Unsuitable Books for Women Genji Monogatari and Ise Monogatari in Late Seventeenth-Century Japan, Kornicki

Unsuitable Books for Women? Genji Monogatari and Ise Monogatari in Late Seventeenth-Century Japan Kornicki, Peter F. (Peter Francis) Monumenta Nipponica, Volume 60, Number 2, Summer 2005, pp. 147-193 (Article) Published by Sophia University DOI: 10.1353/mni.2005.0021

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Unsuitable Books for Women? Genji Monogatari and Ise Monogatari

in Late Seventeenth-Century Japan P. F. KORNICKI

P

entails loss of control over texts: over who reads them, over how they are read, over what texts people read, and over what constructions are put upon them. The Younger Pliny was well aware of this in ancient Rome, though of course in his day “publication” meant putting manuscripts in the hands of professional copyists and booksellers. The advent of print in both Asia and Europe thus merely exacerbated a problem that existed in scribal cultures, too. It was the publication of texts in print that occasioned Zhu Xi’s anxious response to what he perceived as the undesirably liberal availability of books in twelfth-century China and that later spurred the worries of nineteenthcentury British writers about the reading habits of what Wilkie Collins called the “Unknown Public.”1 Similar circumstances obtained in early seventeenthcentury Japan, where the abundance of printed publications was a new, and potentially worrying, worrying, phenomenon. Among these new publications were the first printed editions of Genji monogatari 源氏物語 and Ise monogatari 伊勢物語, and their ready availability aroused disquiet, particularly among the sinological scholars we habitually, but inaccurately, refer to as “Confucianists. “Confucianists.””2 This article seeks to explore the consequences of print for the female readership of Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari , for it was in the context mainly of women readers of these two texts that the anxieties were commonly articulated. We see here a notable difference from the situation in nineteenth-century nineteenth-century UBLICATION

AUTH THOR OR is professor of Japanese history and bibliography at the University of Cambridge. THE AU He would like to express his thanks to Professor Hayakawa Monta 早川門多 for palaeographi palaeographicc assistance; to Dr. T. J. Harper for making available his unpublished unpublished translation of an excerpt from Seji hyakudan 世事百談; to Professor Toshio Yokoyama 横山俊夫 for making available photocopies of material in Kyoto University Library; and to Richard Bowring, Tom Harper, James McMullen, Joshua Mostow, Francesca Orsini, Gaye Rowley, and the anonymous readers for incisive and invaluable comments on earlier versions. 1 Pliny 1969, pp. 36, 40, 62 (letters 1.2, 1.8, 2.5); on Zhu Xi, see Gardner 1990, pp. 21–22, 139–40; on Wilkie Collins and his contemporaries, see Brantlinger 1998, esp. pp. 17–21. 2 On the pros and cons of using this term, and doubts about its suitability for use in the context of Japan, see the introduction to Ko et al. 2003.

Unsuitable Books for Women? Genji Monogatari and Ise Monogatari

in Late Seventeenth-Century Japan P. F. KORNICKI

P

entails loss of control over texts: over who reads them, over how they are read, over what texts people read, and over what constructions are put upon them. The Younger Pliny was well aware of this in ancient Rome, though of course in his day “publication” meant putting manuscripts in the hands of professional copyists and booksellers. The advent of print in both Asia and Europe thus merely exacerbated a problem that existed in scribal cultures, too. It was the publication of texts in print that occasioned Zhu Xi’s anxious response to what he perceived as the undesirably liberal availability of books in twelfth-century China and that later spurred the worries of nineteenthcentury British writers about the reading habits of what Wilkie Collins called the “Unknown Public.”1 Similar circumstances obtained in early seventeenthcentury Japan, where the abundance of printed publications was a new, and potentially worrying, worrying, phenomenon. Among these new publications were the first printed editions of Genji monogatari 源氏物語 and Ise monogatari 伊勢物語, and their ready availability aroused disquiet, particularly among the sinological scholars we habitually, but inaccurately, refer to as “Confucianists. “Confucianists.””2 This article seeks to explore the consequences of print for the female readership of Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari , for it was in the context mainly of women readers of these two texts that the anxieties were commonly articulated. We see here a notable difference from the situation in nineteenth-century nineteenth-century UBLICATION

AUTH THOR OR is professor of Japanese history and bibliography at the University of Cambridge. THE AU He would like to express his thanks to Professor Hayakawa Monta 早川門多 for palaeographi palaeographicc assistance; to Dr. T. J. Harper for making available his unpublished unpublished translation of an excerpt from Seji hyakudan 世事百談; to Professor Toshio Yokoyama 横山俊夫 for making available photocopies of material in Kyoto University Library; and to Richard Bowring, Tom Harper, James McMullen, Joshua Mostow, Francesca Orsini, Gaye Rowley, and the anonymous readers for incisive and invaluable comments on earlier versions. 1 Pliny 1969, pp. 36, 40, 62 (letters 1.2, 1.8, 2.5); on Zhu Xi, see Gardner 1990, pp. 21–22, 139–40; on Wilkie Collins and his contemporaries, see Brantlinger 1998, esp. pp. 17–21. 2 On the pros and cons of using this term, and doubts about its suitability for use in the context of Japan, see the introduction to Ko et al. 2003.

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Europe, where disquiet about what women were reading related principally to current fiction.3 In seventeenth-century seventeenth-century Japan, by contrast, it was rather the classics of the Heian period, especially Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari , and the tradition of court poetry, that gave rise to anxiety. Why should these and other works of Heian literature have been seen to be unsuitable reading matter for women? What effect did such views have on the reading practices of women, and what responses did they elicit? These questions bristle with difficulties, so it will be as well to map out a strategy beforehand beforehand for answering them. Since it was print that made these texts easily accessible, I consider, firstly, the early seventeenth-century appearance of these two works in print and the ways in which their presentation affected reading possibilities and practices; secondly, the views of sinologists and others who took exception to them as suitable texts for women and urged women instead to turn to morally beneficial sinological texts; thirdly, the resistance to such views from male defenders of Genji; fourthly, the actual reading practices of women readers; and fifthly, the appropriatio appropriation n of Genji in other contexts that cast light upon the question of women readers. Finally, I argue that if the issue of gender is ignored, the print revolution of the seventeenth century cannot be fully understood, and consider the implications of this study for the further exploration of women’s literacy and reading in seventeenth-century seventeenth-ce ntury Japan. From Manuscript to Print

By1600 printing had already been practiced for hundreds of years in Japan, but it was not until the advent of commercial printers and publishers in the early years of the seventeenth century that Japanese literature, including both fiction and histories, was put into print for the first time. This circumstance is largely attributable to the monastic rather than commercial functions of print before the seventeenth century and to the exclusivity of the courtly world in which literary works had been transmitted. The commercial booksellers that began operating in Kyoto in the early years of the seventeenth century rapidly brought most of the corpus of earlier fictional literature into print, however, and by the end of the century both Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari had been published in numerous editions. Although textual scholars have for the most part dismissed these various printed editions, such works, together with their extensive illustrations, continued to serve as the main point of access to the world of the Heian monogatari until the Meiji period. 4 They form, therefore, an essential part of any consideration of the readership of these two works in the seventeenth century. A brief examination of the extensive range of texts and digests of Genji and commentaries on it published in the course of the seventeenth century will demonstrate its ready availability. Four movable-type editions of Genji are 3 4

See Flint 1993 and Brantlinger 1998. It is astonishing that surveys of the various texts of Genji ignore the very existence of these editions; see, for example, Ikeda 1953–1962, vol. 7; and Nihon koten bungaku daijiten , vol. 2, pp. 433–34.

KORNICKI: Unsuitable Books for Women?

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known to have been printed between 1600 and 1644.5 Woodblock editions began to appear in the early 1650s, when Yamamoto Shunshô 山本春正 (1610–1682) produced the first large-format illustrated version. Shunshô was an active waka poet in both Kyoto and Edo and a follower of the celebrated poet Matsunaga Teitoku 松永貞徳 (1571–1653), who had already been involved in the popularization of hitherto restricted genres.6 Over the next twenty years Shunshô’s illustrated version went through a bewildering number of reprints and new editions in various formats and sizes, evidence in itself of the extent and diversity of the market for printed copies of Genji.7 This was by no means the whole picture, for there were also digests, or condensed versions of the text, offering easier access to it in more familiar language. Digests of Genji had been produced since the Kamakura period, but in the seventeenth century they began to appear in print. More than a dozen editions of the fifteenth-century Genji kokagami 源氏小鏡 were published between 1651 and 1680. In the 1650s Nonoguchi Ryûho 野々口立圃 (1595–1669), another follower of Matsunaga Teitoku, created the first digest written for a commercial audience, the illustrated Jûjô Genji 十帖源氏. It was followed shortly thereafter by a simplified version for children, Osana Genji おさな源氏. Both works went through innumerable editions and reprints in the seventeenth century. 8 Of printed texts, then, there was an abundance. Genji was not, however, an easy text for seventeenth-century readers. The practice of studying it with a teacher was still very much alive even at the end of the seventeenth century and doubtless remained the elite and scholarly mode of access to the text for some time to come.9 But once printed commentaries on the text became available, complete with philological crutches for those who needed them, it was for the first time possible to imagine reading Genji without a teacher. There can be no doubt that these printed commentaries had a profound impact on how the text was read and studied. One of the earliest to be printed was Bansui ichiro 万水一露, drawn up by the renga poet Eikan 永閑 at the end of 5

Kawase 1932, p. 90; Kawase 1967, vol. 1, pp. 512–13; vol. 2, pp. 886–88. On the putative Sagabon 嵯峨本 edition, which does not carry any overt indication of its place of publicatio publication n or its publisher, see Ii 2002, pp. 672–87. 6 On Yamamoto Shunshô, see Odaka 1964, pp. 468–503. 7 On Yamamoto Shunshô’s illustrated editions, see Yoshida 1987, vol. 1, pp. 9–115; and Shimizu 2003, pp. 39–103. Shimizu mostly accepts Yoshida’s judgments, but argues against his ordering of some of the undated editions; see the meticulous bibliographical analysis analysis in Shimizu 2003, pp. 14, 41–71. In English there is Markus 1982, pp. 167–74; although still rewarding, rewarding, this offers incomplete bibliographical bibliographical data and in that respect is superseded by Shimizu and Yoshida; see also Kokusho sômokuroku, vol. 3, p. 124; Shorin shuppan, vol. 1, p. 43. 8 Genji kokagami had appeared in seven movable-type editions by 1640, three unillustrated wood-block editions between 1651 and 1666, and numerous other illustrated wood-block editions in various sizes from 1657 onwards; Jûjô Genji was reissued three times in the 1660s. First published in Kyoto in 1661, Osana Genji was reprinted numerous times in the seventeenth century; it was published in a separate Edo edition in 1672 with four reprints in the 1680s. Yoshida 1987, vol. 1, pp. 194–218, 245–66, 245–66, 323–40. 9 See the innumerable references gathered conveniently conveniently in Ii 2001, pp. 657 ff.

