Send message to Author

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.