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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.