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the sixteenth century. The manuscript was amplified by Matsunaga Teitoku and eventually published in 1663. In his afterword, Teitoku acknowledged that ideally Genji should be approached with the four leading commentaries at one’s side and with access to the “lectures of a distinguished teacher.” He claimed, however, that Eikan had distilled the essence of these commentaries so that a reader could manage with Bansui ichiro alone. Clearly Teitoku accepted the practice of reading Genji without the mediation of an instructor.10 In 1673 another extensive commentary appeared, Shusho Genji monogatari 首書源氏物語, but this has been overshadowed by the much better known Kogetsushô 湖月抄, published in the same year. Kogetsushô was prepared by Kitamura Kigin 北村季吟 (1624–1705), a prominent poet and scholar, and he, too, sought to make the world of Genji commentaries and scholarship public property in the form of an annotated edition of the text based extensively upon earlier exegetical literature. This edition is generally considered to have achieved the widest circulation in the Edo period. To be sure, it is not easy to verify this assumption. Nishida Naokai 西田直養 (1793–1865), a Kokugakusha and associate of Hirata Atsutane 平田篤胤, for example, had high esteem for Kogetsushô and considered it indispensable, but how representative was his opinion?11 The frequency of textual and visual reference to Kogetsushô in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries does, however, lend some credence to the premise of its preeminence.12 Enough has been said now of the printing history of Genji, and it would be supererogatory to enumerate the various other digests and commentaries here. The grounds for Yoshida Kôichi’s 吉田幸一 claim that there was a veritable Genji publishing boom in the 1660s are obvious.13 Ise monogatari , too, likewise suddenly became accessible in two senses, the availability of copies and the publication of commentaries facilitating private reading. The same was true of most of the canonical texts of Heian and Kamakura literature in their seventeenthcentury incarnations.14 We can now identify three stages in the process whereby, in the course of the seventeenth century, Genji and Ise came into the public domain. First movabletype editions appeared. These were in all likelihood produced in small quantities, and readers of these copies still needed instruction, so the established oral 10

Ii 1988–1992, vol. 28, p. 413. On the various commentaries, Ii 2001 is exceptionally useful. See his Sasanoya manpitsu 篠舎漫筆, in Nihon zuihitsu taisei , 2nd series, vol. 2, pp. 149–50. 12 See, for example, the references to Kogetsushô in works by Ihara Saikaku 井原西鶴, Tamenaga Shunsui 為永春水, and Santô Kyôden 山東京伝, in, respectively, Saikaku zenshû, vol. 2, pp. 270–71; NKBZ 47, p. 392; NKBT 59, p. 427. 13 Yoshida 1987, vol. 1, p. 413; for details of other digests, see vol. 1, pp. 272, 289–93. Nakano 1997 provides information about other works, but it should be noted that he is dependent upon Yoshida in the case of works discussed by both. 14 On the early printing history of Ise monogatari, see Kawase 1932, pp. 23–41; Kawase 1967, vol. 1, pp. 430–40, 508–509; vol. 2, p. 855; Tanaka 1965, pp. 319 ff. See also Vos 1957, pp. 101–14, for an examination of the commentarial tradition; and Bowring 1992, pp. 466–77, for the polemics of the Edo-period commentaries. 11


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context for the transmission of received interpretations continued unchanged. Second came illustrated wood-block editions. These may well have been produced in larger numbers, but were not easy reading for the untrained. They did offer readers some help, however, in the form of glosses (furigana, dakuten, etc.) and notes to facilitate solitary reading. Third were the texts equipped with commentaries and the digests, and here we can identify the possibility of access for the untrained, without the need for a teacher to indicate how to construe and interpret the text. Surviving seventeenth-century booksellers’ catalogues provide a further angle on the flood of published editions. An undated catalogue printed during the 1660s includes four entries for Genji, including commentaries, illustrated editions, and so on, and seven for Ise monogatari , and the catalogues of 1670 and 1675 include progressively more entries for each of the two works. 15 The simultaneous availability of such a range of editions bespeaks a vigorous contemporary demand for copies of the text, but also raises the question of the potential economic constraints on this market. Andrew Markus has made much of the high cost, relative to other books, of Kitamura Kigin’s Kogetsushô in the booksellers’ catalogues.16 The prices given in the catalogues for 1681 and 1696 were indeed high at 130 monme; but after all, Kogetsushô consisted of sixty-two volumes. On the other hand, one could purchase the reduced-size version of Yamamoto Shunshô’s illustrated Genji for less than half the cost (50 monme in 1681), a copy of Osana Genji in ten volumes for only 12 monme, and a copy of Genji kokagami for just 3.5 monme. Ise monogatari , meanwhile, which in most editions filled only two volumes, could be had, even with illustrations, for less than 2 monme.17 To contextualize these prices, we might note that in 1657 the daily wages of skilled laborers like carpenters and thatchers were fixed at 3 monme; in 1710, day laborers in Kyoto were paid 1.5 monme; and between 1662 and 1700, the price of one koku (5.1 U.S. bushels) of white rice ranged between 39 and 105 monme; while Kogetsushô was thus indeed expensive, Ise monogatari and the cheaper digests were financially within reach for a skilled laborer. 18 And we should not forget that by the end of the seventeenth century, booksellers were in the habit of renting out their books as well as selling them, a practice that reduced the cost of access to any given item as well as extended the range of books available to customers of relatively modest means.19 The various printed editions described here created new readership possibilities, for we are talking about new readers, not simply old readers acquiring new opportunities for perusing familiar texts. It is true that manuscript production of Genji and other Heian texts continued throughout the Edo period and that an 15 16

Shorin shuppan, vol. 1, pp. 43, 96–97, 142, 198, 209, 290, etc.

Markus 1982, pp. 170–71. Shorin shuppan, vol. 2, pp. 164, 189; for the prices in 1696 and 1709, which were for the most part unchanged, see vol. 2, pp. 216, 297–98. 18 Ono 1979, pp. 207, 451–52. 19 Nagatomo 1982, pp. 19–32. 17

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illustrated manuscript in a fine calligraphic hand, preferably copied from an ancient exemplar, carried far more cultural prestige than any printed edition. But print, meanwhile, generated copies of Genji in quantities previously unthinkable and reached an audience with little chance of access to the manuscript traditions.20 The Case Against Genji Monogatari and Ise Monogatari

The view that monogatari were at best a distraction and probably of some harm to women is of greater antiquity than Genji itself and can be traced back to Sanbô-e 三宝絵 (984).21 The subsequent elaboration of Buddhist justifications of Genji testifies to the perception that it was vulnerable to criticism and needed to be defended against detractors.22 Our concern here is the direction taken by this discourse in the seventeenth century. Male sinologists were the major source of early Edo criticism of Genji, but the debate widened, especially in the eighteenth century, when adherents of other intellectual traditions, such as Kokugaku, took up opposing positions. The long-established consensus is that sinologists considered Genji monogatari to be morally objectionable, but the circumstances surrounding this issue deserve further consideration. Many of the sinologists addressed themselves not only to Genji but also to Ise monogatari : why did they concern themselves with these two works in particular? What does a close reading of their writings reveal of the context for their views? Were these two texts in fact “snatched from the hands of women readers,” as has been claimed? 23 Was it really “paradoxical” that some sinologists turned their attention to texts considered to be morally repellent, and, if so, why did they do so? 24 Let us begin with Hayashi Razan 林羅山 (1583–1657) and his son and heir, Gahô 鵞峰 (1618–1680). Both were not only lecturers to successive shogun but also scholars, bibliophiles, and book collectors on a heroic scale; they were at the heart of the sinological establishment in seventeenth-century Japan. Some time in the 1650s, they published together a pair of bibliographic guides, the first to appear in print in Japan; the proliferation of printed matter since the beginning of the century had undoubtedly made such guidance seem a matter of urgency. Razan’s bibliography concerned Chinese books and Gahô’s listed Japanese; unlike most of Razan and Gahô’s other writings, however, these two bibliographies were written not in Chinese but in simple Japanese, katakana mixed with characters, and were furnished with ample furigana glosses. According to the two postfaces, the object was to impart the “general outline” of Chinese and Japanese literature broadly conceived and to “instruct children”; 20

As Shimizu takes pains to emphasize, all the block-printed editions were openly for sale; Shimizu 2003, pp. 20–25. 21 Rowley 2000, pp. 18–19; Kamens 1988. 22 On the “religious allegorization” of Ise monogatari, see Klein 2002, pp. 124ff and passim. 23 Noguchi 1995, p. 7. 24 McMullen 1999, pp. 4–5.


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a brief explanation of the work’s contents accompanied each title. It appears, then, that the bibliographies were compiled to guide those setting out on the first stages of a course of serious reading.25 The fact that these bibliographies were published in tandem suggests acceptance of the value of reading Japanese texts as well as canonical Chinese works, a stance that by no means was taken for granted among Japanese sinologists. That said, many of the Japanese texts listed were actually written in Chinese (kanbun), and, with the exception of a few chronicles concerning the wars at the end of the sixteenth century, most were of considerable antiquity. So this was no guide to recent Japanese literature. The list included some texts in Japanese, such as Heike monogatari 平家物語, Jinnô shôtôki 神皇正統記, and Kokon chomonjû 古今著聞集, but there were significant absences: excluded were all the court anthologies of waka poetry and all the Heian monogatari, with the solitary exception of Eiga monogatari 栄花物語. These omissions were no accident. It is evident that Hayashi Gahô declined to recommend any literature of this sort, including Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari , to the young. Why? The omissions from Gahô’s bibliography would seem to corroborate Nakamura Yukihiko’s 中村幸彦 observation that Razan and many of his contemporaries did not accept the authority of the Japanese canon when individual works affronted their sense of moral propriety. 26 This is an important difference between the seventeenth-century sinologists and the courtly intellectuals of the preceding age, such as Sanjônishi Sanetaka 三条西実隆 (1455–1537), for whom the authority of the canon was paramount. In the preface to his commentary on Tsure zuregusa 徒然草, Razan attributed the moral shortcomings of monogatari, which “contain the language of sycophantic laughter and false wit and lack the means to instruct or reprove,” to the fact that they were written by “women and girls.” 27 Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that Razan himself had read Genji in his youth, and he remained engaged with it, for around 1605 he had a vigorous exchange of views with Ikkadô Jôa 一華堂乗阿 (1531–1619) on the interpretation of a particular passage. One of the leading practitioners and theoreticians of waka at court, Jôa lectured on the subject to Emperor Go-Yôzei 後陽成; Razan was by fifty years Jôa’s junior, and yet he delivered his riposte to Jôa with supreme 25

Hayashi 1996, vol. 1, pp. 1–31; Hayashi 1979, vol. 2, pp. 391–401. The first dated edition of these two works is that of 1667, but an earlier edition may have been published in the Jôô era (1652–1655); Kokusho sômokuroku, vol. 6, p. 394. 26 Nakamura 1958, pp. 4–8. 27 For the preface to Nozuchi 野槌, Razan’s commentary on Tsurezuregusa, which was published some time before 1650, see Kokubun chûshaku zensho, vol. 13, p. 1 (separately paginated); and Hayashi 1930a, p. 564. Razan made a similar observation in his miscellany Baison saihitsu 梅村載筆; see Nihon zuihitsu taisei, 1st series, vol. 1, p. 21. The authorship of the latter work is disputed, but see the convincing arguments for Razan’s authorship of most of it, including the remark quoted, in Hori 1964, p. 54. Gahô included Eiga monogatari in his bibliography of recommended books in spite of its attribution to a woman writer, Akazome Emon 赤染衛門; presumably he either was more tolerant of female authorship than his father, or he considered Eiga monogatari, with its focus on the life and times of Fujiwara no Michinaga 藤原道長, to be a historical work and therefore to be distinguished from the fictional monogatari.

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confidence and minute knowledge of Genji.28 He also paraded his knowledge of Genji in his commentary on Tsurezuregusa, and he compiled a collection of extracts from Genji commentaries that unfortunately was lost with the bulk of his library during the Meireki 明暦 fire of 1657.29 Even if he did not regard Genji as suitable reading for the young, then, he clearly found it acceptable for a scholar such as himself. His son did not dissent from this view. Should we be surprised that Razan paid so much attention to Genji? Perhaps not, if we recall that, committed sinologists though both he and his son were, they were simultaneously concerned to “domesticate” the way of the sages in Japan and were anything but blind to the history and social conditions of the Japan in which they lived.30 How much Gahô knew of Genji is unclear, but, according to his autobiography, on his father’s instructions he studied Japanese as a boy under Matsunaga Teitoku; later he became an avid reader of Japanese “books” (sôshi 草子, a word that at the time connoted literary works, including monogatari). 31 Rejecting the tradition of secret transmissions in which the interpretation of texts had hitherto been cocooned, in 1603, well before Gahô’s birth, Teitoku had taken part with Razan and a few others in a series of public readings and lectures on Taiheiki 太平記, Rongo shitchû 論語集注, Tsurezuregusa, and Hyakunin isshu 百人一首.32 He also, as noted above, contributed to several editions of Genji by writing prefaces or undertaking editorial work. In the light of the association with Teitoku, then, the sôshi Gahô enjoyed reading likely included Genji and other texts that he forebore to recommend in his bibliography. Gahô wrote extensively on Japanese history, and his published works show him to have been thoroughly conversant with the fictional literature of the Heian period.33 And if knowledge of Genji seems unlikely in the Hayashi father and son, let us remember that even Ogyû Sorai 荻生徂徠 (1666–1728), notorious for his sinophilia and supposed disdain for things Japanese, knew Genji well.34 28

The letters are cited in Odaka 1964, pp. 230–33, from Razan-sensei besshû 羅山先生別集, an unpublished manuscript in the Naikaku Bunko 内閣文庫. On Jôa, see Odaka 1964, pp. 204–37. 29 See the bibliography of Razan’s writings compiled by Gahô in 1659 and included in the separately paginated supplement to Hayashi 1930b, pp. 64–65. As James McMullen points out in McMullen 1999, p. 59, n. 213, some of Razan’s comments on Genji are also preserved in an anonymous work by a contemporary entitled Zechishô 是知抄. This work does not appear to be in the public domain, but extracts from it are cited in Shigematsu 1961, pp. 273–74. 30 I borrow the term “domesticate” in this context from the subtle examination of this problem in Nakai 1980, p. 159. 31 Gahô’s autobiographical account, Jijo ryakufu 自叙略譜, is contained in the supplement to the voluminous collection of his writings, Hayashi 1689, pp. 2a–2b. Hayashi 1997, which is a partial facsimile of this work, does not include the supplement. 32 See Odaka 1953, pp. 124ff; and Odaka 1996, vol. 7, pp. 240–45. 33 Odaka has complained (Odaka 1964, p. 169) of the inadequate biographical and bibliographical study of Razan; this remains the case today, but Gahô is totally neglected. Gahô published Nihon ôdai ichiran 日本王代一覧 (1663 and numerous later editions) and played a major part in the compilation of the official kanbun history of Japan sponsored by the bakufu, Honchô tsugan 本朝通鑑. For a brief biography, see the introduction to the partial facsimile edition of Gahô-sensei Rin-gakushi zenshû 鵞峰先生林学士全集, in Hayashi 1997, vol. 12, pp. 2–17. 34 This is obvious from his Narubeshi 南留別志; see Ogyû 1973–1978, vol. 5, pp. 643, 652, 661. See also Iwahashi 1934, pp. 432–33.


