- Convenor:
-
David J. Gundry
(University of California, Davis)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
William Fleming
(University of California, Santa Barbara)
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Pre-modern Literature
Short Abstract
This panel begins with three papers examining portrayals of urban physical and social spaces written in, respectively, the early Muromachi period, the early Tokugawa period, and the late Tokugawa period, before finishing with an analysis of a recently published novel set in medieval Kyoto.
Long Abstract
The presentations in this panel examine portrayals in Japanese literature of medieval and early-modern Japan’s urban physical and social spaces.
“The Capital as Past, Present and Future: Prince Muneyoshi’s Reconciliation of Poetic and Political Aims in Rikashū” explores how, exiled from the capital during the Nanboku-chō period, Muneyoshi (1311–?) worked to reconcile the conflicting but sometimes overlapping objectives of advancing the cause of the Southern Court and seeking recognition from the waka mainstream in Northern Court-controlled Kyoto through his varied treatment of the trope of the capital (miyako) in the poems and headnotes of this waka anthology.
“The Four Metropolises of Ihara Saikaku’s Fiction” analyzes the contrasting portrayals of Kyoto, Osaka, Edo and Nagasaki in Saikaku’s (1642–1693) Kōshoku ichidai otoko (1682), Kōshoku gonin onna (1686), Honchō nijū fukō (1686) and Seken mune san’yō (1692) and the ways in which the narratives in question both reflect and help construct a developing Japanese national consciousness that accounts for and celebrates the country’s cultural diversity. Furthermore, this presentation examines the complex interplay of inherited status and newly acquired wealth, tradition and innovation in the cultural and social ferment of the urban spaces in which these stories are set.
“A Glimpse of Urban Edo through Peculiar Tales” examines how two fictional texts by late Tokugawa-period Confucian scholar Miki Kussai (dates unknown) portray a prosperous literati life in 1830s Edo in which popular cultural producers weave a complicated network of support and competition, which in turn helps these producers negotiate their identity while reimagining the community of popular culture during the breakdown of the official cultural hierarchy in the 19th century.
“The Contested City in Furuyama Hideo’s Novel Inu-oh” wraps up this panel’s exploration of literary depictions of the premodern Japanese city with an analysis of a 21st-century work’s (2017) portrayal of the titular early Muromachi-period sarugaku performer’s struggle with rival performing troupes for control of the Kyoto theatrical field, which mirrors the political chaos of that era.
Keywords: City, Kyoto, Edo, Osaka, Nagasaki, Muromachi, Tokugawa, sarugaku.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) |
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
This paper explores how Southern court general and poet Prince Muneyoshi (1311-?) worked to reconcile his political goals and poetic ambitions through his varied treatments of the trope of the capital (miyako) in his personal waka anthology, Rikashū (circa 1371?).
Paper long abstract
A son of Emperor Godaigo and Nijō Ishi of the famed poetic house, Prince Muneyoshi (also, Munenaga 1311-?) was a key military figure and poet of the Southern court whose poems offer unparalleled insight into the turmoil of the Nanbokuchō era. By all accounts, Muneyoshi had been composing poems in Kyoto from a young age, but the bulk of his poems are attributed to later periods when he was away on military campaigns in support of his father’s plan to stabilize outlying areas, strengthen central rule—and ultimately retake the capital. A close reading of his personal waka anthology Rikashū (circa 1371?) suggests that the capital was no mere memory or eventual political goal, for even as he was upholding his commitments to the Southern court in a dizzying array of locales, he was at the same seeking immediate and remote recognition from the waka mainstream in Northern court-controlled Kyoto. This presentation will explore how Muneyoshi worked to reconcile these two fundamentally disparate objectives through his varied treatments of the trope of the capital (miyako) in both the headnotes and the poems of Rikashū. Ranging from memory to gateway to destiny, Muneyoshi’s iterations of the capital, made possible by the fundamental ambiguity of that poetic term, facilitate a delicate balance between his unflagging commitments to his political aims and the Way of waka.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines portrayals in Saikaku’s fiction of the four great cities of Genroku Japan: aristocratically elegant Kyoto, Osaka, capital of chōnin culture, samurai-dominated Edo and exotic Nagasaki, analyzing the ways in which they reflect and construct a developing national consciousness.
