SOURCE: Konishi, Jin'ichi. “Prose in Japanese.” In A History of Japanese Literature, translated by Aileen Gatten, edited by Earl Miner, pp. 355-64. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986.

[In the following excerpt, Konishi discusses the Tales of Ise as a collection of fictionalized episodes based on actual events and handed down from oral sources. He also compares the stories to similar tales of the same era.]

Most prose works composed in Japanese during the tenth and eleventh centuries have characteristics embracing the monogatari, the nikki, and the shū. Assigning them to one or another category involves assessment of preponderant qualities. Not infrequently, the most outstanding aspect of a work provides the basis for determining its tentative classification. One clearly discernible group consists of monogatari narrating fact rather than fiction. There are two kinds of monogatari within this group: those resembling shū, in which waka forms the core of the work; and those having properties in common with nikki, in which narration of events is central. The former will be called “monogatari centering on waka” (utagoto no monogatari) and the latter, “monogatari centering on society” (yogoto no monogatari).

CENTERING ON WAKA

In the sense used here, “factual” indicates an authorial attitude or claim. The author purports to narrate facts, but the content of the work is not limited to events that actually happened. The Tales of Ise is one example. Most of its episodes adopt a narrative style that begins with the words, “Once there was a man” (“Mukashi otoko arikeri”), but the anonymous “man” (otoko) is not the only character in the work. Sixteen historical figures, including Ki no Aritsune (815-77), appear twenty-two times in the Ise, a reflection of the narrator's factual claim.¹ A manifestation of the influence exerted by this is the fact that the “man” recites waka found in the royal anthologies under the name of Ariwara Narihira. For this reason, the figure of the “man” was taken as designating Narihira, and a variant title arose for the Ise, Zaigo Chūjō no Nikki (The Nikki of the Ariwara Captain), and An Untitled Book included the work under the category of “real events.” For all that, no reader was likely to have believed the factuality of an episode in which demons gobble up a woman in a single bite (IM [Ise Monogatari], dan 6:114). Such a story requires only that its narrator seriously proclaim it as true. The audience need not actually believe the story as long as it is willing to listen attentively, temporarily suspending disbelief. Even so, there seem to have been some skeptical readers, because a postscript was later appended to the story about the demons, indicating that they were in fact two older brothers of the Nijō Consort, Fujiwara Mototsune (836-91) and Kunitsune (827-908; ibid., 114-15). This is part of the framework of the story, a confirmation that some such event did occur.

One might also recognize the presence of stories that were other than fictional in aim, that were factual monogatari whose raw material was an actual event. The enormous difficulty of proving how much is indeed true in such works, however, renders it rather pointless to classify factual monogatari according to the criterion of actual occurrence. Factual monogatari are more effectively divided by form. One category represents what might be called a waka-prose complex, a linkage of waka and prose so organic that the waka cannot be removed without the prose section losing its meaning. In a second category, development occurs solely through the order and logic of the prose sections. An occasional waka may appear in such works, but it will have only secondary importance to the narrative. One work that falls between the two categories is Tannomine Shōshō Monogatari (The Lieutenant of Tannomine), a chronologically ordered description of events set in motion by Fujiwara Takamitsu's (b. 939) sudden decision to become a monk. The chronological structure of The Lieutenant of Tannomine, together with its concordance with historical fact, clearly mark it as a kind of work different from the Tales of Ise. On the other hand, the Tannomine is a rather short piece, containing eighty-one waka (two of which are chōka, long poems). This waka group can stand alone as an object of reading, a property differentiating it from the later Eiga Monogatari (A Tale of Flowering Fortunes) and Ōkagami (The Great Mirror). The prose parts of the Tannomine may be omitted, and still its waka corpus will offer its own interest so long as the reader is informed of the setting for each waka. This is a characteristic of the shū, and is a feature common to both the Tales of Ise and The Lieutenant of Tannomine. In this respect the two works can be seen as a single kind. One of the variant titles of the Tannomine is the Takamitsu Nikki. The work does have some properties of a nikki, inasmuch as it relates a specific person's circumstances. But the verbal suffix “-keri,” indicating transmitted recollection, is employed in the prose sections, and the story is told in the “past tense.” We should, therefore, accord greater weight to its monogatari properties.