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Yet this is to say nothing of how these sinologists read their Genji. It has been suggested that their Neo-Confucian allegiances left Razan and his contemporaries with too utilitarian, too moralistic a view of fictional literature to be able to see it as anything but salacious, or to be able to appreciate its literary qualities; that, like the “blind in front of a famous painting,” they treated the Japanese classics as historical sources and little more.35 While there is too little evidence to reach a confident judgment on this question, it seems fair to say that, for Razan, Genji was not so much a literary treasure as a window onto a degenerate past. It also remains true, however, that, as seen above, he considered it a text that could be studied without disgrace by an adult male and a scholar. Declining to recommend such works as Genji, Razan and Gahô passed over them in silence in the guidance they offered to young readers. Their epigones, however, were too anxious about the accessibility of Genji and Ise monogatari , especially to young women, to content themselves with discretion, and they gave sometimes vigorous expression to their views. In the second half of the seventeenth century the concerns about Genji voiced discreetly or in private by Razan thus became more specific and more public as the next generation of sinologists turned to print. 36 The earliest explicit expression in print of disquiet about Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari in the hands of women that has so far come to light dates from 1653. It appears in the writings of Nagata Zensai 永田善斎 (1597–1664), a former pupil of Hayashi Razan who later became a domain scholar in Wakayama on Razan’s recommendation: In this country, from the highest in the land down to officials, samurai, merchants, and farmers, all educate their daughters with Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari. This is doubtless because they want to have them compose waka. What possible benefit can there be in women composing waka? People simply want to accustom women to lewd behavior.37

While Zensai suggested that his contemporaries widely considered Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari suitable books to place in the hands of young women even of the agricultural and mercantile classes, we cannot give much credence to this perception of universal female literacy and should probably put it down to rhetorical exaggeration. More notable are his objections to what he saw as the purpose of reading these works, namely facility in waka composition. Presumably reflecting his distaste for literature concerning the relations between men and women, Zensai equated this literary consumption and creativity with 35

Odaka 1964, pp. 159–61, 171–72 (quotation from p. 161). This topic has been touched upon in Nakamura 1975, pp. 21–28; in Markus 1982, pp. 177–79; and in McMullen 1999, pp. 59–60. From all of these I have learned much, but my focus is different. 37 Nakamura 1975, pp. 26–27. The quotation comes from vol. 1 of Kaiyo zatsuroku 膾余雑録, which has never been reprinted; block-printed editions dated 1653 survive in Kyoto University Library, the Mitsui Bunko at the University of California at Berkeley, and other libraries. 36

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lewdness. It is worth recalling in this connection that Hayashi Gahô had excluded waka poetry from his guide to reading; for some, waka poetry was morally suspect territory. Having established what, in his view, women should not be reading, in the remainder of the passage Zensai proposed that daughters be brought up instead on such early Chinese texts as the Classic of Filial Piety ( Xiao jing 孝経) and Biographies of Notable Women ( Lie nü zhuan 列女伝), stipulating that kana glosses should be added for those who could not read the Chinese.38 What he does not say here is as important as what he does say: he is not dismissive of women as readers per se, he does not object to the prospect of women reading Chinese, and he does not object to men reading Genji.39 Nagata Zensai was not a lone voice, and it is worth examining with some care the later seventeenth-century discourse on Genji and Ise as reading matter. In 1659, a few years after Nagata published his views, Yamazaki Ansai 山崎闇斎 (1618–1682), one of the most prominent thinkers of his time, wrote a primer for young girls and did so precisely because he wished to supply them with alternative reading matter in language they could understand, that is, in Japanese rather than kanbun. According to his preface to this work, Yamato shôgaku 大和小学, he had been in Edo the previous year, and when he had expostulated against the use of Genji and similar texts, someone had suggested that he put the Confucian primer Xiao xue 小学 into kana so that women could read it. In the preface he firmly rejected Buddhist and Confucian defenses of Genji: The fact that people today will frivolously walk down a road from which there is no return [i.e., go astray morally] is due to the existence of The Tale of Genji and The Tales of Ise. It is said that The Tale of Genji was written as an admonishment for men and women. It is extremely doubtful, however, that such frivolity could serve to admonish anyone. Kiyohara no Nobukata asserted that although The Tales of Ise deals with matters of lust, it also includes depictions of ritual decorum and humaneness and that Confucius and Mencius would have acted in the same way as Narihira did if they had been in his position. It is not worth discussing the merits or failings of such falsehoods!40

38

According to seventeenth-century publishers’ catalogues, Zensai himself produced a Japanese version of Lie nü zhuan, Honchô retsujoden 本朝烈女伝, but this is probably an error for the version by Kurosawa Hirotada 黒沢弘忠 (1622–1678), which was published in 1668 and carried a postface by Nagata dated 1657. Shorin shuppan vol. 1, pp. 100, 145, 200, 214, 301. 39 We might note that none of the figures considered here opposed women reading or thought to suggest that it would be better if women were kept illiterate or at basic levels of literacy. Much later, Matsudaira Sadanobu 松平定信 (1758–1829) did express the view that illiteracy was to be preferred in women, and he considered intelligence in a woman a source of trouble, but even he conceded that they might read books in kana. See Shûshinroku 修心録, in Matsudaira 1893, vol. 1, p. 37; cited in Umehara 1988, p. 252. 40 Nihon kyôiku bunko, Kyôkashohen 教科書篇, p. 25; translated by Lawrence Marceau in Shirane 2002, pp. 360–62. In his discussion of Yamato shôgaku, Herman Ooms claims that Ansai wrote this work for Inoue Masatoshi 井上正利, daimyo of Kasama 笠間, but offers no evidence for this view. Ooms 1985, pp. 217–19. Kiyohara no Nobukata 清原宣賢 (1475–1550) was a teacher of sinology to court aristocrats and Buddhist clergy.


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Ansai’s follower, Asami Keisai 浅見絅斎 (1652–1711), made his master’s distaste more general in a lecture on poetic morality delivered in 1706: Love poems cause harm to the teachings for husbands and wives; Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari are in the same tradition and are at the forefront of licentious teaching; it is not appropriate to justify handling them by claiming that they have been passed down as valuable works for poets.

As Keisai’s subsequent remarks show, his principal concern, too, was with “young children and girls” and how they were to be encouraged to derive moral lessons from classical poetry. 41 A few years earlier a book published in 1690 advised pregnant women on their reading, evidently with Yamazaki Ansai’s views in mind: When reading be sure to choose books that are not lubricious either in text or illustration. Works like Yamato shôgaku and Kagamigusa 鏡草 are appropriate, but Genji monogatari and the like should not be read under any circumstances.42

Noguchi Takehiko 野口武彦 considers, probably rightly, that this advice was intended for women in general, not solely pregnant women.43 And here, too, we find an effort not only to direct women away from Genji but also to suggest alternatives: the premise is that women want, and that it is appropriate for them, to read. In this case the texts recommended are Ansai’s Yamato shôgaku and Nakae Tôju’s 中江藤樹 Kagamigusa, a didactic work for women with extensive reference to Chinese history and legend, first published in 1647 and reprinted in 1669 and 1675.44 The most determined treatment of this topic is to be found in the teachings of Yamaga Sokô 山鹿素行 (1622–1685), a pupil of Hayashi Razan who later departed from the sinological orthodoxy of his day. The moral dangers of Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari were evidently a matter of some concern to him, for he referred to them a number of times in his discourses with his followers, which the latter edited between 1663 and 1665 and which circulated in manuscript until published in the 1940s. In a section devoted to the education of women, Sokô argued that while the values to be imparted to young women were the same as those directed at young men, the objective of instruction was different, namely to train women to be subservient wives. 45 He went on as follows: It is common in our country to give girls still being brought up in the recesses of the home Genji monogatari, Ise monogatari , and such like books, and to employ a woman teacher and have her explain the text to them. Girls then devote themselves to poetry composition, do painting and calligraphy, make artificial flowers, play the koto, and hold merry feasts. This is because people have lost 41

Satsuroku 剳録, in NST 31, p. 365. いなご草, in Nihon kyôiku bunko, Eisei oyobi yûgi hen 衛生及遊戯篇, p. 50.

42 Inagogusa 43 44 45

Noguchi 1995, p. 7. Nakae 1940, vol. 3, pp. 297–466. Yamaga 1940–1942, vol. 6, pp. 299–302.

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[understanding of] the instruction of girls. In my opinion, books like Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari pursue the emotional relationships of the sexes and principally concern the sensual; consequently, ethics are forgotten, and the essential relationships between lord and retainer, father and son, husband and wife fall into disarray.46

As James McMullen points out, in his youth Yamaga Sokô had evidently tried his hand at writing a commentary on Genji; but this was not simply a youthful indiscretion, for even in 1675 his personal library contained copies of Genji monogatari , Ise monogatari , and several commentaries on Genji.47 This was not a man, then, who utterly repudiated these texts, but rather one who thought them unsuitable reading matter for women. In this he shared much the same views that we have already seen to enjoy some currency among contemporary sinologists. One of the last major writers to inveigh against Genji and Ise in the context of the education of young women was the sinologist educator Kaibara Ekiken 貝原益軒 (1630–1714). In Wazoku dôjikun 和俗童子訓, published in 1710, he included a section on what young girls should be offered to read: One must be selective in what one allows young women to read. There is no harm in those books depicting the events of the past. Do not allow them to read kouta and jôruri books: they do not teach the true way of the sages and are tinged with frivolity. Moreover, one should not readily allow them to read such books as Ise monogatari , Genji monogatari, and their ilk, which, although possessed of a literary elegance, depict licentious behavior.48

Several writers apart from Nagata Zensai recommended introducing women to sinological works as a positive alternative to pieces such as Genji. In comments published posthumously in 1715, Fujii Ransai 藤井懶斎 (1618?–1705?), a follower of Yamazaki Ansai, allowed that few later female writers in Japan could compare with the Heian authors, but advised that for proper instruction women should turn to sinological texts: There have been no learned women in our country the equal of Ise [to whom Ise monogatari was attributed], Murasaki Shikibu 紫式部, Sei Shônagon 清少納言, Daini no Sanmi 大弐三位, and Akazome Emon. Their writings should be read carefully. Yet they do not know the learning of the sages: they are little more than latter-day equivalents of Cai Yan 蔡5 of the Han dynasty and her ilk. How could they possibly be free of error? To what, then, should women turn to for learning? First they should read such books as Warnings for Women ( Nüjie 女誡, Jp. Jokai) by Cao Taigu 曹大家.49

Nakayama Sanryû 中山三柳 (1614–1684), a doctor who attended Emperor GoMizunoo 後水尾, was more dubious than the others considered here about the 46

Yamaga 1940–1942, vol. 6, p. 301. McMullen 1999, p. 59; Yamaga 1940–1942, vol. 15, pp. 888–89. 48 Kaibara 1910–1911, vol. 3, p. 217; translation from Rowley 2000, p. 31. 49 Kansai hikki 閑際筆記, in Nihon zuihitsu taisei , 1st series, vol. 9, p. 171. Daini no Sanmi was a poet active in the eleventh century. Cai Yan was abducted and spent twelve years among Turkic 47


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wisdom of encouraging women to study. If they were to do so, he wrote in a piece published in 1670, they should be directed to sinological works rather than Japanese fictional literature and poetry: Perhaps because it is not a good thing to encourage women to study, when they do, their hearts become proud, they look down on their husbands and they fall away from righteousness. Girls hereabouts [sc. Kyoto?] study by reading unworthy books such as the tales of Genji, Sagoromo 狭衣, Ise, and so on. Consequently the way of the Buddhist prelates is in ruins and the girls immerse themselves solely in vice. Ono no Komachi 小野小町, Sei Shônagon, Murasaki Shikibu, and Izumi Shikibu 和泉式部 were all accomplished writers and skilled in waka composition, and it was probably for that reason that they were all strumpets. It must be realized that in another country [sc. China], too, women skilled in the poetic arts all became strumpets. A woman follows her husband, so even if she is learned it is of no benefit. . . . If it is the will of a girl’s parents to encourage her in learning, it would be good for her to acquaint herself with Zhu Xi’s [edition of] Xiao xue or Biographies of Notable Women .50

