pmjs logs for January, 2000. Total number of messages for month: 60

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Discussions are marked in bold.

Spirits in Rome (Royall Tyler) 

New Programs at the U of Arizona (Noel John Pinnington) 

"Gate of Hell" [Jigoku Mon] (Jonathan Dresner, Robert Borgen, Tom Conlan, Robert E. Morrell, Karel Fiala, Michael Watson) -> also archived 

"Kana Classic" CD-ROM (Wayne Shimoguchi, Kate Wildman Nakai , Stephen Miller) 

Early Modern Japan: An Interdisciplinary Journal (Philip C. Brown) 

Extreme kakekotoba (Lewis Cook, Robert E. Morrell, Rein Raud, Richard Bowring, Paul S. Atkins, Noel Pinnington, Janine Beichman, Royall Tyler, Stephen Miller, Sonja Arntzen, Michael Watson, Lawrence Marceau, William Bodiford) --> also archived 

EAJS conference (Aug. 2000) (Rein Raud) 

AAS conference (March 2000) 

kogo jiten [dictionaries of classical Japanese] 

the role of aviaries / Genji screen (Melanie Trede) 

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




From: Royall.Ty...@....edu.au (Royall Tyler)
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2000 20:10:00 +1000
Subject: Spirits in Rome

For anyone interested in spirit possession in Genji and elsewhere--
The other day I ran across this sonnet in "Les Regrets," a collection by
Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560). Du Bellay spent many years in Rome, where
he observed scenes remarkably like some that are familiar from Heian
literature. (My rough and ready translation.)

D'ou vient que nous voyons à Rome si souvent
Ces garces forcener, et la plupart d'icelles
N'estre vieilles, Ronsard, mais d'aage de pucelles,
Et se trouver ainsi en un mesme couvent?
Qui parle par leur voix? quel Daemon leur defend
De respondre à ceulx-là qui ne sont cognuz d'elles?
Et d'où vient que soudain on ne les void plus telles
Ayant une chandelle esteinte de leur vent?
D'où vient que les saincts lieux telles fureurs augmentent?
D'où vient que tant d'esprits une seule tormentent?
Et que sortans les uns, le reste ne sort pas?
Dy, je te pry, Ronsard, toy qui s is leurs natures,
Ceux qui faschent ainsi ces pauvres creatures,
Sont-ilz des plus haultains, des moyens, ou plus bas?

Whence comes it that we see so often in Rome
these girls in frenzy, nor are most of them
old, Ronsard, for they are not yet married,
and generally in one and the same convent?
Who speaks with their voice? What Daemon forbids them
to answer those whom they do not know?
And whence comes it that suddenly they are like that no longer,
after blowing out a candle with their breath?
When comes it that the holy precincts increase their raging?
Whence comes it that so many spirits torment one girl,
and that, when some go, the rest do not?
Tell me, please, Ronsard, you who know their natures:
Those who thus torment these poor creatures,
are they from among the highest, of the middling, or the lowest?

(The poet Ronsard was a friend of Du Bellay.)
I would be glad to hear from anyone who knows anything about this, or who
knows anyone or any book that might have something to say on the subject.
Perhaps Doris Bargen does, but I do not think she is on this list.

Royall Tyler



From: "Noel John Pinnington" <.......@...rizona.EDU>
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 11:45:19 -0700
Subject: New Programs at the U of Arizona

Apologies for cross-listing.

The Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona is opening
new M.A. and Ph.D. programs in Japanese Literature and Japanese Religion /
Thought starting Fall, 2000. Areas of specialization offered are modern
literature, pre-modern literature, pre-modern Japanese religion. Financial
aid is available, and at present all graduate students in East Asian Studies
receive some degree of financial aid. For general information and faculty
specializations visit http://w3.arizona.edu/~eas/. Detailed program
information has not yet been added to the website, so interested persons
should contact Phil Gabriel, (modern literature; ph...@...tarnet.com;
520-621-5460), Noel Pinnington (pre-modern literature; no...@...rizona.edu;
520-626-3476) or Todd Brown (pre-modern religion; jtbr...@...rizona.edu;
520-621-5478). The closing date for applications for Fall, 2000, is February
1st, 2000.



From: Jonathan Dresner
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 13:17:35 -0600
Subject: "Gate of Hell"

I showed the 1953 movie "Gate of Hell" to my students, which seems to have been a reasonable success. One thing I was wondering, though: is it (the tragic relationship, I mean; I know the Heiji Disturbance is factual) based on a known incident or story, or is it entirely fabrication? It reminds me of the morality tales in the Konjaku, but I only have access to the Ury collection, and it isn't in there.

Thanks,

Jonathan Dresner




From: Robert Borgen
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 12:41:29 -0800
Subject: Re: "Gate of Hell"

A number of years ago, I too began to wonder about the source of the story "Kesa and Morito" (that's the name used by Akutagawa's version of the story--translated in Takashi Kojima's Rashomon and Other Stories.--upon which "The Gate of Hell" is also based). I discovered that the anecdote first appears in Genpei Seisuiki (or Genpei Jousuiki, take your pick), a sort of expanded version of The Tale of the Heike. The only edition I could find of it at the time was unannotated and very "Chinesey" (i.e., difficult to read), so I put it aside. I believe annotated editions are now available, but I haven't gone back to check them out. The only significant detail I remember is that, after Morito becomes a monk at the end of the movie, he takes the name Mongaku and goes on to play a conspicuous role in The Tale of the Heike.

Michael Watson surely knows far more than I about this subject, and I hope he can fill in further details, but, since I did spend a few hours pursuing the matter once upon a time, I thought I would use this opportunity to publish belatedly the results of my inquiries.

Michael: We await further enlightenment on the subject!

Robert Borgen




From: Jonathan Dresner
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 14:58:10 -0600,
Subject: Re: "Gate of Hell"

Robert (and all),

Well I'll be! I even have that collection on my shelf; that might explain why it seemed so familiar. I also await with anticipation more details, but it is good to know at least that there is some classical basis for the tale.

Thanks,

Jonathan



From: Tom Conlan <.........@...doin.edu>
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 17:18:25 -0400
Subject: Re: "Gate of Hell"

Just a bibliographic note: the best annotated version for the Genpei Josuiki (Seisuiki) that I know is edited by Ichiko Teiji and published in four volumes by Miyai shoten. (Volume 4 was published in 1994). Unfortunately, this volume ends at maki 24, and I have no idea when (or if) the other 24 maki will be published.

Tom Conlan



From: "Robert E. Morrell" <.........@...sci.wustl.edu>
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 22:27:56 -0600
Subject: Re: "Gate of Hell"

Jonathan,

Some years ago I also had occasion to show "Gate of Hell," and spent more time than I should have tracking down antecedents. Not surprisingly, the self-sacrifice of wife Kesa has a distinctly Confucian ring to it, and the bones of the plot seems to have originated in a Han morality tale, whose source eludes me. Then it appears again in the _Gempei joosuiki_ (sorry, no chapter and verse), and also in Akutagawa's quirky _Kesa to Morito_ (1918), trans. in Keene's _Modern Japanese Literature_, pp. 300-306.

Personally, I think it ranks among the greatest Japanese films. Would that we had more of them.

Bob




From: Karel Fiala <.........@....ac.jp>
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 13:33:23 +0900
Subject: Re: "Gate of Hell"


The story conceiving Mongaku as Morito is present also in other versions of the Heike, e.g. in the Enkei-bon (= Enkyoo-bon), dai 2 no maki no sue, dai 2 dan. (Some gunki monogatari experts, e. g. Mizuhara Hajime or Ogawa Eiichi, consider this version of "Heike" to be older than others. Certainly, it is older than Seisui-ki and much easier to read). However, even this story is not the oldest. Kesa gozen of Seisui-ki is according to Enkei-bon "Toba kyoobu-zaemon no onna" or "Toba Akiyama Kyoobu-zaemon Naganori no tsuma" (Shibu-hon, it gives even some data: spring 1165), "Toba no naishi" (Ryoosokuin-bon and otogi-(zoo)shi "Saru-Genji").

According to Tomikura's "Zen Tyuusyaku" the story is just a fiction, but it is almost certain that Mongaku was of Endoo clan and was "Watanabe zaijuu"("Zoku-gunsyo-ruijuu": son of Endoo Tamenaga).

The story of "Kesa gozen" as a reason for his "shukke" "at the age of 19" is also in Nagato-bon, which is thought to have a common source with the "Enkei-bon" and has effected "Seisui-ki" to a considerable extent. The Nagato version can be recommended for reference, it might preserve an even older version than Enkei.

