pmjs logs for December 1999. Total number of messages for month: 13

A historical curiosity (Chris Drake, Rein Raud, Jonathan Dresner) 

Reading Kambun: Heian Courtier Journals Summer 2000 (Joan Piggott) 

CD-ROM resources (John Schmitt-Weigand, Michael Watson ) 

New Texts in Japanese Text Initiative (Kendon Stubbs ) 

Genji authorship (Royall Tyler) see archive for earlier messages in thread 

new members: Todd Brown, Amy Franks, Mark Funke, Arunas Gelunas, Niels Guelberg, Terrence Jackson, Lorinda Kiyama, Tzvetana Kristeva, Nicola Liscutin, Mary Cender Miller, Noel Pinnington, Gregory Pflugfelder, Eric Rath, Vyjayanthi Ratnam, Mary Reisel, Joseph Sorensen 

Lightly edited (see "principles"). Editorial comments in italics.

From: Chris Drake
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1999 08:48:02 -0800
Subject: Re: A historical curiosity

Rein, I just finished reading the kasen sequence you posted.
Thanks very much! It's not a historical curiosity at all but
something that still has a lot of power. I hope it's published in
a book or in e-form soon. Some of the links are really excellent,
and I think they provide us with one good, imaginative model for
the list sequence now under way.

Is the "wet black bough" a reference to Pound's poem?

Chris Drake

From: Rein Raud

Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1999 09:05:03 +0200

Subject: Re: A historical curiosity

> Is the "wet black bough" a reference to Pound's poem?

Yes, Chris, it is - as the previous ku had "faces in the crowd". I'm
afraid that my own links in the sequence may appear rather bookish,
using intertextual allusions more often than other techniques of linking
and bringing them in quite often, but this probably has to do with my
long-time admiration for the Shinkokinshu people.

Rein Raud

From: Joan Piggott
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 11:01:31 -0500
Subject: Cornell East Asia Program Reading Kambun: Heian Courtier Journals Summer 2000

Cornell East Asia Program
Reading Kambun: Heian Courtier Journals
Summer 2000

The East Asia Program of Cornell University is pleased to announce the
fourth of its summer Reading Kambun workshops.

This summer, with a small group of interested scholars, we will read
Heian-period courtier journals, including sections of the <Teishin koki>,
<Shoyuki>, and <Chuyuki>. Professor Sanae Yoshida of the University of
Tokyo Historiographical Institute will lead the workshop with Professor
Joan Piggott of Cornell's Department of History. Professor Yoshida is well
known for her work on the <Chuyuki> volumes in the Dai Nihon Kokiroku
series. She was originally trained as an architectural historian and thus
she brings special abilities and interests to her readings of Heian
courtier journals.

Working sessions will be held Monday through Friday from July 24 through
August 18. Applicants should have a general knowledge of classical Japanese
and experience reading Heian kambun. Sessions are conducted entirely in
Japanese and therefore require a high degree of spoken fluency.

[Application details omitted]

From: Jonathan Dresner
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 1999 15:20:40 -0600
Subject: Re: A historical curiosity

Do you mind if I show this sequence to some of my students? I'm going to be teaching a January Term class in Japanese poetry, and I'd like to be able to show them some contemporary examples: this is a fine renga, and very clearly demonstrates the possibility of writing in this style and in groups in a non-Japanese environment. I've got about ten students registered so far, and I'm hoping to do at least one session of linked verse with them, to give them a better feel for the genre.

Thanks,

Jonathan

From: Rein Raud
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 1999 10:02:11 +0200
Subject: Re: A historical curiosity

Dear Jonathan Dresner,

I don't mind at all - on the contrary, I would be very happy if the text
would find wider circulation. I suppose the same is true of other authors.
Kai Nieminen is also on this list, alhtough I know him to be very busy with
work just now, but I suppose that if he had anything against it he would say
so.
Good luck with your course.