Another of this persuasion was Nagaoka Itan 長岡意丹 (seventeenth century, dates unknown), who replaced his wife’s copies of Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari with Chinese didactic works for women.51 Nakamura Tekisai 中村 K斎 (1629–1702), a famous sinologist and encyclopedist, considered it valuable for girls to be taught to read not only Biographies of Notable Women but also canonical Chinese texts such as the Analects, Classic of Filial Piety , and so on, in order to acquire the womanly virtues, provided that, from the age of eight, they were taught at home either by their mothers or by hired women tutors. 52 (Both Tekisai’s recommendations and the critical remarks voiced by Yamaga Sokô above testify to the existence of female home tutors at this time.) Sinological education for girls did not have a long history, and what persuaded these seventeenth-century men to encourage an incursion into what had been marked as an exclusively male field of scholarship was clearly their moral objections to the Japanese classics and the need to find advisable alternatives. What we see in these writers, then, is learning interpreted solely in sinological terms and women being advised to read Chinese literature for women. We find grudging admiration for the great women writers of the distant past, but also criticism of the perceived lewdness of their writings, their supposed ignorance of Chinese canons of taste and decorum, and even their propensity to write waka, peoples; she left a collection of poems and other writings. Nüjie is a collection of precepts for women written in the Later Han dynasty by Cao Taigu. 50 From Daigo zuihitsu 醍醐随筆, in Zoku Nihon zuihitsu taisei , vol. 10, p. 55; partially cited in Nakamura 1975, pp. 27–28. 51 Text cited in Nakamura 1975, p. 27, from Nagaoka Kyôsai’s 長岡恭斎 Bibôroku 備忘録, which I have been unable to locate. 52 Himekagami 比売鑑, in Kinsei joshi kyôiku shisô , vol. 2, p. 23. Himekagami was first published in two parts in 1709 and 1712, but Tekisai’s preface bears the date 1661, and this work was obviously written before his death in 1702. For a discussion of this and later texts bearing on the question of reading in women’s education, see Nakaizumi 1966, ch. 9.

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a genre that some sinologists obviously found suspect. The Heian writers’ gender likewise turns out to be a serious handicap, for, like Hayashi Razan, these sinologists considered that monogatari had moral shortcomings precisely because they were written by “women and girls.” Even Keichû 契沖 (1640–1701), whose commitment to the Japanese classics is obvious from the numerous commentaries he devoted to them, held that Murasaki may have unintentionally led readers astray for, “having the body of a woman,” she had written extensively of kôshoku 好色 (lewdness, the erotic).53 The observations quoted above have sometimes been taken to express moral objections tout court to Genji and Ise monogatari . In fact, as we have seen, the sinological writers themselves read these works. They no more condemned those texts in toto than did Sarah Ellis condemn Shakespeare when she wrote in 1845 that “It is scarcely possible to imagine a prudent and judicious mother allowing the unrestrained and private reading of Shakespeare amongst her children.” 54 The issue was the supposed effect of these works on young minds, in the Japanese case, young female minds. In addition to the observations of the sinologists, booksellers’ catalogues offer valuable evidence of what, if Genji was not considered appropriate, might have passed muster as suitable reading matter for women in the seventeenth century. The classified catalogue of 1670 introduced a new category into its scheme of classification, that of “women’s books” ( josho/nyosho 女書), a development that bespeaks professional recognition of a new class of reader, if not of purchaser, and identification of certain types of book as appropriate for women. 55 What were these “women’s books,” which almost without exception carried the word “woman” at the head of the title? They consisted initially of Chinese books for women such as Four Books for Women, Japanese books of etiquette or morals, and letter-writing manuals; later editions of the booksellers’ catalogues added other works of this sort. 56 The category of “women’s books” did not include books of court poetry or texts of Genji and Ise, which were to be found in quite a separate section devoted to classical literature.57 Clearly, there was some congruence between what the booksellers conceived of as women’s books and what Yamaga Sokô and the others thought women should be reading. And this remained for some time the recommendation for respectable reading: in a collection of moralistic stories published in 1752, a farmer was advised to offer his daughters Onna daigaku 女大学 (the archetype of didactic works for women, 53

In his commentary on Genji, Genchû shûi 源註拾遺; Keichû 1926, vol. 6, p. 393. Ellis, The Young Ladies Reader (1845), cited in Flint 1993, p. 83. 55 Shorin shuppan, vol. 1, p. 100. 56 I consider here only the editions of 1670, 1671, 1675, 1685, and 1699; Shorin shuppan, vol. 1, pp. 100, 145, 200–201, 214; vol. 2, p. 40. For the category “women’s books” in later editions, see vol. 3, pp. 139, 178, 216. 57 Shorin shuppan, vol. 1, pp. 94–95. This does not signify, of course, that women read only the books listed in the catalogues under the new rubric of “women’s books.” Tiziana Plebani makes a similar point in Plebani 2001, pp. 37–40, demonstrating that in sixteenth-century Italy the reading of women went beyond the limited range of books, mostly books of hours, included in the category “libri da donna” used by copyists and booksellers. 54


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attributed to Kaibara Ekiken), Yamato shôgaku, and a moralistic book for women by Kumazawa Banzan 熊沢蕃山 (1619–1691) entitled Joshikun 女子訓; when they were a little older, they could read Biographies of Notable Women and Four Books for Women .58 In the second half of the seventeenth century, then, the classic works of Japanese fiction written by women, Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari in particular, were deemed unsuitable reading matter for young women by many male scholars, most of whom belonged to what we call the Confucian tradition. In the eighteenth century, the sinologists no longer dominated the debate over suitable readings for women as they once had; scholars from other traditions began to speak up, and many of them were less exercised by the problems with Genji and Ise than had been the seventeenth-century sinologists. 59 The notion that these particular Japanese classics were morally corrupting for young women nevertheless continued to feature from time to time in books on education and reading for women. The haikai poet Tanboku 潭北 (1677–1744), who traveled widely offering instruction to rustics, advised them, for instance, that Genji led to vice and that Yamato shôgaku and the Japanese version of Biographies of Notable Women made better reading.60 Ôe Genpo 大江玄圃 (1729–1794) included a section on reading in his Onna gakuhan 女学範 (1764) in which he quoted Yamazaki Ansai’s preface to Yamato shôgaku and suggested a range of suitably uplifting works of an instructional nature for women to read instead of Genji.61 Ise Sadatake 伊勢貞丈 (1717–1784), a historian of the samurai class and an acute observer of his time, described Genji and Ise as “lewd, salacious, improper and offensive” in their subject matter. Accusing Murasaki Shikibu of impropriety and immorality, he concluded: Our scholars of the poetic persuasion revere Genji monogatari as if it were holy writ or the pronouncements of a sage; in fact, it is a pernicious fiction. Since the novel was written by a woman, there is no point in condemning it. But Murasaki Shikibu was a woman of literary genius, and possessed intelligence enough to understand these things. So condemn it I do.62 58

Kyôkun zônagamochi 教訓雑長持, in NST 59, p. 359. A few sinologists, such as Muro Kyûsô 室鳩巣 (1658–1734) and Inoue Kinga 井上金峨 (1732–1784), continued to insist that both Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari were salacious. See Sundai zatsuwa 駿台雑話, in Nihon zuihitsu taisei , 3rd series, vol. 3, p. 667; and Byôkan chôgo 病間長語, in Onchi sôsho, vol. 11, p. 53 (separately paginated), respectively. 60 Minka dômôkai 民家童蒙解 (1736), in Tsûzoku keizai bunko, vol. 11, p. 213. 61 See Jogaku sôsho, vol. 2, pp. 4–7; or the facsimile in Kinsei joshi kyôiku shisô , vol. 3, pp. 59

413–21.

62 Ansai

zuihitsu 安斎随筆, in Kojitsu sôsho, vol. 8, p. 133. I quote from an unpublished translation by T. J. Harper of Yamazaki Yoshishige’s 山崎美成 Seji hyakudan, Nihon zuihitsu taisei,

1st series, vol. 9, pp. 441–42, in which Yamazaki cites Ise Sadatake. The same passage is cited by the pseudonymous Gankôdô Gûsai 含弘堂偶斎 in his Hyakusôro 百草露, which is of uncertain date; see Nihon zuihitsu taisei , 3rd series, vol. 6, pp. 87–88. I have so far failed to locate the original citation in Ise Sadatake’s writings, but both Yamazaki and Gankôdô quote the same text and refer to it as the work of Sadatake. In the same passage Sadatake also allows, however, that Genji and Ise were suitable for private reading, especially for the study of court poetry and history.

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Before bringing this section to a close, a word of caution is in order. A surprisingly large amount of the writings of seventeenth-century sinologists continues to be available only in manuscripts or block-printed editions. The points made here may need refinement or revision as more texts become accessible in modern printed form. At present, however, my examination of reprinted writings for passages critical of Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari has revealed only those quoted above. They are not numerous, extensive, or elaborate, and their authors do not refer to each other in open debate until the eighteenth century; the passages partake less of the character of a discourse than of Sartre’s notion of seriality. Might there have been a more extensive discourse that is not reflected in the sources that have come down to us, perhaps because it was transmitted orally or was taken so much for granted? This is certainly possible. The great calligrapher and arbiter of taste Honnami Kôetsu 本阿弥光悦 (1558–1637), for example, hints at a climate of broad moral condemnation: “Hayashi Dôshun (=Razan), who is now flourishing, reviles . . . Tsurezuregusa and Genji monogatari; he is merely imitating the leavings of Zhu Xi and to us he is absurd.” 63 Yet, such a climate of condemnation, if there was one, was not taken for granted by Yamaga Sokô or the others who put their views on paper. It should also be noted that no attempt was made to ban Genji monogatari or Ise monogatari on grounds of lewdness. Censorship was already on the point of being systematized, and there is evidence that an edict was issued in the Kanbun 寛文 era (1661–1673) banning books of waka poetry and kôshokubon 好色本 (erotica). 64 In 1687, the question was raised, “if kôshokubon are to be destroyed, should we also destroy Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari ?”65 Yet no cases are known in which works of Heian literature were actually suppressed, and the conclusion must be that the availability of Genji and Ise in print was at least tolerated. Criticisms of them, even when voiced vehemently, turn out to be not so much outright condemnations as reservations arising from the assumption of a female readership. Defending Genji

Resistance to the critical discourse outlined above took many forms and came from many quarters, and in a few cases it even anticipated the warnings in print. Some defenders of Genji and Ise reiterated earlier arguments in favor of these works. The anonymous author of Kiyomizu monogatari 清水物語 (1638), for instance, advised readers interested in waka composition to read Genji, indicating an instrumental, if not particularly novel, approach to the work that distanced itself from moral appraisal. 66 Ikkadô Jôa, mentioned above as Hayashi Razan’s 63

Masaki 1981, p. 69. Honnami is sometimes read Hon’ami. There is a passage in Kumazawa Banzan’s writings that similarly seems to be referring to contemporaries who found Genji morally repugnant tout court (see p. 166, below). 64 Tokugawa kinreikô 2953, vol. 5, pp. 255–56; see also Kornicki 1998, pp. 334–35. 65 See Kôshoku hajakenjô 好色破邪顕正 , in Kôshokumono sôshishû, p. 367. 66 Kanazôshi shûsei, vol. 22, p. 292.