In 19 th century, the Czech poet Julius Zeyer found inspiration in Kesa and Morito' s story in his romantic work on Gompachi and Komurasaki (he merged parts of these stories). The work is one of the sources of Central European Japonerie.

Karel Fiala



From: Michael Watson <........@...eijigakuin.ac.jp>

Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 18:48:48 +0900

Subject: Re: "Gate of Hell"


The Kakuichi recited version of the _Heike monogatari_ 5.7 "Mongaku no aragyoo" introduces Mongaku, lay name Endoo Musha Moritoo. There is a detailed account of his "austerities" but only the briefest mention of why he became a monk: "at the age of nineteen he experienced a religious awakening and took religious vows" (borrowing McCullough's renderings of "aragyoo" and "dooshin okoshi" from p. 178 of her translation).

For dramatic events which led him to we have to look to the longer "yomihon" versions of the Heike, to Genpei josuiki--as already mentioned--or to the earlier Enkyo-bon or Nanto-bon, Nagato-bon, etc.

The story of Kesa and Moritoo appears in the first episode of Genpei josuiki, book 19, "Mongaku hosshin no koto." It is a longer and more involved story than I remembered, vol. 3, pp. 19-29 of the best complete
edition available (_Shintei genpei josuiki_, 6 vols., ed. Mizuhara Hajime, Shinjin oraisha, 1988-1991). As it in book 19, Tom Conlan will still be able to read the episode Ichiko's incomplete edition.

Of the two editions, I find Mizuhara's edition the easier to read--perhaps because it is kanji/hiragana rather than kanji/katakana. Both are well annotated. Mizuhara's contains also the valuable notes of the early modern Mito-han historians.

The Japanese Akutagawa's text of "Kesa to Moritoo" (1917) is available online, together with many other of his works:
http://www.aozora.gr.jp/sakka_akutagawa_ka.html

Akutagawa's version consists almost entirely of two soliloquies (dokuhaku). It depends on readers' knowledge--or supposition--about what will happen. The last sentences describe Kesa lying in the bedchamber, candle extinguished, so that Moritoo will not realize that he is killing her rather than her husband, as planned.

In the GJ version, Kesa and Moritoo have been lovers for three years. Kesa tells Moritoo to kill her husband, saying that she will wash his hair, make him drunk, and put him to sleep in the "takadono" (tr?). Moritoo creeps in the house in the dead of night, and finds the wet hair. He cuts off the head, wraps it in his sleeve and returns home, jubilant. It is only when he hears that Wataru's wife has been killed does he take out the head, discovering to his horror that it is Kesa's....

The Genpei josuiki finds a Chinese parallel for her self-sacrifice.

As editor of the list, let me also wish you all the best for another
millennium of Japanese studies. For those who have forgotten, messages to the list are sent to p...@...tbot.com.

Michael Watson <........@...eijigakuin.ac.jp>



From: Karel Fiala <.........@....ac.jp>

Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2000 09:23:25 +0900

Subject: Re-re: "Gate of Hell"


P.S.: There are probably more data concerning "Toba kyoobu". You should try to check them. On the other, also the Chinese strory quoted in this context in the "Seisuiki" should be examined. It might be one of the sources of the story and its co-occurrence with the story might be a reflection of an early version. To read the story, as it is reported in the "Shibu Kassen-joo" version of the "Heike" Tale, I could recommend you to consult Prof. Hattori's "kun-yomi" version of the "Shibu".




From: Wayne Shimoguchi <........@...ba.ac.jp>

Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 16:48:28 +0900

Subject: Opinions about KanaClassic


The following message has been cross-posted to the H-JAPAN discussion list.

I would very much appreciate hearing the opinions of anyone who has used KanaClassic, the software for learning classical Japanese kana writing put out by Columbia University Press. I would be interested in your evaluation as to the quality of the program and any problems one may have encountered in using it. I would like to run it on Japanese Windows98.

Thank you.

Wayne Shimoguchi
Foreign Section Librarian
Nagoya Shoka Daigaku
wsh...@...ba.ac.jp




From: "Kate Wildman Nakai" <.........@...fman.cc.sophia.ac.jp>
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 19:06:12 +0000
Subject: Re: Opinions about KanaClassic

Regarding KanaClassic, please see Monumenta Nipponica 54:3 (Autumn 1999) for a review article ("Mastering Hentaigana") by Aileen Gatten.

Kate Wildman Nakai
-------------------
Kate Wildman Nakai, Prof. of Japanese History, Sophia University,
and Editor, Monumenta Nipponica
Monumenta Nipponica, Sophia University
E-mail: kw-na...@...fman.cc.sophia.ac.jp
Monumenta Nipponica home page: http://monumenta.cc.sophia.ac.jp



From: Stephen Miller <.........@...t.colorado.edu>

Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 12:54:51 -0700 (MST)

Subject: kanaClassic


There was a review of "kanaClassic" in the Nov. ATJ (Association of Teachers of Japanese) Newsletter which can be found on the web at

<.....p://www.colorado.edu/ealld/atjzz>.

Just click on the icon for "Newsletter" and then on "Technology-Based Learning and Resources. Stephen Miller
ATJ, Newsletter Editor




From: "Philip C. Brown" <..........@....edu>
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 10:38:37 -0500
Subject: Early Modern Japan: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Volume VII Number 2

Early Modern Japan: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Volume VII Number 2, was mailed to subscribers shorly before the year-end holidays. This issue is a directory of Early Modern Japan Specialists and copies are available for special order at $8 each (checks should be made payable to "Association for Asian Studies" and requests should be mailed to Philip C. Brown at the address below.

If you are interested in adding your name to the directory for publication in the future, or those who may wish to add or revise information already submitted, please complete the Specialists Information Form at our web site:

http://emjnet.history.ohio-state.edu/

Early Modern Japan: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Volume 8 number 1 will be published this spring and will include essays on early modern Japanese women s studies by Anne Walthall, an essay on the NHK dramatization of the 47 ronin, book reviews and more.

Subscription Information

For one volume (two issues), the rates are as follows:

Regular US$15
Student US$7.50 (enclose a copy of student ID)
Overseas US$18
Institutions US$20

Subscription checks should be made payable to The Association for Asian Studies. Send subscription checks to:

Azumi Ann Takata
Early Modern Japan Network
Center for Japanese Studies
University of Michigan
Suite 3603
1080 S. University
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1106 USA    

Early Modern Japan: An Interdisciplinary Journal publishes article manuscripts (scholarly essays, research notes, discussions of pedagogical issues, document translations, reports of general interest on professional issues and the like, especially those not well covered by other scholarly publications) and book reviews. If you have something in process, The editors welcome preliminary inquiries about manuscripts for publication in Early Modern Japan. Please send queries to

Philip Brown
Early Modern Japan
Department of History
Ohio State University
230 West 17th Avenue
Columbus, OH 43210
E-mail to brown....@....edu.

Books for review and inquiries regarding book reviews, please contact

Lawrence Marceau
Review Editor
Early Modern Japan
Foreign Languages & Literatures
Smith Hall 326
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716-2550.
E-mail: lmarc...@...l.edu.

Subscribers wishing to review books are encouraged to specify their interests.

Philip C. Brown
Manager, EMJNet
Department of History, Ohio State University
230 West 17th Ave., Columbus OH 43210 USA
1 614 292 0904 tel; 1 614 292 2282 fax



[The following thread is in the public archives]


http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~pmjs/archive/2000/kakekotoba.html



From: "Lewis Cook" <.......@...ldnet.att.net>
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 13:13:53 -0500
Subject: Extreme kakekotoba?

I've been perplexed for some time now by proposals for what strikes me as an extreme form or degree of kakekotoba in some commentaries on canonical texts, and hope that list members might have suggestions on how to help me overcome this perplexity.

The clearest example I can cite occurs in Komachi's poem "iro miete utsurou mono wa yo no naka no hito no kokoro no hana ni zo arikeru" (KKS No. 797).

[Japanese]

(Jane Hirshfield's appealing translation of this, in Ink Dark Moon, reads: "How invisibly / it changes color / in this world, /the flower / of the human heart.")

The interpretive crux of this poem, for several centuries, has been whether "mie-te" is to be taken as affirmative ("miete") or as negative ("miede").

Hirshfield's translation assumes it is to be read "miede," and this has been the predominant interpretation since c. the 12th cent., but there have always been dissenters who prefer "iro miete..." (On this latter reading, Hirshfield's translation would have to be amended to "How visibly / it changes color...") (A fair enough summary of the debate and its terms as things stood c. 1970 is available in Takeoka Masao's KKS Zenhyoushaku)

The complication, and cause of my perplexity, is that at least some exegetes have proposed that this "-te / -de" is a kakekotoba and that both the affirmative and negative readings are to be understood at once. (The most recent example, far as I'm aware, is Arai and Kojima, eds., Shin Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei Kokinshuu. 1989. In a footnote, they merely assert, without citing precedents or arguments, that this is a kakekotoba. At least one 14th c. KKS commentary makes this claim as well, however.)

