Session 04: Uchi-soto III (public-private / content-form / omote-ura)

Topics

❖ Heian period literature considered in terms of script (sinified Chinese vs. onnade), gendered perspective, etc.
◊ The basics of content-form (kotoba-kokoro)
◊ Adding sophistication to the uchi-soto framework by introducing omote-ura

Thoughts—read before class, revisit for tests

My collected thoughts on different ways that Japanese has been recorded onto paper can be read here: scripts.

Earlier sessions used the uchi-soto framework to consider setting aside spaces thought of as inner and outer and attributing qualities to those spaces. This session is the third of three and covers three different topics:

• The primary focus is on notions of public and private literary discourse, suggesting various associations.
• In addition, the enduring issue of the relationship between form (style) and content is noted.
• Finally, the inner-outer framework itself is problematized through the more sophisticated notion of omote-ura.

While these three do have some relationship to each other, they are here in part because these are the last major items I want to cover using the uchi-soto frame work. Omote-ura is at the end for the specific reason that it is a more sophisticated, and I think, accurate way, of evaluating the uchi-soto framework itself.

Required—to be completed for today's session

There are a wide variety of readings for this day. I suggest they be read in the order presented below.

The first selection is to reset the uchi-soto framework into a somewhat different terminology: "interior-exterior". This short reading discusses some Japanese literary texts from this perspective, providing something of a review, and expansion, on our topic—

✓ Rimer interior-exterior [bSpace, PDF]

The next reading are two stories from a Heian period prose work titled Nihon ryoiki. These stories are written in sinified Japanese. They are part of a "legends & tales" tradition we will revisit several times and are listed here, in part, to be a piece of that thread (Nihon ryoiki, Konjaku monogatari, Ujishui monogatari, Ugetsu monogatari and so forth). These tales have been the inspiration for writers and painters over the ages. Akutagawa Ryunosuke's Rashomon, for example, initially comes from the Konjaku monogatari.)

These, in my presentation, also represent works within a "public space". What I mean by that will be further elaborated in lecture—

✓ Nihon ryoiki - two stories [bSpace, PDF]

Continuing with readings in sinified Japanese, and so continuing with readings that are NOT part of the onnade literary body, I have selected a journal, a poem and a short prose piece. The journal is selected to contrast with the Tosa Journal which, the author states, is written from the onnade perspective, as well as provide a foundation reading for the Hojoki, which we will read at another point in the term. The poem stands out in contrast to the type of discourse which is almost universally set up as representative of Heian literature. The third selection, by Sugawara Michizane, is part of the reading because: a) Michizane is a famous Chinese studies scholar whom you should know, and b) the perspective shown even in such a short piece is radically different from the worlds of Sei Shonagon, Murasaki Shikibu, Izumi Shikibu and such—

✓ Chiteiki [bSpace, PDF]

✓ Oe Marriage of Man and Woman [bSpace, PDF]

✓ Michizane Late Winter Visit [bSpace, PDF]

This set of readings is meant to introduce or revisit major texts of the Heian period and contrast with the set immediately above. I will note in lecture the difference between Chiteiki and A Tosa Journal. The Gossamer Journal is selected both as a representative of the women's diary and journal literature of the day and to show an advance from Tosa. While, strictly speaking, Tosa stands at the head of the quasi-autobiographical journal genre (nikki), the Gossamer Journal so exceeds it in psychological complexity that I would suggest thatit be taken as the first nikki. Please compare. Then, we return to the Pillow Book, for further examples of superior onnade literature. The initial reading (Keene) is a more extended expression of some of the main points I hope to mention in class, and touches on many important texts of the time—

✓ Keene Feminine Sensibility in Heian Era (optional) [bSpace, PDF]

✓ In Classical Japanese Prose: A Tosa Journal, first 12 days.

✓ In Classical Japanese Prose: The Gossamer Journal 102–127 .

✓ In Classical Japanese Prose: The Pillow Book episodes 7, 39 74, 78, (124—optional). (*Please note that episode numbers change from translation to translation and even among original versions of the work.)

My current thinking is to include a few poems that help support lecture comments I will make about "banquet" and "private" poem expression. But I haven't decided whether to have readings or, if so, what they will be.

✓ TBD.

Finally, I want to make some comments on omote-ura (surface-behind). The reading is important, but just the thesis, not necessarily the details. This topic is a bit subtle so, in case you don't catch it in lecture, the reading should help clarify things—

✓ Doi omote-ura (read for basic ideas only) [bSpace, PDF]

Multimedia notes

❖ Uchi-soto Urami (Rokujo) [bSpace, PPT]

Links

⇢ None.

Other

My notes on the Japanese terms. (Sources are 小野進。古語辞典。岩波書店。 and 白川静。字訓。平凡社。 Ono's etymologies are interesting but controverisal.)

うら

• 「心」と同根の語。表面を「うへ」といい、古くは「うへ」と「うら」とが相対する語であった。すべて表に対するところ、かくれていてみえないところをいう。
• In early texts sometimes written: 宇良。
• 漢字：表裏、国語：面心。

うらむ

• 怨・恨
• 岩波：えんじ（怨）は不満をすぐ口に出す

うらやむ

• 嫉・妬・羨
• 古くは嫉妬の意に用いる例が多い。「心病む」

うらやましい、うらめし

うらおもひ（心思ひ）

うらがなし（心悲し）

うらぐはし（心細し）心にしみて美しく感じられる。

Terms and such mentioned this day that are not otherwise in an obvious place on the web site, the powerpoints, the assinged reading, etc. (to help with capturing items mentioned, perhaps quickly, in class, not for test purposes) —

Fall 2011: MISHIMA Yukio's Confessions of a Mask, ENCHI Fumiko's Masks, nikki genre (日記, diaries, memoirs or, more precisely court diaries 王朝日記), Empress Teishi's salon (includes Sei Shonagon), Empress Shōshi's salon (includes Murasaki Shikibu, Izumi Shikibu), Chiteiki (池亭記, = Record of Pond Pavilion), okashi (をかし, aesthetic term), Urami Waterfall (Urami-no-taki [裏見の滝])