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adversary in a dispute over Genji, argued on the other hand that “the reason [ Ise] monogatari was written largely with lewdness (kôshoku) on the surface was to draw people to the Way by means of what they find appealing.”67 This was perhaps the first expression in the Tokugawa period of the old “means to an end” argument, which acknowledged the “lewdness” but considered it merely the sugar on the pill. Ikkadô Setsurin 一華堂切臨 (1591–1662) took a similar position in a collection of notes on Genji published in 1650. He accepted that it contained a great deal of lewdness but held that so, too, did other books seeking to teach moral lessons; Genji, he asserted, was actually an epitome of moral teachings.68 Honnami Kôetsu put the matter more sharply, stating that it was “laughable that scholars continue to consider that the monogatari of Japan are conducive to vice and make depressing reading.”69 Honnami and Ikkadô did not take up specifically the question of suitability for women readers, but most others addressed precisely this issue. Take an anonymous defender writing in 1630: Recently a certain stubborn person has been speaking about Genji monogatari. He says, “Murasaki Shikibu is said to have written it to instruct people, but in her heart she is a slut. Parts of it are lewd ( kôshoku), and those who read it cannot but be damaged, so it should on no account be shown to girls.” This man is a fool who does not know the Way. . . . [Genji monogatari] contains the spirit of encouraging virtue and reproving vice (kanzen chôaku 勧善懲悪); on the surface it seems lewd, but actually it is fully in accord with the Way of benevolence, righteousness, and [the rest of] the Five Cardinal Virtues ( jingi gojô 仁義五常), revealing the good as good and the evil as evil.70

Those who edited texts or digests of Genji for solitary readers were, not unexpectedly, sensitive to the need to justify making it available to the public (including women as well as men) in printed form. Yamamoto Shunshô appended a postface to his first illustrated edition of Genji of 1654 in which he explained the illustrations by saying that they were to assist women and girls in their reading. He made use of both traditional defenses of the text: Genji was essential reading for poets, and while on the surface it might be lubricious in content, underneath it was morally instructive and beneficial. 71 Matsunaga Teitoku wrote in the same vein in his introductory remarks to his amplification of Bansui ichiro , the commentary on Genji, that the tale was an allegory offering instruction in the proper human relationships.72 67

Cited from an unidentified source in Odaka 1964, p. 235. Jôa was also the author of an unpublished commentary, Ise monogatari shinchû 伊勢物語新註, of which a solitary copy survives in Daitôkyû Kinen Bunko 大東急記念文庫 . 68 Gengi ben’inshô 源義弁引抄, in Hihyô shûsei, vol. 1, pp. 10–11. 69 Masaki 1981, p. 91. See also Matsuda 1963, p. 99. 70 Tsukinokarumoshû, in ZGR 33:1, pp. 86–87. On the dating of this work to 1630, see Shigematsu 1961, pp. 304–305. Could the reference to a “fool” be an oblique reference to Razan? 71 The postface to the 1659 edition of Jûni Genji sodekagami made similar point. Yoshida 1987, vol. 1, pp. 28–32, 293–98. 72 Ii 1988–1992, vol. 1, p. 6.

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The author of the extensively annotated Shusho Genji monogatari (1673) used similar arguments to justify presenting it to the public. The introductory material in this edition borrows extensively from an earlier commentary, Myôjôshô 明星抄, written by Sanjônishi Kin’eda 三条西公条 (1487–1563) and first printed in 1657. Kin’eda had defended Genji as only superficially lewd and in reality concerned to foster virtue. Shusho Genji monogatari cited both this passage and another that depicted Genji as a bridge to virtues hallowed in the Confucian tradition as well as to Buddhist enlightenment: The gist of part of this tale is on the surface formed of lewdness and voluptuousness (kôshoku yôen 好色妖艶), but the author’s intention is to lead people on the path of Benevolence and Righteousness and the Five Cardinal Virtues, and ultimately to awaken them to the truths of the Middle Way and the True State of Affairs (chûdô jissô 中道実相).73

Another who pursued arguments of this sort was Kitamura Kigin, the author of the celebrated Kogetsushô. Kigin was cautious in his approach to Genji. His moral concern about women’s reading is evident from the fact that in 1655 he had published Kana retsujoden 仮名列女伝, a Japanese-language adaptation of the Ming edition of Biographies of Notable Women . The detractors of Genji, it will be recalled, had recommended the Chinese original as a suitable alternative, and in 1653–1654 it had just been reprinted in Japan. In his postface to his reworking of this edition Kigin in effect aligned himself with Nagata Zensai’s call two years earlier for a kana version of Biographies of Notable Women for women to read: [ Biographies of Notable Women ] first unfolds various examples of benevolence, wisdom, chastity, and morality and finally tells of some concubines; the intention is to encourage good and reprove evil, and it makes readers respect virtue and take care over their behavior. In our country, the authors of Ise monogatari , Yamato monogatari 大和物語, Genji monogatari, and Sagoromo monogatari are supposed to have had precisely the same intention. However, these works are written in ancient language, which for the uninitiated is difficult to understand. The original Biographies of Notable Women, on the other hand, is written in Chinese, so the likes of young girls cannot decipher it.

Kigin’s Japanese version of Biographies of Notable Women seems to have enjoyed some popularity, for it was reprinted in 1665, 1730, and the 1750s, but what concerns us here is his equivocation about the Japanese classics he mentions.74 He does not share Nagata Zensai’s disdain, but he does not mount an explicit defense, either. How, then, did Kigin present Kogetsushô, his vast commentary on Genji, to the public? In his introduction he cited extensively, and with evident approval, 73

Arikawa 1927–1928, vol. 1, pp. 11–12. On Myôjôshô, see Ii 2001, pp. 452–58. For Shusho Genji monogatari’s use of these points, see Katagiri 1980, pp. 36–37, 126, 133. 74 The complete text is contained in vol. 17 of Kanazôshi shûsei; see p. 266 for Kigin’s postface, and pp. 276–78 for the bibliographic history.


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from Sanjônishi Kin’eda’s Myôjôshô, including the passage quoted by the compiler of Shusho Genji monogatari .75 At the head of his notes to readers ( hanrei 凡例) at the beginning of Kogetsushô, Kigin also cited, again without comment, the following passage from Môshinshô 孟津抄, a commentary by Kujô Tanemichi 九条稙通 (1507–1594) completed in 1575: When you read Genji you must do so with the correct state of mind and a sense of the evanescence of things. Without the correct state of mind you will incline foolishly towards lewdness ( kôshoku). Therefore you must read Genji with care.76

Whatever his private feelings on the matter may have been, Kigin, therefore, was aware of the need to tread a careful path in public. He cited various morally favorable appraisals of Genji, but he did not go so far as to defend it explicitly. Yet by making Genji approachable without a teacher, Kogetsushô contributed to its burgeoning commercial readership and its accessibility to women. Other commentators spoke out more positively in favor of Genji. Genji gaiden 源氏外伝, Kumazawa Banzan’s commentary on Genji, on which he embarked in 1673, the year Kogetsushô was published,77 opens with the statement: A certain woman said, “. . . The Genji monogatari depicts the most indecent doings. But it was written by such a brilliant woman, and in such lovely language, and moreover it appeals to a woman’s heart, and there are so many things to be learnt from reading it that—well, it seems to me that in spite of the sort of book it is, it could not but be edifying for an ignorant woman.”78

In view of the anxieties we have already examined, it is unlikely to be by peradventure that Banzan’s opening words alluded to the issue of women’s reading. He was surely addressing himself to the critics. He went on to express general agreement with the views he attributed to “a certain woman,” but disputed the premise that Genji was indecent. As Noguchi Takehiko has argued, these opening words reveal one side of Banzan’s enterprise to be the instruction of women.79 This was a matter in which Banzan took serious interest. Like his teacher, Nakae Tôju, Banzan, as noted above, wrote a book of moral precepts for women, Joshikun (1691). Of course, he did not repine against the patriarchal society to which he belonged, but McMullen notes that he looked favorably on the wives of some of his followers who studied the Confucian canon and considers that his views were more “liberal and compassionate” than those of many of his contemporaries. McMullen further points out that Banzan considered 75

The text quoted by Kigin slightly diverges from that of the 1657 edition of Myôjôshô; see Nakano 1989–1990, vol. 5, pp. 16–18. 76 Arikawa 1927–1928, vol. 1, p. 32. 77 As James McMullen has established, Genji gaiden was in fact a colloborative venture undertaken by Banzan and Nakanoin Michishige 中院通茂; see McMullen 1991 and 1999. 78 Banzan zenshû, vol. 2, p. 419; translation from Harper 1971, p. 84. 79 Noguchi 1995, pp. 226–27.

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Murasaki to have written Genji for the instruction of women and that he regarded Lady Akashi as a “mirror for women.” 80 To be sure, as McMullen puts it, “[t]hroughout his long involvement with the Genji, Banzan was conscious that he pleaded a difficult cause.” This was on account both of its status as a work of fiction and of its focus on sexual relationships. But he never sought to expurgate the text. 81 How, then, did he deal with its supposed indecency? As in the opening passage of Genji gaiden, he resorted to the old line of argument about the sugar to coat the pill, but at a more subtle level he also drew an analogy with the supposedly lubricious passages in the Book of Odes : It is my belief that the prevailing opinion held by scholars of the Tale of Genji as a licentious, corrupting, and dirty book stems from their failure to arrive at the inner significance of the Odes as a means for understanding the correctness or incorrectness of human attitudes.82

Arguing that others had been influenced by certain passages into misreading both the Book of Odes and Genji, Banzan resisted the opinions of his contemporaries and in doing so made it defensible for women to read Genji. Somewhat more explicit on the connection between the moral value of Genji and female readership was Andô Tameakira 安藤為章 (1659–1716) in his study of Genji published in 1703 under the title Shika shichiron 紫家七論. Genji monogatari portrays human feelings and social conventions without pass-

ing judgment on such matters. . . . Readers are left to draw moral lessons from the story on their own. While the novel’s greater purpose is to provide instruction for women, it also contains numerous lessons for men. . . . In the way that it portrays the lives of people as they existed in this world, Genji monogatari encourages good and punishes evil. Those who fail to appreciate the author’s intention as such—instead calling the novel a guide to indecent behavior—are not even worthy of contempt.83

The vigor of Tameakira’s language suggests that the advantage in the debate was shifting to the defenders. The moral issue, particularly as it related to women, was nevertheless still at the forefront and determining the discourse. For a different level of defense, one less dependent on a moral interpretation of literature, we have to await the contribution later in the eighteenth century of Motoori Norinaga 本居宣長 (1730–1801), who explicitly rejected the moralism in the approaches of both Banzan and Tameakira. Reading and Genji

What were the practices of women readers themselves regarding Genji and Ise? In addition to the textual sources there is a considerable body of visual evidence, 80 81 82 83

McMullen 1999, pp. 364–66, 372–73, 381. McMullen 1999, pp. 308–309. Translated in McMullen 1999, pp. 322–23, from Banzan zenshû, vol. 2, p. 369. NST 39, pp. 431–33; translated by Patrick Caddeau, in Shirane 2002, pp. 361–62.


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and although often chimerical or ambiguous, it has, I would argue, some valuable contributions to make. Women in the Tokugawa period of whom we have record made no attempt to conceal their reading of Genji and in some cases implicitly rejected the arguments of the detractors. Take the case of Nonaka En 野中婉 (1660–1725), the daughter of a senior retainer of the daimyo of Tosa. She practiced medicine in a village now subsumed by the city of Kôchi and wrote a guide to behavior for a woman acquaintance who was about to marry. In it she lamented that young women paid less attention to the books that could teach them valuable moral lessons than to hairstyles and fashion. Chinese models of womanhood might be unattractive, she acknowledged, presumably referring to the likes of Biographies of Notable Women , and in their place she recommended the “gentle Japanese ways” found in Tsurezuregusa and Genji. En expressed concern that some women misused poetry anthologies as a means of matchmaking, but she indubitably considered Genji more of a help than a hindrance to women.84 Direct testimony of women readers in the Edo period is rare, but there is sufficient evidence to show that En was far from an isolated example. Ôgimachi Machiko 正親町町子 (d. 1724), consort of the senior shogunal retainer Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu 柳沢吉保, and Kanzawa Tami 神沢民, daughter of an official in Kyoto, both read Genji without apparently feeling any need for deception.85 The same was true of Inoue Tsû 井上通 (1660–1738), daughter of a Marugame 丸亀 domain samurai, who read not only Ise monogatari and Genji in the Kogetsushô edition but also the texts for women recommended by the sinologists. She likewise composed poetry in both Chinese and Japanese and is said to have written an account of secrets relating to Genji that she had heard.86 Further evidence comes from Genji binkagami 源氏鬢鏡 (1660), a condensed version of the tale that included an illustration and a haiku on each of the fifty-four chapters. Among the haiku were ones by Matsunaga Teitoku, Nonoguchi Ryûho, and Kitamura Kigin, all deeply implicated in the popularization of Genji, and by three women: Chô, the daughter of a Mr. Hayashi 林氏息女長 of Osaka, the wife of one Mitsusada 実貞 of Ise Yamada, and Myôsen 妙仙, the wife of Kaedei Ryôtoku 鶏冠井令徳 (1589–1679), an associate of Teitoku (a number of Myôsen’s verses were published in her lifetime). The anonymous compiler of Genji binkagami noted that while Genji was the “foremost treasure of our nation,” there was a danger of being led astray if one read it carelessly and misunderstood Murasaki’s purpose. The inclusion of verses by three women, who can hardly have written them without some familiarity with Genji, testifies both that women were reading the tale and that the compiler assumed at least some women could be trusted to do so with appropriate care.87 84 85

Oboroyonotsuki 朧夜の月, in Nihon kyôikushi shiryô, vol. 5, pp. 699–701.