There are obvious differences between the Ise and the Tannomine. The former retains some signs of oral composition and transmission, whereas the latter is a literary composition in conception and execution. Masuda Katsumi's important theory posits that the Ise, regularly termed an utamonogatari (waka narrative), was not a literary creation transmitted in writing but evolved through utagatari—short, orally transmitted stories connected with specific waka composed by members of the aristocracy. These stories were written down and eventually compiled into the longer waka narrative (Masuda Katsumi, 1953, 15-22).

Ever since the Ancient Age, there had been transmissions of anecdotes linked to given waka or to the origin of that waka (a matter treated in Volume One). This practice, carried on into the Middle Ages, yielded oral waka stories.² It is natural that oral narration would result in frequent variant transmission, and that frequent, substantial variants in episodes within a waka narrative would seldom occur in a genre composed and transmitted in writing. Frequent variants and fluidity of content are aspects shared with the setsuwa, and certain kinds of oral waka stories might well be called waka setsuwa. This is not to say that the waka narrative is simply a collection of waka setsuwa. Certain waka narratives have specific, recognizable properties.³

Let us consider those episodes [dan] of the Tales of Ise in which the anonymous “man” acts as protagonist. There is no interconnection or interrelationship among the events described in these episodes, and yet the man displays an identifiable nature throughout. He is associated solely with the amorous, courtly life and has no connection with the world of power and fame. “Concluding that he was a useless fellow,” the man journeys to the East Country (IM, dan 9:116-17), but his only major activity on the trip is reciting waka. His actions are performed to affirm that his reason for being lies in amorousness and courtly ways. Feng-liu/fūryū originally became a worthy principle for the literati's life because it complemented orthodox Chinese morality. Having shed its orthodox Chinese aspects, fūryū created a unique world of amorousness and courtly acts, and fūryū itself underwent a considerable transformation. This is discerned in matters of tone. The feng-liu that delights Po Chü-i is cheerful and accommodating, a contented quality, whereas the anonymous “man's” amorous and courtly acts are often linked to disappointing circumstances. The man does not have his way in the world of power and fame, and he also encounters frequent disappointments in his many journeys through the world of love. In one case, a woman whom the man loves deeply avoids his ardent pursuit by hiding where he cannot reach her. The man lies on the bare floor of her former room, now stripped of its doors and sliding panels, and longs for the past. The moon sets. He recites this waka and goes home at dawn in tears (IM, dan 4:112-13):

          Tsuki ya aranu
Haru ya mukashi no
          Haru naranu
Wagami hitotsu wa
Moto no mi ni shite.
This is not that moon!
Nor is this spring the spring that was
In those days bygone!
My being the single thing
Remaining as it ever was …(4)

This episode is noteworthy as an excellent example of disappointed amorousness treated as worthy by its context. Love, which we may think delightful, is here seen in its classically true, grievous form. The idea of disappointed love as the truest form of love survives into the High Middle Ages (Tsurezuregusa, dan 3:89). Critics of linked poetry also perceived that love should be sung of in this vein: “Deep in love, he longs to see her; but she remains beyond reach and his suit fails to prosper as body and soul seem to fade away” (Ubuginu, 175). The Ise episode is the source of such expression: it demonstrates the shift from assigning worth to a fūryū of contentment to valuing disappointed amorousness.

Implicitness—a preference for sorrow over joy, stillness over motion, and the feminine over the masculine—is an important characteristic of Japanese literature, a point discussed in the General Introduction in the first volume of this History. An awareness of the value of implicitness probably arose during the period when the Narihira figure within oral waka stories—the epitome of disappointed amorousness—took shape as a character. The actual Ariwara Narihira followed a relatively smooth course both in official life and in his social affairs, with no special evidence of despair or disappointment. These elements were shaped for the Narihira of oral waka stories, out of a conscious effort to acknowledge the worthiness of disappointed love. The anonymous man in the Ise therefore never feels contentment. The myth of Narihira was an oral transmission created within aristocratic society and is to be distinguished from popular setsuwa.⁵ Some scholars of Japanese literature with ethnological interests have seen the man's journey to the East Country as a crude example of the motif of the nobleman wandering through strange lands, but this approach immoderately magnifies the role of setsuwa motifs.⁶

