EA 116 Week 3a Outline
I. Fictional accounts of angry ghosts and rituals
A. Tale of Genji
1. Author: Murasaki Shikibu (lady-in-waiting to Empress Shôshi/Akiko, the daughter of Fujiwara no Michinaga)
2. Patron: Fujiwara no Michinaga
3. Audience:
a. Class (very elite: maybe 10,000 people total)
In this context, "middle class" is provincial governor class, "working class" is attendants and servants.
b. Religious beliefs: shamanism, Buddhism, angry ghosts
4. Purpose:
5. Benefit:
6. Genre:
7. Narrative/plot necessity:
8. Historical development:
B. What are Heian period fictional accounts of ghosts and rituals mainly about?
1. Issue related to polygyny/polygamy (men able to marry multiple wives):
2. Why would this be the focus?
3. What does Murasaki Shikibu think about the relationship of male guilt and female possession?
[from Murasaki Shikibu's poetry collection]
A poem written about a painting on a screen:
Someone had drawn on a scroll the unpleasant form of a woman possessed by an evil spirit. Behind the possessed woman, a priest was restraining the husband's former wife, who had appeared as a demon. The husband was trying to subdue the evil spirit by reading a sutra.
In his anguish
He has blamed it on his dead wife,
But is it not
The demon in his own heart?
IV. Tale of Genji
A. Who is Rokujô? (Also, see this chart.) A daughter of a former high ranking Minister of the Left. Rokujô was married to the Crown Prince (Genji's uncle, his father's older brother) at 16 and bore him a daughter (Akikonomu). Her father died prematurely, so the Crown Prince lost his political backing and was deposed. He died soon afterward leaving Rokujô a widow at age 20. Genji's father then became emperor with the backing of his father-in-law (Minister of the Right). At the start of chapter Rokujô is about 29-30 years old with a young daughter 13-14 years old.
Note: Although it is only retroactively clear it was Rokujô, the living spirit of Rokujo has already killed one of Genji's mistresses, Yugao, in chapter 4 ("Evening Faces").
1. Why is the affair problematic?
a.
b.
c.
1) Who are two possible angry ghosts?
a)
b)
2. Why is the affair not going well?
a. Age
b. Gossip
1) Emperor to Genji (p. 147): "The Crown Prince was so very fond of her," he said to Genji, in open displeasure. "It is sad that you should have made light of her, as if she were an ordinary woman. I think of the high priestess [Rokujo's daughter] as one of my own children, and you should be good to her mother [Rokujo], for my sake and for the sake of the dead prince. It does you no good to abandon yourself to these affairs quite as the impulse takes you."
Continues: "You should treat any woman with tact and courtesy, and be sure that you cause her no embarrassment. You should never have a woman angry with you."
b. Personality: What is Rokujô like as a person?
1)
2)
3)
4)
5) dominant character trait?
3. Position of Heian women as represented in Tale of Genji
a. Some economic independence (women can inherit in this period)
b. But dependence on men to act for them in economic matters because high-ranking women are kept secluded behind curtains of state
1. Enforced seclusion means they are always waiting for men to visit.
B. Who is Aoi (AKA "Heartvine" or Aoi no Ue)?
1. Older than Genji (married when she was 16 and he was 12)
2. What is she like?
a.
b.
3. Why might she be vulnerable to possession?
a.
C. The carriage incident (pp. 148-53) [image]
1. Rokujô's immediate response (pp. 150-51)?
a. “Quite aside from her natural distress at the insult, she was filled with the bitterest chagrin that, having refrained from display, she had been recognized. The stools for her carriage shafts had been broken and the shafts propped on the hubs of perfectly strange carriages, a most undignified sight. It was no good asking herself why she had come…."
b. After Genji passes without acknowledging her:
“…the Rokujo lady was in misery. She had been utterly defeated…She was ashamed of her tears. Yet she thought of how sorry she would have been if she had not seen that handsome figure set off to such advantage by the crowds.”
2. Result
a. Before:
b. Now:
3. Genji's response?
(p. 153) “Genji presently heard the story of the competing carriages. He was sorry for the Rokujo lady and angry with his wife. It was a sad fact that, so deliberate and fastidious, she lacked ordinary compassion. There was indeed a tart, forbidding quality about her. She refused to see, though it was probably an unconscious refusal, that ladies who were to each other as she was to the Rokujo lady should behave with charity and forbearance. It was under her influence that the men in her service threw themselves so violently about. Genji sometimes felt uncomfortable before the proud dignity of the Rokujo lady, and he could imagine her rage and humiliation now.”
a. Who does he blame?
b. Does he feel guilty?
c. Who do you think is to blame?
d. Why doesn't his visit to Rokujo help?
