Imakagami

The is a Japanese '' rekishi-monogatari'' ( historical tale) written in the late Heian period.''Britannica Kokusai Dai-hyakkajiten'' article "Imakagami". 2007. Britannica Japan Co.'' MyPedia'' article "Imakagami". 2007. Hitachi Systems & Services.''Digital Daijisen'' entry "Imakagami". Shogakukan. It is also called the or the .

Date and authorship

It has been speculated that the work was compiled in or shortly after 1170; Donald Keene, citing Isao Takehana, stated that the work was probably written between the eighth month of 1174 and the seventh month of 1175.Keene 1999 : 559, citing (566, note 28) Takehana 1984 : 620 (Vol. 3). The author is uncertain, but the most likely candidate is the ''waka'' poet .Keene 1999 : 559, citing (566, note 29) Takehana 1984 : 620-622 (Vol. 3) and Matsumura 1979 : 156-161.

Structure and style

The text is in ten volumes, and is told from the point of view of an elderly woman who is described as a granddaughter of , the narrator of the '' Ōkagami'', and as having formerly been in the service of Murasaki Shikibu. It has been suggested that the writer chose a woman as his fictional narrator where the ''Ōkagamis author had chosen two men that he wished to focus on more elegant "feminine" topics than military and political affairs.Keene 1999 : 560, citing (566, note 30) Takehana 1984 : 42 (Vol. 1).

The work contains 140 ''waka'' and countless references to Japanese and Chinese literature.Keene 1999 : 560, citing (566, note 32) Matsumura 1979 : 168-180.

Content

The work begins with a group of pilgrims visiting the temples of Yamato Province being approached by an elderly woman who, when asked if she lives in the region, says that she lived in the Capital for one hundred years and then in Yamashiro Province for another fifty, before moving to Yamato.Keene 1999 : 560. The listeners are astonished at her great age, but she humbly replies by listing several others in China and Japan who had supposedly lived to great age, including her grandfather Yotsugi. She says her name is Ayame (iris), which was given to her because of her birth on the fifth day of the fifth month, the same day as the , although she had also been given the nickname Imakagami (the new mirror) by her mistress Murasaki Shikibu, in reference to a poem by Bai Juyi that described the casting of a new mirror on that day.Keene 1999 : 560, citing (566, note 31) Takehana 1984 : 38-39 (Vol. 1).

The rest of the work describes the old lady's recollections of the past. It describes the period of roughly 150 years from 1025 to 1170.Keene 1999 : 559. and is primarily focused on an account of the imperial family and the Fujiwara and Murakami-Genji clans.

Relationship to other works

The work is classified as one of the four "mirrors" of history along with the ''Ōkagami'', '' Mizukagami'' and '' Masukagami''.Keene 1999 : 564.Nishizawa "Rekishi-monogatari" ''IN'' Nishizawa (ed.) 2002 : 249. It is considered to be a direct continuation of the ''Ōkagami''.

Although it was written during the period of rule by the Taira military clan ( Japanese Wikipedia article), its focus is on ''waka'' poetry and the affairs of nobles at court.

See also

* '' Ōkagami''
* '' Mizukagami''
* '' Masukagami''

References

Bibliography

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External links

Full text
at Nihon Bungaku Denshi Toshokan.
Scanned copy of full text
available from the National Institute of Japanese Literature.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Imakagami
1170s books
1170s in Japan
Heian period in literature
Late Old Japanese texts
Monogatari
12th-century Japanese books
History books of the Heian Period