Flowering tales : women exorcising history in Heian Japan / Takeshi Watanabe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Watanabe, Takeshi, 1975- author.

Series:

Harvard East Asian monographs ; 427.

Harvard East Asian monographs ; 427

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Historical fiction, Japanese--History and criticism.

Historical fiction, Japanese.

Japanese fiction--Heian period, 794-1185--History and criticism.

Japanese fiction.

Eiga monogatari.

Genre:

Historical fiction.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London : Harvard University Asia Center, [2020]

Summary:

"Telling stories: that sounds innocuous enough, but for the first chronicle in the Japanese vernacular, A Tale of Flowering Fortunes (Eiga monogatari), the health of its eleventh-century community was at stake. Flowering Tales is the first extensive literary study of this historical tale that covers about a hundred-fifty years of births, deaths, and happenings of late Heian society, a golden age of court literature. Takeshi Watanabe contends that the blossoming of tale literature, marked by The Tale of Genji, inspired what he describes as Eiga's affective history: an exorcism of embittered spirits whose stories needed to be retold to ensure peace. Tracing narrative arcs of political marginalized personages, Watanabe shows how Eiga, adapting the discourse and strategies of The Tale of Genji, reconnected wayward ghosts into the community through figural genealogies that relied not on blood, but on literary resonances. These reverberations, highlighted through comparisons to contemporaneous accounts in courtiers' journals, echo through shared details in funerary practices, lack of political support, and characterization. Flowering Tales reanimates these voices to trouble conceptions of history: how it ought to be recounted, who got to record it, and why remembering mattered"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction

1. The Genealogy of Eiga monogatari

2. The Buried Mothers of the Middle Regent's House

3. The Other Empress: Seishi and the Figural Genealogy

4. Fathers and Daughters as Spirit Possessions

5. The Sequel: Matching Change with Continuity

Epilogue: The Sacred Mirror

Glossary of Personages and Their Genealogies by Chapter.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

1-68417-609-3

OCLC:

1127297392

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9781684176090 DOI