This proposal is intriguing to me but also baffling. (It is not a fluke: there are other such instances --- one occurs in a comment by Kanera in Kachou Yosei on "Fujinouraba" in Genji, in which he claims that "aratamete / aratamede" is a kakekotoba.) Yet it seems to defy reason in a way that kakekotoba of the order of "matsu" as "pine" and "wait" do not. (Am I the only one troubled by this?)

Lewis Cook
Queens College, CUNY




From: "Robert E. Morrell" <.........@...sci.wustl.edu>
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 19:41:52 -0600, "PMJS" <......@...tbot.com>
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

To at least one literary archaeologist, the issue draws attention to the corrosive insistence on current Western Eurocentric analyses of Japanese (or any) non-European literature. . . Until we seriously try to come to terms with the philosophic bases for THEIR OWN literary practice, we are merely practicing intellectual colonialism.

A related issue. Current Western practice is against footnotes. Without footnotes, one can simply imply that one is not an academic pedant. Or, we can simply ignore the fact that such conventions as kakekotoba are much more prevalent in Japanese than they are in English, and then pretend that they really make no difference to the translation. I agree that, to me at least, many explanations/interpretations of ambiguous Japanese texts often seem forced. (Take, for example, the first three waka early on in the Taketori monogatari. The standard headnotes squeeze them dry. But is all this word-play REALLY intended? Who is to say?)

So what do we do in English? My own sense is that too little explication can often be more misleading than too much. But I also suppose that the issue will be debated for at least the next three centuries.

Bob

Robert Morrell
Prof. Emeritus, Japanese Literature & Buddhism
Washington University in St. Louis




From: rb...@...mes.cam.ac.uk (Richard Bowring)
Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2000 13:10:26 +0000
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

I don't think I am as worried as you are about this being called kakekotoba, which simply refers to one word being used in more than one sense. Visually this is indeed one word. The positive-negative switch is just as valid, although I suppose you could call it more 'radical'. To put it another way, what else would you call it in Japanese? The really interesting thing here is one of possible over-interpretation. The interpretive gap offered by the quite normal habit of omitting diacritics is surely omnipresent and it is left to the reader whether s/he wishes to be creative or not. But then I seem to remember somewhere in Brower and Miner that describes one occasion when judge X ridiculed judge Y for having made the 'stupid' mistake of having read 'tazu' instead of 'tatsu'. Had Y really made a mistake, or was he being creative? And was X just riding roughshod over him into order to show 'superior' knowledge? I'm afraid I suspect that the majority of these courtiers were probably a fairly literal and unimaginative lot.
R. Bowring




From: "Rein Raud" <.....n.r...@...l.ee>
Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2000 10:30:51 +0200
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

Why do we say that this instance (te ~de) of kakekotoba is extreme, whereas the standard "pine"/"wait" type is not? If any "logic" is valid in Komachi's world, it is certainly not Aristotelian, and there is no need to oppose affirmation/negation. For me, the particular charm of this poem by Komachi has always been in the fact that it posits two incompatible views of "the human heart" at once, and both are correct. And this precisely is the message of the poem. It is also corroborated by the double meaning of "iro" (colour/passion) and what "fade away" would mean in the context - it is one thing if the passion fades away, another if it applies to the whole heart-flower. As it is well known, the last two lines of Komachi's more chrestomatic KKS 113 do not even break into a single grammatical sentence, which also demonstrates that she is able to use the very fact that linguistic expressions has it limits in order to refer to the "extremeness" of the emotional reality beyond.

Rein Raud



From: "Paul S. Atkins" <.........@...tana.edu>
Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2000 11:31:30 -0700
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

Prof. Cook, thank you for raising this interesting problem.

I found a similar mention of the -te/-de ambiguity in Yamashita Michiyo's _Kokinshuu: koi no uta_ (Chikuma, 1987), but such a reading does not appear in the earlier Iwanami edition of the _Kokinshuu_, first published in 1958. One gets the feeling that this is an interpretation that has gained currency among Japanese scholars only in the last forty years or so, perhaps even in the last 15-20 years.

Using the Japanese Text Initiative's index, I was able to find a few instances of "miete" in the _Shin Kokinshuu_, but none seemed to carry the second meaning of -de. Kakekotoba are supposed to be established usages, so it's quite odd. Also if -te/-de were a kakekotoba, it would be somewhat unusual, because most kakekotoba involve two words of different grammatical classes. (e.g. matsu/pine is a noun, matsu/wait is a verb). But -te and -de are both particles appended to verbs.

Perhaps someone versed in historical linguistics could tell us if a distinction was made in speech in Heian Japanese between -te and -de. Would someone reading this poem out loud read it -te no matter what the interpretation was? Or would she read it as -de if that were her interpretation?

Let me go out on a limb and say that I don't think the two readings are
equally meaningful. If the poem is read,

iro miete utsurou mono wa yo no naka no hito no kokoro no hana ni zo arikeru

it means simply that something that shows its color (passion) and then
fades is the flower that is the human heart. That's not so interesting,
because ordinary flowers do the same thing.

If however, the poem is read,

iro miede utsurou mono wa yo no naka no hito no kokoro no hana ni zo arikeru

it means that what fades without a perceptive change in color is the flower that is the human heart. Now that's interesting. A man loses interest in her, but she hasn't the slightest clue from him. We may note the contrastive wa, which implies a comparison between the flower of the human heart and ordinary flowers.

I don't have access to the _KKS zen hyoushaku_, so this may be an old argument.

Paul Atkins

-------------------------------
Paul S. Atkins
Assistant Professor of Japanese

Department of Modern Languages & Literatures
Montana State University
Bozeman, MT 59717-2980

http://www.montana.edu/japan
http://www.montana.edu/wwwml/
http://www.homepage.montana.edu/~patkins/



[in answer to Robert Morrell]

From: "Lewis Cook" <.......@...ldnet.att.net>
Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2000 13:28:57 -0500
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

I'm not sure to what extent this message is intended as a reply to my query, but since you mention intentions as well as footnotes, let me add a footnote to my own query correcting one error of transmission and (I hope) clarifying some of my intentions.

The error: in my query as it came back to me from the list server there is a string of 11 or so question marks following my citation of the Komachi poem in romaji. In the message as input by me (under Win98-J), this string consisted of kanji and kana for the first half of Komachi's poem, which I meant to cite partly just because it can be done (in principle, anyway). Evidently, I chose the wrong one of several options for encoding when I sent the message.

I menton this only because I'm afraid that all those question marks may have given the impression that I find the whole of Komachi's poem very perplexing, which I do not. Otherwise, a little context to clarify what I was perplexed by:

My initial response to this poem was to accept the "negative"construal ("iro miede...") --- which as I noted has traditionally been the predominant reading --- on the grounds that the poem seems designed to focus on the irony of the fading of an invisible flower, etc. (The case for this reading is presented convincingly enough in Takeoka's review of the tradition of debate on "miete" vs. "miede.") In the early 1970's (roughly) there was a renewal of this debate among Heian lit. scholars, and it happened that the one participant in this debate who argued in favor of the affirmative reading ("miete") was the professor (Nomura Seiichi) who, a decade or so later, was directing my research in Japan. So I invested a certain amount of effort in trying to understand the terms of the debate, and came away convinced that the affirmative reading was indeed more persuasive because it entails the somewhat finer irony of the all too visible fading of what should be an invisible flower.

My surprise, and perplexity, was thus a response to the suggestion (which I first encountered in the SNKBT KKS, in 1989) that, in effect, this debate need never have taken place since the crux was not a crux but a kakekotoba.

As far as I am aware, none of the participants in recent (post-Muromachi, say) debates over this poem, indeed no commentator since c. the 14th century, has (until Arai & Kojima's edition) ever proposed the suggestion that this was a kakekotoba. Which compounds my surprise. (Arai has spent much of his career studying pre-Edo commentaries on KKS so I assume he encountered this suggestion himself in the 14th c. Reizei family commentary which seems to be the unique <.....recedent for this reading.)

I don't mean to back-pedal on this question, but perhaps it was a tactical error to mention evidence (e.g. from Kanera) that the supposition of a "te-/de" kakekotoba in Komachi's poem is not a fluke. (I know of only 2 or 3 other cases where similar claims for an affirmative / negative kakekotoba are made and all are much later.) Are there any other waka from the 9th c. or before for which it is arguable that this particular (or even an analogous) kakekotoba is to be accepted?

