Gender and National Literature: Heian Texts in the Constructions of Japanese Modernity (Asia-pacific: Culture, Politics and Society) - Hardcover

Yoda, Tomiko

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 082233187X ISBN 13: 9780822331872

Verlag: Duke University Press, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

Boldly challenging traditional understandings of Heian literature, Tomiko Yoda reveals the connections between gender, nationalism, and cultural representation evident in prevailing interpretations of classic Heian texts. Renowned for the wealth and sophistication of women’s writing, the literature of the Heian period (794–1192) has long been considered central to the Japanese literary canon and Japanese national identity. Yoda historicizes claims about the inherent femininity of this literature by revisiting key moments in the history of Japanese literary scholarship from the eighteenth century to the present. She argues that by foregrounding women’s voices in Heian literature, the discipline has repeatedly enacted the problematic modernizing gesture in which the “feminine” is recognized, canceled, and then contained within a national framework articulated in masculine terms.

Moving back and forth between a critique of modern discourses on Heian literature and close analyses of the Heian texts themselves, Yoda sheds light on some of the most persistent interpretive models underwriting Japanese literary studies, particularly the modern paradigm of a masculine national subject. She proposes new directions for disciplinary critique and suggests that historicized understandings of premodern texts offer significant insights into contemporary feminist theories of subjectivity and agency.

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Tomiko Yoda is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian and African Languages and the Program in Literature at Duke University.

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"Keenly, lucidly, thoroughly, " Gender and National Literature" shows how the modern feminization of Heian literature did not simply parallel the formation of the modern subject in Japan, but proved integral to it. Tomiko Yoda thus issues a profound challenge to the received wisdom about the femininity and the 'women' of classical literature. And her response is brilliant: turning to the materiality of the Heian text, Yoda poses new readings that take the question of gender far beyond previous studies of Heian and modern Japanese literature."--Thomas LaMarre, author of "Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archaeology of Sensation and Inscription"

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Gender and National Literature

Heian Texts in the Constructions of Japanese ModernityBy Tomiko Yoda

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2004 Tomiko Yoda
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780822331872

Chapter One

The Feminization of Heian and Eighteenth-Century Poetics

Given the widely accepted image of the Heian court as populated with effete aristocrats and the reputation of the Heian period as the golden age of women's writing, the association between Heian literature and femininity seems all but inevitable. Historically, however, the identification of mid-Heian literature with feminine qualities was a notion that gained currency through the discussion of poetics during the eighteenth century. While the perception of Heian aristocratic society and culture that developed during preceding centuries no doubt informed it, the feminization of Heian literature in the eighteenth century must be understood in relation to debates over the nature of poetry and its function within the society of the time. A closer look at the principal sources from the period suggests that the identification of Heian literature in feminine terms was variously construed and contested. This chapter examines the complex sets of designs that were involved in ascribing femininity to Heian literature and identifies common concerns informing divergent perspectives. Through this analysis, I begin exploring the broader problem of how the gendering of literary history and aesthetics has functioned in the modern construction of literature.

I argue that the feminization of Heian literature and the use of gender metaphors to discuss literary discourses germinated in response to the problems specific to eighteenth-century poetics: the need to establish a new definition of poetry and its standard of evaluation in opposition to accepted paradigms. This development in poetics, furthermore, was inextricably connected to the destabilization of the existing social and intellectual formations increasingly apparent by the early to mid-eighteenth century-including the dysfunction of the political and economic structures of Bakufu (the Tokugawa Shogunate), the challenge against the neo-Confucian intellectual order, and impacts of expanding urban space and its population. Harootunian and others have identified in the eighteenth-century debates on poetics a profound anxiety that the contemporary world had lost the immanent, spontaneous, and transparent form of human sociality and communication. The critical question, then, was how to reconstitute a unity and order of poetic modes and values in light of this condition. The problem, furthermore, was directly linked to the more general project of locating the integrity among the diverse and seemingly fragmented human experiences in which the essence of poetry was to be found. The association between poetry and social harmony is an idea found in some of the earliest forms of poetics in Japan (as well as in the Chinese poetics that often served as the model). In the eighteenth century, however, the coherence and authenticity of poetic sociality was posited against the perceived sense of growing social and linguistic opacity. It is in this context that we find the use of gender categories in the discussion of poetics. In particular, the "feminine" was constituted as a key signifier of negativity-that is, the inferior pole of an interconnected yet asymmetrical binary-in relation to which new visions of sociality, poetic theory, and poetic practice were constituted.

Eighteenth-century poetics offered highly sophisticated responses to the problem of how to identify coherence in the anomie of human experience and how poetry construed as the purest and most authentic deployment of language may figure in such a process. This explains why it continued to inspire Japanese intellectuals, who later sought the means to grapple with the deeply unsettling impact of modernity. This prefiguration of modern discourses on literature by eighteenth-century poetics offers an important perspective on how the feminization of the Heian and the use of gender metaphors in discussing literary values and types in general took shape in modern (i.e., post-Restoration) studies of literature.

Kamo no Mabuchi and the Feminization of Heian Poetry

The picture of elegant Heian aristocrats inhabiting an exquisitely refined court society-immersed in the pleasures of art and literature and shunning prosaic concerns such as economic affairs, military training, and even official matters of the state bureaucracy-has circulated widely through the popular reception of mid-Heian texts such as The Tale of Genji. Takahashi Masaaki traces back the roots of these conventional images not to the Heian period itself but to the nostalgic construction of it by the courtiers of later centuries who idealized the mid-Heian period as the apogee of aristocratic culture, taking the world depicted in the Genji at face value. By the mid-fifteenth century, the economic and political power of the courtiers had undergone a marked decline and the capital they resided in had been badly damaged by repeated battles. Under such circumstances, courtiers sought to preserve their prestige, in part, by becoming purveyors of traditional arts, including poetic composition and criticism. During the Tokugawa period, the links between the courtiers and the arts were institutionalized by a Bakufu policy that removed the imperial family and courtiers from political arenas while offering them patronage for their roles as guardians of traditional learning and artistic practices. The historical transformation of the status and role of courtiers in Japanese history reinforced the perception of an effeminate and precious Heian aristocracy.

The association between Heian literature and femininity that is often taken for granted today, however, has more specific sources in eighteenth-century poetics, particularly in the work of Kamo no Mabuchi (1697-1769). In "Nihimanabi" (ca. 1765), he writes:

Since the Yamato region [where the capital was located during the Nara period] was a land of valiant men, in ancient times even women followed the masculine mode of composing poetry. Thus, the poems of the Man'yoshu are composed in the masculine style. Because the Yamashiro region [where the Heian capital was located] was a land of women, even men followed the feminine mode, so the poems of Kokinwakashu are mostly composed in a graceful feminine style (tawoyameburi). Furthermore, when Kokinwakashu evaluated the styles of the six poets (poetic sages), it favored a tranquil and clear style of poetry, criticizing the strong and firm style as rustic. This is because they considered the poetic style of its particular time and place as the standard, without taking into consideration archaic poems.

Mabuchi equates the rise of feminine style with the degeneration of poetry, attributing this downturn to the decline of direct imperial rule (the domination of the court by powerful aristocratic families), as well as to the popularity of Chinese literature and culture in the early Heian period.

Mabuchi posited the femininity of Heian society and its poetry in contrast to the masculinity of ancient poems, particularly those collected in an anthology of the Nara period, Man'yoshu. For Mabuchi, Man'yoshu epitomized the essence of waka-the unadorned and straightforward expression of feelings unsullied by artificial embellishments or...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 082233187X
• ISBN 13: 9780822331872
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 296
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar