Pre‐modern Japanese Literature

July 31, 2014 Saeko Shibayama Japanese Literature?

Big Names? Haruki Murakami (1949‐)

KenzaburōŌe (1935‐, Nobel 1994)

Yukio Mishima (1925‐1970)

Yasunari Kawabata (1899‐1972, Nobel 1968) Jun’ichirō Tanizaki (1886‐1965) Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892‐1927)

Sōseki Natsume (1867‐1916)

Ōgai Mori (1862‐1922) Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653‐1725) Matsuo Bashō (1644‐1694): poems Ihara Saikaku (1642‐1693)

Zeami (ca. 1363‐1443) Kamo no Chomei (1153‐1216)

Murasaki Shikibu (Lady , d. ca. 1014)

Sei Shōnagon (b. 965?) Pillow Book

Kokinshū (905) Man’yōshū (ca, 785) Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters, 712) Pre‐modern Literature

Goethe, Faust (1808, 1832) (Meiji period, 1868‐1912)

Dream of the Red Chamber (China, 18th Century) Jean‐Jacques Rousseau, Confession (1782‐89) Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1759)

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605‐1615) Edo period, 1603‐1868 William Shakespeare (1564‐1616) Nō play, “Lady Aoi” (Muromachi period, 14‐16th c.) Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (1380s) Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron (ca, 1348‐53)

Beowulf (ca. 975‐1025) Genji monogatari (, ca.1000) Augustine, Confessions (397‐8) Nara period, 710‐794 ★ Why do we read pre‐modern literature/”classics”?

• to learn about the society/historical period • to learn about (historical) language • to learn about “humanities” (universal values and ideas, “literature”) • to learn about deeper and more nuanced aspects of human life • to acquire personal “cultivation” (教養, kyōyō) • to enjoy; entertain oneself (i.e. Tsurezuregusa 徒然草, Essays of Idleness); new realms of knowledge experience Brief History of up to Edo period c.f. William Wayne Farris, Japan to 1600: A Social and Economic History (University of Hawaii Press, 2009)

• 35,000‐15,000 BP: The Paleolithic • 15,000 BP‐900 BCE: Jōmon Age (“the most materially affluent hunter‐gatherer society,” Jōmon=“rope‐pattern”) • 900 BCE‐250 CE: Yayoi Period (agrarian, rice producing, metallurgical techniques—weapons) • 250‐600 CE: The Tomb Era (10,000 tumuli, burial mounds, • ca. 538 CE: transmission of Buddhism via Korea (→ importation of Chinese characters) • late 7th CE: the first name “Japan” (nihon 日本)/new centralized state emerged • 712 Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters) Oldest Extant Manuscript of The Chronicle of Ancient Matters (712→1371, NT) Phonograph and Logograph

あいうえお (hiragana) アイウエオ (katakana) 亜伊羽枝尾

羽‐‐‐phonographically, “u”; logographically, hane (“feather”) Man’yōshū (Collection of Myriad Leaves, ca. 785) Kokinshū (Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems, 905) Kokinshū (Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems, 905) (lit. “Japanese songs”): 5/7/5/7/7 hana no iro wa The color of the flowers utsuri ni keri na has faded—in vain itazura ni I grow old in this world, waga mi yo ni furu lost in thought nagame seshi ma ni as the long rain falls. (Ono no Komachi, Spring 2, 113) Kokinshū (Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems, 905)

• first imperially redacted anthology of Japanese poems • manuscript written in predominantly kana (Japanese syllabary) • established poetic topics and associations: four seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter); love (different stages of love); travel, celebration and miscellaneous, etc. c.f. haiku

• 5/7/5 (first half of waka poem) • waka → → haiku • must contain seasonal words () and cutting words (kire‐ji) furuike ya An old pond‐‐ kawazu tobikomu a frog leaps in, mizu no oto the sound of water. (Matsuo Bashō) Heian Court Literature (around 1000)

• Fujiwara regency politics • Empress’ literary salons→ talented ladies‐in‐ waiting

Sei Shōnagon (b. 965?) Pillow Book: essay/diary

Murasaki Shikibu (Lady Murasaki, d. ca. 1014) Genji monogatari (Genji monogatari, 源氏物語, ca. 1001‐1010)

• Author: Murasaki Shikibu (d. ca. 1014) ‐Daughter of a scholar of Chinese literature and poet, a court official, a provincial governor ‐in 970‐978, spent time in Echizen (Present‐day Fukui prefecture) ‐married Fujiwara no Nobutaka, had a daughter; Nobutaka died in 1001 ‐summoned to the imperial court around 1005 or 1006 to serve Empress Shōshi (彰子), the daughter of Fujiwara no Michinaga The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari, 源氏物語, ca. 1001‐1010)

• 54 Chapters • some 800 waka poems (5/7/5/7/7) c.f. haiku (5/7/5) • 3 parts • Main themes: the protagonist Genji being an amorous man (iro gonomi), forbidden love, and transgression (mono no magire) • Influence of Chinese literature → Chinese poet, Bo Juyi’s ballad, “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow” (Chōgonka 長恨歌) • comparable to the modern “psychological” “novel”? c.f. Virginia Woolf the Genji • a kind of multiple bildungsroman (“a novel dealing with one person’s formative years or spiritual education” OED) Genji, Murasaki, etc.

