Traditional Japanese Literature

by Haruo Shirane

  utamakura

  place with poetic associations

  waka

  classical poem (thirty-one syllables)

  wasan

  Buddhist hymns in Japanese

  zuihitsu

  essay, pensée, miscellany

  RANKS, TITLES, AND OFFICES

  Japanese

  English

  sesshō

  regent

  kanpaku

  regent (for adult emperor)

  daijō daijin

  prime minister

  sadaijin

  minister of the left

  udaijin

  minister of the right

  naidaijin

  palace minister

  daijōkan

  council of state

  naka no kanpaku

  middle regent

  nyōgo

  high imperial consort

  kōi

  lesser imperial consort

  chūgū

  empress

  dainagon

  senior counselor

  chūnagon

  middle counselor

  shōnagon

  junior counselor

  sangi

  consultant

  taishō (daishō)

  major captain

  chūjō

  middle captain

  shōshō

  lesser captain

  kami

  governor

  kugyō

  senior noble

  tenjōbito

  courtier (literally, “hall person”)

  daiben

  major controller

  chūben

  middle controller

  shōben

  lesser controller

  jige

  gentlemen of low rank

  zuryō

  provincial governor

  JAPANESE NAMES AND JAPANESE PRONUNCIATION

  All Japanese names are given in the normal Japanese order, surname first. Up through the Kamakura period, the surname and the first name often were linked by the attributive particle no, as in Fujiwara no Shunzei. Fujiwara is the surname and Shunzei the given name. In addition, premodern writers are often referred to by their given name. Thus, one would say “a poem by Shunzei.” Each syllable in Japanese is distinct, with no accent, and each vowel sounds similar to that in Italian. Vowels with macrons (long mark) over them are held twice as long as the unmarked vowels.

  ABBREVIATIONS OF MODERNS SERIAL EDITIONS

  CZS

  Chūsei zenke no shisō, vol. 16 of Nihon shisō taikei (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1972)

  KNKB

  Kanshō Nihon koten bungaku, 35 vols. (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1977–1978)

  NKBT

  Nihon koten bungaku taikei, 102 vols. (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1957–1968)

  NKBZ

  Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, 60 vols. (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1970–1976)

  SNKBT

  Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1989–)

  SNKBZ

  Shin Nihon koten bungaku zenshū (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1994–)

  SNKS

  Shin Nihon koten shūsei, 79 vols. (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1976–1989)

  Citations are followed by an abbreviation of the series title, the volume number, and the page. For example, NKBZ 51:525 refers to page 525 of volume 51 of Nihon koten bungaku zenshū.

  Provinces of Japan from the eighth century. (The provinces were established in the late seventh and eighth centuries, and it now is standard practice to use retrospectively the same names for the regions that they later represented.)

  INTRODUCTION

  In this anthology, each chapter or period (Ancient, Heian, Kamakura, and Muromachi) begins with a brief historical overview of the major political, social, and economic changes, followed by shorter introductions to authors and genres, and then brief introductions to specific texts. Whenever possible, the texts are grouped by genre. But because some of the genres (such as waka, monogatari, setsuwa, and warrior tales) span many centuries, they are arranged not by genre but chronologically, across various periods. Readers are thus urged to read by both genre and period. The following introduction highlights some of the recurrent issues spanning these different historical periods and genres.

  LANGUAGE AND WRITING

  The oldest extant literary and historical texts in Japan date back to the beginning of the eighth century. The Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters, 712) and Nihon shoki (Chronicles of Japan, 720) were written in order to legitimize the new state order by providing an account of how the world came into being and by tracing the origins of the emperor to the age of the gods. Anthologies of Japanese poetry began to be compiled in the late seventh century, and the Man’yōshū (Collection of Myriad Leaves), an encyclopedic collection of poetry, was compiled throughout the eighth century. Although a long tradition of songs existed before the Man’yōshū, it was only after the Chinese system of graphs was imported and adapted to record Japanese words that written literature came into being. In fact, Chinese became the official language of government and religion, and the most esteemed literary genres in the eight century were, as in China, histories, religious-philosophical writings, and poetry. Whereas the Kojiki and Nihon shoki are written almost entirely in Chinese, the Man’yōshū uses Chinese graphs phonetically to record poetry composed in Japanese. With the notable exception of folk songs adapted in the Man’yōshū, the literature of the early period was written by the nobility, particularly those close to the emperor and the imperial court, which held the reins of power through both the Nara and the Heian periods.

  A major turning point in the history of Japanese literature came in the late ninth century with the emergence of kana, the native phonetic syllabary, which led to the first great flowering of vernacular literature, including the Kokinshū (Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems, ca. 905); The Tales of Ise; Kagerō Diary by the Mother of Michitsuna; Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow Book; Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji; and Sarashina Diary by the Daughter of Takasue. The high quality of this vernacular literature, much of it by women writers of the middle level of the aristocracy, was one reason why this period was later (in the medieval period) canonized as the “classical period,” becoming the linguistic model for written Japanese for the next thousand years.

