is an early 13th-century

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

ese text. One volume in length, it is the oldest existing Japanese text on prose

literary criticism A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature's ...

.Nihon Koten Bungaku Daijiten (1986:1798-1799) The author is unknown, but the leading candidate proposed is Shunzei's Daughter.Marra 1984 : 116. Other candidates who have been proposed include her maternal grandfather Shunzei himself and the monk .Marra 1984 : 115.

Composition

One manuscript gives the title as , a reference to the name of the era in which it was written. Composition occurred between 1200 and 1202.Kubota (2007:341-342) The author is unknown. Hypotheses include

Fujiwara no Shunzei was a Japanese poet, courtier, and Buddhist monk of the late Heian period. He was also and when younger (1123–67) as . He was noted for his innovations in the waka poetic form and compiling the '' Senzai Wakashū'' ("''Collection of a Thou ...

( -1204); his granddaughter, often called " Shunzei's Daughter" ( - 1252); Jōkaku (1147-1226); and Shikishi Naishinnō (1149-1201); but strongest support is for Shunzei's daughter.

The volume is composed of four distinct sections: a preface, literary criticism, poetic criticism, and a discussion on prominent literary women. The preface introduces an 83-year-old woman on a trip. She stops to rest at a house, where she writes down the conversation of a group of women talking about literature, creating a

frame tale A frame story (also known as a frame tale, frame narrative, sandwich narrative, or intercalation) is a literary technique that serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, where an introductory or main narrative sets the stage either fo ...

excuse to write the volume. The frame tale itself has many elements from

monogatari is a Literary genre, literary form in traditional Japanese literature – an extended prose narrative tale comparable to epic (genre), epic literature. ''Monogatari'' is closely tied to aspects of the oral tradition, and almost always relates ...

of the time. The literary criticism covers 28 stories, including ''

Genji Monogatari is a classic work of Japanese literature written by the noblewoman, poet, and lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu around the peak of the Heian period, in the early 11th century. It is one of history's first novels, the first by a woman to have wo ...

'', '' Sagoromo Monogatari'' ( ja), '' Yoru no Nezame'', ''

Hamamatsu Chūnagon Monogatari , also known as , is an eleventh-century Japanese ''monogatari'' that tells about a ''chūnagon'' who discovers that his father has been reborn as a Chinese prince. He visits his reincarnated father in China and falls in love with the Hoyang Conso ...

'', and ''

Torikaebaya Monogatari , translated into English as ''The Changelings'', is a Japanese tale from the late Heian period (794 to 1185) by an unknown author, or possibly more than one author. It is four volumes in length.Kubota (2007:255) It is the tale of two siblings wh ...

''. The others mostly do not exist anymore.Hayashiya (1973) For poetic criticism, it covers ''

Ise Monogatari is a Japanese ''uta monogatari'', or collection of ''waka (poetry), waka'' poems and associated narratives, dating from the Heian period. The current version collects 125 sections, with each combining poems and prose, giving a total of 209 poems ...

'', ''

Yamato Monogatari is a collection of 173 short stories which give details about life in the imperial court in the 9th and 10th centuries. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Yamato monogatari''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia'', p. 1047. It is an '' uta monogatari'' (a ...

'', ''

Man'yōshū The is the oldest extant collection of Japanese (poetry in Classical Japanese), compiled sometime after AD 759 during the Nara period. The anthology is one of the most revered of Japan's poetic compilations. The compiler, or the last in ...

'', and private and imperial collections. The editor laments the lack of women compilers in the collections. It then goes on to discuss the ability and upbringing of a number of prominent women:

Ono no Komachi was a Japanese waka poet, one of the '' Rokkasen''—the six best waka poets of the early Heian period. She was renowned for her unusual beauty, and ''Komachi'' is today a synonym for feminine beauty in Japan. She also counts among the Thirt ...

Sei Shōnagon , or , was a Japanese author, poet, and court lady who served the Empress Teishi (Sadako) around the year 1000, during the middle Heian period. She is the author of . Name Sei Shōnagon's actual given name is not known. It was the custom amon ...

Izumi Shikibu was a mid-Heian period Japanese people, Japanese poet. She is a member of the . She was the contemporary of Murasaki Shikibu, and Akazome Emon at the court of empress Empress Shōshi, Joto Mon'in. She "is considered by many to have been the gr ...

, Akazome Emon,

Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, Japanese poetry#Age of Nyobo or court ladies, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial Court in Kyoto, Imperial court in the Heian period. She was best known as the author of ''The Tale of Genji'', widely considered t ...

and others. The text is particularly valuable as a resource, since it includes descriptions of a number of either completely or partially lost texts.

References

Bibliography

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Composition

Contents

See also

References

Bibliography

Further reading