Preachers, Poets, Women, and the Way: Izumi Shikibu and the Buddhist Literature of Medieval JapanCenter for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2008 - Buddhist literature, Japanese - 374 pages According to a sixteenth-century Japanese commentary on the Lotus Sutra, the venerable Chinsō Kashō was once preaching on the "ten wickednesses of women" when an angry old nun stepped out from the audience and shouted, "It's not just women who are so evil--you've got plenty of wickedness in you, too!" Women were reviled in much of the popular Buddhist rhetoric of medieval Japan, castigated for their "filthy femininity," but their low spiritual status was in fact frequently contested. This dispute over the place of women in Buddhism was often played out in the realm of medieval preachers' and storytellers' apocryphal tales of the lives, deaths, and inevitable religious awakenings of prominent female literary figures of an earlier age. Inspired by the folklorist Yanagita Kunio's groundbreaking work of the early 1930s, Preachers, Poets, Women, and the Way explores the ways in which such fictional and usually scandalous stories of the Heian women authors Izumi Shikibu, Ono no Komachi, Murasaki Shikibu, and Sei Shōnagon were employed in the competitive preaching and fund-raising of late-Heian and medieval Japan. The book draws upon a broad range of medieval textual and pictorial sources to describe the diverse and heretofore little-studied roles of itinerant and temple-based preacher-entertainers in the formation and dissemination of medieval literary culture. By plumbing the medieval roots of Heian women poets' contemporary fame, Preachers, Poets, Women, and the Way illuminates a forgotten world of doctrinal and institutional rivalry, sectarian struggle, and passionately articulated belief, revealing the processes by which Izumi Shikibu and her peers came to be celebrated as the national cultural icons that they are today. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Setsuwa Sources and the Origins of an Affair | 28 |
Mice in the Koto the Otogizōshi Kotohara | 52 |
Copyright | |
15 other sections not shown
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Preachers, Poets, Women, and the Way: Izumi Shikibu and the Buddhist ... R. Keller Kimbrough No preview available - 2008 |
Common terms and phrases
anthology asobi Bodhisattva Buddha Buddhist bungaku Bunko century Chūjōhime Chūsei composed daijiten darkness into darkness emperor Empress Enkyōji enlightenment etoki explains Five Obstructions Fujiwara Genji Hachiman Heian Hokekyō Hōshō Ippen Ippen Shōnin Iwashimizu Izumi Shikibu Izumi Shikibu engi Japanese Jōruri Kamakura Kannon Karukaya kenkyū Kokubungaku Komachi Koshikibu Koten Kotohara Kumano bikuni Kyoto Lotus Sutra manuscript Medieval Japan Miyai Shoten monks monogatari Mount Shosha Murasaki Shikibu Muromachi period Nara nenbutsu night Nihon Nijō NKBT noh play nyonin kinsei Ono no Komachi otogizōshi poem poetic poetry preaching priest Pure Land Rakuyō Seiganji engi rebirth recited roadside deity Sangoku denki scrolls Sei Shōnagon Seiganji Amida Seiganji engi emaki Seiganji Temple setsuwa shiryō Shobō Shoin Shōkū Shōnin Shōnagon Shrine shū SNKBT sōshi Taima Taima Mandala Taima Temple tale Tendai Tennōji textual line Tokyo Uji shūi University Press verse waka wakashū woman women Yanagita Yanagita Kunio yūjo