Genji Chapter Titles Genji Manuscripts a late Kamakura (14th c) manuscript: 3.2 million USD (Picture scrolls, 12th century, NT)

Genji kokagami (Small Mirror of the Genji, ca. 15th century, a medieval “handbook/digest” of the Genji Various Genji‐e (Genji Pictures)

Influences of the Genji monogatari: Beyond Genres, Genders, Time and Place

• More than 500 commentaries written on the Genji by the end of the Edo period • First received by waka poets (mostly male) of the medieval period → warrior elites, Edo literati: the Genji as a guidebook for poetry composition • Constant female readership: the Genji as a romance (readership especially expanded during the Edo period with the introduction of movable types and other print technology) • Adaptations in various nō plays during the Muromachi period (14‐16th c.) • English Translation: Arthur Waley 1921‐33; Edward Seidensticker 1976; Royall Tyler 2001 + more than 6 modern Japanese tr. (i.e. Tanizaki Junichirō) • Virginia Woolf (1882‐1941), “The Tale of Genji” (1925) • numerous modern film adaptations Michael Emmerich, The Tale of Genji: Translation, Canonization, and World Literature (Columbia UP, 2013) Asaki yumemishi (The Tale of Genji, by Yamato Waki, 1979‐93, 13 vols.) English Translations of the Genji

Arthur Waley (1889‐1966), 1925 (1921‐33, 6 volumes)

Edward Seidensticker (1921‐ 2007), 1976

Royall Tyler (1936‐), 2001

c.f. Donald Keene (1922‐)

• literary genres: poetry (waka, kanshi), diary (nikki), essay (zuihitsu), anecdotal tales (setsuwa), poem‐tales (uta‐gatari)

• monogatari (“tale”): c.f. Taketori monogatari (The Tales of the Bamboo Cutter, ca. 909)

• Genji monogatari: one of the world’s first “novels?”

• What’s so “novelistic” about the work? • omniscient narrator (opinionated) • character developments (bildungsroman) • plot structure (foreshadowing) • frequent switching of scenes • the overall length and structure Genji, “Heartvine” (Aoi) Chapter

• Fujitsubo • “Genji, he [his father—the emperor] said, must be the boy’s adviser and guardian. Genji was both pleased and embarrassed.” (330)

• “You should treat any woman with tact and courtesy, and be sure that you cause her no embarrassment. You should never have a woman angry with you.” (331) [Genji’s father]

• What would his father think if he were to lean of Genji’s worst indiscretion? The thought made Genji shudder. He bowed and withdrew. • At Sanjō, his wife and her family were even unhappier about his infidelities, [...]

• the Kamo festival in the Fourth Month

• Quite aside from her natural distress at the insult, she was filled with the bitterest charging that, having refrained from display, she had been recognized. (p. 332.)

• Genji presently heard the story of the competing carriages. He was sorry for the Rokujō lady and angry at his wife. It was a sad fact that, so deliberate and fastidious, she lacked ordinary compassion.(p. 333) • his Nijō mansion • Murasaki

• For the Rokujō lady the pain was unrelieved. [...] A hope of relief from this agony of indecision had sent her to the river of lustration, and there she had been subjected to violence. • At Sanjō, Genji’s wife seemed to be in the grip of a malign spirit (mononoke). • There was something very sinister about a spirit that eluded the powers of the most skilled exorcists. (335)

★ medical‐religious‐magic rites ★ Shingon esoteric Buddhism “No, no. I was hurting so, I asked them to stop for a while. I had not dreamed that I would come to you like this. It is true: a troubled soul will sometimes go wandering off.” The voice was gentle and affectionate. (337)

“Bind the hem of my robe, to keep it within, the grieving soul that has wandered through the skies.”

It was not Aoi’s voice, nor was the manner hers. Extraordinary— and then he knew that it was the voice of the Rokujō lady. (338) • Ceremonies honoring a boy baby are always interesting.

[The scene switches]

• The Rokujō lady received the news with mixed feelings. [...] The strangest things was that her robes were permeated with the scent of the poppy seeds burned at exorcisms. She changed clothes repeatedly and even washed her hair, but the odor persisted. (338)

[The scene switches]

• He [Genji] gazed down at her [Aoi=his wife], thinking it odd that he should have felt so dissatisfied with her over the years. (339)

• “Might these clouds be the smoke that mounts from her pyre? They fill my heart with feelings too deep for words.”

[The scene switches→ End of the chapter] Virginia Woolf, “The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki” in Vogue, July 1925.

