Abstract
This paper intends to bring the interrelation between premodern Chinese and Japanese literature under the scope of comparative literature. Anglophone studies of Chinese influence on Japanese literature are scarce due to the legacy of Japan’s emphasis on its own “national literature” and the contemporary criticisms of influence study. Through a comparative reading of the “The Story of Yingying” from China and the Japanese canonical work The Tale of Genji, this study argues that it is insufficient to read Genji within the frame of Japanese “national literature,” which presumes a homogenous Japanese culture and tradition. In my analysis, a theme of feminine power represented in Chinese narrative is shown to be further developed in Genji. I find that female characters in these Chinese and Japanese literary texts are not always presented as weak or fragile, rather they speak up for themselves audaciously and directly. I suggest that this feminine voice that subverts and inverts power relations in the Genji is a case of a normally covert activity being practised in plain view, what I call an “open smuggling” of feminine power which is also discernible in “The Story of Yingying”.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The porous border is an idea I have borrowed from Phyllis Sternberg Perrakis’s study of Doris Lessing’s The Cleft. Perrakis argues that Lessing “portrays the porous nature of all three borders, genre, gender and species”. Perrakis (2009, pp. 143–159).
After reading the description of Yinging’s character, Kawaguchi (1991, p. 22) finds a great similarity between Murasaki Shikibu and Yingying. Yingying is described as a girl of outstanding learning yet not one to flaunt her talents; she is elegant and her gestures show great refinement. All of these qualities, according to Kawaguchi, can be found in Murasaki Shikibu’s temperament.
Damrosch (2018, p. 57 and p. 31) points out in his How to Read World Literature that we can “expand our literary and cultural horizons far beyond the boundaries of our own culture” and “we need to develop skills in reading across time.”
Akiyama (1975, p. 40). Akiyama selects sentences from the Genji which comment on women’s lives and concludes from these negative voices that Genji is a work that simply repeats women’s woes.
Zhu (ed.). (1988, pp. 2789–2796). Bai also wrote a poem for Yuan after Yuan’s death, expressing his sad feeling at the loss of a life-long friend. See Bai Juyi Ji Jiaojiao, 2423.
Yu (ed.). (2008, p. 65). “数日来, 行忘止, 食忘饱, 恐不能逾旦暮。若因媒氏而娶, 纳采问名, 则三数月间, 索我于枯鱼之肆矣.”
Bargen (1997, p. xix). kaimami means to peep through the interstices of a fence.
We have evidence in the Genji that monogatari are told to boys. For instance, in the Hahakigi (Broom Tree) chapter, the Chief Equerry recalls how as a child he was saddened by the monogatari told to him by the gentle-women. Or, when he is peeping at the sisters of Uji, Kaoru thinks about the old stories told to him about beautiful women who have been hidden away.
Tamakazura is the daughter of Yūgao and Tō no Chūjō. After Yūgao’s unexpected death, Tamakazura is raised by her wet nurse in Tsukushi (nowadays Kyūshū, remote from the capital). In order to escape from the obstinate pursuit of a local official in Tsukushi, the wet nurse decides to bring Tamakazura back to the capital. Genji finds out about Tamakazura’s distress and provides shelter for her.
The original sentence for Yingying is “崔已阴知将诀矣,” which means Yingying already knows about the inevitable separation. The wife of Higekuro also tells herself that “今は限り”, now it is time that the husband would leave her for the new wife.
Murasaki Shikibu, Genji Monogatari, vol. 3 (2009, p. 365). Tyler (2002, p. 531).
Tsutsumi Chōnagon Monogatari, Shihen nihon koten bungaku zenshū, vol.17 (2004, p. 406).
Ibid., p. 407.
Ibid., p. 408.
Ibid. p. 409.
Ibid.
Lu (2006, p. 71). “演讲之迹甚明,而尤显者乃在是时则始有意为小说.”
References
Ahlberg, S. (2017). Via Dolores: The passage of the feminine as contraband in Nabokov’s fiction. In E. Sommers (Ed.), Nabokov’s women: The sisterhood of textual Muses (pp. 3–18). New York: Lexington Books.
Akiyama, K. (1975). Genji monogatari no sekai: sono hōhō to tassei [The world of The Tale of Genji: Its method and achievement]. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai.
Akiyama, K. (1999). Genji monogatari [The Tale of Genji]. Tokyo: Shōgakukan.
Bargen, G. D. (1997). A woman’s weapon: Spirit possession in The Tale of Genji. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Barthes, R. (1990). The death of the author. In Image, music, text (Trans., S. Heath)(pp. 142–148). London: Fontana Press.
Bowring, R. (1988). Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bronstein, M. (2018). Out of context: The uses of modernist fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chen, Y. (2001). Yuanbai shijian zhenggao [The study of Yuan Bai’s poems]. Beijing: Sanlian Shudian.