About intentions again, with certain specific kinds of exceptions (usually involving the editorial intentions of Tsurayuki et al. in arranging the poems in KKS as they did) medieval KKS commentators rarely if ever speculate on the putative intentions of authors of poems.

Re: "intellectual colonialism," I'm probably misunderstanding here but not sure I see the point. If you wish to use the word "colonize" in that sense, and with respect for its etymological co-origins with the word "culture," you could certainly argue that any effort to understand a culture other than "my own" (although I don't believe the notion of "my own" much less "our own" culture makes all that much sense, especially not as opposed to "their own") is a form of colonialism, and so much the worse for that word's force.

Don't mean to sound antagonistic, just hoping to provoke clarification.

Lewis Cook




From: "Noel Pinnington" <.......@...rizona.EDU>
Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2000 12:42:51 -0700
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

I am probably missing something. Surely a kakekotoba involves a sequential swivel; it ends one phrase (joshi) with one significance, and then kicks off another phrase within which it has a second meaning. No one is suggesting that there is a phrase ending: miete and then beginning: de utsurou... are they?
Noel Pinnington



From: Janine Beichman <.........@....vc-net.ne.jp>
Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2000 11:35:11 +0900
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

I too thought a kakekotoba involved a sequential swivel, to borrow Noel's pithy phrase. Could we take a few steps back and define a kakekotoba? Miete/miede seems close to an ordinary pun. But then perhaps the definition of a kakekotoba has itself undergone evolution? I wonder what the history of the term itself is. Perhaps the definition of kakekotoba has changed since Japanese critics became aware of its likenesses and differences to wordplay in Western languages, i.e. since the Meiji period, but especially since the post-war period...?



From: "Lewis Cook" <.......@...ldnet.att.net>
Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2000 23:49:31 -0500
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

[in answer to Noel Pinnington]

No, the suggestion is just that "miete" and "miede" are kakekotoba calling for two antithetical but simultaneous readings of the same grammatical phrase (no swivel). There is a concise and, I think, reliable entry ("Kakekotoba") in the Waka Daijiten (Meiji Shoin revised ed., 1986) which addresses this question, stating that the word "kakekotoba" has historically (meaning, here, not just post-Edo or post-Meiji) been used to refer both to cases of 'one word' (not the "same"word but two homophonous words or two strings of identical phonemes not counted, for etymological reasons or whatever, as the same lexeme, e.g. nagame as "endless rain" and nagame as "gaze") used at once -- within roughly the same grammatical construction, that is -- in two different senses (as in the Komachi poem KKS No. 113 referred to by Rein) -- puns, in short -- and also to cases of "pivot"words, as in SKKS No. 952 (izuku ni ka koyoi wa yado wo kari-goromo himo yuu-gure no mine no arashi ni) where "kari" and "yuu"are both puns and pivot words (syllepses or zeugmas), i.e. involve "sequential swivels"and not simply (non-sequential) superimpositions of disparate lexemes. I appreciate the temptation to assume that the latter cases might more properly be called kakekotoba but am not aware of any historical basis for such a distinction. (Medieval commentaries on waka and renga regularly use the word "kakekotoba" in both of these senses.)

Lewis Cook



From: Royall.Ty...@....edu.au (Royall Tyler)
Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2000 08:10:29 +1000
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

As far as I can see, the judgment that iro miete/de is a kakekotoba is irreducibly arbitrary. Since the writing system requires no distinction between the two, and since no canonical authority (I assume) recognizes the te/de ambiguity as a device for producing kakekotoba, the judgment that miete/det IS a kakekotoba can appeal only to authorial intention, which is unknowable, or to kokubungaku fashion, which is mutable.

Royall Tyler




From: "Robert E. Morrell" <.........@...sci.wustl.edu>
Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2000 16:00:38 -0600
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

Dear Professor Cook,

You wrote:

[section omitted]

About intentions again, with certain specific kinds of exceptions (usually involving the editorial intentions of Tsurayuki et al. in arranging the poems in KKS as they did) medieval KKS commentators rarely if ever speculate on the putative intentions of authors of poems.

Well, they may rarely overtly "if ever [have] speculate[d] on the putative intentions of authors of poems." But they must surely have covertly done so. When poets used such devices as honkadori, would they not necessarily have had to speculate on the intentions of the writer of the original phrase? And when, over time, a dramatic shift occurred in poetic goals and techniques -- say, from the KKS kokoro/kotoba balance (sama?) to the SKKS's kotoba sukunaki kokoro amashi -- could this have ever happened if the community of poets was not continually speculating on and judging the merits of earlier writing, and then looking for ways to infuse new life into old words? True, they rarely stated these judgments in any formal way, but they must have made them.

Re: "intellectual colonialism," I'm probably misunderstanding here but not sure I see the point. If you wish to use the word "colonize" in that sense, and with respect for its etymological co-origins with the word "culture," you could certainly argue that any effort to understand a culture other than "my own" (although I don't believe the notion of "my own" much less "our own" culture makes all that much sense, especially not as opposed to "their own") is a form of colonialism, and so much the worse for that word's force. Don't mean to sound antagonistic, just hoping to provoke clarification.

I really only had a couple of simple observations to make, and I made them rather clumsily. The first is that since most of us are not Heian Japanese, one of the best places to look for clues might be in their underlying philosophies rather than in methods of analysis derived from Western literature and its underlying presuppositions ("intellectual colonialism"). . . My second point was just that since there will always be differences of interpretation, we will always need footnotes -- however they may be disfavor these days, especially among poets.

Sorry for the confusion.

Bob




From: "Lewis Cook" <.......@...ldnet.att.net>
Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2000 22:45:42 -0500
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

Rein Raud writes:

Why do we say that this instance (te ~de) of kakekotoba is extreme, whereas the standard "pine"/"wait" type is not? If any "logic" is valid in Komachi's world, it is certainly not Aristotelian, and there is no need to oppose affirmation/negation. For me, the particular charm of this poem by Komachi has always been in the fact that it posits two incompatible views of "the human heart" at once, and both are correct. Ant this precisely is the message of the poem. It is also corroborated by the double meaning of "iro" (colour/passion) and what "fade away" would mean in the context - it is one thing if the passion fades away, another if it applies to the whole heart-flower. As it is well known, the last two lines of Komachi's more chrestomatic KKS 113 do not even break into a single grammatical sentence, which also demonstrates that she is able to use the very fact that linguistic expressions has it limits in order to refer to the "extremeness" of the emotional reality beyond.

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to reply to this (and to several replies from other list members, for which I am grateful --- I will try to get to these soon).

I don't have any very good answers to your question -- why this particular kakekotoba seems 'extreme' (maybe not the best choice of word) and perhaps, as Richard Bowring suggests, I am worrying it needlessly.

My rough sense of what gives a kakekotoba (or a pun) its peculiar force is that two words (matsu as "wait" and as "pine" say) which we know perfectly well are related only by coincidence (a meaningless accident of homophony) are joined in a relation that catches us by surprise, creates meaning where there was none, is somehow both more and less 'natural' than what our common sense of language leads us to expect. (Not a very elegant statement but will have to do for now.)

One reason I suppose this effect to be more intense in the pair "-te / -de" is that (unlike matsu as 'pine" and as "wait,") the superimposed words are not just different (semantically unrelated) lexemes but are logically antithetical. I don't mean to quibble, since I am very much in agreement with your account of the charm of Komachi's poem, but I don't think one has to be an Aristotelian to oppose affirmation to negation, and you seem to agree in accepting that this kakekotoba posits mutually "incompatible views." Much of Komachi's poetry builds on ironic mediations of oppositional terms, and of course on elaborate kakekotoba, and I did not mean to suggest that I am skeptical of the punning interpretation of the 'iro miete' poem, only surprised, and perplexed partly because I know of no precedent for making of this "-te/-de" pair a kakekotoba and only a handful of later occurrences. (There is a similar crux for "omohoete/-de" in KKS 351. As far as I know no one has ever proposed resolving this into a kakekotoba, though the context is somewhat less hospitable to such a reading than in the case of Komachi's poem.) But I wonder how many of Komachi's kakekotoba have well-attested precedents?

Lewis Cook





From: "Rein Raud" <.....n.r...@...l.ee>
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 15:21:42 +0200
Subject: EAJS

Since online registration to the EAJS Lahti conference is now possible, I am once more forwarding the conference announcement. I do not subscribe to any other Japanese Studies lists, so perhaps those of you who do could help me to distribute this information.

The 9th International Conference of EAJS
in Lahti, Finland, August 23-26, 2000

The ninth international conference of the European Association for Japanese Studies will be held in Lahti Finland, August 23-26, 2000, in cooperation with the University of Helsinki, its Lahti Research and Training Centre and Department of Asian and African Studies.