Rein Raud

From:John Schmitt-Weigand
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 09:11:54 +0900
Subject: CD-ROM resources

Hello,

an encyclopaedic CD-ROM published just recently should be mentioned
here. It is the "light edition" ("raitoban") of Shogakukan's
"Suupaa Nipponika dai hyakka jiten", also available on
CD-ROM. The full version claims to be one of the most
comprehensive multi-media encyclopaedias, being priced at
around 70.000 Y; In contrast, the light version is priced
more reasonably at 15.000 Y and contains the *complete* text
of the full version plus a "Kokugo daijiten", the main difference
being that it does not include the multi-media contents (pictures,
videos etc.) of the full version.
It is possible to install the complete work on hard disk
(takes around 350 MB w/o Kokugo daijiten).
The search engine is sophisticated, astonishingly fast and
the visual presentation of the articles is quite pleasant.
Full text search is available. The Windows version was just
released, but as the full version is also available for Mac
we can expect that a Mac version of the "raitoban" is to follow
soon. As an alternative, I have seen the full version at
antiquarian book stores in Kanda as well as in Osaka (Umeda)
priced at around 35.000 to 40.000 Y.

John Schmitt-Weigand

From: Michael Watson 

Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 11:53:42 +0900

Subject: Re: CD-ROM resources

Good to hear from John Schmitt-Weigand about the "Light" version of
Shogakukan's "Suupaa Nipponika dai hyakka jiten" CD-ROM. Unlike John I
haven't taken the plunge yet, but I tracked down a little more information:

The expensive full version is in 4 CD-ROM, while the light version is on
just one, and is called "suupaa nipponika raito-ban" [Japanese]
Its ISBN is 4-09-906723-8

Information on contents and technical requirements can be found on
http://skygarden.shogakukan.co.jp/sol/ssnle/index.html
together with a Shockwave demonstration--one of the demo pages is its entry
for "setsuwa bungaku". Online ordering also possible.

Information about the Mac version of the full version can be found in the
following review:
http://mac.nikkeibp.co.jp/mac/product/9906/shogakukan.shtml

Michael Watson 

From: Michael Watson
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 12:39:45 +0900
Subject: Re: CD-ROM resources

Last Friday I attended the annual "Computer Kokubungaku" meeting at NIJL
(Kokubungaku kenkyu shiryokan).
http://www.nijl.ac.jp/symposium.html
Unlike past years, the resources were available here and now, and not just
some scholar's wishful thinking or a research group's jealously guarded
data. After a long drought it has finally begun to pour.

The focus this time was on Genji monogatari. Not one but three CD-ROMs have
come out this year, all commercially available. Two are even affordable. I
heard talks about all three CD-ROMs and had some hands-on practice, but have
not made up my mind which to purchase yet. Again, alas, all for Windows.

Pride of place to the Iwanami Genji CD-ROM, in the same series as the
21daishu CD-ROM I mentioned earlier. The editing team was headed by Nakamura
Yasuo at the Shiryokan (www.nijl.ac.jp). The base text (teihon) is an Edo
edition--to avoid copyright problems--but it will also be of great interest
to those learning to read premodern Japanese texts as windows display
honkoku transcription and the corresponding page of the Edo printed edition
(graphic file).

One feature I liked about this CD-ROM is that the excellent search engine
can be used for other texts that the user "registers"--it is an open system
in other words. I'll point you to information on the Web when I track it
down. The price is around 11,000 yen.

The Iwanami/Nijl team are planning to produce one CD-ROM every year in the
"Koten Collection"--already scheduled are:
Azuma Kagami (2000)
Eiga monogatari and other rekishi monogatari (2001)
Kojiki, Hitachi fudoki (2002)

The second CD-ROM is produced by Benseisha (http://www.bensey.co.jp/) and allows KWIC concordance searches of the text--the Taisei text is used (ed. Ikeda Kikan). There is no electronic text included, however the fast search engine lists the target word in context, giving Taisei vol/page/(line?) reference. For 9800 yen, a useful tool. The information about this CD-ROM is not on their web site but you can contact Benseisha either at 03-5215-9025
(fax 03-5215-9021) or by e-mail LEG05067@niftyserve.or.jp.

