Premodern texts & concepts: Japan

*This Web page is related to multiple class sessions.

Topics

*No class period covers all of these topics. Some versions of this course will skip some of the below topics.

Terms
❖ koi (孤悲、古非、恋、こひ, longing)
❖ amae (甘え in modern Japanese, not used in premodern, "playing the child", evoking the nurturing response, being vulnerable, revealing dependency, etc.
❖ nasake, ninjo (情、人情 emotions, deep emotions / human feelings, humanness)
❖ giri (義理, obligation, duty) & shame
❖ musubu (結ぶ, to bond)
❖ irogonomi (いろごのみ、色好), an ideal of courtly romantic manner

Texts & films
❖ Anthology of Poems Old and New (古今集, Kokinshu, 906) compiled by the poet and mid-level government official Ki no Tsurayuki, 872-945
❖ Tale of Genji (源氏物語, Genji monogatari, ca. 1010) by the aristocratic lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu, b. 973?
❖ "Double Love Suicides at Amijima" (playwright: Chikamatsu Monzaemon, 1720)
❖ Double Suicide (Japan, 1969)

About the topics of these sessions*

Here is my short list of aspects of romance that are apparent in The Tale of Genji that sometimes continue to appear in modern Japanese narratives and which seem "natural" to Japanese readers or audiences. (By "natural" I mean something that feels familiar and for which there is tolerance or acceptance, even if the reader or viewer doesn't particularly agree.)

First-person / narcissistic longing. The language of love of Genji is, in part, inscribed in the word "koi" which is a type of longing and nearly always "my longing" and so "love" as narrated in that story is "about me, my feelings of love" rather than "What can I do for you? What are your needs?". While it is possible to describe this as self-centered and narcissistic one can also say that it is simply interested in a particular aspect of the experience of romance.

Being dependent. One characteristic of an intimate relationship in Japan (premodern and, I would argue, modern) is that acting in a way that invites another's support or protection is viewed not as a demanding weakness or as dangerous, clingy behavior, but rather admirably vulnerable, honest and trusting. It is a channel for the exchange of love. Evoking, allowing or enjoying the response "Here, let me do that for you …" has been called, in modern times, "amae".

Private discourse. Japanese romantic narratives often position themselves deep in the private end of the spectrum between a public world with a set of morals to subscribe to and a private world distant from the imperative of those morals. This makes Genji feel a bit immoral (to some) or a-moral (to some). Spring 2012: I gave the example of wife beating and the necessity for that to be kept in a private space since the public, widely accepted narrative is strongly against it (not to mention, the "law", which is an encoding, in a sense, of widely held narrative of the "should" variety). Japanese romantic narratives are comfortable with very private perspectives. (In trying to clarify the private/pubic scheme, I screened the trailer to "Tony Takatani" based on Murakami Haruki's short story, as a modern example of Japanese narrative involved in the private, and narcissistic. And I offered various positions—foot-fetish as a private interest vs. an assertion that all relationships should be dominant/submissive, for example— to show how we measure things by whether they are someone's private affair or intended to affect our public discourse. We allow the former and resist the latter when we don't agree with it.

Love will not last. Since "love" is primarily presented in Genji as a passion towards another, not a publicly stated commitment towards another, it is easy to also characterize it as fleeting. It is not "anchored" through a public promise or public imperatives. It is possible to promise "I will care for you until I die" but we know that it is not possible to promise "My heart will leap up with passion every day I see you for the rest of my life." Genji, as a romantic narrative, is positioned deep within these "naturally" occurring emotions/passions and relatively far from promises that incorporate free-will choices. The basis for this line of narrative having "truth" value to the readers of the day is definitely Buddhist but that is not the whole story. Japanese narratives cleave close to this naturally occurring emotions and are less interested in free-will choices and that, too, subverts the possibility of enduring situations / commitments.

Love is debilitating. In Genji, generally, characters are burdened, sad, weakened in some way—even debonair gentlemen such as Genji. Being in love means being in a weakened state physically and emotionally. It rarely is shown to be an empowering element. This is not always true of Japanese narratives. In a medieval short story, "Little One-Inch" (that is measuring his height!), Little One-Inch finds a way to win his love out of confidence and bravado, based on the energy that comes from him wanting the woman he has become infatuated with. But Genji is an iconic text, as is the Kokinshu, and the narratives there import the Buddhist (and to some degree Confucian) hesitation about lust, lustful relationships, and passion that is lust-based. In English, too, the word "lust" marks certain feelings as somehow not right. So we have this too, but it is very strong in Genji's world and quite common in Japanese narratives.