  The main element of literary continuity between the ancient period and the Heian period is Japanese poetry, the thirty-one-syllable waka or uta, which was composed extensively in the seventh and eighth centuries and became even more important in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Indeed, in Heian aristocratic society it was impossible to function, in either public or private, without the ability to compose waka. Furthermore, a significant number of literary diaries (nikki) and poem tales (uta monogatari) in the Heian period grew out of private collections of poems that had been exchanged between the author and his or her acquaintances. The Kana Preface to the Kokinshū, the first imperial collection of waka, reminds its readers that giving voice to one’s feelings through poetry is an inevitable response to expèriences of seasonal changes and human events. Much of the kana literature by women, which blossomed in the mid-Heian period, is highly lyrical, with stress on emotions and private thoughts, often encapsulated in the waka that emerge at climactic moments in the narrative. The Tale of Genji, with more than eight hundred poems, is a good example of this phenomenon.

  POWER AND COURTSHIP

  From its beginning at the imperial court, Japanese poetry, which became the central genre in the premodern period, had both a public, political role, often in the ritual affirmation of power, and a private, social role, as an intimate form of dialogue and the primary vehicle for courtship between the sexes. Although most of the poems in the Kokinshū were drawn from private exchanges and collections, the anthology was commissioned by the emperor and served as a whole to enhance the cultural authority and aura of the throne. The private, dialogic function of poetry, which resulted in the Heian literary diaries, should
thus be distinguished from its ritualistic, public functions in the form of anthologies.

  The early chronicles, such as the Nihon shoki and Kojiki, which were commissioned by the Yamato court in the early eighth century at a critical period in nation-state building, and the first two volumes of the Man’yōshū affirmed the power and authority of the head of the Yamato clan, which became the imperial household. By contrast, the vernacular monogatari in the tenth and eleventh centuries represent alternative voices, of those left out of power. The function of literary culture in the Heian period, particularly after the tenth and eleventh centuries, is very different from that of the ancient period. The center of political power had shifted from sovereigns to regents, from the throne to commoner clans (primarily the Fujiwara), who controlled the throne through marital politics. In the sixth and seventh centuries, the emperor ruled directly and administered through the daijōkan (state ministries), but starting in the Heian period, a division gradually formed between the imperial palace and the state ministries. New power also devolved to the provincial governors, over whom the state ministries had increasingly less control.

  The Heian vernacular monogatari came from the hands of the provincial governor class (who had economic stability but were one step removed from the upper echelons of power) and, as a consequence, is a much more private genre than the early chronicles and court poetry (such as Hitomaro’s chōka, or long poems) found in the first two volumes of the Man’yōshū. The Heian monogatari continued to deal with the nobility and the emperor, and in that sense they maintained the aristocratic, court culture of the Nara period. But in contrast to the Kojiki and Nihon shoki and the early volumes of the Man’yōshū, which enforce the authority, power, and divinity of the sovereign and his or her surrogates, the protagonists of the monogatari violate the sociopolitical order and relativize the authority of the throne. The protagonists of The Tales of Ise and The Tale of Genji belong to clans (the Ariwara and the Genji) that were ousted. Instead of affirming the dominant clan (the northern branch of the Fujiwara), The Tales of Ise, for example, reveals deep sympathy for those (such as the clan of Ariwara Narihira, the protagonist) who have been defeated by or fallen into the shadow of the Fujiwara.

  One consequence of being at a slight remove from the center of power is that the Heian monogatari offer an alternative voice. The Tale of Genji, for example, glorifies court culture and the position of the emperor who stood at its center, harking back to a time, a century earlier, when the sovereign had direct power, as opposed to the regency system, in which the emperor was a puppet of his Fujiwara relatives. At the same time, however, The Tale of Genji, which depicts an illegitimate son on the throne, seriously undermines the myth of direct and unbroken descent from the gods that became so important in later, twentieth-century pre-World War II discourse. The sympathy for the political losers and the expression of alternative voices are a major feature of the monogatari genre and continue into the medieval period with, for example, The Tales of the Heike, a warrior tale that portrays the fall of the house of the Heike (Taira), and the Clear Mirror (Masukagami), one of the four historical “mirrors” or chronicles of political leaders, which looks back nostalgically to the exiled emperors GoToba and GoDaigo at a time when the imperial court was on the verge of extinction. Other monogatari and historical chronicles, however, glorify those who achieved power. A Tale of Flowering Fortunes (Eiga monogatari) and The Great Mirror (Ōkagami), both written in the late Heian period, portray the life and political rise of Fujiwara nō Michinaga, the most powerful regent in the Heian period.

