<Articles>On the Reception of Chinese Culture during the Period of the Flowering of National Culture, Using the Descriptions of Foreign Countries in Japanese Literature as a Key

OSHIO Kei

doi:10.14989/shirin_100_641

This article employs literary works, which have seldom been regarded favorably as objects of analysis in Japanese historiography, as primary sources to re-examine the structure of mid-to-late Heian culture (国風文化 kokufû-bunka). Specifically, it employs two fictional narratives, the Hamamatsu chûnagon monogatari 浜松中納言物語 and the Matsuranomiya monogatari 松浦宮物語, that use foreign countries as the background of the tales as keys to clarify the reception of Chinese culture and its reality in the period of kokufû-bunka. In the first section, I examine the Hamamatsu chûnagon monogatari. One can note that two types of expression can be discerned therein: expressions using Chinese literary works (漢籍 kanseki) and expressions that were verbal representations of Chinese-style paintings. However, the knowledge of Chinese literary works used by the author had previously been incorporated in Japanese narratives and paintings including the Collection of Japanese and Chinese Poems for Singing (和漢朗詠集 Wakan rôeishû), and thus did not extend beyond the boundaries of common knowledge known to the nobility of the time. In other words, one could say that there was a certain fixed, shared knowledge of Chinese literary works within the noble society of the day. In order to consider the background to the spread of such knowledge, I next considered the manner in which literature was received. At that time the mode of the reception of literature differed according to one's social status. Narrative fiction had a dual character, used both for entertainment and for education. In the salons of women of the highest ranks of the nobility, illustrated narratives were collected and also produced. For women in the middle rank of the nobility, these narratives were difficult to obtain, but they would occasionally receive them from women in the upper levels of the nobility. These two different types of reception were brought together by women in service to the influential families. In other words, the middle-ranking noble women who read the narratives given by higherranking noble women and who were the recipients of culture were transformed into the producers of new culture by becoming involved in the production of narratives in the salons. In this way, a cultural entity that spanned social ranks was formed, and the knowledge of Chinese literary works shared in noble society was selected.

<Articles>On the Reception of Chinese Culture during the Period of the Flowering of National Culture, Using the Descriptions of Foreign Countries in Japanese Literature as a Key

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