Cyclical love. The world of Genji has a strong sense that love isn't particularly building something or going somewhere, it is just ever-present or regularly recurring. One is stuck within its troubles more or less endlessly.

Where is Confucianism in all of this? Since Genji's topic is not marriage but romantic feelings, and since it is a very private world, Confucianism is not challenged or denied in this text, it just isn't the most relevant set of values. Or, the fact that it is ignored might, in some ways, be a challenge.

Murasaki's writing situation: Murasaki Shikibu was a mid-level aristocrat who served a lady of the highest social position (first daughter to the most powerful man of the day, to later give birth of the emperor's children). She was highly educated, highly intelligent, a brilliant observer of the social world around her. She is known primarily for this text but also wrote a journal and many poems. She wrote primarily for other women of her day, in a similar position as her. He text was distributed / consumed either by read aloud sessions where a group of women would sit together, or hand-copied and distributed in full or in parts. Later, over the centuries, favorite passages were distilled and presented in illustrated texts, or just shared by word of mouth. In short, this is a text by an aristocratic women meant for other aristocratic women.

The mark of Buddhism, in its general shape, is strongly evident. Murasaki is not promoting Buddhism, but accepts uncritically its basic views.

The imperially commanded poem anthology Anthology of Poems Old and New (Kokin waka shu, 10th c.), considered the gold standard of poetry by the average literate aristocrat, had collected love poems into five subsections that trace out the trajectory of love as, simply put: rumors or brief glimpses of a woman attracts a man who presents himself to the woman through poetry as infatuated, earnest, disoriented, suffering until he can meet with her while the woman resists, the culmination of love which is marked primarily by anxiety that the relationship will not last, concerns that the lover is untrustworthy, fear of the gossip of society, and then, a gradual realization, to the woman, that her man is not longer interested. This basic trajectory was important to The Tale of Genji, although the plot lines are much more complicated than this, and this basic narrative, similar to the Western story of Romeo and Juliet (star-crossed lovers prevented from love by society), remains a powerful influence on romantic narratives.

Vocabulary notes

Bonds / musubu. Tying knots, giving gifts that have knots on them, etc. Love is to be enwrapped, entangled, not necessarily a shoulder-to-shoulder, free-will based, "team".

Irogonomi (literally "love or the sensual" "love of color") usually describes a man, but can describe a woman, who has a high interest in the opposite sex and romantic affairs with them, and is nearly always endowed with these qualities: power, wealth, good looks, education, moderately high social status (those in the very highest circles avoid scandal), an almost unreasonable level of inability to resist the opposite sex, a charming demeanor, excellent fashion sense, and able to write elegant poetry and engage in elegant conversation that is pleasing to the partner. (For the woman these traits are the same, although "the rainy night" discussion of Genji Chapter 2 suggests that a woman of too-high a status or of too much good manner, is objectionable to the man and, further, that a "diamond in the rough" situation is particularly appealing to the man.)

Koi is a common term to describe love as it is presented in The Tale of Genji and is better translated as "longing" than as "love" if "love" is meant to suggest "true love", a notion embedded in Christian values and not found, in my opinion, in premodern East Asian texts.

Amae is a modern, psychoanalytic term that refers to a lover's behavior that is meant to express dependency or actually be dependent, evoking from the lover a desire to care for that person. It is considered an attractive and charming characteristic, at least up to a degree that that a Western 21st-century young American might find excessive. Amae, in my opinion, is blending with the Confucian value of xiao, but is not derivative of it.

By the way, it is amae, not amai. Amae is a noun derived from the verb amaeru. Amai is an adjective. They do not mean the same thing. This is a common confusion since, when we think in English, we say that Japanese girls who are being "sweet" and "cute" are doing this as a way to amaeru. But "sweet" in Japanese, amai when used for a person, means "naive" — only if used for food does it mean "sweet".

Irogonomi, koi, and amae should be considered culturally specific to Japan. There are near equivalents to some of these in China and Korea but it erases cultural differences that we want to notice if we simply treat these as the Japanese words for a pan-East Asian set of concepts. Japanese kawaii (可愛い) is not derivative of the amae concept, though clearly there some connections. Aegyo (可愛) is, I think, the closest Korean word to "kawaii". I do not know keenly the nuance of keai (可愛) in modern Chinese but I think it is similar.