The extant text of the Tales of Ise is undoubtedly based on such oral waka stories, but it hardly appears to be a written compilation that has been orally transmitted. The present text contains many literary elements. This can be concluded from the unified tone of the extant Ise text, which is present in all manuscripts. I once wrote that the special nature of the Ise lies in its “pristine passion” (Konishi, 1953c, 42). One example is the “well-curb” (izutsu) episode. A boy and a girl, who have long played together by a well, grow up and become attracted to each other. They eventually marry, but the man's affections soon shift to another woman. His wife does not resent his inconstancy, she only yearns to have him back. Moved by her steadfastness, the man returns (IM, dan 23:126-27). He is moved by the purity of her love, which first blossomed in childhood and remained throughout adulthood. The purity of love is an element common both to episodes with a Narihira character as protagonist and to others in which the hero is a historical figure. Modern readers are also struck by such purity.⁷

Simple recording and compilation would not likely yield a unified tone. The present text of the Ise underwent a complex process of composition. At its earliest stage, it probably consisted of fewer than twenty episodes, all concerning Narihira's waka (Katagiri, 1968, 286). At some point prior to the compilation of the Gosenshū, the corpus apparently grew to approximately forty episodes, or about one-third of the present text (ibid., 261-90). We do not know what relationship exists, in terms of composition, between the extant Ise text and the earlier versions, but in the process some individual or individuals must have consolidated and revised episodes.

The somewhat later Stories of Heichū has a more pronounced unity in tone throughout. Again, an anonymous “man” is the hero of the monogatari. He is described in each episode as having the same personality traits, leading to a strongly received impression that the “man” of the episodes is one and the same character. When the name “Heichū” appears in the final episode, the reader concludes that the “man” of the earlier episodes must have been Heichū all along. Yet the “man” in the Heichū is of a very different nature from the “man” in the Tales of Ise. The difference is that Heichū's love affairs end up as comic failures. He does strive very seriously to succeed at love, but his efforts always result in failure. He would seem to be an inferior inhabitant of the amorous world, since he constantly loses at love, and yet he amounts to more than a humorous figure. The seriousness with which he goes about his failures gives him a sense of humanity that moves the reader, whose position is that of the ordinary beings in monogatari. The man even has about him a certain pathos, some features that cannot be laughed at. Yet his world may be termed a comic one, as suggested earlier. Heichū is every bit as disappointed in his amours as the “man” in the Tales of Ise, but he is presented in an entirely different tone. There are few consistently comic works in Japanese literature, and so Heichū is an exceptionally noteworthy character.

The character of Heichū was probably shaped by the compiler of the Heichū rather than taking on its own form as oral waka stories evolved. The consistent, unified tone is one indication of the compiler's influence; another is the farcical—as opposed to comic—nature of the Heichū myth that was transmitted orally in contemporary aristocratic society. A caricaturized Heichū episode—in which the man, wishing to look properly tearful, unknowingly splashes his face with ink instead of water—was current before the Genji was written and was widely transmitted in setsuwa from the twelfth century on, because the usual Heichū image was farcical.⁸ Yet that story of the inkstained Heichū that must have been the source of later versions does not appear in the Stories of Heichū. The non-farcical, comic Heichū of the monogatari was probably created by a specific author in the course of integrating composition.

The Yamato Monogatari (Tales of Yamato) has neither a single protagonist nor a definite tone. It might also be noted that the waka that are the foci of many of the episodes are treated in a way different from those in the Tales of Ise and the Stories of Heichū. This is seen very clearly when the same story appears in both the Ise and the Tales of Yamato. Consider the “well-curb” story mentioned earlier. In the Ise version, the boy and girl who played by the well marry later, and when the husband's affections shift to another woman, the wife expresses no resentment. But the husband, suspecting that his wife must have a lover, hides in the garden of the house. The woman assumes her husband has gone off to see his new lover in Kawachi and recites,

          Kaze fukeba
Okitsu shiranami
          Tatsutayama
Yowa ni ya kimi ga
Hitori koyu ran.
As the wind blows,
In the offing the whitecaps rise
Like Tatsuta Mountain;
Are you now crossing its peak
All alone this midnight?

The man “felt boundless love for her and went no more to Kawachi.” So the Ise version. In the Yamato version, the following events are presented as occurring after the poem.