And finally the one that is beyond most individuals' research budgets (260,000 yen) "Kadokawa koten taikan Genji monogatari CD-ROM" was produced by a team under the academic direction of Professor Ii Haruki (Osaka University)--well known to many on this list. It includes a transcription of the Ooshima text, Yoomei-bunko text, Hohan text, and a Kawachi-bon text. Search by part of speech, waka (including waka alluded to), geneological tables...

[Japanese]

http://www.kadokawa.co.jp/game-video/contents/199909/609.html
This CD-ROM is being marketed through Kinokuniya.

This page is disgracefully uninformative (url directory is game-video??) but the following academic site gives more information:

http://www.koka.ac.jp:8080/ss4/taniguti96M/0/20/NDK/GenjiCD/GenjiCD.html
http://www.koka.ac.jp:8080/ss4/taniguti96M/0/20/NDK/GenjiCD/GenjiBunken/List
NDK.html

The latter is a bibliography of publications by Ii-sensei and others about how this CD-ROM and the underlying databases were developed,

Michael Watson 

From: Michael Watson
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 3:23:56 +0900
Subject: Re: CD-ROM resources

P.S. The Iwanami Genji monogatari CD-ROM costs 12,000 yen, not 11,000 as I wrote, and is based on the Shoo-oo 3 e-iri edition, i.e. it is an illustrated edition. The Edo text was checked against the Taisei and ShinNKBT texts. [Japanese info]

From: Janine Beichman
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 18:16:50 +0900
Subject: Re: A historical curiosity

Rein, I told Ooka that you'd posted the kasen and there had been some nice
feedback about it. He said he didn't have a copy on hand, so I took the
liberty of sending him your post --hope you don't mind. Best, Janine

From: Michael Watson
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 23:04:36 +0900
Subject: recently joined

The list has fallen rather quiet of late--giving me time to work on the
online resources--but I am happy to report that our numbers continue to
grow. Those of you who look from time to time at the list home page (url
above) may have noticed that I have started to list the names of newly
joined members at the top of that page, with links to their
self-introductions on
http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~watson/pmjs-db1.html

It is only proper to send out these self-introductions by e-mail as well--a
custom I have neglected of late. With apologies, then, let me welcome the
last fifteen of you to join (omitting one or two members who introduced
themselves directly to the list--something that you are all welcome to do)

Vyjayanthi Ratnam
Todd Brown
Niels Guelberg
Amy Franks
Noel Pinnington
Gregory Pflugfelder
Terrence Jackson
Tzvetana Kristeva
Nicola Liscutin
Lorinda Kiyama
Mark Funke
Mary Reisel
Mary Cender Miller
Joseph Sorensen
Arunas Gelunas
Eric Rath

Self-introductions (unless otherwise indicated)

Vyjayanthi Ratnam
I am a second year graduate student at Cornell University. I am really
interested in issues of medieval historiography, particularly in relation to
the Gempei Josuiki.

Todd Brown
Assistant Professor of Japanese Religions, Department of East Asian Studies,
University of Arizona, Tucson.
Research interest: Premodern Japanese history and religion, with a
particular emphasis on the relationship between patronage and sectarian
development in medieval Buddhism. Other interests include pilgrimage;
practices associated with the belief in mappo; the medieval "status system";
and pre-modern Buddhist didactic, hagiographic, and polemical works and
their use in proselytization. My dissertation is a study of the evolution of
the Jishu sect of Pure Land Buddhism from the late thirteenth through the
mid-fourteenth century.

