Rewriting Medieval Japanese Women
Politics, Personality, and Literary Production in the Life of Nun Abutsu
Publication Year: 2013
Abutsu’s life is well documented in her own letters, diaries, and commentaries, as well as in critiques written by rivals, records of poetry events, and legal documents. Drawing on these and other literary and historiographical sources, including The Tale of Genji, author Christina Laffin demonstrates how medieval women responded to institutional changes that transformed their lives as court attendants, wives, and nuns. Despite increased professionalization of the arts, competition over sources of patronage, and rivaling claims to literary expertise, Abutsu proved her poetic capabilities through her work and often used patriarchal ideals of femininity to lay claim to political and literary authority.
Rewriting Medieval Japanese Women effectively challenges notions that literary salons in Japan were a phenomenon limited to the Heian period (794–1185) and that literary writing and scholarship were the domain of men during the Kamakura era. Its analysis of literary works within the context of women’s history makes clear the important role that medieval women and their cultural contributions continued to play in Japanese history.
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Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
Acknowledgments
Initial funding for this study of Nun Abutsu and the extraordinary spectrum of works she produced took place during my doctoral studies at Columbia University, as an East Asia fellow and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada doctoral fellow. ...
Chapter 1. Nun Abutsu and Women’s Writing in Medieval Japan
This book traces the life and works of an extraordinary thirteenth-century woman who is known today as Nun Abutsu. Abutsu was born in 1225 into the elite social echelon of courtiers who lived in what is now Kyoto, and she died in 1283 while residing in the new, warrior-based political center of Kamakura. ...
Chapter 2. A Woman’s Guide to Career Success: Nun Abutsu and Court Life in The Nursemaid’s Letter
The life of Nun Abutsu can be seen as a medieval success story—the tale of a midranking aristocratic woman who proved herself a capable attendant at court and who eventually overcame difficulties to wed an influential and prosperous courtier and literary luminary. ...
Chapter 3. Lover and Nun: Embodying the Heroine in Fitful Slumbers
Based on the memoir that Abutsu wrote describing her youth, she appears to have followed the instructions outlined in The Nursemaid’s Letter and committed to heart canonical poems and narratives that she then used to tell her own story.1 She certainly was able to master The Tale of Genji, ...
Chapter 4. Women and the Way: Nun Abutsu as Poet and Genji Scholar
Abutsu’s diary Fitful Slumbers contains a total of twenty-two poems, all but one of which were composed by the author. It also includes the first of Abutsu’s forty-eight poems that would appear in imperial anthologies. If we assume that Abutsu wrote Fitful Slumbers at the early stages of her relationship with her future husband Fujiwara no Tameie, ...
Chapter 5. Politics and Poetry: Diary of the Sixteenth Night Moon as a Literary Appeal
Abutsu’s husband Tameie died at the age of seventy-eight. During his last years, he and Abutsu resided together in her home in the north of the capital, after he passed his own residence on to his daughter Tameko.1 Abutsu was fifty-one years old and in the prime of her life as a poet. ...
Epilogue: Abutsu’s Legacy
Abutsu died in 1283, likely still awaiting her court case in Kamakura. Some later sources suggest that she was able to return to the capital,1 but since her case dragged on and there is nothing to corroborate her presence in Kyoto after 1279, it seems she spent her last days in Kamakura teaching a large circle of students, ...
E-ISBN-13: 9780824837853
Print-ISBN-13: 9780824835651
Publication Year: 2013
OCLC Number: 856976847
MUSE Marc Record: Download for Rewriting Medieval Japanese Women