See the discussion and translations in Rowley 2000, pp. 27–30. According to the biography appended to Inoue Tsûjo zenshû , pp. 234–35, 245. See also Chikaishi 1973. On Inoue’s Gengo hiketsu kikigaki 源語秘決聞書, see Joshi Gakushûin 1939, p. 139. 87 For the text of Genji binkagami, see Teimon, vol. 1, pp. 484–503; the compiler’s comments 86

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Similar examples can be found right up to the end of the Tokugawa period. Tadano Makuzu 只野真葛 (1763–1825) considered, for example, that “it was undoubtedly because I had read The Tale of Ise as a child and had learned to write in that manner that my piece [passed muster].”88 Matsuo Taseko 松尾多勢子 (1811–1894) may have been a devotee of the ideas of Hirata Atsutane, whose moral disdain for Genji was vehement, but she bought a copy of Kigin’s Kogetsushô and evidently read both this (or another text of Genji) and Ise monogatari.89 And Yoshida Ito 吉田いと (b. 1824), who went up to Edo and boarded with the Kokugaku scholar Tachibana no Moribe 橘守部, studied Genji and the Man’yôshû with his son.90 Finally, not only did successive shogun from Ieyasu onwards hear lectures on Genji, but they sometimes did so in the presence of women, and the presents given to the shogun’s daughter on her marriage in 1685 included copies of Genji, Ise monogatari, and the first eight imperially commissioned anthologies of poetry. 91 Women readers of Genji and Ise monogatari also figure in fiction and visual representations. The heroine of Jûnidan sôshi 十二段さうし, published during the 1660s, reads not only Genji and Ise monogatari but also Sagoromo monogatari , the Kokinshû, and the Man’yôshû, not to mention various Chinese texts.92 A few years later Ihara Saikaku 井原西鶴 gave a detailed description of the extravagant household of a merchant’s wife, whose “year-long work is to divert herself idly with Genji monogatari to hand.”93 A novel by Ishikawa Tomonobu 石川流宣 (ca. 1661–ca. 1721) published in 1686 portrays a thirteen-year-old girl who “spends all her time in writing practice and absorbed in Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari.” Her brother is in low spirits, and she concludes that, “judging by the sôshi that have been passed down from ancient times,” he must be suffering from lovesickness.94 Contemporary artists similarly depicted both in prints and in paintings a variety of female reading practices. As early as 1658 a didactic book for women showed a woman reading with piles of books around her, thus presenting a message about the desirability of reading. 95 Hishikawa Moronobu 菱川師宣, who played an important part in the vulgarization of Genji and Ise, produced many such representations of women reading, some of which explicitly indicate the texts to be Genji and Ise monogatari (see figures 1 and 2). An illustration in his may be found in the preface (p. 485) and postface (p. 501); the reference to the “foremost treasure of our nation” comes from the writings of Ichijô Kaneyoshi 一条兼良. On Myôsen, see also Odaka 1964, p. 459. 88 Goodwin, Gramlich-Oka et al. 2001, pp. 180. 89 Walthall 1998, pp. 26, 35–36. 90 Takai 1991, pp. 49–51. 91 Tokugawa jikki, vol. 38, pp. 343–44, 672, 677; vol. 39, pp. 59, 64, 69; vol. 41, p. 570; vol. 42, p. 538; vol. 43, p. 739. 92 See Mori 1962, p. 274. 93 Saikaku oridome 西鶴織留, in Saikaku zenshû, vol. 7, p. 323. 94 Kôshoku Edo murasaki 好色江戸紫, in Yoshida 1995, vol. 1, pp. 151–54. 95 See illustration in the 1658 edition of Jokunshô, in Nihon hanga bijutsu zenshû, vol. 2, p. 81.


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Figure 1. Scene from Hishikawa Moronobu’s Wakoku hyakujo 和国百女, published in 1695. Nihon fûzoku zueshû , pp. 12–13. Courtesy of Nihon Tosho Sentâ 日本図書センター. The text in the column above reads as follows: とのさま他こく／あそばされて御／るすのうちさミし／さのまま御なぐさ／みのためにとて古／今集万葉いせもの／がたりげんじさ衣／えいぐはものがたり／もじほくさかず／あるさうしをミづ／からよませられし事ほいなれつれ／々々ぐさなどには／かのよしだのけんかう／ほうしのふミがら／をおもしろく作りをきし／事なとを聞くに／つけても女ハかミ／のめでたからんこそ／とハあり／またいせ／ものがたりにはなりひらの事を／はじめおハり／かきしるせり／かりそめ／のたはむれ／あそび／にも／さうしをよみてなくさむこそよしといへり

This may be translated as: While their lord is away in another province, for their amusement in their loneliness during his absence, they enjoy themselves by reading all sorts of books, like Kokinshû, Man’yôshû, Ise monogatari, Genji monogatari, Sagoromo monogatari, Eiga monogatari , and Moshiogusa [probably referring to the renga manual compiled by Sôseki 宗磧, which was printed for the first time around the 1630s]. Hearing that the famous Yoshida Kenkô wrote interestingly in his Tsurezuregusa, the women consider it a divine blessing. Again, Ise monogatari tells all about Narihira. It is good, they say, to amuse oneself reading these books even to divert oneself for a while.

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Figure 2. Scene from Moronobu’s Imayô makura byôbu 今様枕屏風 (early 1680s). The text above sets the scene: a young samurai, identifiable by his sword, is visiting a woman (not a courtesan); she is reading Ise monogatari and is impressed by the sex-appeal of Narihira, the hero. Kikan ukiyo-e 62 (1975), p. 89; for the text, see Kikan ukiyo-e 63 (1975), p. 144. Courtesy of Gabundô 画文堂. Uchiwa ezukushi 団扇絵つくし (1684) likewise shows three women sitting or

sprawled on the floor, each reading a book, with an explanatory text above: Oh, the blessings of this benevolent age of peace! Those who have lived long find pleasure in literature and peep day and night at the volumes of Nihon shoki 日本書紀 or Lao zi 老子. Women, too, thinking this splendid, meet up and from dawn until dusk amuse themselves reading the poems of the Kokinshû and Man’yôshû, Genji monogatari or Ise monogatari .96 96

Tenri 1983, p. 261. Other depictions by Moronobu of women reading are included in Chiba 2000, but an examination of these and other representations of women reading will have to await another opportunity.


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Another work illustrated by Moronobu, Genji yamato ekagami 源氏大和絵鑑 (1685), would seem to have been deliberately targeted at a female audience. This work devotes one page to each chapter of Genji with an illustration in a roundel and above it the name of the book and brief textual comment or quotation. 97 Moronobu explained in his preface that he was dissatisfied with existing Genji illustrations because they failed to indicate precisely what scenes were being represented; his objective, therefore, was to provide proper captions to his visualizations so that they could serve as ehon 絵本 or as nagusami 慰み (amusement). The term nagusami is more often than not associated with female rather than male reading, and it is unlikely to be a coincidence that the copy of this work in the British Library bears an inscription identifying it as the property of a woman.98 Related to the image of women as readers is that of them as writers. For the frontispiece to Ise monogatari hirakotoba 伊勢物語ひら言葉 (1678), Moronobu depicted Lady Ise, the putative author of Ise monogatari , in the act of composition.99 The primary visualization of female authorship in the Edo period was, however, the figure of Murasaki at her desk writing Genji. The legend that places Murasaki in Ishiyamadera 石山寺 near Lake Biwa when she began writing Genji was in circulation from the late Heian period, and although little credence can be attached to it, the frontispiece to most illustrated editions of Genji portrayed precisely this scene, a solitary woman engaged in writing with the lake stretching out in front of her. Similar scenes were featured in many books for women, too (see figure 3). 100 These depictions did more than merely illustrate the scene: they also presented Murasaki with the paraphernalia of the scholar, that is, with a mass of books within arm’s reach. In some cases these were shown as scrolls but usually they were anachronistically given the form of books in the Edo period, thus locating the image of the learned woman in a contemporary setting. Such images provided the female counterpart to the topos of the solitary male scholar as depicted, for example, in illustrated versions of Tsurezuregusa. In this way, Murasaki Shikibu in the act of writing represented not a profligate woman writing a lubricious tale, but a woman with the accoutrements of scholarship in a solitary meditative setting; the image undermined the connection between writing women and frivolity or lewdness made by Hayashi Razan and others after 97

British Library, 16055.cc.5; Gardner 1993, pp. 312–13; Matsudaira 1988, pp. 89–91. The inscription, found in both volumes, reads: “owner, of the Iinuma family, woman” ( 持主／飯沼氏／女). It is not clear, alas, who she was and when or where she lived. For the implications of an association of reading with amusement or pleasure, see below, pp. 180–81. 99 Imanishi 1991, pp. 2–3. Moronobu also did the illustrations for Ise monogatari eshô 伊勢物語絵抄. An undated copy of this book purchased in Japan by Engelbert Kaempfer shortly after its publication is held by the British Library, Or. 75. f. 14. Whether this Ise monogatari eshô is identical to the work of the same title published in 1679 held in the Ryerson Library of the Art Institute of Chicago and other locations has yet to be established. See Gardner 1993, pp. 323–24. 100 On the legend and its literary expression, see Teramoto 1984, pp. 589ff; for illustrations of the scene, see Yoshida 1987, vol. 3, pp. 5, 327; and ( E-iri) Meijo monogatari (絵入) 名女物語 (1670 and many later reprints), vol. 5, pp. 2b–3a, in Edo jidai josei bunko, vol. 81. For a painting of the scene by Miyagawa Chôshun 宮川長春 in Tokyo National Museum, see Calza 2004, p. 132. 98

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Figure 3. Murasaki Shikibu at her desk by Lake Biwa as shown in the 1659 edition of the digest Jûni Genji sodekagami. The books piled up on her right anachronistically take the form of Edo-period printed books. Yoshida 1987, vol. 3, p. 327.

him and accorded it serious status. 101 Intertwined with such images, however, were others of women reading Genji that complicated things. Appropriation and Recuperation

By the end of the seventeenth century, those women with the literacy and the means to have access to books had achieved a measure of autonomy as readers, notwithstanding the recommendations of male moralists. A corollary of print, the availability of books that women enjoyed also resulted in new contexts for the reading of Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari and new discourses in which to place them. Here I shall deal briefly with two such discourses, those of sex and of etiquette, for the former arguably impinged upon the anxieties of the sinologists while the latter furnished a new justification for women’s reading addressed to women readers themselves. By the late seventeenth century both Genji and Ise monogatari had long been subjected to erotic adaptation and parody. Numerous printed works borrowed 101

On this subject, see, by way of comparison, Kroll 1999, pp. 89–110.


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their inspiration from, and used the title of, Genji, starting around 1670 when an untitled erotic version of the tale was published; another example is Genji on’iroasobi 源氏御色遊 (1681), produced by the prominent illustrator Yoshida Hanbei 吉田半兵衛.102 Much the same was true of Ise monogatari , which inspired a number of erotic paintings and, in the year 1662 alone, three books connecting it with the world of the so-called pleasure quarters. 103 Twenty years later, when Saikaku’s hero Yonosuke 世之介 set sail on his ship for the fantasy island of women at the end of Kôshoku ichidai otoko 好色一代男 (1682), he took with him two hundred copies of Ise monogatari, two hundred makura-e 枕絵 (i.e., erotic pictures), and assorted aphrodisiacs and other equipment, making the connection with eroticism explicit. 104 Sexualization extended to images of reading, too. Many of the paintings and prints produced by Moronobu and his contemporaries, for instance, depict not “respectable” women but courtesans in the act of reading (see figure 4), and in many scenes the implied narrative is that reading gives way to sex, for in many a shunga scene books lie scattered about the floor. 105 Sometimes the woman portrayed reading is clearly stated not to be a courtesan, but is nevertheless shown in a situation of intimacy (see figure 2). Even the most sober didactic works were not immune to treatment of this sort. A particularly apposite example is an erotic parody of Onna daigaku . This inevitably anonymous and undated piece, entitled Onna dairaku 女大楽 (Great Pleasure for Women) and probably published in the 1720s, includes a scene in which a woman’s reading is interrupted by a man who is genitally stimulating her from the other side of the kotatsu. Here the very act of reading is invaded by the fantasies of the erotic tradition.106 Developments of this sort have suggested to Andrew Markus that by the Genroku period there was a dichotomy between courtly and amatory perceptions of Genji, that there was in some quarters a “desire to pursue the salacious side of the work, to see in it a kind of erotic casebook or vade mecum for the 102

Kikan ukiyo-e 39 (1969), p. 95; for a facsimile of another untitled erotic Genji parody, attributed by Richard Lane to Moronobu and dated around 1671, see 57 (1974), pp. 69–126; for Genji on’iroasobi, see Nakano 1997, p. 26. See also Screech 1999, pp. 243–45. A later example is ( Ukiyo Genji) Gojûyonjô 浮世源氏五十四情 , published probably in the early nineteenth century; the title, referring to fifty-four emotions, puns on the fifty-four chapters ( jô 帖) of Genji; for safety’s sake, the publisher made the external title of Gojûyonjô the more innocuous 五十四帖; the only copy

known to me is in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (Japonais 216). 103 Screech 1999, pp. 200–205; Bowring 1992, pp. 479–80. The three works are Okashi otoko をかし男, Yoshiwara Ise monogatari 吉原伊勢物語, and Yarô Ise monogatari 野郎伊勢物語 ; for this and other matters relating to Ise monogatari in the seventeenth century I am indebted to Mostow 2003. 104 Saikaku zenshû, vol. 1, p. 229. 105 Some of the many examples that could be given are reproduced in Kikan ukiyo-e 43 (1970), pp. 103, 119; 49 (1972), p. 59; 52 (1972), p. 13; 62 (1975), p. 90, etc. 106 The only copy of this work I know of is in the Uezu-ke 上江洲家 archives in the Kumejima Shizen Bunka Sentâ 久米島自然文化センター in Okinawa; the illustration referred to is on pp. 7b–8a. I am grateful to Professor Toshio Yokoyama for having given me access to his photographs of this badly worm-eaten book. For more erotic parodies of moral literature for women, see Brea and Kondo 1980, pp. 127–30.