The conference will be divided into the following eight sections:

Section 1. Urban and Environmental Studies
Section 2. Linguistics and Language Teaching
Section 3. Literature
Section 4. Visual and Performing Arts
Section 5. Anthropology and Sociology (JAWS Section)
Section 6. Economics, Economic and Social History
Section 7. History, Politics and International Relations
Section 8. Religion and History of Ideas

For further details concerning the names and addresses of the section
convenors to whom papers should be sent and information on the themes
proposed within the sections, please see the EAJS website
http://www.eajs.org

[registration details omitted]

All of you who are interested in Japan and Japanese Studies DO COME to Lahti to make a most rewarding and interesting conference and to learn what European colleagues are doing. Lahti extends a hearty welcome to all conference participants and guests.


From: Michael Watson <........@...eijigakuin.ac.jp>

Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 18:08:15 +0900

Subject: AAS (March 9-12, 2000)


More conference news. Like many of you, I will be going to San Diego for the March 9-12 Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies. AAS members will already have seen the titles of panels in the Winter Issue "Asian Studies Newsletters."

Looking through the online list of panels
http://www.aasianst.org/panels00.htm
I have listed below those which would seem to touch most closely on pmjs interests. I for one would be interesting in hearing of other panels or papers of interest. It is good to see that so many pmjs members (**) are involved as organizers. More information about papers, presenters and discussants would be most welcome.

THURSDAY [March 9 ] 7:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m.

19. The Informing Image: "Illustration" in Early- Modern Chinese and Japanese Printed Editions of Narrative, Dramatic, & Poetic Texts (Joshua Mostow, University of British Columbia)**

FRIDAY 8:30 a.m.-10:30 a.m.

28. Intersections of Japanese Lyric Poetry and the Noh Drama (Paul S. Atkins, Montana State University, Bozeman)**

31. Disease and Famine in Premodern Japan (Carol Richmond Tsang, University of Illinois, Chicago)**

39. Varieties of Pure Land Practice in China and Japan (Richard M. Jaffe, North Carolina State University, Raleigh)

FRIDAY 10:45 a.m.-12:45 p.m.

59. Three Epics: The Tale of the Heike (Japan), Three Kingdoms, and The Water Margin (China) (Moss Roberts, New York University)

FRIDAY 1:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m.

69. At the Edge of the Stage: Marginality in Japanese Theater (Eric Rath, University of Kansas)**

72. Women and Text in Late Tokugawa Japan: Questioning Disciplinary Boundaries (Noell Howell Wilson, Harvard University)

80. "True Scenery" in China, Korea and Japan: Realism in East Asian Landscape Painting? (Burglind Jungmann, University of Califormia, Los Angeles)

FRIDAY 3:15 p.m.-5:15 p.m.

91. Defining Refinement: The Aesthitic of Furyu in Japanese Intellectural and Popular Culture (Sponsored by Sino-Japanese Studies and Early Modern Japanese Studies) (Patricia J. Graham, University of Kansas)

92. How Can You Tell the Past from the Future?: Historical Fiction in Postwar Japan (J. Martin Holman, Berea College)

95. The Arts of the Book in Asia: Traditions and Transformations (Nancy Norton Tomasko, Independent Scholar)

SATURDAY 8:30 a.m.-10:30 a.m.

109. The Discourse of Exile in Heian and Kamakura Japan (Richard H. Okada, Princeton University)

SATURDAY 10:45 a.m.-12:45 p.m.

130. Entertaining Passions: Amusement and Obsession in Japanese Popular Culture (Stephen B. Snyder, University of Colorado, Boulder)

SATURDAY 2:45 p.m.-4:45 p.m.

148. Interiority and Exteriority in Japanese Landscape Painting (Sponsored by Japan Art History Forum) (Matthew P. McKelway, New York University)

SATURDAY 5:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m.

168. Liminal Gender in Japanese Culture - Heian and Heisei (Robert Omar Khan, University of Texas, Austin)**

SUNDAY 8:30 a.m.-10:30 a.m.

185. Japanese Ethnolinguistic Origins: A Reappraisal (Christopher I. Beckwith, Indiana University)

188. Individual Papers: Demons, Cyborgs, and Absent Fathers: Shifting Identities in Japanese Literature Past and Present (Rebecca Copeland, Washington University, St. Louis)

SUNDAY 10:45 a.m.-12:45 p.m.

206. Text, Image and the Materiality of Production in Modern Japan (Claire Cuccio, Stanford University)**

208. The Culture of Travel in Pre-Modern Japan (Laura Nenz-Detto-Nenzi, University of California, Santa Barbara)

Michael Watson




From: "Paul S. Atkins" <.........@...tana.edu>
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 16:43:44 -0700
Subject: Re: AAS (March 9-12, 2000)

Since Michael asked, here are the details for the panel I've organized for AAS 2000. I hope others will post their information, too.

Panel title: Intersections of Japanese Lyric Poetry and the Noh Drama

Papers (in order of presentation):

"The Demon-quelling Style in Japanese Poetic and Dramatic Theory." Paul Atkins, Montana State University, Bozeman.

"Resuscitating Metaphor: Zeami and Renga." Akiko Takeuchi, University of Tokyo.

"Down the Primrose Path: Narihira as Love God in Medieval Poetic Commentaries and the Noh."
Susan Blakeley Klein, University of California, Irvine.

"Poetry in the Noh and the 'Broken' Aesthetics of the Early Modern State." Tom Looser, McGill University.

Our discussant will be Karen Brazell.

I'm looking forward to meeting those of you who will be attending the conference. Michael, are there any plans for a PMJS get-together?

Paul Atkins



From: "Lewis Cook" <.......@...ldnet.att.net>
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 01:14:01 -0500
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

Royall Tyler writes:

As far as I can see, the judgment that iro miete/de is a kakekotoba is irreducibly arbitrary. Since the writing system requires no distinction between the two, and since no canonical authority (I assume) recognizes the te/de ambiguity as a device for producing kakekotoba, the judgment that miete/det IS a kakekotoba can appeal only to authorial intention, which is unknowable, or to kokubungaku fashion, which is mutable.

Thanks very much for this response, Royall. (Again I apologize for belated replies to this and other comments.)

You are quite right to suggest that judgements about kakekotoba are arbitrary; we seem bound either to appeal to canonical authorities, if these exist, or fall prey to the whims of fashion (presiding interpretive communities, etc.) But canonical authorities are only immutable while they last ('fashion' in very slow motion?); the foundations of their authority is ultimately no less arbitrary, after all.

(One laborious aside, pertinent here because it involves a similarly "antithetical" reading of the 'same' word, this one thoroughly canonical in its time: throughout the medieval era, Nijo Family / School commentators on KKS maintained that the phrase in the Kana Preface "ima wa, fujinoyama mo keburi tatazu nari" was to be read "even now, the smoke of Mt. Fuji has not ceased [rising].' They accomplished this feat by taking the word or string of phonemes "tatazu" to represent the negative form of the verb "tatsu" meaning to "cut off." This doesn't work too smoothly from a grammatical point of view, but it had the virtue of establishing a clear differendum vis a vis the Reizei Family reading, i.e. that "tatazu" means "no longer rises." I doubt if anyone since the 19th century has accepted the Nijo School's gloss on this, but it is noteworthy that according to To no Tsuneyori this "tatazu" was taken to be an 'antithetical' kakekotoba, to be understood both as "no longer rises" and as "has not ceased [to rise]" by cognoscenti of Tameie's generation, before the schism between the Nijo and Reizei families, that is.)

Isn't the point though just that questions about whether a certain word in a given poem or text "is" a kakekotoba are not questions about matters of fact (nor certainly about such inscrutables as authorial intentions) but about more or less persuasive or acceptable interpretations? When we claim to 'see' a pun on matsu as "pine" and "wait" in any number of passages in, say, Matsukaze, we are appealing to (pretty overwhelming) evidence from context and from precedent and convention, but not to anything quite like a grammatical rule, and not necessarily to an explicit canonical ruling. The problem with Komachi's "iro miete/de" poem is that there is a shortage of context and a seeming absence of precedent, and the usual suspects (Teika, Kensho, and heirs) were (for the most part) silent on this crux. I don't think this means we need to give up in despair, though.

