A History of Japanese Literature, Volume Two: The Early Middle Agesby Konishi Jin'ichi; Aileen Gatten; Earl Miner

A History of Japanese Literature, Volume Two: The Early Middle Ages by Konishi Jin'ichi;Aileen Gatten; Earl MinerReview by: Margaret H. ChildsThe Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Nov., 1987), pp. 193-197Published by: American Association of Teachers of JapaneseStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/489317 .

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Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese

A HISTORY OF JAPANESE LITERATURE, VOLUME TWO: THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES, by Konishi Jin'ichi. Translated by Aileen Gatten, edited by Earl Miner. Princeton University Press, 1986. Pp. xvi + 461. $50 (hardbound), $20.50 (paper).

Reviewed by Margaret H. Childs

The new periodization reflected in the title, The Early Middle Ages, refers approximately to what has been familiar to us as the golden age of Japanese literature, the poetry and prose (and song) of the Heian period (9th to 12th centuries). Konishi Jin'ichi offers broad new conceptual categories, such as ga (high, refined, precedented) and zoku (low, unrefined, unprecedented), well-documented evidence of Chinese and Korean influence, especially on the development of waka, and detailed discussions of the literary history and value of a considerable number of texts. For the most part Konishi dis- cusses the already well-known classics, Kokinshu, The Tale of Genji, etc. While a good deal of his work is essentially traditional, there are important new perspectives, especially con- cerning Japanese prose.

The subject of the first two chapters is poetry and prose in Chinese and the influence of shih of the Six Dynas- ties period on waka. Konishi shows that the ruling aesthetic in poetry was wit, as revealed in oblique argument ("a rea- soning process involving cause and effect") and fabricated logic ("presenting superficially plausible but essentially illogical concepts"). Wit is hardly the touchstone of great literature, but Konishi's discussion is of considerable historical interest.

Konishi has identified a few key governing concepts as the basis of a new assessment of this period. These are discussed in Chapter 3, "The Nature of the Middle Ages," which opens with a discussion of some aspects of the soci- ology of literary creation: the premier arts (first waka, and later renga and haikai) were composed by amateurs who formed groups in which all were simultaneously authors and audience. The shared background and experiences of these groups led to an aesthetic characterized by retrospectivity,

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subtlety, fragmentation and profundity (p. 97). This discussion leads to his theory of ga and zoku. Ga is wit, elegance, refinement; zoku is that which is pure, open, free, popular. Konishi suggests that writers often turned from ga to zoku as they aged, and cites Ki no Tsurayuki, Fujiwara Teika and Zeami as examples of this phenomenon. Chapter 4 is a brief discussion of the remnants of ancient kotodama influence. Konishi then argues in Chapter 5 that fury (an idealized sphere of the worldly pleasures of music, literature, merry- making, and the company of women) was the basis of the aesthetic of the early middle ages. With this orientation established, Konishi then mixes history, analysis and eval- uation in discussing the literary arts of the period.

In Chapters 6 and 7 Konishi pays particular attention to the influence of the Japanese understanding of Po Chii-i's poetry and recounts the fall of shih and the rise of waka. He also provides detailed evidence of the influence of cultural activities on poetry: the practices of adding waka to painted screens and of holding competitive waka matches encouraged the use of assigned topics and sequential organization of waka and an increase in the "distance between the poet and the poetic speaker" (p. 194). Konishi is not always convin- cing, however, when he suggests that moder readers should find enduring interest in certain texts. His analyses are often rather dry, terse, and uninspiring. One glaring in- stance is his discussion of Izumi Shikibu's poetry, which he declares to be "strongly moving, even for modern readers" (p. 248). In support of this recommendation Konishi cites the poem "I do not even know/If my long dark hair is tangled./As I lie beside you,/You, my darling, are so dear/To begin by stroking it aside." He praises this as a sincere expression of her "precise feelings," a characterization that is neither con- vincing nor particularly accurate. I think this poem is, at best, touching and its value lies in its freshness, vivid detail, and intimacy.

The most important and intriguing although not alto- gether satisfying aspect of this volume is Konishi's interpre- tation of the terms monogatari, nikki and shui in Chapter 8. Modern scholars have long been confounded by the ambigu- ities of these terms, and Konishi's efforts to bring order to this complex problem are very welcome. Konishi's approach

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is "to try to understand them in the context of what makes them unclassifiable" (p. 257). Some distinctions that usually apply are that monogatari can relate fabricated or real events and can have multiple protagonists while nikki always present real events and the protagonist should be a single historical person. While this much is clear, a good deal of the chapter is rather vague and confusing. Konishi in- sists, for example, that "diary" is a misleading translation for nikki, but he does not say just how the two differ. He himself refers to nikki as "quotidian records." I was forced to surmise that perhaps a crucial difference lies in the fact that nikki can be narrated in the third person, while diaries are inevi- tably told in the first person. Konishi's assertion that monogatari and nikki differ in tense (monogatari are told in "past tense," and nikki in "present tense" p. 256), seems to simplify unduly the nature of Japanese verb endings, implying as it does that Japanese and English tenses are analogous. More- over, Konishi virtually renounces this distinction when he elaborates the point: he says that -keri, which expresses transmitted recollection, is "the keynote of monogatari" but admits that several nikki are also narrated in that mode. His argument is sometimes arbitrary, i.e., "Narration in the present tense is the governing principle of the nikki, although it is not an absolute condition" (p. 257).