The woman lay down, weeping, and put a metal basin filled with water against her breast. The man watched in amazement. What might she be doing? The water began to boil, whereupon she threw it away, and again filled the basin with cold water. The man, seeing this, was filled with love. He ran up to the house and said, “How grieved you must be to do such a thing!” He took her in his arms, and they lay together. Thereafter he strayed no more, but remained always at her side.

(YM [Yamato Monogatari], dan 149:320-21)

In the Tales of Ise, the man is moved by the waka and returns to his first love. In other words, the waka resolves the complexities of the plot. The Yamato story has the same plot, but the man is not immediately motivated by the waka to return to the woman he has known from childhood. His decision is made only after he witnesses a fantastic event: a basin filled with cold water boils when the emotionally feverish woman puts it to her breast. Her poem is not the direct impetus behind the resolution of events.

The genre others have termed utamonogatari (waka narrative) has been said to possess a characteristic form: a waka marks the climactic point in the plot development and provides the impetus by which problems in the story are either resolved smoothly or end in catastrophe (Suzuki Kazuo, 1953-54, 117). According to this definition, episode 149 of the Tales of Yamato, whose climactic point is a fabulous event rather than a waka, cannot be called a waka narrative. Compared with its parallel “well-curb” episode in the Tales of Ise (dan 23), the Yamato version has more expository elements. This is due to the author's wish to shape a climax marked not by a waka but by facts related in the prose story, which must unavoidably emphasize the exposition of those facts. This episode and others like it are best seen not as waka narratives but rather as waka setsuwa, works whose subject matter is an oral account having to do with a waka.

Of course, Suzuki Kazuo's definition does not always enable us to distinguish between waka narratives and waka setsuwa. The difference between the two remains, in the end, a question of degree, a matter of how far the expository elements predominate. Consider episode 38 of the Stories of Heichū, for instance, in which a misunderstanding results in the hero's beloved becoming a nun. This story also appears in the Tales of Yamato (dan 103) and the Tales of Times Now Past (30:story 2). In the Heichū version, the climactic point is the scene where the hero receives a waka from the woman that informs him she has become a nun. The other two versions have the same content but include detailed narration about the transition of events. Consequently, in those versions the woman's poem (which one might expect to be the focus of the story) is made inconspicuous by the many expository passages. A work having this much exposition may be termed a waka setsuwa. Other Yamato stories, like “Ikutagawa” (“The Ikuta River”; YM, dan 147) and “Ashikari” (“The Reed Cutter”; YM, dan 148) are setsuwa pure and simple. They were probably included in the Yamato only because they happen to have waka in their texts.

Utagatari, oral waka stories, are the source of both the waka narrative (in Suzuki's sense) and the waka setsuwa, and they represent oral transmissions within aristocratic society. Unlike folklore, oral waka stories were not always transmitted from times long past. When Taira Kanemori (d. 990) was serving as provisional governor of Echizen, there was a grandson of Seiwa Tennō (r. 858-76) living in Kurozuka. [The literal meaning of the place name is “black burial mound.”] Kanemori sent a waka to the man's daughter, asking for her hand in marriage:

          Michinoku no
Adachi ga hara no
          Kurozuka ni
Oni komoreri to
Kiku wa makoto ka.
Is the hearsay true,
That a wraith is hidden
In Black Burial Mound,
There in the Field of Adachi
In the land of Michinoku?

The parents refused his suit on the grounds that the girl was too young. After Kanemori returned to the capital, the woman married another man, and Kanemori suffered great loss of face (YM, dan 58:257-58). She had taken Kanemori's jest seriously, interpreting “wraith” as implying that she was a demon.⁹ Angered at Kanemori's apparent rudeness, she sought to spite him by rushing into marriage with another man. What is noteworthy about this story is its date of composition. The prototype text of the extant Yamato, probably compiled in 951, seems to differ little from the text we have today (Abe Toshiko, 1954, 18-30). If this is the case, the oral waka story that was the source of this episode evolved during Kanemori's youth and was immediately incorporated into the ancestor of the present Yamato text.

