A Tale of False Fortunes

Introduction

Introduction c 1 Enchi Fumiko (1905–1986), noted for her translation of The Tale of Genji into modern Japanese and for her encyclopedic knowledge of Japan’s classics, commented in her later years that “the women of the Heian aristocracy all seem to be cast in the same mold” and that she did “not particularly like them,” but that she was “rather fond of Fujiwara Teishi, the consort of Emperor Ichijò,” whom she found to be “vivid and fresh” (“Teidan,” 31). That her admiration of Teishi was genuine is amply evinced by her 1965 work, A Tale of False Fortunes (Namamiko monogatari), in which she not only crafted an innovative form of historical fiction but also created a new image of womanhood through her portrayal of Teishi. A Tale of False Fortunes is unquestionably Enchi’s most ambitious work of historical fiction and, as winner of the fifth Women’s Literature Prize (Joryû Bungaku-shò) in 1966, also arguably her best. In it, the author creates a textual foil to A Tale of Flowering Fortunes (Eiga monogatari), the panegyric to Fujiwara no Michinaga (966–1028) written mainly by Akazome Emon, a lady-in-waiting to Michinaga’s principal wife, Rinshi. Michinaga assumes almost god-like stature in Akazome’s narrative , which describes a time when Fujiwara control of the throne was at its zenith. By making sure that every empress— and every dowager empress—was from a ranking Fujiwara family, the emperor was easily manipulated by male maternal relatives who, since early times in Japan, had exercised greater customary power than paternal kin. Moreover, emperors were pressured to retire young in order to prevent the experience and cumulative wisdom of age from defying the de facto power of the regency. In Enchi’s recreation of Michinaga’s machinations Introduction c 2 c Introduction to realize his ambitions, a challenge comes from an unforeseen source and in an unexpected form. Throughout A Tale of False Fortunes a fictional document is cited as the “source” of Enchi’s portrayal of Teishi and of the events surrounding her life at court. This document, which Enchi professes to have perused often enough in her youth to have committed lengthy portions to memory, is cited throughout in extracts rendered in a convincing Heian-style prose, the production of which itself constitutes no mean achievement for a twentieth-century writer. (Apocryphal stories have circulated of attempts to find the lost “manuscript” cited in her story soon after its appearance.) The plausibility of such a work existing among the books left to Enchi’s father by Basil Chamberlain is weighed against the implausibility of even so perspicacious a mind as hers recalling long extracts verbatim after half a lifetime. The reader’s mind is constantly engaged in making such judgments and is thus drawn into the story, alternately affirming or denying the veracity of the source document, or of Enchi’s narrative based thereon. This fictitious document offers an alternative account to that appearing in A Tale of Flowering Fortunes. Enchi frequently interjects her own “suppositions” about the fictive document, lending it an aura of credibility. In mixing real historical sources with a fictive one, she thus blends “what was” with “what might have happened” in a convincing and natural manner. Enchi herself acknowledged that she got the idea of building a narrative around a fictitious historical document from reading Tanizaki Jun’ichirò’s “A Portrait of Shunkin” (Shunkin shò; Enchi 1986, 193). Moreover, certain instances of sensual fixation in Enchi’s work—like that of Yukikuni for Teishi in the latter part of the novel—are also redolent of Tanizaki’s fiction (Kamei and Ogasawara, 77). Like “A Portrait of Shunkin,” there are three levels of narrative language in A Tale of False Fortunes: extracts from the alleged document, a reconstructed story based thereon, and the author’s own commentary. There are at least as many differences as similarities, however, in the way the spurious document is used in the story. First, the setting of Tanizaki’s work was close to his own time, and cannot Introduction c 3 be considered historical fiction. Moreover, his “commentary” is far more limited, confined for the most part to the beginning and end; Enchi, on the other hand, interjects her comments throughout, and even offers her speculations on the reliability of the source. The most important difference, however, is perhaps that Tanizaki did not use the fictitious...