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Figure 4. Courtesans reading. Kikan ukiyo-e 57 (1974), p. 9. Courtesy of Gabundô. A courtesan with an apprentice; single-sheet print in the style of Okumura Masanobu 奥村政信, c. 1703.

execution of amatory designs.”107 Dichotomy is perhaps not the right word, however, for the amatory and courtly overlapped seamlessly in the elite parts of the pleasure quarters, and Timon Screech, who has written of the “sexualization of Genji” and the “‘Genjization’ of sex,” seems closer to the mark. 108 This phenomenon is apparent in the appropriation of canonical texts to the world of the courtesan that was already well under way in the seventeenth century. Abundant visual and textual references to courtesans reading Kogetsushô provided vivid evidence of this development. 109 Shikidô ôkagami 色道大鏡, Fujimoto Kizan’s 藤本箕山 encyclopedia of commercial sex (1678), noted that in 1657 the courtesan Yachiyo 八千代 had somebody lecture her on Genji and the 107

Markus 1982, pp. 175, 182. Screech 1999, p. 243. 109 See the works mentioned in note 12. There are many visual references, too; see the picture of the Chôjiya 丁子屋 bordello in the 1776 series of paintings reproduced at the front of Ono 1977; the 1816 painting by Utagawa Toyokuni 歌川豊国 in Manno Bijutsukan 万野美術館 (Osaka) in Nikuhitsu, vol. 7, plate 44, illustration no. 8; and the early nineteenth-century painting in the British Museum illustrated in Clark 1992, p. 142. G. G. Rowley, who also explores this question, cites another early nineteenth-century example in Rowley 2000, p. 31. 108


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Kokinshû.110 And a guide to the writing of love letters, published in 1698 and probably written for the benefit of courtesans, recommended the Man’yôshû and Genji as reference works for those needing to write such letters. 111 Genji figured

in the world of courtesans in other ways as well. By ca. 1670 the practice of Genji-na 源氏名, assigning nicknames derived from the chapters and characters of Genji, had spread from courtly circles to courtesans, as a glance at any late seventeenth-century courtesan critique will show, and one of those critiques made the connections explicit: in 1687 the famed haikai poet Kikaku 其角 produced Yoshiwara Genji gojûshikun 吉原源氏五十四君, which provided a critique of fifty-four Yoshiwara courtesans to match the fifty-four chapters of Genji.112 Association with Genji was also, and perhaps more importantly, a matter of image. As Timothy Clark has put it: The cult of the Yoshiwara courtesan in pictures and novels of the eighteenth century undoubtedly exploited such parallels with the past in stressing the cultivation of the high-ranking women, portraying them in settings and engaged in cultivated pastimes that, it was suggested, somehow put them on a par with Lady Sei [Shônagon] and Lady Murasaki [Shikibu].113

A rather more cynical observer of the power of an image was Yanagisawa Kien 柳沢淇園 (1704–1758), a samurai aesthete who excelled in Chinese verse and painting and who stated in 1724 that if courtesans did not have on display the twenty-one imperial anthologies of poetry, Kogetsushô, and other such works, they did not appear to be of the top rank. 114 It is thus possible that among courtesans Kogetsushô functioned as little more than a token of courtly tastes, just as the French court poet Eustache Deschamps (1346–1406) considered Books of Hours in the hands of women as little more than a fashion accessory.115 But more was at work in the image of the reading courtesan than a display of cultural knowledge. The association between reading and intimacy seen in figure 2 suggests that such representations should be understood at least partly as conveying “absorption,” or psychological depth: the reading figure, the artist implied, is not only literate but also cultured and capable of empathy. 116 This “absorption” in books, moreover, was depicted as common to courtesans and to noncourtesans. This confusion of roles was clearly deliberate, as was also the blurring of the distinction between books as accompaniment/alternative to sex and books as elegant pastime or source of knowledge and culture. While it might 110

Noma 1961, p. 564.

111 Ensho 112 Zoku 113

bunrei 艶書文例 (1698); facsimile in Edo jidai josei bunko , vol. 89. enseki jisshu, vol. 2, pp. 70–95.

Clark 1992, p. 22. ひとりね, in NKBT 96, p. 74. 115 Penketh 1997, p. 269; on books as tokens, see Clunas 1988, p. 136. 116 For the notion of “absorption,” see Fried 1980, pp. 8–13, 66. See also Bryson 2003, p. 106, who notes the tendency to dismiss the appearance of books in European portraiture as “decorative tokens of learning or culture” and emphasizes instead the “genuine and fascinated absorption into the subjective space the book opens up.” 114 Hitorine

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be objected that the confusion was deceptive and the scenes of books and reading in brothels the fake furniture of respectability, the reverse might equally be true: some may well have seen the literate high-ranking courtesan as a model of womanhood for noncourtesans. Or it may simply be the case that we exaggerate the distinctions between courtesans and “respectable” women.117 To what extent might all this have contributed to the sinologists’ unease about Genji in the hands of “respectable” young women? Nagata Zensai’s worries predated both the earliest extant images of, or textual references to, courtesans reading Genji and the earliest erotic parodies, but that is far from conclusive given the poor survival rate of early seventeenth-century ephemera and erotica. Towards the end of the century, however, the centrality of Genji in the commercial worlds of sex and publishing must surely have heightened the anxieties its contents and female authorship initially aroused in the minds of Hayashi Razan and Nagata Zensai. At the same time, however, we can also speak of a “Genjization” of etiquette, or rather, to substitute Toshio Yokoyama’s term for Screech’s, a “kugefication” of etiquette, a process whereby the perceived etiquette of the court aristocracy, or kuge, was presented as a model for women as a whole. 118 Even in the first half of the seventeenth century this trend had become apparent in didactic works for women, for, as Aoyama Tadakazu 青山忠一 has demonstrated, a number of them commonly derived their ideal of womanhood from Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari .119 Take Jokunshô 女訓抄, which was first published in 1637 and thereafter constantly reissued in various editions up to the early eighteenth century. The anonymous author actually encouraged women to take an interest in waka and familiarize themselves with these works. 120 Similarly, the author of Onnayô kinmô zui 女用訓蒙図彙 (1687) not only chose a copy of Ise monogatari to illustrate the category “books” in the encyclopedia section, but also recommended reading such books, albeit with care: Genji monogatari, Ise monogatari, and the like are for the amusement ( moteasobi もてあそび) of women, and even to people of the noblest birth nothing can surpass them. . . . On the surface they deal with kôshoku things, so readers have

used them as guides to sexual matters and diverted themselves accordingly. This is quite wrong. . . . The object is to teach that things may flourish for a while but then change; all is impermanence. . . . If these monogatari encouraged lewdness, then it would be best if they did not exist. It is precisely because fundamentally

117

See the discussion of similar problems in the context of ancient Greece in Davidson 1997, pp. 87–90, 126, 135. For the courtesan as a model for all women, see Saikaku’s description of a wealthy merchant’s wife who makes herself like a courtesan to please her husband in Saikaku zenshû, vol. 7, p. 323; Cecilia Seigle claims that in the seventeenth century, “Yoshiwara courtesans became trendsetters for much of urban society.” See Seigle 1993, p. 71. 118 Yokoyama 1999, p. 200. 119 Aoyama 1982, pp. 8–10. 120 See the facsimile of the 1639 edition in Daitôkyû 1976, pp. 437f f, 446ff; Aoyama 1982, pp. 10–12, 62ff.


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this is not what they do that Genji monogatari is unsurpassed among the treasures of our country, as people of old have said.121

The line of argument recalls that of Andô Tameakira quoted earlier, but here the remarks are addressed not to men but to women. Even more outspoken was Onna shikimoku 女式目, which survives in an undated seventeenth-century edition. Apart from the usual moral exhortations, the anonymous author urges the importance of reading and writing for all classes, both as a source of pleasure and to gain access to knowledge; he/she introduces Genji, Ise monogatari , and Eiga monogatari and includes an illustration showing three women with scattered volumes of Genji all around them, with the caption “Scene of reading Genji monogatari” (see figure 5).122 Gradually, then, it came to be seen as desirable for women to read these books for reasons to do with etiquette. As early as 1661 Asai Ryôi 浅井了意, a writer for the popular market who had already published a commentary on Ise monogatari and another on the six additional chapters covering the death of Genji that are now known to be spurious, produced a book of models of Japanese femininity entitled Honchô jokan 本朝女鑑. With the exception of a few nuns, all the illustrations presented courtly realizations of femininity, and the text insisted that women should not only learn to read and write but should also study Ise monogatari, Genji, Sagoromo, Eiga monogatari , and the Kokinshû.123 The title of a later example, Onna Genji kyôkun kagami 女源氏教訓鑑 (1713), explicitly associated Genji with didactic instruction. Apart from valorizing female reading in an illustration showing a widow with a pile of books, this work included a digest of Genji together with information about waka composition, perfumes, and other elegant pursuits.124 A guide to letter-writing for women published in 1690 incorporated a sample letter requesting the loan of Genji, Sagoromo monogatari , Ise monogatari, Eiga monogatari , or Makura no sôshi .125 Parallels and Implications

As I have attempted to show, many male writers in the seventeenth century either inveighed against the popularity of Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari among women readers or expressed anxiety about how women might be reading such works. But while some saw these works as morally objectionable, others regarded 121

Tanaka 1970, pp. 12, 228–29, 284. In Emori 1993–1994, vol. 1, pp. 26–30. The 1702 edition of Onna chôhôki, vol. 1, p. 6a, also urges women to acquaint themselves with Genji and Ise monogatari, Hyakunin isshu, the Kokinshû, and the Man’yôshû. 123 For the illustrations, see the complete facsimile in Honchô jokan; for the passage on women’s reading, see vol. 2, p. 304 of the facsimile, or p. 263 of the reprinted text in Nihon kyôiku bunko, Kôgihen, ge 孝義篇下. Ryôi is the presumed rather than stated author of this work; his commentaries are Ise monogatari jokai 伊勢物語抒海 (1655) and Genji kumogakureshô 源氏雲隠抄 (1677, subsequently reprinted often). 124 Facsimile in Edo jidai josei bunko , vol. 1. Although published in Osaka, the focus, as revealed in the illustrations of places and festivals, is indubitably Kyoto. 125 Edo jidai josei bunko , vol. 60, Kaidai, p. 16. 122

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Figure 5. Women reading as shown in the conduct book for women Onna shikimoku, seventeenth century. ( Edo jidai) Josei seikatsu ezu daijiten, vol. 1, p. 28. Courtesy of Ôzorasha 大空社.

them as culturally or professionally indispensable. Since print had rendered Heian literature accessible and had suddenly enlarged its audience numerically and socially, it is hardly surprising that, in consequence, texts such as Genji monogatari and Ise monogatari became the object of a plurality of reading strategies. The worries about the effect of reading on women’s morals expressed by Nagata Zensai, Yamaga Sokô, and others was not particular to Japan, for the phenomenon has much wider currency. Parallels may be found, for example, in sixteenth-century English conduct-books and similar texts on the education of women that warn against permitting young women access to secular literature because of its power to excite and lead astray. Roger Ascham, who in 1570 deplored the “fowlest adoulteries by sutlest shiftes” in Morte d’Arthur , might have made common cause with Yamaga Sokô; so, too, might have Thomas Salter, who was appalled by the “filthie love” and “abhominable fornications” in Greek and Latin literature. In the eyes of these writers it was the availability