The fact that an oral waka story was incorporated into writing as soon as it appeared can only indicate that such stories flourished in contemporary aristocratic society. The compilers' aim, to appreciate waka within a narrative “field,” surely transformed the poems in the familiar reality of readers' lives.¹⁰ In the main, their aim was not to make existing prose traditions into means of information but rather to present waka within a vivid narrative field. Ever since the Ancient Age, recorded traditions have presented a background for waka, in the form of forenotes and afternotes. The “miscellaneous waka, accompanied by stories” of the Man'yōshū (16:3786-889), provide one such instance. This practice, however, is not always identical to the act of appreciating waka within a narrative field. Oral waka stories have been shown to differ in style from the forenotes in waka collections, and so waka stories very likely did not evolve from amplified forenotes (Sakakura, 1953, 12-17). They represent in effect the lively, practical behavior of contemporary aristocratic society. Oral waka stories may have used certain of the miscellaneous Man'yōshū waka-story complexes or information in their forenotes and afternotes as material, but the narrative nature of the oral stories differs from that of the Man'yōshū contexts.

The creation of an active “field” for waka, in which they could be appreciated in settings other than their original ones, is a phenomenon dating from the Kokinshū period. Progression in a collected series of poems is one such field: the changing seasons, for example, or the course of a love affair. The field can act on the waka to create a new meaning heretofore absent in the individual poem, as has been shown. On the other hand, these were fields concerned with natural change [as in a sequence compiled in a royal anthology], differing fundamentally from the narrative field of a plot. The writing and reading of waka in a narrative field developed in the tenth century. We might note that, with the compilation of the Tales of Yamato in the mid-tenth century, the fictional elements of plots increased. One manifestation of this is the increased proportion of waka setsuwa episodes over waka narratives in the Yamato. The middle of the tenth century was also the time when a great many monogatari were written “that tell only of fantastic things.” Waka setsuwa probably arose from the same expressive awareness that gave rise to the fictional monogatari. But waka setsuwa were not treated as fiction. They might strike an audience as a bit strange sometimes, but their truthfulness remained outwardly unchallenged. This way of reading continued beyond the twelfth century. Several waka setsuwa appear in works on poetics by Minamoto Shunrai (1055?-1129?) and Fujiwara Kiyosuke (1104-77). … The authors did not record them at random but because they felt that a waka could not be properly appreciated unless its circumstances of creation were known. Scholarship, in those days, was the transmission of such information to posterity. The Tales of Yamato should therefore be acknowledged as a factual monogatari.

Notes

1. The sixteen figures are Ki no Aritsune (dan 16, 38, 82), Minamoto Itaru (39), Junna Tennō (39), Takaiko (39), Prince Kayō (43), the Nijō Consort (5, 76, 95), Fujiwara Tsuneyuki (77, 78), Takakiko (77, 78), Prince Koretaka (82, 83), Montoku Tennō (77), the Cloistered Prince of Yamashina (78), Fujiwara Yoshichika (101), Ariwara Yukihira (101), Fujiwara Toshiyuki (107), Kōkō Tennō (114), and the Horikawa Minister (97). Historical figures also appear in postscripts to certain episodes. These postscripts are probably later accretions.

2. One example of usage of “utagatari” will suffice. “I remember that while I was ill someone told me an odd utagatari about a place called Kainuma Pond. I said I would try to compose a waka about it” (Murasaki Shikibu Shū, 88, forenote).

3. Utamonogatari, waka setsuwa, and utagatari are closely related terms, but their individual properties must be kept in mind. Definitions follow. (1) Utamonogatari (waka narrative): a literary creation, transmitted in writing, of a story or collection of stories, each of which focuses on a single waka as the climax of the story. (2) Waka setsuwa: a story, transmitted either orally or in writing, whose subject matter concerns one or more waka. The story is not shaped so as to focus on the waka, and there is no carefully planned style, unlike that of the waka narrative. (3) Utagatari (oral waka story): an orally transmitted story, usually short, about events linked to one or more waka. One or more waka stories can provide the raw material for a waka narrative. [Auth., Trans. The author later gives examples of these kinds.—Ed.]

4. [Perhaps the most famous, and certainly one of the most difficult to translate, of waka, this poem also appears as KKS 15:747.—Ed.]

5. In this case “myth” is used as a critical term and signifies the relating of unreliable facts in a manner that strikes the audience as reliable. This also applies to the myth of Heichū, discussed later in this section.

6. The motif of the wandering noble (first discerned by Origuchi Shinobu) has a circular structure: a man who does not obey the logic of his community is driven from there and exiled, but his crime is redeemed by the hardships encountered in his wanderings, and he eventually returns to the community (Araki, 1982). Not all stories of wandering nobles conform to this motif.