4. Rokujo's response (later)
(p. 156) "For the Rokujo lady the pain was unrelieved. She knew that she could expect no lessening of his coldness, and yet to steel herself and go off to Ise with her daughter -- she would be lonely, she knew, and people would laugh at her. They would laugh just as heartily if she stayed in the city. Her thoughts were as the fisherman's bob at Ise. Her very soul seemed to jump wildly about, and at last she fell physically ill."
D. Exorcism scene (pp. 156-65)
1. Inital exorcism scene(p. 156): “At Sanjo, Genji's wife [Aoi] seemed to be in the grip of a malign spirit.”
a. Is there a narrative connection between Rokujô's thoughts and Aoi's illness?
Immediately prior to above line (p. 156):
"[Rokujo's] anger and sorrow increased. Her hope of relief from this agony of indecision had sent her to the river of lustration, and there she had been subjected to violence."
b. What is typical about this scene?
c. What is different?
d. Who do people suspect? Why?
1) Murasaki (young girl that Genji has recently taken into his household)
2)
3)
e. Who is actually possessing her?
2.
Rokujô's point of view (pp. 160, 163)
" The malign spirit was more insistent and Aoi was in great distress. Unpleasant rumors reached the Rokujô lady, to the effect that it might be her spirit or that of her father, the late minister (that is possessing Aoi). Though she had felt sorry enough for herself, she had not wished ill to anyone, and might it be that the soul of one so lost in sad thoughts went wandering off by itself? She had, over the years, known the full range of sorrows, but never before had she felt so utterly miserable. There had been no release since the other lady had so insulted her, indeed behaved as if she didn't exist."
a. Description of her dream vision (p. 160)
“More than once she had the same dream: in the beautifully appointed apartments of a lady who seemed to be a rival she would push and shake the lady, and flail at her blindly and savagely. It was too terrible. Sometimes in a daze she would ask herself if her soul had indeed gone wandering off.”
b. Is she conscious of what she's doing?
“She would be notorious. It was common enough for the spirits of the angry dead to linger on in this world. She had thought them hateful, and it was her own lot to set a hateful example while she lived.”
c. What kind of tama is this?
3. Labor Exorcism of Aoi (pp. 161-65)
4. How does Rokujô kill Aoi? (pp. 164-65)
a. Genji has gone to see his other son, the crown prince (making excuses).
b. Her father and brothers are gone to court.
c. What has stopped?
d. She is seized by a “strangling shortness of breath” and dies
5. Is the exorcism successful?
a. Yes:
b. No:
c. Because of the exclusion of priests from the scene of possession, what has not happened?
6. Does possession accomplish anything positive for the women possessed and the women possessing?
a. Yes:
b. No:
7. What is Murasaki Shikibu 's goal here? Does she care about Buddhism? Why isn't the exorcism successful and Rokujo pacified?
Preview of coming attractions:
In the second chapter I had you read, "The Sacred Tree," Genji sleeps with Rokujo for the last time, just before her departure with her daughter for the Ise Shrine, where her daughter will be the Ise Priestess. Rokujo dies not long after returning from Ise (chapter 14), and on her deathbed entrusts her estate and her daughter to Genji's care. But this is not the last time we see her in the book -- after death she remains an angry spirit who overtly attacks Genji's wife Murasaki (causing possession illness) and implicitly attacks Genji's new young wife, the Third Princess (Onna Sannomiya), causing her unstable, impulsive behavior (she has an affair with Kashiwagi, the son of Genji's best friend, and ends up pregnant by him). After Genji finds out about the affair, the Third Princess ends up taking the tonsure and Kashiwagi wastes away from guilt/possession illness.
Because Rokujo is not pacified, she remains an angry voice of discontent about the effects on women of the polygynous marriage system to the very end of the story.
We will return to the story of Rokujo, Aoi, and Genji in just a few weeks with two Noh plays, Aoi no Ue and Nonomiya (Shrine in the Fields), loosely based on the two chapters we read for today.
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