Niels Guelberg
Waseda University.
*Two of NG's publications in lieu of a self-introduction:
Buddhistische Zeremoniale (koshiki) und ihre Bedeutung fur die Literatur des
japanischen Mittelalters. Munchener ostasiatische Studien, Band 76.
Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1999. 318 pp. ISBN: 3-515-071474.
Zur Typologie der Mittelalterlichen Japanischen Lehrdichtungen:
Voruberlegungen anhand des "Kohon Setsuwashu." Muchener Ostasiatische
Studien, Band 28. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1991. 186 pp. ISBN: 3-515-05856..
[Author's dissertation from Munich, 1990. Contains annotated translation of
two books of Kohon setsuwashu. ]
* "ue" in surname is umlaut--Gülberg--these are also omitted in bibliography
(editor)

Amy Franks
*Yale University

Noel Pinnington
Asst Professor of Japanese Literature, Department of East Asian Studies,
University of Arizona, Tucson
Research Interests:
Pre-modern Japanese thought and literature, particularly: Noh ideology (esp..
Komparu Zenchiku), the development of a 'way' of incense, Tokugawa
mathematics, pre-modern Japanese languages.
Teaching:
Pre-modern Japanese literature and language. Work in progress: A full-length
study of Zenchiku's ideas. An investigation of rhetoric in the language of
No texts, a study of Genji Ko and the development of incense games, Tokugawa
solutions to the Bell number problem, A handbook of approaches to teaching
about Japan to non-Japanese (co-editor).
Recent publications:
"Crossed Paths: Zeami's transmission to Zenchiku," Monumenta Nipponica, 52:2
Summer 1997. // "Invented origins: Muromachi interpretations of okina
sarugaku," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 61:3,
1998

Gregory M. Pflugfelder
Assistant Professor, EALAC/History, Columbia University
Publications:
* Seiji to daidokoro: Akita-ken joshi sanseiken undo^shi (1986)
*"Strange Fates: Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Torikaebaya Monogatari" (MN
47.3, 1992)
*Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse,
1600-1950 (Univ. of California Press, Sept.,1999)

Terrence Weyl Jackson
I am affiliated with Indiana University and am currently at Tokyo University
working on my doctoral dissertation. I study Tokugawa Japan and my thesis is
relate to the social politics and ties within the intellectual world during
that period. I am particularly interested in rangakusha and the history of
science in Japan.

Tzvetana Kristeva
*Chujo University, Japan.

Nicola Liscutin
German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo - DIJ Tokyo
http://www.dijtokyo.org/dij-e/index-e.html
Although my interests now are indeed more in modern (contemporary) women's
literature, there are still strong connections (and lingerings?) of my
"premodern period" - a PhD thesis on sekkyobushi (Cambridge) that needs to
be rewritten for publication with Stanford UP, four years of teaching
classical literature at SOAS, a translation with students of a Hiraga Gennai
text that awaits finishing and editing, PLUS a strong interest in anything
that is new and exciting in premodern literature studies.

Lorinda Kiyama
Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford University. Fulbright Fellow, Nagoya University
Research on shodo bungaku (performative preaching), late Heian through
Muromachi periods

Mark Funke
I am a Ph. D. candidate at the University of Sydney. My field of research is
religion and politics of the Nara period. I have a particular interest in
the influence of the Hachiman cult on the politics of this period.

Reisel, Mary <maryre@netvision.net.il>
The Department of East Asian Studies, Tel Aviv University, Israel
I'm currently finishing a thesis for a masters degree at the Tel Aviv
University. I work and study in two departments - EAS and Sociology and
Anthropology. My research is about Japanese contemporary fashion design and
the way designers try to create new body images as well as new gender
relationships through their clothes. I intend to continue with a PhD in the
USA next year on the same subject of the relations between body and fashion
(which relates not only to clothes but also hair style, make-up, etc.) but
in more ancient times, that is before the Edo period. I'm particulary
interested in gender relations and the meaning of fashion in the Heian
period and I'm trying to find someone who might be interested in being the
advisor of such a research paper. I'm interested in all aspects of daily
life in traditional Japan till the 17th c.