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of such books in print that made the problem acute. 126 “The anxieties,” argue Carol M. Meale and Julia Boffey, “suggest that women routinely took advantage of the available opportunities to read a wide variety of texts in both manuscript and print.”127 Similarly, in late fifteenth-century Italy, when printing was transforming the availability of texts, women were advised to avoid secular literature on account of its corrupting influence.128 Print made all this possible and urgent, and the anxieties expressed in Japan are likewise indicative of the transformations to which print gave rise. The target of those anxieties was not the current erotic fiction of the day, or even the works of Ihara Saikaku at the end of the century, but acknowledged classics, which only posed moral problems when in the hands of women. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the tide was shifting, and it became a matter of course that women include Genji in their reading. Two moral booklets for women published in the 1780s, for example, incorporated in a list of books that “might be read with profit” by women the following: moralistic tracts such as Yamato shôgaku, Himekagami, and Kagamigusa; Honchô retsujoden (a Japanese version of the Chinese Biographies of Notable Women ); and Genji, Ise monogatari, Hyakunin isshu , and other works from the literary canon.129 Publishers, too, were not slow to recognize the changing climate. Some time in the late eighteenth century the Osaka publisher Kashiwaraya Seiemon 柏原屋清右衛門 produced a catalogue of books that “it is beneficial for women to read”; this included ten editions of Hyakunin isshu , three of Ise monogatari , and a number of items claimed, in the accompanying blurbs, to be connected to Genji.130 The process by which Genji and Ise gradually came to be accepted as works valuable for women to read intersected with the larger sociological transformation of court culture in the seventeenth century as it passed out of the controlling hands of the aristocracy and ever more into the hands of those of lesser social status, such as the commoner compilers of the Genji commentaries or the commoner poets who challenged the aristocratic guardians of the waka tradition.131 As interpreted and diffused in various seventeenth-century texts, court culture represented an alternative, possibly the only credible native alternative, to the 126

Wright 1970, p. 231; on Salter, see Hull 1982, pp. 71–75. Meale and Boffey, 1999, p. 535. 128 Plebani 2001, p. 40. 129 Shinsen onna yamato daigaku 新撰女倭大学 (1785), in Nihon kyôkasho taikei , vol. 15, p. 316 (partially cited in Umehara 1988, pp. 252–53); Onna kuku no koe 女九九の声 (1787), in Emori 1993–1994, vol. 4, pp. 26–27. For illustrations in various didactic books for women showing women reading Genji, see Emori 1993–1994, vol. 8, pp. 252 ff. 130 “Jochû no mitamai eki aru shomotsu mokuroku” 女中の見給ひ益有書物目録 , reproduced in Asakura 1983, vol. 1, pp. 355–58. It is undated, but an example of it is bound at the end of the copy of Onna daigaku takarabako 女大学宝箱 (1772) in the Mikami-ke 三上家 archives (B-IV/2) in Kyôto Furitsu Tango Kyôdo Shiryôkan 京都府立丹後郷土資料館 , Amanohashidate 天橋立, thus indicating that it dates from the late eighteenth century. A similar list of books recommended for women to read is reproduced and annotated in May 2003, pp. 134–35. 131 On the waka poets, see Thomas 1991. 127

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sinological culture recommended to women by the male moralists. 132 Nonaka En, the woman doctor of Kôchi, had accepted the moral value of such Chinese texts as the Classic of Filial Piety and the Biographies of Notable Women , which Nagata Zensai and the others had urged upon women readers, but she argued that the “gentle Japanese ways” of Genji were more suitable for Japanese women. Throughout the eighteenth century, this was a line constantly peddled by women’s conduct books such as Onna teikin gosho bunko 女庭訓御所文庫 (1790), which explicitly offered “courtly” ways as a model of behavior for women. These developments also had implications for authorship and education, for it was precisely in the context of a diffused court culture that women writers of the Edo period began to make a name for themselves. Among these was Isome Tsuna 居初津奈 (dates unknown). In addition to a number of texts on letter writing and similar works, all of which were published commercially, she compiled Onna hyakunin isshu 女百人一首 (1688), an anthology of poems written by women from the Nara to Muromachi periods, mostly taken from the imperially commissioned anthologies. It consists simply of the poems, written in a woman’s hand, and illustrations of courtly women to provide a visualization of the women poets, but the compiler expressed the hope in her postface that it would be of help to women commencing serious education. 133 As the language used on both sides of the debate about women’s reading indicates, the consolidation of a market for women’s books bespeaks not only the evident but unquantifiable growth in female literacy and the expansion of the reading public to include women, but also new modes of reading. Let us finally, then, consider first the question of modes of reading and second that of women’s literacy. Like Yamaga Sokô and others, Moronobu uses words like nagusami and moteasobu to refer specifically to female reading.134 How are we to understand the use of distinct terms to refer to women’s reading that, at least in the seventeenth century, seemed to connote “amusement” or “playing” with books? There are similarities here with seventeenth-century English discourse on women’s reading, where there is a tendency for it to be characterized as a diversion or form of amusement, a phenomenon that Heidi Brayman Hackel interprets as a “trivialization” of women’s reading. 135 Since serious reading was in England equated with study and texts in classical languages that few women had access to, women’s reading was certainly different in kind and was perceived to be less demanding than that of men. The vocabulary of women’s reading noted above 132

Cf. McMullen 1999, pp. 60, 452. Facsimile in Edo jidai josei bunko, vol. 90; for details of other similar anthologies, see also Edo jidai josei bunko , vol. 60, Kaidai, pp. 1–19. 134 Tenri 1983, p. 261; Matsudaira 1988, p. 35; Kiyomizu monogatari (1638), in Kanazôshi shûsei, vol. 22, p. 292; Yamaga 1940–1942, vol. 6, p. 301; the 1659 postface of Jûni Genji sode kagami, in Yoshida 1987, vol. 1, pp. 293–98; the preface by Tsujihara Genpo 辻原元甫 to Onna shisho 女四書 (1656), in Tôyô jokun sôsho, vol. 3, p. 42 (separately paginated). 135 Hackel 2003, pp. 110–11. 133


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might suggest that in Japan, too, we have a case of trivialization. But there is another angle to this, and that is the rise of leisure reading. In the hands of Moronobu, moteasobu does not appear to carry the opprobrium of an inferior mode of reading common to women. That we are talking of a different style of reading is apparent, too, from the marked tendency in Moronobu and other seventeenth-century artists to represent women reading in relaxed rather than formal poses. These relaxed poses were by no means the monopoly of women, however. Particularly in settings associated with the pleasure quarters, we find men, too, depicted as engaging in a similar form of relaxed reading. 136 Onna shikimoku, an early conduct-book for women, provides a positive gloss to reading as moteasobi. The anonymous author argued that it was important for women of all classes, explicitly including women of the merchant class, to be literate so as to gain access to the pleasures that books provide as well as to knowledge. 137 There are few signs, then, that (women’s) leisure reading was being trivialized in seventeenth-century Japan; on the contrary, some writers sought to justify or champion it. What does all this tell us about women’s literacy? It has been customary to assume high levels of female illiteracy at the end of the Tokugawa period to say nothing of the beginning, but even in the seventeenth century the literate woman was not a rare exception. Women’s literacy was taken seriously by moralists, who were alarmed at how widespread it had become. By the end of the Tokugawa period women were not only participating in commoner ( terakoya) education both as pupils and as teachers but were also to be counted among the followers of various Kokugaku teachers. A few achieved fame as painters or exponents of Chinese poetry; some played formative roles in mercantile enterprises; and it was not unknown for a woman to take on a village headship. 138 We are gradually, therefore, realizing that literate spaces long thought of as exclusively male were not so after all. Furthermore, the reality of women’s urban employment even in seventeenthcentury Japan sits uncomfortably, as Yokota Fuyuhiko 横田冬彦 has shown, with the docile and domestic image purveyed by Onna daigaku that has for too long been taken as a guide to actualities. A wide variety of trades and professions were practiced by women, he notes, from medicine to prostitution, and women’s didactic works acknowledged this diversity, which is paraded, even celebrated, 136

E.g., Kikan ukiyo-e 42 (1970), p. 107; 47 (1972), p. 132; 49 (1972), p. 59; 81 (1980), p. 32; Tenri 1983, p. 34. For an example showing a woman reading to a man, both in relaxed poses, on a screen dating from the 1640s at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, see Calza 2004, pp. 54–55 (and a close-up on p. 51). 137 Emori 1993-1994, vol. 1, pp. 26–29. For another instance, in Kyohakushû 挙白集 (1649), a collection of poems and writings on poetry by Kinoshita Chôshôshi 木下長嘯子 (1569–1649), see Yoshida 1972, vol. 2, pp. 18–22; also Matsuda 1963, pp. 100–103; and Keene 1976, pp. 305–307. On Chôshôshi’s hedonism and nagusami, see Matsuda 1963, pp. 95–99. 138 See the essays in the first part of Bernstein 1991; in Wakita, Bouchy, and Ueno 1999; and in Onna to otoko no jikû, vols. 7 and 8. On women teachers, see Sugano 1997–1998. For a woman shôya 庄屋 in 1638, see Kasaoka 2001, pp. 229–30.

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in Nishikawa Sukenobu’s 西川祐信 compendium of one hundred types of being for women, Hyakunin jorô shinasadame 百人女郎品定 (1723). Sukenobu shows us not only an aristocratic lady and a daimyo’s daughter but also a woman haikai poet, a hairdresser, a doctor, and a cook engaged in their several occupations.139 This sense of the variety of womanhood, consciously crossing the divisions imposed by ascribed status, is found also in the work of Moronobu and in didactic literature for women, such as the illustrated 1702 edition of Onna chôhôki 女重宝記, in which farmers’ wives, courtesans, and merchant wives are shown alongside women from the aristocracy or samurai class, with gender overriding the status distinctions that divided male society.140 Central to many of the occupations women could pursue was literacy; this is obviously so in the case of the doctor or the poet, but Sukenobu’s cook, for example, is using a book of recipes. How did women acquire this literacy? Recent studies have sought to replace earlier sketchy accounts of women’s education with some hard evidence from diaries, autobiographies, and the like, but most of this relates to the nineteenth century. 141 Yet there is some hard evidence for the seventeenth century, too, as is evident from the pictorial and textual evidence discussed above. Indeed, the premium on writing and the social expectations of literate women are evident from the profusion of published handwriting and letter-writing manuals for women from the 1650s onwards, while the publication from 1637 of conductbooks for women bespeaks the emergence of a market, if not a public, of literate women.142 There has obviously been a misprision of the social, cultural, and economic participation of women in the burgeoning urban and literate cultures of seventeenth-century Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo which have been hitherto cast as essentially male. The extent and uses of female literacy in seventeenth-century Japan are questions that will remain difficult to answer until personal letters and other ephemeral writings by women have been gathered more widely, to mention just two of the many kinds of evidence, hitherto for the most part undervalued and unused, that need to be drawn upon. This essay is simply a first step. It has sought to address the context wherein women’s reading became a matter of debate in the seventeenth century, when a number of writers became concerned about the texts that women were reading as print made a multiplicity of texts readily available. It has also sought to show that the transformative power of print impacted on women in various ways as they, too, became consumers in the marketplace for books. Print is, of course, not the only variable here, for the transformations created by the rapid urbanization of the seventeenth century, particularly as they applied 139

Yokota 1995 and 1999. For Hyakunin jorô shinasadame, see Edo fûzoku zueshû. For Moronobu, see Wakoku hyakujo 和国百女, facsimile in Nihon fûzoku zue or in Nihon fûzoku zueshû. Onna chôhôki, vol. 1, pp. 4–6. 141 See Tocco 2003, pp. 193–218. 142 For the manuals, see Koizumi 1998; for the early editions of Jokunshô, see Gotô 2003, pp. 60, 66, 80. 140


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to the lives of women, cannot be overlooked. In late Ming China, too, the rise of urban literacy and the growth of employment outside the home created tensions between male expectations and female practice; as Handlin puts it, men came to realize “not the equality of women but their comparability.”143 A similar sense of comparability is discernible in Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris (1362) and is problematized in Christine de Pizan’s Le livre de la cité des dames (1405). 144 In seventeenth-century Japan it is visible in Moronobu’s texts and illustrations; it is notable also in the acceptance even by hard-line sinologists of women as readers, for the suggestion that women turn to Chinese classics broke down one of the reading barriers between men and women. Print made some of these shifts possible, but so did a rising premium on education and literacy and the incorporation of women into the market for cultural goods. As the editors of Women and Confucian Cultures argue, the “old stereotype [that] construes Asian women as victims of tradition, or Confucian patriarchy” is sorely in need of correction not only in terms of female subjectivities but also of opportunities and contexts.145 And this applies particularly forcefully to the question of literacy and readership. As the protests by Nagata Zensai and the others show, it is undeniable that women were reading, that it was not their literacy that was problematic, and that they defied the constraints the “Confucians” attempted to put upon them. Not, of course, all women by a long way, but enough to matter, even in the seventeenth century.

143 144 145

Handlin 1975, p. 16. Brown 2000, e.g., p. 329; Richards 1982, pp. 153–54, 184–85, etc. Ko et al. 2003, pp. 1–3.

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Unsuitable Books for Women Genji Monogatari and Ise Monogatari in Late Seventeenth-Century Japan, Kornicki

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