There are a number of other poems in KKS which include words which may or may not be (taken as) kakekotoba, for which there are apparently no precedents, and which have thus provoked not futile but I think fruitful debate. E.g., "munashiki kara no" in No. 571 --- where kara seems to demand to be read as "corpse" as well as "because." Or gani in 349, presumably a devious pun on the archaic suffix gani /gane expressing a wish, and on the name of the genre the poem was required by decorum to fit. Or the se ni in 990 (which virtually every medieval, Edo and modern commentary, with 2 or 3 exceptions, accepts as a pun on zeni [money], despite the complete lack of precedent and its manifest indecorousness). Or --- a good example of canonical authorities in disagreement --- the ushi in Sosei's KKS 803 ("aki no ta no ine chou koto mo kakenaku ni nani wo ushi to ka hito no karuramu"), which Kensho of the Rokujo Family wants to read not only as "displeasing" but as "ox," to which Teika objects "amari ni ya?" (in Kenchu Mikkan). Almost every other substantive in this poem (KKS 803) is a kakekotoba, if you want to see it as such; Sosei even works in a reflexive pun on the word kake-koto[ba]. Who is to say, or rather how are we to decide, whether this ushi is not also an ox?

I don't think (to repeat) the fact that we cannot say with certainty makes this question any less worth pursuing. Most of what we do by way of reading & writing is perforce interpretation rather than asseveration, no?

(Forgive me for going on and on. I admit I find these problems irresistible.)

Lewis Cook



From: Michael Watson <........@...eijigakuin.ac.jp>
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 17:37:49 +0900
Subject: kakekotoba discussion archived

[url given have been changed to present locations as of 27 Jan. 2001]

A few list announcements.

PMJS subscribers now number 150 as we are joined by Professor Wayne Farris.
I have added recent self-introductions at
http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~pmjs/pmjs-db.html
(Links to the entries of recently joined members are at the top.)

For the benefit of a certain Colorado poetry class and any other interested
parties, I have collected the messages so far on the subject of kakekotoba
and placed them into the following online archive:
http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~pmjs/arch/arch07.html

It is a pleasure to edit a lively discussion like this. I would do this more
often only it is fiddly business tidying up carriage returns and converting
_italics_ to real italics. Or perhaps rough and ready pages would suffice?

At present the complete archives -- http://pmjs.listbot.com/ -- can be
viewed by members only. It would be a simple matter for me to make these
public. In this case you would be able to point your students to the listbot
archive to read a recent discussion. The main drawback to this is that
e-mail addresses and other information contained in signatures would be more
public. (When compiling pmjs archives, I edit out this kind of personal
information.) Opinions please, onlist or off (wat...@...eijigakuin.ac.jp).

(If and when the archive goes public, it will be possible to "hide" any
chosen message, such as messages sent in error [!], or the complete lists of
current members that were sent out in the early days of this list.)

Finally, if your eyes have not glazed over completely, I am both pleased at
the growing size of the page of translations (okagesama de) and worried
about how much time it must take to appear on your distant screens.

http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~watson/pmjs/trans01.html
[now in frame format: http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~pmjs/trans/trans.html]

has now topped 110 kb. The page lists translations in alphabetical order by
title and it could of course be divided, but another solution is to set up
mirror sites on servers closer to pmjs members in Europe and North America.

Lewis Cook in New York tells me that the page takes 12 seconds to open,
whereas an experimental "mirror" of the page stored on an American server
took just 2 seconds. Those of you living in North America and perhaps Europe
too many find this page faster to open:

http://homepage.mac.com/mgwatson/pmjs/trans01.html

[still there, but not updated]

This site is not ideal for this purpose, for reasons I won't bore you with,
but will do for now until some kind soul can offer me a better home on their
university server (hint hint).

Comments as to format and content very welcome, as always.

Michael Watson <........@...eijigakuin.ac.jp>

editor, pmjs mailing list



[some messages sent in error were omitted above]



From: Laurel Rasplica Rodd <......@...t.Colorado.EDU>
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 10:13:24 -0700 (MST)
To: Premodern Japanese Studies <......@...tbot.com>
Subject: Introduction

Having made the recent gaffe of broadcasting an email to my students, I'm feeling guilty about never having gotten to doing my self-introduction.

I have worked on both Buddhist literature and waka, have published a translation of Kokinshu, am nearly done with a first draft of Shinkokinshu, and am working when I can find time on Yosano Akiko as well. I've been too busy chairing our department at Colorado and serving
as President of ATJ for the past few years to make much progress on my writing, but I am pleased to be working with graduate students in our new MA program now. Classes with them are a lot more fun than meetings!

Apologies again for my earlier mis-posting. I'll try to keep my fingers under control.

Laurel Rasplica Rodd
East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Campus Box 279
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0279



From: Royall.Ty...@....edu.au (Royall Tyler)
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 18:23:21 +1000
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

A wonderful reply, Lewis, from a true scholar. As for me, I didn't mean that the te/de question is uninteresting. I only meant that it is ultimately undecidable according to any principle outside one's own judgment. Is that not so? To read miete and miede simultaneously certainly gives the poem a new zing. Presumably anyone for the last thousand years has been free to do that privately. However, people want rules (as you said, most Genji readers want answers, not questions), and so there's a lot to be said for AUTHORIZING them to do it, ex cathedra SNKBT; except that some may then be disappointed because they really did prefer miede alone, and now they have to take both coz SNKBT said so.

It remains true, anyway, that double meanings will inevitably crop up from time to time (in any language, but certainly in J) as an effect of chance. The poet might even edit out such a chance double meaning if s/he noticed it. Sometimes it may be so unlikely that no one could take it seriously, but as the gap between far-out accident and obvious intention narrows, more and more people will start making the connection, more or less outrageously. It's a question of interpretation, it is indeed; and I suppose of measuring the degree of improbability.

Royall Tyler



From: David Lurie <.........@...oo.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 00:38:52 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: AAS (March 9-12, 2000)

The following panel may also be of interest to PMJS
members.

THURSDAY [March 9 ] 7:00 p.m.?9:00 p.m.

14) Some of Japans' Chinas: Text, Image, and Voice from the 7th to the 18th Centuries

David Lurie (Columbia University)
Writing and Reading Intertwined: From Chinese to Japanese Inscription

Yukio Lippit (Princeton University)
>From Catalogue to Image: The Kundaikan Sochoki and the Reception of Chinese Painting in Japan from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries

Emanuel Pastreich (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
The Visible Vernacular: Sawada Issai and the Status of Vernacular Chinese in Tokugawa Japan

Chair: Haruo Shirane (Columbia University)
Discussant: Ivo Smits (Leiden University)



From: Tom Conlan <.........@...doin.edu>
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 10:52:32 -0400
Subject: Re: AAS (March 9-12, 2000)

 

The following panel about the thirteenth-century Mongol Invasions of
Japan may also be of interest to PMJS members

Saturday March 11, 5-7 p.m.

167. For Whom the "Divine Winds" Blew: Myths of the Mongol Invasions of Japan (Thomas Conlan, Bowdoin College)

Chair Paul Varley
Discussant Takahashi Kimiaki
Presentations by Tom Conlan, Haruko Wakabayashi and Fabio Rambelli



From: "Lewis Cook" <.......@...ldnet.att.net>
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 18:29:22 -0500
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

I hope I'm not violating netiquette by persisting with this thread, but I'd like to reply to some outstanding messages (and then would be happy to pursue the details off-list with anyone interested).

Paul Atkins writes:

I found a similar mention of the -te/-de ambiguity in Yamashita Michiyo's _Kokinshuu: koi no uta_ (Chikuma, 1987), but such a reading does not appear in the earlier Iwanami edition of the _Kokinshuu_, first published in 1958. One gets the feeling that this is an interpretation that has gained currency among Japanese scholars only in the last forty years or so, perhaps even in the last 15-20 years. 

I haven't seen the book by Yamashita but from your account I'll assume you mean that Yamashita notes the ambiguity --- the possibility of two alternative readings --- but does not specifically propose the _kakekotoba_ interpretation here. Right? And I'll also assume that the recently current interpretation you refer to is just that there is an ambiguity re: te / de in KKS 797.

One very relevant point which both Richard Bowring and Royall Tyler remarked in passing --- the ambiguity itself is not new. The earliest extant manuscripts of KKS (as of most everything else in 'kanabun') do not contain diacritical marks (seiten); if they do these are usually later additions. The ambiguity is there from the start, as an effect of the writing system. (I'd imagine there were oral traditions of recitation of this poem which would have had to resolve the ambiguity, but we don't have any evidence for these of course.)

There is a good historical explanation for the renewal of attention to this ambiguity between, say, 1958, date of Saeki's NKBT KKS, and 1989, when Arai & Kojima's SNKBT KKS was published. The intervening decades saw an abrupt revival of interest in "medieval learning," including pre-Kokugaku commentary traditions on the canon. (One striking example: all the 'discoveries,' during those decades, of allusions in noh plays by Zeami et al. to 13th and 14th c. esoteric commentaries on KKS and IseMg, facilitated by the publication of the first typographic editions of some of these commentaries, which had been almost completely ignored for the preceding 2 centuries, by Katagiri Yoichi and others in the 1970's.) This revival was in part, I think, a by-product of the post-war critique of Kokugaku ideology, but the effects hadn't really set in by 1958; at that time, very few KKS scholars paid much attention to pre-Kokugaku or pre-Keichu~ scholarship on KKS.

