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13th century AD

Criticism, Spring, 1997 by James A. Wren

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(7.) All further references will be to Abutsu-ni, Izayoi nikki, in Nihon koten bungaku zenshu: chusei nikki kikoshu, Vol. 48, ed. Nagasaki Ken, Tonomura Natsuko, Iwasa Miyoko, Inada Toshinori, and Ito Ken (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 1994) and will be noted parenthetically by page number. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are by the author and in the instance of the poetry are such as to underscore the linguistic nature of the originals. sometimes to the detriment of their readability.

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(8.) See, for example, Earl Miner, Comparative Poetics: An Intercultural Essay on Theories of Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 112; and Maggie Childs, "Pre-modern Japanese Autobiography as Therapeutic Writing," in The Desire for Monogatari: Proceedings of the Second Midwest Research/Pedagogy Seminar on Japanese Literature, ed. Eiji Sekine (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1994), 45.

(9.) Izayoi nikki, 269. The English translation in this instance is from Edwin O. Reischauer, "The Izayoi Nikki," in Translations from Early Japanese Literature, trans. and ed. Edwin O. Reischauer and Joseph K. Yamagiwa, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1951), 53.

(10.) John Frow, Marxism and Literary History (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986), 128ff.

(11.) See, for example, Sano Yasutaro, Izayoi nikki shinshaku (Tokyo, 1937); and Reischauer, "The Izayoi Nikki."

(12.) "Kanno Kakumyo, "Yokyoku ni okeru katoku no iso: Aridoshi no shudai wo megutte," Nihon bungaku 6 (1989): 1-11. Katoku setsu, or more precisely katoku setsuwa, a term comprised of four Sino-Japanese characters, is often used by Japanese scholars of Literature, but rarely if ever does it appear in a dictionary of literary terminology. It is virtually never defined. Therefore, to understand better its meaning, we need necessarily understand first the individual characters. Ka means poetry, though the term is almost exclusively reserved for waka (tanka, short poems using the 5-7-5-7-7 syllable structure). The meaning of toku is a bit more difficult to ascertain: originally written with a character meaning "regular" or "often repeated" (e.g., otokui, "a regular customer"), in the Edo Period, the character changed to a homophone meaning "virtue" or "gain" (in the ethical sense). The usual usage of setsu in Japanese bears out the meaning of "explanation" (e.g., settoku, "persuasion"; setsumei, "explanation"; or sekkyo, "sermon"). The original Chinese meaning "to speak" (in T'ang China, pronounced siuet, while today we will hear shuo), is preserved in Japanese in such words as kaisetsu ("commentary"), ronsetsu ("discourse"), or shasetsu ("editorial"). A ripe source of allusion (as in dento bungaku) and symbolic of the symbiotic relationship between literary writings and a still-pervasive oral tradition (collectively termed densho bungaku), the setsuwa represent in the main an enormous group of folktales and legends featuring an array of figures (historical and otherwise) who gained widespread popularity during the long medieval period (approximately 1185-1600) in Japan.

13th century AD

Criticism, Spring, 1997 by James A. Wren

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