Paper long abstract
Ihara Saikaku’s (1642–1693) fiction inherits the longstanding valuation of the city above small towns and the countryside evident already in the contrasting in Ise monogatari and Genji monogatari of the comfort and sophistication of the capital with the supposed misery and barbarism of nearly everywhere else in Japan. However, unlike the unipolar Japan depicted in Heian-period literature, Saikaku works such as Kōshoku ichidai otoko (1682), Kōshoku gonin onna (1686), Honchō nijū fukō (1686) and Seken mune san’yō (1692) posit a culturally multipolar realm in which four cities outshine everywhere else, each in its own distinctive way. Kyoto features as the origin of an aristocratic elegance that extends down the social scale to suffuse the upper levels of its chōnin class. Osaka is portrayed as the center of an exuberant and inventive high-chōnin culture. Samurai set the tone in Edo, a city whose inhabitants, for example, are characterized in the final story of Seken mune san’yō as exhibiting a generosity due to the influence on all social classes there of the warrior status-group. Nagasaki is depicted as an intriguingly exotic locale not only due to the presence of Chinese and Dutch traders there but also because of the distinctive customs of the locals.
This paper will analyze the ways in which the narratives in question both reflect and help construct a developing Japanese national consciousness that accounts for and celebrates the country’s cultural diversity as embodied by these four metropolises. Furthermore, it will examine the complex interplay of inherited status and newly acquired wealth, tradition and innovation in the cultural and social ferment in which these stories are set.
Audio-visual equipment needed: a projector for showing PowerPoint slides.
Paper short abstract
In Furukawa Hideo’s 2017 novel Inu-oh, the struggle of rival performing troupes in Kyoto mirrors the political chaos of the early Muromachi. This presentation reads the novel as an alternative literary history, looking at the relationship of forgotten performers and the city where they work.
Paper long abstract
In his own time, the Muromachi sarugaku performer Inu-oh was one of the greats; Zeami himself called him “the flower of the art.” But as Zeami’s inchoate noh theater grew to dominate the scene, Inu-oh and his school of sarugaku were all but forgotten; today little is known of him other than his name and reputation. Furukawa Hideo fills the void in the unlikely tale Inu-oh (2017). Furukawa’s novel is an original sequel of sorts to The Tales of the Heike, which Furukawa translated into contemporary Japanese. Inu-oh and his friend, the blind biwa hōshi Tomoichi, tell forgotten tales of dead storytellers to pacify their spirits and to help themselves rise in the world.
In Inu-oh, the struggle for control of Kyoto by the rival performing troupes mirrors the political chaos of the early Muromachi period. This presentation looks at the relationship of the two performers and the city in which they make their fortunes. The alternate history Furukawa creates by drawing connections between the early days of the noh theater and stories of the Genpei Wars, already 150 years in the past at that point, reminds the reader of the constructed nature of the corpus of Heike and noh texts and imagines alternate possibilities from the periphery that must have been erased along the way.
Paper short abstract
This paper analyzes two nineteenth-century Japanese vernacular fiction texts by Miki Kussai, analyzing how his nonlinear tales captured Edo City’s 1830s literati network. These works embedded critiques of urban literati identity in rumors and gossip during shifting hierarchies of early modern Japan.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines two vernacular fiction texts from nineteenth-century Japan to trace how urban literati life was portrayed by a Confucian scholar, Miki Kussai (birth and death years unknown), and how his depiction encapsulated the literati network of Edo city in 1830s Japan. Despite his lack of reputation today, Miki Kussai was a sociable guest among the literati circle in Edo’s urban areas. His works of vernacular fiction captured friends and rivals in this circle through messy narratives and nonlinear plots. Compared to works by his contemporary authors, however, these “fiction” works—sometimes loosely categorized as Peculiar Tales (Jpn. myōmyō kidan)—raise the question about their purpose, creation, and circulation.
In this paper, I focus on two texts, one written in vernacular Japanese and one in vernacular Sinitic, to examine how the author Miki Kussai expressed his critiques of urban Edo’s entertainment life under the guise of rumors and gossip. I argue that despite the lack of consistency in these texts, when analyzed together with other forms of materials such as diaries and playbills, they concoct a story of prosperous Edo literati life where popular cultural producers wove a complicated network of support and competition, which in turn helped these producers negotiate their identity while reimagining the community of popular culture during the breakdown of the official cultural hierarchy in the nineteenth century.