So it's not all that surprising that Saeki (who in any case was a grammarian) didn't bother to mention that certain medievals had been troubled by the "te / de" ambiguity in Komachi's poem.

That said, most of the medieval exegetes who comment on Komachi's "iro miete" poem do prefer the "-de" reading, though many of them note the alternative "-te" reading, attributing it to "other schools." (One of those 'others' appears to have been the Asukai Family: Masachika's Kokin Eigasho~ [1496] comes out in favor of the "-te" reading.) And I have to confess, now, that the 14th c. Reizei Family commentary (the Tamesuke KKSChu~) I've referred to more than once I think as the earliest source of the kakekotoba reading actually dates from the last decade of the 13th c. and unambiguously prefers the "-de" reading. (So much for working from memory.)

Kanera's KKS Do~myo~sho~ (1476) seems to endorse the kakekotoba reading, but the locus classicus is apparently the To~ Family transmission, which (reportedly) asserts that "both readings are to be accepted at once." (Earliest written evidence for this from c. 1470?)

My point is just that this ambiguity is not news, and that I take a certain assurance from the evidence that the difficulties I experience in deciding what a poem such as Komachi's may have meant are least one thing I have in common with ancient adepts who knew a lot more about this business than I do.

[Paul Atkins:] Also if -te/-de were a kakekotoba, it would be somewhat unusual, because most kakekotoba involve two words of different grammatical classes. (e.g. matsu/pine is a noun, matsu/wait is a verb). But -te and -de are both particles appended to verbs. 

This has been my impression as well, but it doesn't seem to stand up to scrutiny. There is a brief (very incomplete) table of 'standard' kakekotoba in the appendices to the _Fukutake Kogo Jiten_. Roughly half do belong to different grammatical classes, but I don't think this is enough to make this count as a rule. (Didn't someone, a Swedish scholar, write a dissertation in English a decade or two ago on kakekotoba in KKS?)

Let me go out on a limb and say that I don't think the two readings are equally meaningful. If the poem is read, iro miete utsurou mono wa yo no naka no hito no kokoro no hana ni zo arikeru it means simply that something that shows its color (passion) and then fades is the flower that is the human heart. That's not so interesting, because ordinary flowers do the same thing. If however, the poem is read, iro miede utsurou mono wa yo no naka no hito no kokoro no hana ni zo arikeru it means that what fades without a perceptive change in color is the flower that is the human heart. Now that's interesting. A man loses interest in her, but she hasn't the slightest clue from him. We may note the contrastive wa, which implies a comparison between the flower of the human heart and ordinary flowers. 

The contrastive "wa" is indeed the nexus on which Takeoka hangs his grammatical argument in favor of the "miede" reading. (Let me reply off-list and try to argue in favor of the "miete" reading. Which I think is a prerequisite to entertaining the kakekotoba reading. More "zing," as Royall says. Isn't zing at least part of what we are after?)

Lewis Cook



From: "Stephen D. Miller" <.........@...t.colorado.edu>
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 18:12:56 -0700
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

Lewis,
Which kogo jiten is the "Fukutake Kogo Jiten?" Who is the publisher? I have six kogo jiten in front of me and none of them is edited or compiled by anyone named Fukutake.... Just wondering. I'd like to look at the list of kakekotoba.

This discussion has been fascinating. I can only hope it continues for some time. Thanks for initiating it, Lewis.

Stephen



From: Janine Beichman <.........@....vc-net.ne.jp>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 11:06:58 +0900
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

As far as I am concerned you are certainly not violating netiquette by persisting with this thread. In fact it is getting more and more interesting. Just a plea that, just when it has gotten so interesting, that it not suddenly go underground/off-line. I look forward to further arguments for 'miete' as opposed to 'miede'. And to have some idea why medieval commentaries on Ise and KKS were ignored for so long was a gem....Please continue!



From: Sonja Arntzen <.........@....srv.ualberta.ca>
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 19:51:26 -0700 (MST)
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

I would like to echo Janine's comment. Even though I have not
participated directly in the discussion, I have enjoyed following it
very much.

Like Laurel Rodd, I have procrastinated about making a self-introduction
and will remedy that now. I have two main areas of research. The first
one occupied the first twenty years of my career. It was the kanshi
poetry of Ikkyu Sojun which culminated in "Ikkyu and the Crazy Cloud
Anthology" Tokyu U. Press, 1986. Then, I turned to Heian Women's
literature, specifically producing a new translation of the Kagero Diary,
U. of Michigan Press, 1997. I am currently putting a tentative toe in
Genji studies by trying an experimental translation of the wakamurasaki
chapter and preparing a conference paper on how the Kiritsubo chapter
transforms Po Chu-i's Chang hen ge.

By the way, whatever happened to the "Stumbling Moon" linked verse
sequence? Did it go off-line or did I kill somehow because it seems as
though my contribution of the eighth link some time ago was the last link.

Sonja Arntzen 



From: .....@...mes.cam.ac.uk (Richard Bowring)
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 09:18:36 +0000
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

A few short comments here.

[Lewis Cook writes:] One very relevant point which both Richard Bowring and Royall Tyler remarked in passing --- the ambiguity itself is not new. Theearliest extant manuscripts of KKS (as of most everything else in 'kanabun') do not contain diacritical marks (seiten); if they do these are usually later additions. The ambiguity is there from the start, a san effect of the writing system. (I'd imagine there were oraltraditions of recitation of this poem which would have had to resolvethe ambiguity, but we don't have any evidence for these of course.) 

Certainly we do not know much about oral recitation but we do know that it was taken extremely seriously. Murasaki herself comments in the nikki that you had to 'watch out' when reciting in front of a master like Kinto: Shijou no Dainagon ni sashiidemu hodo, uta oba sarumono nite, kowazukai youi arubeshi. I had assumed this was a matter of intonation and pattern but perhaps in extreme cases 'misreading' diacritics was another hazard for the unwary. The ambiguities we are talking of here were surely treasured, since they actually fuelled the proliferation of secret traditions and special readings: grist for the mills of medieval commentary.

(Didn't someone, a Swedish scholar, write a dissertation in English a decade or two ago on kakekotoba in KKS?) 

Not quite right. I assume you are referring to Lindberg-Wada 1983, but this was on the use of KKS as a source of allusion in GM and dealt with hikiuta etc.

Richard Bowring



From: "Rein Raud" <.....n.r...@...l.ee>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 11:46:33 +0200
Subject: IshimotaRe: AAS (March 9-12, 2000)

Could anybody tell me how to read the first name of the historian Ishimota, who has compiled the kaisetsu to Goseibai shikimoku in Nihon shisou taikei 21, pp.565ff. Tadashi? Masashi? Or Sei, perhaps?

Grateful in advance,

Rein Raud




From: "Sato/Wakabayashi" <.......@...iij4u.or.jp>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 18:44:34 +0900
Subject: Re: IshimotaRe: AAS (March 9-12, 2000)

Should be Ishimoda Shoo.

Haruko Wakabayashi




From: Michael Watson <........@...eijigakuin.ac.jp>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 19:14:57 +0900
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba? (+Gate of Hell)

Listening fascinated on the sidelines, I can guess the answer to Stephen
Miller's query:

Which kogo jiten is the "Fukutake Kogo Jiten?" Who is the publisher? I have six kogo jiten in front of me and none of them is edited or compiled by anyone named Fukutake.... 

Fukutake is the publisher, and the title is also part of the title. The
authors are Inoue Muneo and Nakamura Yukihiro. [Japanese]

I see that Richard Bowring has already replied to the point

(Didn't someone, a Swedish scholar, write a dissertation in English a decade or two ago on kakekotoba in KKS?) 

I'll give the biblio. anyway --from the biblio. of RB's CUP book on Genji:

G. Lindberg-Wada, Poetic Allusion: Some Aspects of the Role of Kokin Wakashu as a Source of Poetic Allusion in Genji Monogatari, Japanological Studies 4, Stockholm: Univ. of Stockholm.

And (offending against netiquette myself by changing the subject), while looking through materials to add to the translation webpage I came up with another retelling of the Morito/Mongaku story we were discussing in the "Gate of Hell" thread. The main character in the Muromachi tale "Saru Genji zoshi" gives a detailed account of the Morito story. The otogizoshi has been translated by Edward Putzar as "The Tale of Monkey Genji (Monumenta
Nipponica 18 [1963]: 286-312). There is also a German translation ("Das Buchlein vom Possenreisser-Genji" tr. by Nelly & Wolfram Naumann, Die Zauberschale..., 1973, 303-316.)

