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Sweat, tears and nightmares : textual representations of sexual violence in Heian and Kamakura monogatari

University of British Columbia

Readers and scholars of monogatari—court tales written between the ninth and the early twelfth century (during the Heian and Kamakura periods)—have generally agreed that much of their focus is on amorous encounters. They have, however, rarely addressed the question of whether these encounters are mutually desirable or, on the contrary, uninvited and therefore aggressive. For fear of anachronism, the topic of sexual violence has not been commonly pursued in the analyses of monogatari. I argue that not only can the phenomenon of sexual violence be clearly defined in the context of the monogatari genre, by drawing on contemporary feminist theories and philosophical debates, but also that it is easily identifiable within the text of these tales, by virtue of the coherent and cohesive patterns used to represent it. In my analysis of seven monogatari—Taketori, Utsuho, Ochikubo, Genji, Yoru no Nezame, Torikaebaya and Ariake no wakare—I follow the development of the textual representations of sexual violence and analyze them in relation to the role of these tales in supporting or subverting existing gender hierarchies. Finally, I examine the connection between representations of sexual violence and the monogatari genre itself. By drawing on an extensive comparative approach that contrasts the Japanese monogatari with the Western genres of fairy tale, novel, romance and fan fiction, I argue that female readers and writers of monogatari could only address the topic of sexual violence within the confines of a genre avowedly fictitious, which, precisely because of its fictitiousness, provided a textual safe space. 

Text

2015-08-18

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/54511

Asian Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/