Having offered fabricated versus real events as one criterion for distinguishing some monogatari and nikki, Konishi views it all through yet another lens by devising a fictional/factual distinction that refers to narrative stance: if the narrator by his "attitude and gestures" (p. 258) presents his story as fictive or if the narrator himself is fictive (as in Tosa nikki), the text is fictional. These seem to me to be quite different techniques with varying implications. He also declares that "if the narrator takes the stance that the events to be told are true, the audience must accept the monogatari as true" (p. 257). This too is debatable. One wishes Konishi had used certain moder terms with more consideration for the reader; the distinctions within some sets of concepts tend to blur: e.g., fiction, fantasy, and the supernatural; truth, realism, and ordinary beings and events; and fiction, truth, and fictional truth.

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Konishi further divides fictional monogatari into categories based on characters and plot: those containing superi- or beings and fantastic events, superior beings and ordinary events, ordinary beings and ordinary events, and ordinary beings and fantastic events. This is one of his more easily intelligible and functional schemes, even though some works, broken down into parts, fit into more than one of these categories.

Konishi next considers "factual monogatari" which include works in which waka are central (i.e., The Tales of Ise) and works in which events are central (i.e., Eiga monogatari). In downplaying the historicity of Eiga monogatari and Okagami, Konishi provides a much-needed corrective to traditional views of those works. On the other hand, I am skeptical of his suggestion that factual nikki which include records of formal events (i.e., Murasaki Shikibu nikki), dem- onstrate "some form" of "literary realism" which "moved" its audience (p. 382).

The concluding chapter concerns song, especially imay6, bringing in a genre rarely considered part of the traditional canon before this.

Overall, this is an ambitious work that offers poten- tially fertile new ground for analysis and debate. It is re- markable in its scope in tackling questions of theory, history, international influence, cultural settings, and analysis. My major complaint is that it is occasionally repetitious, vague, and confusing. The editor, Earl Miner, and translator, Aileen Gatten, occasionally provided clarification, and I wish they had done more. The English prose is virtually free of trans- lationese. Where the pace of my reading slowed, the fault lay with the density of the content and the structure of the argu- ments, never with the English style. I happened across several gaps in the index, in both entries and page references. The addition of a glossary would be a big help.

For its thorough and meticulous historical dimension this text will be nearly indispensable as a reference tool. Most importantly, though, this book commands the attention of both generalist and specialist for the conceptual frame- works it proposes. The overarching themes of galzoku and

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Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese

fuiryui induce relatively easy agreement and are broadly applicable. The categorization of Japanese prose genres, complex and difficult though it is, is a major contribution to Japanese literary scholarship.

SHOMONKI: THE STORY OF MASAKADO'S REBELLION, translated by Judith N. Rabinovitch. Tokyo: Sophia University (Monumenta Nipponica), 1986. Pp. 168. $16 or Y3000 (hardbound); $10 or Y2000 (paper); $2 or Y450 mailing fee when ordered from the publisher.

Reviewed by Wayne P. Lammers

Shomonki, of which the book under review provides a complete translation, is a chronicle of Taira Masakado's military progress from battling his relatives "over a trivial mat- ter involving a woman" (p. 74) in 935, to terrorizing the eight eastern provinces and proclaiming himself "New Emperor" of Japan in the last month of 939, and thence to his death in bat- tle barely two months later. Throughout these developments, the legitimate imperial court in Heian-kyo was a mostly help- less onlooker: it could but issue its directives and hope that other military chieftains in the eastern provinces would re- main loyal to the imperial authority and be able to reestab- lish peace. The chronicle is thought to have been written in the year 940, shortly after Masakado's fall, by a man of some learning, perhaps in government service, who had viewed events from close to the scene rather than from the capital.

In her discussion of the historical significance of the uprising, Judith Rabinovitch speculates that Masakado's mo- tives for expanding his private feud into an adventure of conquest probably involved a complex of "regional ties, eco- nomic interests, and political problems not adequately ex- plained in this or any other contemporary document" (p. 20).

fuiryui induce relatively easy agreement and are broadly applicable. The categorization of Japanese prose genres, complex and difficult though it is, is a major contribution to Japanese literary scholarship.

SHOMONKI: THE STORY OF MASAKADO'S REBELLION, translated by Judith N. Rabinovitch. Tokyo: Sophia University (Monumenta Nipponica), 1986. Pp. 168. $16 or Y3000 (hardbound); $10 or Y2000 (paper); $2 or Y450 mailing fee when ordered from the publisher.

Reviewed by Wayne P. Lammers

Shomonki, of which the book under review provides a complete translation, is a chronicle of Taira Masakado's military progress from battling his relatives "over a trivial mat- ter involving a woman" (p. 74) in 935, to terrorizing the eight eastern provinces and proclaiming himself "New Emperor" of Japan in the last month of 939, and thence to his death in bat- tle barely two months later. Throughout these developments, the legitimate imperial court in Heian-kyo was a mostly help- less onlooker: it could but issue its directives and hope that other military chieftains in the eastern provinces would re- main loyal to the imperial authority and be able to reestab- lish peace. The chronicle is thought to have been written in the year 940, shortly after Masakado's fall, by a man of some learning, perhaps in government service, who had viewed events from close to the scene rather than from the capital.

In her discussion of the historical significance of the uprising, Judith Rabinovitch speculates that Masakado's mo- tives for expanding his private feud into an adventure of conquest probably involved a complex of "regional ties, eco- nomic interests, and political problems not adequately ex- plained in this or any other contemporary document" (p. 20).

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Documents

A History of Japanese Literature, Volume Two: The Early Middle Agesby Konishi Jin'ichi; Aileen Gatten; Earl Miner