Week 9b Outline I. Basic Story of Sakura Sôgorô (events supposedly happened in 1644) A. Characters:
II.Three versions of the story
1. Effect of Buddhism on story? 1. Probably developed as a Shrine origination story (engi) 2. Shrine established by Hotta family in 1746
[50] "It's said that the priest from Tôkô-ji begged for the lives of Sôgorô and his children. That is simply an embellishment added to the main story, and it is false." [65-66, long interpolated comment] "It was fine for the priest from Tôkô-ji to appear at this juncture and accept the children's remains, but it would have been even better had he busied himself before the children were killed, so as not to have had to take care of them." "What is the purpose of priests putting on dyed robes and rolling the Buddha's name around in their mouths?' people muttered to each other. Sôgôro was a mere layperson, but for the sake of the peasants he took a crime upon himself, even though he could not have foreseen that he would see his wife and children executed before his eyes and depart this life ahead of him. Why didn't the priest sympathize with him? There are lots of priests in important temples of the Sakura domain besides the one from Tôkôji, but they value their lives, keep their mouths shut from one year to the next, and it is asking too much of them to turn to the Buddha even when they are sick. How these bonzes stink of meat!" 4. What might the criticism of the priest from Tôkô-ji (50, 65) indicate about changes in attitude toward Buddhism in the Tokugawa period?
A. Similarities/Connections
IV. How are the representations of Sôgorô and his wife as ghosts representative of Edo period? A. How do they become avenging ghosts?
V. How are the ghosts pacified?
VI. How might the use of Sakura Sôgorô's image by peasants as a rallying point for protest at social injustice be a further development of the use of Sugawara no Michizane as an image for peasant uprisings? How does it seem to differ?
VII. Did Sakura Sôgorô exist?
VIII. If he didn't exist, why did his story come into existence?
IX. Why so many ghost stories, especially on the Kabuki stage, in the late Edo period? A. Social/Natural Conditions B. How did the Tokugawa Shogunate (government) respond? II Ghosts Transition to the Modern A.1868: Meiji "restoration" of the Emperor, and move of the imperial capital from Kyoto to Edo (renaming it Tokyo) B. "Civilization and Enlightenment" (bunmei kaika) movement (1870s-80s) 1. Scholar and Government Official, Inoue Enryô, the "Obake Hakase" ("Professor Obake") a. Attempts to use scientific methods to examine (and eradicate) all kinds of "primitive" superstitions, including belief in the supernatural; reforms the education system b. Invents the term yôkai and sets out to document all the different kinds of supernatural phenomena from across Japan (continuing and expanding Toriyama Sekien's Edo period encyclopedic illustration project) in order to debunk them. c. Ironically, in the process Inoue creates a whole new branch of scholarship in Japan, "Yôkai Studies" (Yôkaigaku) that continues with a series of scholars, including the anthropologist Yanagita Kunio in the1930s, folklorist Komatsu Kazuhiko more recently. C. Yôkai become fictionalized (or positioned on the unstable margin between "real" and "imaginary" -- to be scared when we hear or watch a ghost story we have to at least pretend to believe for the duration of the story, but in the end, the supernatural is assigned to the "imaginary" category) 1. In the early 20th century, academics and artists/authors psychologize the supernatural as "uncanny" and the "return of the repressed" (sometimes this process is correlated with depoliticizing previously political stories) a. eg modern versions of Yotsuya Kaidan delete all critiques of samurai values and culture implicit in the original Kabuki version and focus only on the gender oppression and psychological horror 2. The supernatural can still function (among other ways) as: a. social critique of oppressions of various kinds or as a way of defamiliarizing the present so we can get a perspective on it (eg. "Get Out") b. sometimes when connected to conspiracy theories, supernatural stories can still be seen as subversive of the government ("The Truth is Out There") c. urban legends involving ghosts often feature dangerous and liminal spaces and times where we feel anxiety (twilight or midnight, bridges, crossroads, dark alleys, etc.) d. there is also the "ludic" aspect that was already developing in the medieval period -- as belief wanes, yôkai are used for parody or treated as cute and fun e. the"yôkai industrial complex": yôkai and ghosts function as a form of pure entertainment that fuels global capitalism f. new forms of media and genre constraints also have an effect on the representation and powers of yôkai and ghosts D. EXAMPLES 1. A brand new form of the supernatural: the original 1954 "Gozira" (Godzilla) movie (image) and it's more recent 2016 version "Shin Gozira" (Godzilla Resurgent, more literally, New/Kami Godzilla) (image) 2. Modern ghosts (urban legends aimed at school children): a. Kuchi-sake Onna (slit mouth woman, image): first appears at end of 1978 in Nagasaki, within six months known in every prefecture 1) has sources in earlier visuals (female demon puppet head), but is really a modern invention (and the traditional stories associated with her have no premodern basis) b. Toire no Hanako-san (cf. Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter series) 1) first documented in 1948 middle school, but precedents with kappa and hungry ghosts 2) why are toilets scary? 2) Red skirt = ? 3. A new form of cataloging: Pokemon a. Like Toriyama Sekien, illustrating traditional yokai and creating many new ones b. What does it teach children? c. Narrative compulsion in video games: what do you have to do to complete the quest? Battle? Collect treasures? Solve puzzles? How do those constraints affect the traditional ghost story line? NOW YOU GO AND FIGURE YOURS OUT! |
#/media/File:Gojira_1954_Japanese_poster.jpg){kind=link}
