradition of didactic literature from ancient through early modern times, aimed at transmitting family teachings, authorizing the acquisition of proprietary knowledge, or simply improving literacy and handwriting. By weaving together a sampling of stylistic effects, this paper will attempt to decipher common motivations around the use of epistolary writing in women’s autobiographical writings.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines the use of setsuwa (anecdotes) about famous poems and poets as educational tools in the poetic treatise Toshiyori zuinō (ca. 1115), a work composed as a poetic textbook for a future empress which offers invaluable insight into elite women’s education in the late Heian period.
Paper long abstract
The Toshiyori zuinō (Toshiyori’s Poetic Essentials, ca. 1115) is a poetic treatise (karonsho) by the innovative and influential poet Minamoto Toshiyori (ca. 1055–ca. 1129). What is notable about the Toshiyori zuinō is that we know not only its author, but also its very particular intended audience: the text was written as an introduction to and textbook on poetry for Fujiwara no Taishi (1095–1156), later a consort to Emperor Toba. Written at a time when Japanese court poetry (waka) was seeing the development of what would come to be regarded as characteristically medieval modes of thought and practice, the Toshiyori zuinō, as we might expect from a karonsho, sets out Toshiyori’s views on the history, nature, and ideal form of waka. However, the text is distinguished from most other poetic treatises by its inclusion of a large number of anecdotes (setsuwa) on famous poems and poets, including such well-known female poets as the eleventh-century Izumi Shikibu and Akazome Emon. These informal, anecdotal accounts were used for pedagogical purposes, being employed as key elements of the poetic education of the Toshiyori zuinō’s original reader (a use of setsuwa that accords perfectly with their fundamentally didactic nature). In this paper I will be examining Toshiyori’s use of the poets and poems of the past as educational tools, in the context of issues of female readership and education and the role of marginal, less prestigious texts such as setsuwa in the process of literary canon formation.