Mary Cender Miller
Ph.D. student in Japanese (Heian studies) at Indiana University

Joseph T. Sorensen
I'm a Ph.D. student in premodern Japanese literature at the University of
California at Berkeley. I've studied Shinkokin poetry, especially that of
Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241). From 1993-95 I studied as a research student
at Kyushu University. Last spring I completed my M.A. thesis on a text Teika
compiled, "Monogatari nihyakuban utaawase" which compared and contrasted
poems from Tale of Genji, Tale of Sagoromo, and other Heian monogatari. My
dissertation will focus on the poetry contest (utaawase) genre, particularly
its inception, the way the (written) genre developed from contest record to
literary text, and the way these texts defined Heian aesthetics.

Arunas Gelunas
A Ph.D. student in Kaunas, dealing with the history of ideas. He has also
studied suibokuga at the Tokyo Geidai, in theory and in practice.
[Introduction by Rein Raud.]

Eric Rath
I am assistant professor of premodern Japanese history at the University of
Kansas. My speciality is late medieval and early modern (16th-18th
centuries) cultural history broadly defined to include the performing arts,
thought and food. I am currently completing a manuscript on the
professionalization of noh theatre from the time of Zeami to the modern
period focusing on how ritual, myths, and secret writings have helped to
form the ethos of the noh profession. My next project is on secret writings
and popular discourse on food in the early modern period. I have studied and
perform noh dance and chanting, shoulder-drum (kotsuzumi), and nagauta
shamisen.

I hope the year 2000 will some interesting discussions on pmjs.

Michael Watson <watson@k.meijigakuin.ac.jp>

Editor, PMJS mailing list
Meiji Gakuin University, Yokohama, Japan

P.S. Tohoku Denryoku has just phoned us here in Yokohama to warn us that
heavy snows have cut off electricity to our cottage in Aizu-Bandai. Imagine
us there, if you will, cut off from the world, celebrating Christmas by
candlelight. Seasons greetings to you all.

From: Kendon Stubbs
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 1999 14:15:38 -0500
Subject: New Texts in Japanese Text Initiative

Eight new texts have been added to the online Japanese Text Initiative
(JTI) at the University of Virginia Electronic Text Center
(http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/japanese):

Sei Shonagon, Makura no soshi
Shinkokinshu
Buson, Haikushu
Kanadehon Chushingura
Ryokan, Kashu
Futabatei, Ukigumo
Hagiwara Sakutaro, Tsuki ni hoeru
Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Jigokuhen

Our edition of Shinkokinshu is newly edited from the Tamesuke manuscript
with an introduction and editorial note by Professor Lewis Cook of Queens
College.

The JTI now includes 41 titles. All of the titles are searchable by
characters or words. They can be searched as a group or individually.

Kendon Stubbs
University of Virginia Library

From: Royall Tyler
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1999 05:08:44 +1000
Subject: Re: Genji authorship

For anyone interested, I have done a rudimentary summary on the Genji authorship issue, which I brought up on this list some time ago, from materials that I received during the earlier discussion (thanks again to all) or that I happen to have at hand.

A.
The long article in Nihon koten bungaku daijiten lists just two premodern doubts about authorship, apart from the ideas that MS's father, Tametoki, laid out the whole plan and left his daughter to fill in the details, and
that Michinaga added to MS's work:

1. Ichijô Kanera's statement in Kachô yosei that "aru hito" says the Uji chapters are by MS's daughter, Daini no Sanmi.

2. Hanaya Gyokuei's statement in Gyokueishû (1602) that the Uji chapters are by Daini no Sanmi and Takekawa by Saiin Senshi. The NKBD article dismisses these as mere denbun and unworthy of credence.

