Short Abstract

This panel explores the intermedial transposition of Japanese classical literature into modern media. Analyzing texts such as The Tale of Genji and The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, as well as mythology and folklore, we explore how shifting text to visual performance transforms and re-creates meaning.

Long Abstract

This panel explores the transformation of Japanese classical literature, folklore, and mythology when it crosses borders between media. The development of Japanese classical literature is itself closely connected to the materiality of transmission. Even as the development of the kana script expanded the scope of poetry and prose, associations with orality and performance remained. The frequency of references to visual and performing arts in written narratives attests to the close relationship between arts of various media. Such intermedial transposition is a commonly used literary device of the transmission, reception, and appreciation of Japanese literature.

This panel aims to identify the role of the medium in the bidirectional re-creation of meaning when literary configurations cross media. That is, considering the role of the new medium in creating meaning leads us to pay closer attention to what was conveyed or not conveyed in the original medium, as well as the role of the audience in imagining or augmenting unconveyed elements. We particularly look to modern media and performance to understand the historical reconceptualization of intermedial transposition over time.

Nagako Muto argues that the female music (onnagaku) in the “Wakana-ge” (“New Herbs, Part Two”) chapter of The Tale of Genji exists as “imaginary sound,” which in adaptation creates the potential for it to be shown and participated in. Modern adaptations of Genji from manga to figure skating draw creative potential from this imaginary depiction of music in writing. Mikiko Saso examines the 2022 animated film Suzume, which adapts the folk belief, made popular through kaname-ishi (keystones) and namazu-e (catfish prints) in the Edo period, that earthquakes are caused by dragons and catfish. Moreover, she looks at how the film draws from the myth of the Heavenly Rock Cave. Moemi Tomizawa shows how the narration of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter creates a contrast between oral retrospection and written representation and employs an external narrative perspective like that of picture scrolls. The 2013 animated film The Tale of Princess Kaguya further creates hybrid scenes and adds the use of the animation to destabilize and reconfigure the original narrative.