Chen, Y. (2003). Yuanbai shizhengshi zhi Yingying zhuan [Reading Yuan Zhen and Bai Juyi: the case of Yingying]. In L. Liu (Ed.), Guangdong shehui kexue [Social science of Guangdong], 4, 46–51.
Damrosch, D. (2003). World literature, national contexts. Modern Philology, 100(4), 512–531.
Damrosch, D. (2018). How to read world literature. Hoboken: Wiley.
Denecke, W. (2004). Chinese antiquity and court spectacle in early ‘kanshi’. Journal of Japanese Studies, 30(1), 97–122.
Denecke, W. (2014). Classical world literatures: Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman comparisons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Felski, R. (2011). Context stinks. New Literary History, 42(4), 573–591.
Foley, P. H., & Howard, E. J. (2014). The urgency of tragedy now. PMLA, 129(4), 617–633.
Friedman, S. S. (1991). Weavings: Intertextuality and the (re)birth of the author. In J. Clayton & E. Rothstein (Eds.), Influence and intertextuality in literary history (pp. 146–180). Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Frye, N. (1957). Anatomy of criticism: Four essays. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Hinata, K. (Ed.). (2012). Akashi no Kimi no monogatari to ōōden [The story of Akashi no Kimi and the story of Yingying]. In Genji monogatari to tōdai denki [The Tale of Genji and Tang chuanqi fictions] (pp. 174–205). Tokyo: Seikansha.
Inaga, K. (2004). Tsutsumi chūnagon monogatari [Tales of Tsutsumi Chūnagon]. Tokyo: Shōgakukan.
Kawabata, Y. (1968). Utsukushii nihon no watashi [Beautiful Japan and I]. In Kawabata Yasunari zenshū [Collected works of Kawabata Yasunari] (Vol. 28, pp. 345–358). Tokyo: Shinchōsha.
Kawaguchi, H. (1991). Genji monogatari he no michi: monogatari bungaku no sekai [The way to The Tale of Genji: The world of fictional narratives]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbun Kan.
Keene, D. (1955). Anthology of Japanese literature: From the earliest era to the mid-nineteenth Century. New York: Grove Press.
Keene, D. (1974). Literature. In E. A. Tiedemann (Ed.), An introduction to Japanese civilization (pp. 375–422). New York: Columbia University Press.
LaMarre, T. (2000). Uncovering Heian Japan: An archaeology of sensation and inscription. Durham: Duke University Press.
Landwehr, M. (2002). Literature and the visual arts: Questions of influence and intertextuality. College Literature, 29(3), 1–16.
Lu, X. (2006). Zhongguo xiaoshuo shilue [A history of Chinese novels]. Beijing: Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe.
Perrakis, S. P. (2009). The porous border between fact and fiction: Empathy and identification in Doris Lessing’s The Cleft. In S. Watkins & A. Ridout (Eds.), Doris Lessing: Border crossings (pp. 143–159). London: Continuum.
Poe, A. E. (2013). The murders in the Rue Morgue and other tales. London: Penguin Books.
Pollack, D. (1986). The fracture of meaning: Japan’s synthesis of China from the eighth through the eighteenth centuries. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sarra, E. (1999). Fictions of femininity: Literary inventions of gender in Japanese court women’s memoirs. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Shinma, K. (2012). Genji monogatari to yūsenkutsu: wakamurasaki maki to Yūgao maki wo chūshin ni [The Tale of Genji and a visit to the cave of immortals: Around young Murasaki chapter and the evening face chapter]. In K. Hinata (Ed.), Genji monogatari to tōdai denki [The Tale of Genji and Tang chuanqi fictions] (pp. 130–173). Tokyo: Seikansha.
Tyler, R. (Trans.). (2002). The Tale of Genji. London: Penguin Classics.
Ye, W. (1980). Introduction. In Murasaki, Yuanshiwuyu [The Tale of Genji] (Trans. Z. Feng) (pp. 1–9). Beijing: Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe.
Yoda, T. (2004). Gender and national literature: Heian texts in the constructions of Japanese modernity. Durham: Duke University Press.
Yu, P. (1988). Yu Pingbo lun hongloumeng [Yu Pingbo’s research on the dream of the red chamber]. Shanghai, Hong Kong: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, Sanlian Shudian.
Yu, K. (Ed.). (2008). Tang Song chuanqi [Tales from Tang Song dynasty]. Beijing: Gaodeng Jiaoyu Chubanshe.
Zhu, J. (Ed.). (1988). Bai Juyi ji jianjiao [The annotated Bai Juyi]. Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ni, J. The feminine voice of subversion and inversion: a comparative reading of “The Story of Yingying” and The Tale of Genji. Neohelicon 47, 715–733 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-020-00527-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-020-00527-0