• “Since her book was read aloud, we may imagine an audience; but her listeners must have been astute, subtle minded, sophisticated men and women.” [...] (265)

• [...] there are two kinds of artists, said Murasaki: one who makes trifles to fit the fancy of the passing day, the other who ‘strives to give real beauty to the things which men actually use, and to give to them the shapes which tradition has ordained.’ (266)

• But the essence of her charm lies deeper far than cranes and chrysanthemums. (267)

• How does she compare Lady Murasaki to Tolstoy and Cervantes? • [...] but not, nevertheless, a star of the first magnitude.

• Some element of horror, of terror, or sordidity, some root of experience has been removed from the Eastern world so that crudeness is impossible and coarseness out of the question, but with it too has gone some vigor, some richness, some maturity of human spirit, failing which the gold is silvered and the wine mixed with water. [...] Nō Drama, Lady Aoi

• comments? impressions? Nō 能 (“skill, technique” → “performing arts”) • Nō drama consists of dance, song, and dialogue and is traditionally performed by an all‐male cast.

• Developed by Kan’ami (1333‐1384) and his son, Zeami (1363?‐1443?) under the patronage of the third Ashikaga shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358‐1408). [Muromachi period]

• Principle aesthetics: yūgen 幽玄 (“profound and refined beauty”) → literary allusions and citations; trans‐generic intertextuality i.e. Genji, Komachi, Tales of Heike, • Religious/ritualistic roots → Nō often contain Buddhist or Shintō elements

• Some 2000 nō plays are extant; only about 240 in the current repertoire; many of the most frequently performed plays written by Zeami Theatrical Elements of Nō

• Shite (protagonist): often a supernatural being • Waki (the opposite character): always a living man, often a traveler or a Buddhist monk • Chorus: six to ten members

Minimal Stage Set • No use of painted scenery or backdrops • A symbolic prop (e.g. fans) • Masks: except for waki • Costumes: robes folder around the performer’s body like origami; splendorous and exquisite textile; The beauty and expressiveness of his performance are not in the particular features of an actor’s face and body but in the grace and expressiveness of his movements. • Musical Accompaniment Five Categories of Nō Plays

Differentiated according to the type of shite •Deity Plays: a deity explains the origin of a shrine, or a related legend. •Warrior Plays: a ghost of a warrior, now tormented in the hellish realm of constant battle. •Woman Plays: protagonists are elegant females •Fourth‐Category Plays: a miscellaneous type •Demon Plays: protagonists are demons.

Lady Aoi () Anonymous, revised by Zeami

Discussion Topics

• Intertextuality between the Tales of Genji • Exorcism • The Narrative Role of Chorus • The Buddhist notion of “impermanence” (mujō) • yūgen (mystery and depth)? • The ending? Courtier [waki‐tsure]: I am a courtier in the service of Emperor Suzaku.

The demon that has possessed Lady Aoi, daughter of the minister of the left, is intransigent. Act 1

Teruhi [tsure]:

May Heaven be cleansed, May Earth be cleansed, May all be cleansed within and without, The Six Roots, may they all be cleansed. [...] Vengeful spirit of Lady Rokujō in the form of a noblewoman [shite]

[...] Like an ox‐drawn cart, this weary world, Rolls endlessly on the wheels of retribution. [...]

You must journey; Strive as you will, there is no escape. What folly to be blind To the frailty of this life, Like the banana stalk without a core, Like a bubble on the water! Yesterday’s flowers are today but a dream. How sad my fate! [...]

Ah, how shameful that even now I should shun the eyes of others As on that festive day. [...] Rokujō: As I have no form, people pass me by.

Teruhi: [...] Oh! pitiful sight! Is this the evil spirit?

Courtier: Now I can guess who it is. Tell me your name.

Rokujō: [...] Attracted by the birch bow’s sound, Here I now appear. Do you still not know me? I am the spirit of Lady Rokujō. Chorus: Do you not know that in this life Charity is not for others? Be harsh to another, Be harsh to another, And it will recoil upon you. Why do you cry? My curse is everlasting. My curse is everlasting.

Rokujō: Oh, how I hate you! I will punish you. Rokujō: I shall be to him

Chorus: A stranger, as I was once, And I shall pass away Like a dewdrop on a mugwort leaf. When I think of this, How bitter I feel! [...] Act 2

Holy Man of Yokawa [waki]: [...] Who is it that seeks admission? Rokujō: Return at once, good monk, return at once. Otherwise you will be burdened with regret. Chorus: Namaku samanda basarada senda makaroshana sowatayauntara takamman Whoever hears my teaching Shall gain profound wisdom; Whoever knows my mind Shall gain the purity of buddhahood.

Rokujō: How fearful is the chanting of the sutra! My end at last has come. Never again will this evil spirit come. Chorus: Hearing the voice of incantation, Hearing the voice of incantation, The demon’s heart grows gentle. Forbearance and mercy incarnate, The Bodhisattva comes to meet her. She enters nirvana, Released from the cycle of death and rebirth—Buddha be praised! Released from the cycle of death and rebirth!– Buddha be praised! http://www2.ntj.jac.go.jp/dglib/contents/learn/edc14/aoinoue/ kansyou/point/sono3.html