Bibliography

Premodern texts and support pages

• The Tale of Genji (see syllabus for access details)
  • The Tale of Genji reading should track, in particular: Genji's mother Kiritsubo, Genji's first love Fujitsubo, Genji's life-love Murasaki, Yugao, the jealous and dangerous Rokujo, Genji's wife Aoi. If you are reading later chapters, then Ukifune. bSpace PDF files Genji Women for EA105 and the Genji Basic Genealogy should be helpful in this regard.
• The following links to others pages on this Web site, where I have been developing a commentary on The Tale of Genji. Many of the chapters assigned for this class are summarized there. See: Wallace Reading Notes Chapter List.
• Kokinshu reader (bSpace, PDF)
  • If you are to read this, read through the poems associated with the five books of love (the love poems begin on page 10 of that reader and continue until the end of the reader, page 19) with the simple intention of getting a "feel" for the discourse about love in these poems and noticing the arc:
    • Book I: approaches the lover or is fascinated with the love;
    • Book II: some encounters with the lover, more substantive in exchanges but probably not yet slept together;
    • Book III: although they have now slept together issues of trust and gossip are prominent;
    • Books IV & V: deal with a fading or gone relationship.
  • Books I & II are definitely Love Phase A, Book III is perhaps an awkward Phase B or an early Phase C; Books IV & V are definitely Phase C. — You should not take more than an hour, if that, with this collection, but do notice how similar the view of love is in Genji and the feel of the discourse as well. The Tale of Genji is a prose work, but one conceived within the space & logic of poetry, poetics, aesthetics.
• Chikamatsu: The Love Suicide at Amijima trans. by Asataro Miyamori, In Parentheses Publications, Japanese Series, Cambridge, Ontario, 2000. (Also available on bSpace as a PDF titled Amijima new trans by Miyamori)

Double Sucides (the film) — about the puppeteers, reality, and so on

• The revisioning of the real: Film director Shinoda Masahiro's emphatic use of kurogo in Shinjū Ten no Amijima" by Yukihide Endo, on the blog Nihon Cine Art (Feb 28, 2009). (There is a no-image PDF version of this article on bSpace as Amijima Shinoda film.)
  • Abstract [given at the beginning of the article]: As argued in my previous paper ("Terayama Shûji's Theatre work: His Experimental Use of the Traditional Kurogo"), a new type of kurogo stagehand emerged in the late 1960s alternative theatre of Japan. Unlike the traditional type, these kurogo were so conspicuous as to impress an audience with their strong presence. The similar experimentation that Terayama carried out in Inugami (Dog God) was done by film director Shinoda Masahiro in Shinjû ten no amijima (Love Suicide at Amijima) independently but almost at the same time (1969). Shinoda brings to the fore kurogo puppeteers who viciously pave the way to the central characters' tragic end. This paper inquires into the ways in which Shinoda's filmic depiction of kurogo emphasizes the kurogo's interference in the couple's life, even their manipulation of it. It also clarifies what his provocative treatment of the kurogo suggests. By doing so, it shows that like Terayama, Shinoda disapproves of a realistic representation of life and acutely aware that life needs art to delve behind the façade of real life.
• Double Suicide and the "fetishism of space" by Anne Rutherford, on the blog senses of cinema, original article in Cinémathèque Annotations on Film, Issue 59 | June 2011.
• Cast of characters, to help keep track for the play or film: Amijima Cast of Characters (bSpace, PDF)

On amae

• Doi on Amae 01 & Doi on Amae 02 (bSpace, PDFs)
• Indigenous and Cultural Psychology:  FAMILY & SOCIALIZATION — "Close Interpersonal Relationships among Japanese: Amae as Distinguished from Attachment and Dependence" (locate through Oskicat search using "Available Online" as the limiter—the drop down menu—and typing into the search window "Indigenous and Cultural")
• "The Hidden 'I' in Amae: 'Passive Love' and Japanese Social Perception" by Hisa A. Kumagai and Arno K. Kumagai in Ethos, 14:3 (Sep., 1986), pp. 305-320 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/640027)

On shinju (love suicides, group suicides)

• "Cultural Dynamics and Suicide in Japan" by Yoshitomo Takahashi and Douglas Berger in Suicide and the Unconscious, Antoon A. Leenaars, David Lester, eds. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997. (You can access this article at http://www.japanpsychiatrist.com/Abstracts/Shinju.html (Unicode encoding). I also have a copy on bSpace, that is modified slightly to bring attention to particular sections. See Shinju psychology with highlights.)

*UNDER CONSTRUCTION: If this red font phrase underneath the session title has not been erased it means something on this page is incomplete. Perhaps I want to recheck information or perhaps I haven't converted the page from the version of the previous class. It is available but should be taken dubiously.

*ABOUT THIS SESSION: My hope is that you look at this portion BEFORE a session. If there is content here it might help you focus on the main points of the day. However, I add various things here at various times. When I feel I haven't succeeded in class stating something clearly, I might restate it here. Of if it is a difficult concept in might be given in written form here. I will assume that you have read and rechecked for changes this session in preparation for any midterm or test.