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- Heian period (794-1185)
Japanese Studies
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Diaries of the Court Ladies of Old Japan by Call Number: Bartle Library Stacks PL771.2 .D53 2005ISBN: 0710310897
The Tosa Diary by
Written with artless simplicity and quiet humor, The Tosa Diary is the story of a fifty-five day journey by ship from Tosa to Kyoto in AD 935.
Call Number: Bartle Library Stacks (PL788.3.Z5 A3 1981 )ISBN: 9780804836951
The Sarashina Diary by
A thousand years ago, a young Japanese girl embarked on a journey from the wild East Country to the capital. She began a diary that she would continue to write for the next forty years and compile later in life, bringing lasting prestige to her family. Some aspects of the author's life and text seem curiously modern. She married at age thirty-three and identified herself as a reader and writer more than as a wife and mother. Enthralled by romantic fiction, she wrote extensively about the disillusioning blows that reality can deal to fantasy. The Sarashina Diary is a portrait of the writer as reader and an exploration of the power of reading to shape one's expectations and aspirations. As a person and an author, this writer presages the medieval era in Japan with her deep concern for Buddhist belief and practice. Her narrative's main thread follows a trajectory from youthful infatuation with romantic fantasy to the disillusionment of age and concern for the afterlife; yet, at the same time, many passages erase the dichotomy between literary illusion and spiritual truth. This new translation captures the lyrical richness of the original text while revealing its subtle structure and ironic meaning. The introduction highlights the poetry in the Sarashina Diary and the juxtaposition of poetic passages and narrative prose, which brings meta-meanings into play. The translators' commentary offers insight into the author's family and world, as well as the fascinating textual legacy of her work.
Call Number: Bartle Library Stacks (PL789.S8 Z4713 2014 )ISBN: 023153745XPublication Date: 2014- Murasaki Shikibu, her diary and poetic memoirs : a translation and study byCall Number: Bartle Stack PL788.4.Z5 A3513 1982ISBN: 0691065071
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Gender and National Literature by
Boldly challenging traditional understandings of Heian literature, Tomiko Yoda reveals the connections between gender, nationalism, and cultural representation evident in prevailing interpretations of classic Heian texts. Renowned for the wealth and sophistication of women's writing, the literature of the Heian period (794-1192) has long been considered central to the Japanese literary canon and Japanese national identity. Yoda historicizes claims about the inherent femininity of this literature by revisiting key moments in the history of Japanese literary scholarship from the eighteenth century to the present. She argues that by foregrounding women's voices in Heian literature, the discipline has repeatedly enacted the problematic modernizing gesture in which the "feminine" is recognized, canceled, and then contained within a national framework articulated in masculine terms. Moving back and forth between a critique of modern discourses on Heian literature and close analyses of the Heian texts themselves, Yoda sheds light on some of the most persistent interpretive models underwriting Japanese literary studies, particularly the modern paradigm of a masculine national subject. She proposes new directions for disciplinary critique and suggests that historicized understandings of premodern texts offer significant insights into contemporary feminist theories of subjectivity and agency.
ISBN: 0822385872Publication Date: 2004
language, poetry, and narrating in The tale of Genji and other mid-Heian texts by
In this revisionist study of texts from the mid-Heian period in Japan, H. Richard Okada offers new readings of three well-known tales: The Tale of the Bamboo-cutter, The Tale of Ise, and The Tale of Genji. Okada contends that the cultural and gendered significance of these works has been distorted by previous commentaries and translations belonging to the larger patriarchal and colonialist discourse of Western civilization. He goes on to suggest that this universalist discourse, which silences the feminine aspects of these texts and subsumes their writing in misapplied Western canonical literary terms, is sanctioned and maintained by the discipline of Japanese literature. Okada develops a highly original and sophisticated reading strategy that demonstrates how readers might understand texts belonging to a different time and place without being complicit in their assimilation to categories derived from Western literary traditions. The author's reading stratgey is based on the texts' own resistance to modes of analysis that employ such Western canonical terms as novel, lyric, and third-person narrative. Emphasis is also given to the distinctive cultural circles, as well as socio-political and genealogical circumstances that surrounded the emergence of the texts. Indispensable readings for specialists in literature, cultural studies, and Japanese literature and history, Figures of Resistance will also appeal to general readers interested in the problems and complexities of studying another culture.
ISBN: 0822381729Publication Date: 1991- Diaries of court ladies of old Japan byFrom "Nineteenth Century Collection Online"
Envisioning the Tale of Genji: Media, Gender, and Cultural Production by ISBN: 0231142374Publication Date: 2008
Chronological Chart
794 The capital is moved to Kyoto (Heian-kyō). Seiitaishōgun is appointed to subdue the Ezo.
797 Shoku Nihongi history published.
838 Last official embassy to China.
858 Fujiwara Yoshifusa is appointed regent.
927 Engishi law codes published.
939–940 Taira-no-Masakado leads a rebellion.
1002–1019 The Tale of Genji is written.
1016 Fujiwara Michinaga is appointed regent.
1028–1031 Taira Tadatsune insurrection.
1086 The cloister government is established.
1156 Hōgen Incident.
1160 Heiji Incident.
1167 Taira-no-Kiyomori is appointed chancellor (dajō daijin).
1175 The Pure Land Sect is founded by Hōnen.
1180 Minamoto-no-Yoritomo challenges the Taira family.
1181 Taira Kiyomori dies.
1185 The Taira family falls.
Source: Hane, Mikiso, and Louis G. Perez. Premodern Japan : A Historical Survey. Vol. Second edition, Routledge, 2014.
Books in Bartle Library (Japanese)
小右記 Shōyūki. 藤原実資, 957-1046. ; Sanesuke Fujiwara 957-1046. 東京 : 岩波書店; Tōkyō : Iwanami shoten Shōwa 34- [1959]Bartle Stacks (DS803 .T63 1959 ) v.6-8
Fictions reflect to Heian period
- 平安時代の離婚の研究 : 古代から中世へ byCall Number: Bartle Library Stacks HQ937 .K87 1999
- 平安朝物語集 Heianchō monogatarishū byCall Number: Bartle Library Stacks PL777.2 .H45 1926竹取物語 -- 伊勢物語 -- 大和物語 -- 落窪物語 -- 住吉物語 -- 唐物語.
