Joshua S. Mostow

The Columbia Companion to modern East Asian literature

Part 1: General Introduction by Joshua S. Mostow, General Editor 1. The Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature2. Modern Literature in East Asia: An OverviewPart 2: Japan by Sharalyn Orbaugh, Associate Editor Thematic EssaysAuthors, Works, SchoolsPart 3: China by Kirk A. Denton, Associate Editor Thematic EssaysAuthors, Works, SchoolsPart 4: Korea by Bruce Fulton, Associate Editor Thematic EssaysAuthors, Works, Schools

Female Readers and Early Heian Romances: The Hakubyo Tales of Ise Illustrated Scroll Fragments

IN THE post-World War II era, Japanese scholars reached the consensus that the keyword to the early court romance The Tales of Ise (Ise monogatari ) is miyabi .1 Miyabu is to perform or conduct oneself in a manner appropriate to a miya , or court—especially the court of the sovereign— suggesting the translation “courtliness.” Miyabi, however, was not limited to the imperial court, and its possession was in fact a matter of contestation, being claimed as well by aristocratic groups that had been politically marginalized by the emergence of the Fujiwara regency in the tenth century. Scholars such as Watanabe Minoru and Katagiri Yôichi thus see Ise as intended to demonstrate the “courtliness” of Ariwara no Narihira (825–880) and his associates, such as his father-in-law, Ki no Aritsune (815–877), especially after their candidate for emperor, Aritsune’s nephew Prince Koretaka (844–897), was passed over in favor of his younger brother, who was the grandson of Fujiwara no Yoshifusa (804–872) and who ascended the throne as Emperor Seiwa (850–880, r. 858–876).2 Although it has occasioned little comment, Watanabe specifically contrasts Ise’s emphasis on courtliness with the perspective found in works of so-called “court women’s literature” (ôchô joryû bungaku ), such as The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu (Murasaki shikibu nikki , ca. 1010). As is well known, the Diary includes a whole section assessing the character of various

The Tale of Light Snow: pastiche, epistolary fiction and narrativity verbal and visual

Abstract This article examines the early printings of a kana-zōshi, Usuyuki monogatari, from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The text is a pastiche of earlier works, most especially the Heian-period Ise monogatari, and an early edition uses illustrations from the 1608 Saga-bon Ise monogatari wholesale. The article examines whether the function of such visual and verbal quotation can be called parodic, and explores the role of narrativity in the consideration of both parody and pastiche.

A Cultural History of Translation in Early Modern Japan by Rebekah Clements (review)

Rebekah Clements has produced an important study of the kinds of texts that were translated into contemporaneous Japanese(s) throughout the early modern period. Her introduction considers what one might consider “translation” in the early modern period and the plethora of terms used then to describe the rendering of one text into another. The fi rst chapter, “Language and Society in Tokugawa Japan,” provides background for the following chapters, considering urbanization, literacy, the printing industry, “multilingualism,” kokugaku, and “language consciousness among Tokugawa sinologists,” among other issues. Individual chapters consider three kinds of source texts: pre-Edo classical Japanese texts, “Chinese” texts, and texts in Western languages. A penultimate chapter takes up “late Tokugawa ‘crisis translation’” and is followed by a conclusion. The scope of this study is truly vast, and a reader might wonder how any one person could cover such a range of material. Clements’s methodology is similar to that of her mentor Peter Kornicki and his History of the Book in Japan (Brill, 1998). For their vast subjects, both Kornicki and Clements provide essentially a kind of annotated bibliography. You will not fi nd in Clements a detailed analysis of how Ueda Akinari translated or adapted vernacular Chinese stories in his Ugetsu monogatari. Rather, the author sets herself three questions: “what forms of translation were practiced, who were the translators, and what, exactly, were they translating (or not translating)?” (p. 6). Such a survey by defi nition makes it diffi cult for the study to have an argument, but Clements’s point, simply put, is: “In the case of translation, the Meiji period has been given star billing as the period when modernity suddenly gave rise to and was fuelled by large numbers of translations. The chapters that follow reveal that translation was if anything equally signifi cant in Tokugawa Japan” (p. 46). However, this analogy is missing a term: translation in the Meiji period is to modernity as translation in the Tokugawa period is to—what? Early modernity? Clements checks herself several times from appearing to be teleological—that Tokugawa practices inevitably led to Meiji modernity. Nonetheless, her study gives fi ne evidence of how translation was “signifi cant” in shaping several discursive spaces in early modern Japan. This book fi ts into a constellation of recent studies that, while some-

Domesticating Kagerō: A Love That Dares Speak Its Name

IT often seems these days that there is not much of a “field” of premodern Japanese literature outside of Japan. Perhaps part of the reason is the shortage of dialogue between scholars. This may be partially due to our small numbers: every new book is still often the first treatment of its subject outside of works in Japanese, and so no one else has written on the topic. But I think we have, maybe for good reasons, taught our students to avoid conflict. In any event, even dissertations these days rarely seem to start with a review of the previous scholarly literature. Magisterial works of the past century, Konishi Jin’ichi’s A History of Japanese Literature,1 Robert Brower and Earl Miner’s Japanese Court Poetry,2 Katô Shûichi’s A History of Japanese Literature,3 even Donald Keene’s multivolume history,4 are passed over in silence. Book reviews, too, do not often lead to debate. There are not many places to turn to for the dialogue that, it seems to me, is a necessary element for a true “field,” let alone a “discipline.” Which is why Jacqueline Pigeot’s translation and study of Kagerô nikki is such a pleasant change. In addition to the translation proper, Pigeot includes two thoughtful “commentaires” that fully, if not completely, engage the previous scholarship on this and related texts that has appeared in not only French and Japanese, but English and Russian as well. Indeed, their length alone—the two in combination come to over one hundred pages—means that they are the most extended treatment to date of Kagerô in any language other than Japanese.

Indexicality in Esthetic Signs and the Art of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Recent discussions of portraiture have stressed the fact that the goal of a portrait is not so much iconicity or mimesis, for in that case a full-length mugshot would be superior, but rather in “rendering present” the subject for the viewer. Wendy Steiner, in her article on the semiotics of this genre, has suggested that this “rendering” is due to the indexicality, rather than the iconicity, of the sign.1