At the House of Gathered Leaves: Shorter Biographical and Autobiographical Narratives from Japanese Court Literature

by Joshua S. Mostow

This collection of Japanese women's diary literature (nikki bungaku) begins with The Takemitsu Journal (also known as The Tale of the Tonomine Lesser Captain, c. 962), an important precursor and model for the famous Kagero Diary, and Tales of Toyokage (c. 971), a fictionalized re-working of his own poems by Regent Koremasa himself. It also includes the first complete English translations of the Hon'in no Jiju and of the narrative section of The Collected Poems of Lady Ise. The volume concludes with the Tales of Takamura (1185-1333), which Mostow describes as a site of struggle between masculine and feminine narrative styles.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2004

Reviews

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally purchased to read the translation of The Takamitsu Journal (aka The Tale of the Lesser Captain of Tonomine), I became interested in Mostow's purpose in this collection. '1) To explain the development of what is called "diary literature" between the Tosa Diary and the Kagero Diary, 2) to explain the political conditions that allowed for and encouraged the rise of women's autobiographical writing in the Heian court; and', most important to my close reading, '3) to argue that it is a thoroughly modern prejudice that see women's nikki of this period a solely "confessional" and apolitical' (extracted from his introduction). Further, Mostow asserts, 'many of the early instances of this genre were commissioned by men with a political purpose in mind."
That last assertion caused me to rethink my previous readings and reconsider them in the context of this assertion adding a new complexity to the readings.