7. While yet young Mishima Yukio wrote: “One feels a sense of awe in reading a classic like the Ise Monogatari. Certainly a [modern] Japanese would want to write something like it. It is marvelous and compelling enough to be taboo to modern writers, who must protect their nerves. If the Ise were the only Japanese classic, all our writers would hang themselves. … So many of life's crises are depicted in that monogatari. How terrifying that they are presented in such an offhanded way!” (Mishima, 1942, 40). The nature of the seventeen-year-old Mishima's sensations differs from my own. Indisputably, however, the Ise Monogatari has an indescribable charm.

8. The story appears, for example, in Konjaku Monogatari Shū (30:212-15), Kohon Setsuwa Shū (story 19, 1:56-59), and Uji Shūi Monogatari (3:147-50).

9. “Oni” is usually translated “demon,” but it apparently had another, milder meaning in the Heian period, signifying a supernatural being who is not easily seen. Kanemori seeks to court the girl wittily, by implying that he has heard of a maiden living in Kurozuka, treasured by her parents and kept from prying eyes. His poem backfires because “oni” has an ambivalent meaning: the girl thinks Kanemori is insinuating that she is a demon haunting the “Black Burial Mound.” [Auth., Trans.]

10. “Field” here refers to the context presumed and employed for interpretation by the author and reader. The term is analogous to the “field” of “electric field” and “gravitational field.”

Select Bibliography

A. Editions

IM = Ise Monogatari. NKBT, 9 (1957). Edited by Ötsu Yūichi and Tsukijima Hiroshi.

KKS = Kokinshū. See Kokinshū.

Kohon Setsuwa Shū. Kohon Setsuwa Shū Sōsakuin (Kazama Shobō, 1969). Edited by Yamauchi Yōichirō.

Kokinshū [KKS]. Kokinwakashū; Iwanami Bunko (Iwanami Shoten, 1981). Edited by Saeki Umetomo.

Konjaku Monogatari Shū. Konjaku Monogatari Shū; NKBT, 22-26 (1959-63). Edited by Yamada Yoshio, Yamada Tadao, Yamada Hideo, and Yamada Toshio.

Murasaki Shikibu Shū. Murasaki Shikibu; SKST, 1:154. See SKST.

NKBT = Nihon Koten Bungaku Toikei. (Iwanami, Shoten, 1957–67).

SKST = Shikashū Taisei. Shikashū Taisei (Meiji Shoin, 1973-76). Edited by Wakashi Kenkyūkai. 8 vols.

Tsurezuregusa. Tsurezuregusa; Nihon Koten Zensho (Asahi Shimbunsha, 1947). Edited by Tachibana Jun'ichi.

Ubuginu. Kaishū Ubuginu; Renga Hōshiki Kōyō (Iwanami Shoten, 1936). Edited by Yamada Yoshio and Hoshika Muneichi.

Uji Shūi Monogatari. Uji Shūi Monogatari; NKBT, 27 (1960). Edited by Watanabe Tsunaya and Nishio Kōichi.

Yamato Monogatari [YM]. Yamato Monogatari; NKBT , 9 (1957). Edited by Abe Toshiko and Imai Gen'e.

B. Studies Published in Japanese

ARAKI Hiroyuki 1982 “Kishu Ryūridan no Kōzō,” a paper read at the seminar on “Japanese Literary Theory and Practice,” at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies, Washington, D.C., April 1982.

KATAGIRI Yōichi 1968-69 Ise Monogatari no Kenkyū (Meiji Shoin, 1968-69). 2 vols.

KONISHI Jin'ichi 1953c “Yōembi: Bantōshi to no Kōsho,” Kokugo Kokubun 22, no. 7 (1953).

MASUDA Katsumi 1953 “Utagatari no Sekai,” Kikan Kokubun, no. 4 (1953).

MISHIMA Yukio 1942 “Ise Monogatari no Koto,” Bungei Bunka 5, no. 11 (1942).

SAKAKURA Atsuyoshi 1953 “Utamonogatari no Bunshō: ‘Nan’ no Kakarimusubi o Megutte,” Kokugo Kokubun 22, no. 6 (1953).