世界文学中的日本女性文学

Japanese Women's Literature in a World Context

日本女性文学始自《万叶集》,那里收录了为数不多的女性歌人的作品。到了平安时代,女性的文学创作达到了顶峰,形成了日本国文学的基调。而到了室町时代,就很难发现著名的女性歌人、作者。但是,如果把"艺能"也纳入到"文学"的概念中来思考,就可以发现日本的女性在"艺能"中自始至终都起着重要的作用。本论文比较了包括"艺能"在内的日本和欧洲的古代女性文学史,指出了欧洲中世纪女性书写和日本古典女性文学与宗教、预言能力以及"艺能"的关系。

The standard history of women’s literature in Japan begins with the Man’yōshū, which contains the work of a small number of women poets, peaks with women’s writing in the Heian period, and tapers in the Muromachi period, when we find almost no names of noted women writers. However, there is another way of looking at the history of women’s writing, which expands the notion of literature to include oral and performative genres, often referred to in Japan as geinō. Under this broader rubric, we find a long history of women dancers, singers, storytellers, musicians, actresses, and performers, who often functioned as intermediaries between gods and humans. By the medieval period, the god of geinōhad become Ame no Uzume, the female dancer and goddess who draws Amaterasu out of the rocky cave. This essay compares this expanded lineage to the history of women’s writing in Europe, where the history of women’s writing up through the medieval period is inseparable from religious writing, prophecy, and geinō. As we shall see, many of the prominent European women writers in the medieval period were mystics.