For modern times, the NKBD article notes theories that (1) Wakana 1 and after; (2) Niou no Miya and after; (3) Niou, K ai, Takekawa; and (4) the ten Uji chapters are by someone else. It gives extensive bibliographic
information on the controversy over (3) and concludes that the issue is not resolved yet. It gives no information whatsoever on who has held positions (1), (2), and (4). Perhaps these people were/are not accredited scholars.
Certainly the omission of Yosano Akiko, whose final view (as wonderfully described by Gaye Rowley) corresponded to (1), is quite striking. In contrast, Ikeda Kikan, with whom Akiko argued so stubbornly, is frequently cited.

B.
A wrapup piece by Suzuki Hideo ("Genji monogatari no seiritsu," Kokubungaku kaishaku to kyôzai no kenkyû, vol. 40, no. 3 (Feb. 1995), pp. 40-42) concentrates on the question of what order the chapters were written in,
and it mentions the possibility of more than one author only in a summary of Origuchi Shinobu's essay, "Nihon no sôi." Suzuki does not mention the Niou no Miya-Takekawa chapters. (As far as I can see, Origuchi does not
discuss authorship in "Nihon no sôi," although one has the impression that he may have been open to the idea of multiple authorship.)

Suzuki, like others, cites as seminal two ideas put forward by Watsuji Tetsurô in a 1922 article ("Genji monogatari ni tsuite," Watsuji Tetsurô zenshû, vol. 4, Iwanami, 1962): that (1) Hahakigi was written first and that (2) there must have been a pre-GM ur-genji tale on which the present GM was built. This is not a variant of the Father-as-real-author theory in Yotsugi monogatari. Watsuji makes the suggestion (not mentioned by Suzuki)
that the present tale is the product of a sort of studio of writers under the direction of a single author, and based on an original (gen, ur-) GM solely by Murasaki Shikibu. Presumably scholars have seen that suggestion
as less seminal than terminal.

C.
In a brief squib (Kokubungaku kaishaku to ky ai no kenkyû, vol. 44, no. 5 (April 1999), p. 136) Higashihara Nobuaki says, "The hypothesis of three authors is at present highly regarded as an illustration of the splits in
the shutai of the tale." But where is this hypothesis to be found? Who is involved?

D.
These materials do not explain the assumption by René Sieffert ("Furansujin kara mita Genji monogatari," Kaikan j o sh en kinen k nkai kirokushû, Tama Shiritsu Toshokan, 1989), Edward Seidensticker ("Waga Genji zô,"
Kokubungaku 14:1, January 1969), and Setouchi Jakuchô (her recent lecture in Chicago) that many others believe the Uji chapters to have been written by someone else. There seems to be NO body of scholarly opinion that obliged these three even to mention the idea. Nonetheless, all three did,as though they nonetheless felt a marked difference between the seihen andthe later chapters. (Sieffert conceded that while a cursory reading might well leave the reader with the impression that the Uji chapters are by another author, the intensive reading required by the effort of translation makes any such view untenable.)

Nonetheless, Yosano Akiko, who began with this sort of view, changed her opinion later on. Her first translation convinced her that the entire work is by MS. As Gaye Rowley translated her: "When we reach the ten Uji
chapters...the extreme glitter and refinement of the exquisite narrative of the first part gives way to simpler descriptive passages. This air of freshness, this sense of rejuvenation, is the product of Murasaki Shikibu's
genius, ever vigorous." However, her second translation made her certain that Wakana 1 and after are by Daini no Sanmi, and according to her daughter, she always regretted not having had time to discuss the matter in
print.

I understand that colleagues should find the question of narrator and narratorial technique in GM more interesting than that of authorship. It is a much more solid academic issue. Still, Murasaki Shikibu is not just a
name, like Daini no Sanmi. She is a national heroine. People want to believe that she and Genji monogatari are, so to speak, one and the same--that GM, as we have it, is from beginning to end the unmediated expression of her individual genius. That is an interesting phenomenon in itself.

Royall Tyler

See archive authorship of Genji monogatari for earlier messages in this thread