  LOSS AND INTEGRATION

  Cultural forms and rituals provide a general model for social behavior, one that also takes into account possible threats and dangers. The evil-stepmother tale, which was the fundamental paradigm of the monogatari in the tenth century, is one such model of loss and reintegration. The oppressive evil stepmother represents a trial that the unprotected stepdaughter must endure and overcome if she is to become an adult member of the community. The heroine overcomes this threat, the evil characters are punished and driven out, and the cultural norms and values are articulated and reinforced. The exile of the young noble, another familiar plot pattern in both early-Nara-period myths and the Heian monogatari, is the male version of the evil-stepmother tale. A young god or aristocrat who has committed a transgression or sin undergoes a severe trial in a distant and hostile land. In the process, the young man proves his mettle, meets a woman, and acquires the power necessary to become a leader and hero. A good example is the myth of “The Luck of the Sea and the Luck of the Mountain,” one of the key stories in the eighth-century Kojiki. In The Tale of Genji, the hero likewise commits a sin (having a secret son by Fujitsubo, the consort of his father, the emperor). He is exiled to Suma, where he meets a woman who eventually bears his only daughter, a key to his subsequent political success. The exile thereby functions as a means of atonement and a ritualistic coming of age.

  SOCIALITY

  One of the primary functions of culture is the cultivation of “sociality,” the capacity for complex social behavior. Sociality is marked by the ability to be mutually responsive, to read the minds of others, and to be able to understand such notions as politeness and rudeness. Sociality includes knowing how to greet, part, and attend to the “face” of the other. Sociality of this type assumes that the community finds it valuable to invest time and energy not only in mastering the basic social rules but also in appreciating innovative variations and changes, which require judgment and imagination and distinguish between the novice and the sophisticate. Heian aristocratic vernacular texts frequently had this role of developing, embodying, and transmitting sociality. At the lower social end, one of the obvious purposes of anecdotal collections such as the Tales of Times Now Past (Konjaku monogatari shū) was to teach commoners how to behave, what to do (act filial, pay respect to Buddhist priests, and so on), and what not to do (not steal, lie, murder, and so on) by revealing the consequences of certain actions. More sophisticated examples are The Pillow Book (Makura no sōshi) and The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari), which are concerned with sociality at the highest levels of aristocratic society. Much of The Pillow Book is concerned with aesthetics, not as some objective standard of beauty, but as part of sociality, as the fine appreciation of the nuances of social response and interaction. The same is true in the first part of The Tale of Genji, in which superior social ability becomes an admired quality of the hero and heroines. The humor often derives from those characters (such as Suetsumuhana, the red-nosed lady) who unwittingly fail to understand those complex rules of behavior.

  Literary texts explore the complex nature of sociality and offer a wider range of possibilities and perspectives than could normally be experienced firsthand. This particular cultural function can be found in a range of Heian genres, from vernacular literary diaries (such as Tosa Diary, Kagerō Diary, and Sarashina Diary) to poem tales (such as The Tales of Ise), which often focus on the ability to compose waka, one of the key aspects of aristocratic sociality. Some of the women’s diaries may in fact have been written for the authors’ daughters as a way of showing them how to both survive and function properly in society. (To judge these texts solely on modern “literary” grounds—according to modern standards of structural unity, plot, and character development or for their mimetic or expressive qualities—would thus miss one of their main cultural functions.)

  CONDENSATION AND INTERTEXTUALITY

  Many traditional Japanese literary and aesthetic forms, particularly those that stress brevity, condensation, and overtones, assume an intimate audience. The paring down of form and expression occurs in a wide variety of forms: poetry, nō drama, landscape gardening, bonsai, tea ceremony, and ink painting, to mention only the most obvious. Historically, Japanese poetry evolved from the chōka (literally, “long poem”), which is found in the early Man’yōshū; to the thirty-one-syllable waka, the central form of the Kokinshū and the Heian period; to linked verse in the medieval p
eriod; and, finally, in the Tokugawa (or Edo) period, to the seventeen-syllable hokku, later called haiku, probably the shortest poetic form in world literature.

  A similar condensation of form can be found in nō drama. As it evolved under Zeami (1363?–1443?), the greatest nō playwright, nō was a drama of elegance, restraint, and suggestion. Human actions were reduced to the bare essentials, to highly symbolic movements such as tilting the mask to express joy or sweeping the hand to represent weeping. In A Mirror Held to the Flower (Kakyō), Zeami writes that “if what the actor feels in the heart is ten, what appears in movement should be seven.” He stresses that the point at which physical movement becomes minute and then finally stops is the point of greatest intensity. The physical and visual restrictions—the fixed mask, the slow body movement, the almost complete absence of props or scenery—create a drama that must occur as much in the mind of the audience as on the stage.

  In Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa, 1329–1333), often considered the ultimate compendium of Heian court aesthetics, the aristocrat-priest Kenkō argues that what is not stated, cannot be seen by the eyes, and is incomplete in expression is more moving, alluring, and memorable than what is directly presented. Since ancient times, the Japanese have prized the social capacity for indirection and suggestion. Poetry was recognized for its overtones, connotations, and subtle allegory and metaphor rather than for what it actually stated. In large part, this particular literary and social mode depends on a close bond between the composer and reader, with their common body of cultural knowledge, which was absorbed through literary texts.