Michael Watson



From: "Lewis Cook" <.......@...ldnet.att.net>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 09:59:47 -0500
Subject: kogojiten (was 'kakekotoba')

Which kogo jiten is the "Fukutake Kogo Jiten?" Who is the publisher? I have six kogo jiten in front of me and none of them is edited or compiled by anyone named Fukutake.... Just wondering. I'd like to look at the list of kakekotoba. 

I was looking forward to replying to a question I can answer with some confidence, for once, and see that our webmaster has gotten there first. ;-} I would like to hear which of your half dozen kogojiten you've found most useful. To Michael's bibliographical data, let me add that the Fukutake Kogojiten is, in my experience, the most informative of the many short kogojiten on the market, for medieval (post-Heian, pre-Edo) Japanese. I'm told that Inoue Muneo (titular editor for pre-Edo entries) actually had a hand in the editng. The appendices are invaluable.

This discussion has been fascinating. I can only hope it continues for some time. Thanks for initiating it, Lewis. Stephen 

Thanks very much, Stephen. I've learned much from the many generous and learned responses (some off-list) received, and hope there will be more, perhaps on related topics.

Lewis Cook



From: Lawrence Marceau <.........@...l.Edu>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 10:04:54 -0500
Subject: Fukutake Shoten + kakekotoba

Fukutake Shoten changed their name a couple of years ago to "Benesse
Kooporeeshon" ("benesse" means "prosperity, I believe). They have
reissued Inoue's and Nakamura's kogo jiten under a new name, Benesse
kogo jiten as well. TRC's database provides the following information
(apologies to those who lack Japanese encoding for their e-mail):

[Japanese]

With regard to the "te/de" interpretation possibilities, it is certainly intriguing to consider affirmation and negation as two alternative readings to the Komachi (and other) poems. I don't believe that we are displaying a system of logic alien to Heian court sensibilities, though, when our temptation is to exclude opposites as equally acceptable alternatives.

I have in mind one example of an instance in which it seems that the "unacceptable" alternative is now the "standard", while the "correct" (in my opinion, at least) interpretation seems to be secondary. This is in the famous Iroha poem/song. The last part goes as follows:

Asaki yume miji / Wei mo sezu

Shallow dreams unseen / Nor does intoxication occur

In the reading made popular by the manga series (and now feature film), the first line is read as "Asaki yume mishi" with a possible English equivalent of "Having seen a shallow dream". As far as I know, this reading does not fit with the last line, which includes the particle "mo" ("also"), and is also unambiguously in the negative. If the poet has "crossed the deep mountains of existence and non-existence" it does not seem likely that s/he would still be dreaming, especially if no longer in a deluded state.

One last point -- it does not seem that the te/de dichotomy fits the sense of "kakekotoba" as I am aware of it. The closest example I can find of a verb ending or particle serving in a kakekotoba function would seem to be in an example such as "omo-hi" ("thinking of") or "ko-hi" ("longing for") being alluded to with the noun "hi" ("fire"). Metaphor here is the key, I think. If the "mie-te/de" were somehow linked to "te" ("hand(s)") or "de" ("?"), then this would fall within the standard (generally agreed upon) realm of kakekotoba usage. If you have the Shin Meikai kogo jiten (Kindaichi Haruhiko ed., Sanseido), there is a handy list of kakekotoba on page 1230. Te/de are not listed.

Lawrence Marceau



From: William Bodiford <.........@...a.edu>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 09:35:56 -0800
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

Dear Lewis Cook:

Thank you for your "laborious aside." My seminar was just discussing how Japanese Buddhists during the medieval period taught rather forced interpretations of Chinese texts. It is extremely relevant to know that other Japanese forced interpretations on Japanese texts as well.

William Bodiford 



From: "Rein Raud" <.....n.r...@...l.ee>
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 10:40:10 +0200
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

In his first comment, Richard Bowring raised a very important point also echoed by Royall Tyler: overinterpretation and authorial intent. I guess in our age we are not supposed to appeal to auhtorial intent any longer, i.e. the kokoro of a waka is, for our purposes, only the uta no kokoro. But can we speak about over-interpretation when this was the norm in the Confucian treatment of Shijing on the continent, and, we have to suppose, in the circles of Heian Confucian scholars as well? Especially during Saga's times? Perhaps the linguistic awareness characteristic of Heian waka is a result of the combination of this attitude and the semi-playful deconstruction of each others' poems in poetic exchanges. On the other hand, Richard's example shows that "overinterpretation" could be used as a critical argument in poetic debates - thus, probably, in our current debates on waka as well. If we then let the allowed limits of interpretation to be fixed by tradition, won't we then give up our inalienable rights as readers? I have to say I have always liked interesting readings (old and new) that are backed by textual material only, and not the commentary tradition - but it is certainly true that in this way it is always tempting to "over-interpret". It even seems that at the time of the practice itself the allowed limits of interpretation were much broader than in later times, and therefore closer to the criteria of our age than f.e.x the Edo period.

Rein Raud



From: "Lewis Cook" <.......@...ldnet.att.net>
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 16:24:02 -0500
Subject: Re: Extreme kakekotoba?

Richard Bowring writes: 

A few short comments here.

One very relevant point which both Richard Bowring and Royall Tyler remarked in passing --- the ambiguity itself is not new. The earliest extant manuscripts of KKS (as of most everything else in 'kanabun') do not contain diacritical marks (seiten); if they do these are usually later additions. The ambiguity is there from the start, as an effect of the writing system. (I'd imagine there were oral traditions of recitation of this poem which would have had to resolve the ambiguity, but we don't have any evidence for these of course.) 

Certainly we do not know much about oral recitation but we do know that it was taken extremely seriously. Murasaki herself comments in the nikki that you had to 'watch out' when reciting in front of a master like Kinto: Shijou no Dainagon ni sashiidemu hodo, uta oba sarumono nite, kowazukai youi arubeshi. I had assumed this was a matter of intonation and pattern but perhaps in extreme cases 'misreading' diacritics was another hazard for the unwary. The ambiguities we are talking of here were surely treasured, since they actually fuelled the proliferation of secret traditions and special readings: grist for the mills of medieval commentary. 

Thanks very much for these (and previous) comments. Intonation as well as possible ambiguities were certainly issues also on formal occasions, utaawase and kakai (for which protocols for reading aloud are taken up in some detail in Fukurozoushi. The utaawase you referred to previously (discussed in Brower & Miner, pp. 249 ff) is interesting because it involved a misreading of near homophones (tazu and tatsu) where, evidently, no kakekotoba was intended. For anyone really curious, there is a wealth of information on diacritical marks in late Heian and medieval texts of KKS in the multi-volume study by Akinaga Kazue, Kokinwakashuu Seiten-bon no Kenkyuu, which might give some clue to how KKS 797 was performed (I don't have any but the last or most recent volume of this series myself and the sole mention of this poem therein refers to pitch levels.)

A tangent, but I wonder if the "iro miete/de" poem is never cited in the many Komachi-related noh plays, in which case the ambiguity would have to have been dealt with in performance. (I don't see an entry for this poem in the index to the Youkyoku 250-ban shuu, but have no idea how comprehensive that is.)

(Didn't someone, a Swedish scholar, write a dissertation in English a decade or two ago on kakekotoba in KKS?) 

Not quite right. I assume you are referring to Lindberg-Wada 1983, but this was on the use of KKS as a source of allusion in GM and dealt with hikiuta etc. 

I appreciate this correction. Perhaps a dissertation is waiting to be written on kakekotoba in KKS.

Lewis Cook



From: Michael Watson <........@...eijigakuin.ac.jp>
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 10:26:50 +0900
Subject: aviaries in Japan and Genji

Melanie Trede has asked me to post the following question for her (she is on the list, but has trouble posting directly from New York). /ed

From: Melanie Trede <......@....nyu.edu>

Dear colleagues,

Wonder if anybody could be of help to find secondary(or primary) sources on the role of aviaries in Japan? And how that might link up with The Tale of Genji?

I am looking at a pair of screens in the collection fo the San Francisco Asian art Museum dating to around the early 17th c that combines a selection of scenes of The Tale of Genji on one screen, and an aviary with lots of birds on the other. The two screens belong together, there is no doubt about that, but I know of no
other example combining those two iconographies, nor do I know much about birds in connection with texts, or aviaries as a subject matter in pictures.

Thanks for any help,
melanie trede

Institute of Fine Arts, NYU
1 East 78th Street
New York, NY 10021



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