Yosano Akiko and The Tale ofGenji "Akiko on a Certain Day," from the early years of the Taisho period. Courtesy of Chikuma Shobo Publishing Co., Ltd. Yosano Akiko and The Tale ofGenji G. G. Rowley Ann Arbor 2000 Center for Japanese Studies The University of Michigan Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/ Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. Copyright © 2000 The Regents of the University of Michigan Published by the Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan 202 S Thayer St., Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1608 Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies Number 28 PERMISSIONS Material for chapter three draws upon an article "Literary Canon and National Iden- tity: The Tale ofGenji in Meiji Japan," Japan Forum 9.1 (1997): 1-15 and is reprinted here with permission of the British Association for Japanese Studies and Routledge. Material for chapter six first appeared in an article "Textual Malfeasance in Yosano Akiko's Shiny aku Genji monogatari" Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 58.1 (June 1998): 201-19 and is reprinted here with permission of the editors. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rowley, Gillian Gaye, 1960- Yosano Akiko and the Tale of Genji / G.G. Rowley. p. cm. — (Michigan monograph series in Japanese studies no. 28) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-939512-98-X (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Yosano, Akiko, 1878-1942—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Murasaki Shikibu, b. 978? Genji monogatari. I. Murasaki Shikibu, b. 978? Genji monogatari. II. Title. III. Series. PL819.O8R68 2000 895.6f144—dc21 99-089978 This book was set in Janson Text Jacket design by Seiko Semones This publication meets the ANSI/NISO Standards for Permanence of Paper fo Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives (Z39.48-1992). r Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978-0-939512-98-0 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-472-03832-9 (paper) ISBN 978-0-472-12805-1 (ebook) ISBN 978-0-472-90200-2 (open access) The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ To my parents Kenneth and Nancy Rowley "Akiko at about Age Sixty." Courtesy of Chikuma Shobo Publishing Co., Ltd. Contents Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 The Tale ofGenji in the Life and Work of Yosano Akiko Chapter One 17 The Tale ofGenji: Women's Romance, Men's Classic Chapter Two 34 Secret Joy: Akiko's Childhood Reading Chapter Three 52 The Tale ofGenji in the Meiji Period Chapter Four 72 A Murasaki Shikibu for the Meiji Period Chapter Five 90 The Shin'yaku Genji monogatari Chapter Six 112 A Genji of Her Own: Textual Malfeasance in Shin 'yaku Genji monogatari Chapter Seven 132 Akiko's Last Genjis Chapter Eight 157 The Tale ofGenji: "My Whole Life's Work" Epilogue 181 viii CONTENTS Appendix A 183 Akiko's Publications on the Japanese Classics Appendix B 186 Selected Translations List of Characters 193 Bibliography 202 Index 214 Acknowledgments I have been helped by many friends and scholars, in some cases for many years, in the preparation of this study. It is a pleasure, at long last, to be able to thank them. My first debt is to the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust for the scholarship that enabled me to spend three years studying at Newnham College and in the Faculty of Ori- ental Studies of the University of Cambridge. A Japan Foundation Dissertation Fellowship made possible a period of research in Tokyo. At that time Professor Kumasaka Atsuko, who had supervised my work on Akiko when I was an M.A. student at Japan Women's University, welcomed me back to her seminar. Professor Itsumi Kumi graciously invited me to attend her classes on Akiko at Aoyama Gakuin Women's Junior College. Professor Itsumi's dauntless energy, of a sort that in- vites comparison with Akiko's own, continues to be both infectious and inspiring. My debt to her many publications on Akiko will be evident in the footnotes to this study. Professor Ichikawa Chihiro has for many years been an unstinting source of learned guidance, fruit- ful discussion, and practical assistance. Without her generous gift of textually reliable editions of Akiko's Shin'yaku Genji monogatari and Shin-shinyaku Genji monogatari, chapters five, six, and eight could not have been written. Professor Ichikawa also introduced me to the group of scholars who used to meet monthly to read The Tale of Genji under the guidance of the late Professor Teramoto Naohiko. It was a privi- lege to attend these meetings, and I am greatly indebted to Professor Teramoto for his patient advice on a number of difficult points. I am grateful to Professor Edwin A. Cranston of the Depart- ment of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard Univer- sity, who has encouraged me from the outset of my study of Akiko. I x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS would also like to thank Professor Ken K. Ito of the University of Michigan and Professor Janet A. Walker of Rutgers University for their support at different stages of this project. In Cambridge, the learning and counsel of Dr. Carmen Blacker, Professor Richard Bowring, Dr. Peter Kornicki, Mr. Koyama Noboru, Dr. Stephen Large, and Dr. Mark Morris were invaluable. I am also grateful to Dr. James McMullen and Dr. Brian Powell of the University of Oxford for their careful reading of an earlier version of this study. For warm hospitality during many visits over the years I am indebted to Professor W. J. Boot and the other members of the Cen- tre for Japanese and Korean Studies at the University of Leiden. Pro- fessor Adriana Boscaro of the Department of East Asian Studies, University Ca' Foscari, Venice, looked after me during three months of writing in the autumn of 1991, and I am grateful for her continued encouragement. Friends Julia Borossa, Charlotte Klonk, Nicola Liscutin, Gail Marshall, and Margaret Mehl have been unstinting in their support and I thank them for their generosity. Thanks also to Douglas Anthony, Janet Richards, Rosemary Smith, Mark Teeuwen, and my other colleagues in the Japanese Studies Centre of the Uni- versity of Wales, Cardiff, for enabling me to take a semester of study- leave in 1995, and for their consideration during the final months of writing. Charles Boyle gave me much needed help with Japanese word processing technology, for which I am most grateful. Mrs. Kawai Noriyo and the late Dr. Kawai Toshiro of Gifu first looked after me in Japan with rare sympathy and forbearance. This book is also for them. All the mistakes and infelicities of thought and style are, of course, my own. Abbreviations The following abbreviations are used for multivolume series: MBZ Meiji bungaku zenshu. 100 vols. Chikuma Shob5, 1966-89. NKBD Nihon koten bungaku daijiten. 6 vols. Iwanami Shoten, 1983-85. NKBT Nihon koten bungaku taikei. 102 vols. Iwanami Shoten, 1957-68. NKBZ Nihon koten bungaku zenshu. 51 vols. ShSgakukan, 1970-76. TYAZ Teihon Yosano Akiko zenshu. 20 vols. Kodansha, 1979-81. References in the text: The text of The Tale ofGenji cited is the six-volume Genji monogatari, edited by Abe Akio, Akiyama Ken, and Imai Gen'e, vols. 12-17 of Nihon koten bungaku zenshu (NKBZ), published by Shogakukan, 1970- 76. Each quotation is identified by volume and page number, followed by the corresponding page number of the English translation by Ed- ward G. Seidensticker, The Tale ofGenji, 2 vols. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976). They are given in the following form: (4:345; S 662). Unless otherwise identified, however, all translations are my own. References to the collected works of Yosano Akiko are to Teihon Yosano Akiko zenshu (TYAZ), ed. Kimata Osamu, 20 vols. (KSdansha, 1979— 81). They are given by volume and page number in the following form: (1:299). Unless otherwise noted, the place of publication of Japanese works is Tokyo. Introduction: The Tale ofGenji in the Life and Work of Yosano Akiko Zrz/y# shigeki mugura gay ado no koto no ne ni aki o soetaru suzumushi no koe. (1:299) To strains of the koto from a house amid dew-drenched vines the cry of the bell cricket adds its autumnal plaint. Genji oba hitori to narite nochi ni kaku Shijo toshi wakaku ware wa shikarazu. (7:156) Writing Genji alone, left behind Murasaki was young; I am not. Some people are one-book people; their lives and their work are dominated, usually with conscious complicity, by a single book. William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham (1708-78), seems to have found a "politician's vade-mecum" in Spenser's Faerie Queene.1 Umberto Eco, despite the vast range of reference apparent in all that he writes, in- sists that the guiding star of it all is Gerard de Nerval's Sylvie (1853).2 1. Geoffrey Shepherd, introduction to An Apology for Poetry•, by Sir Philip Sidney (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1973), 1. 2. Remarks in the seminar following his 1990 Tanner lectures, Robinson College, University of Cambridge, 9 March 1990. The point is not so firmly stressed in the printed version of Eco's remarks, Interpretation and Over interpretation, ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 1992), 147-48. In his 1993 Charles Eliot Norton lectures, how- ever, Eco returns to the subject: I read [Sylvie] at the age of twenty and still keep rereading it. ... By now I know every comma and every secret mechanism of that novella.... Every time I pick up Sylvie ... I fall in love with it again, as if I were reading it for the first time.