Section 7 | History, Politics and International Relations | Session 6A, Panel
Chair and Organiser: Bettina Gramlich-Oka (Wesleyan University)
Autobiographical writings are potentially rich sources for interrogating the nature of memory as it relates to the relationship between self and society, prevailing social values, and viable modes of personal, political, and intellectual expression. This panel examines autobiographical writings in Japan and Ryûkyû during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, seeking to situate autobiographical expression in a social, political, and rhetorical context while exploring the nature of personal and historical memory. The papers provide historical insight into three different social groups, all of whom resorted to autobiographical writings to give voice to their multivalent views.
There is a long tradition in Japan of expressing oneself in an autobiographical style, yet the genre's production by writers of either gender in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) remains generally unexplored. In particular, while the diary literature of the Heian period (794-1185) is well known as a genre of women's writing, we tend to overlook those works written by Tokugawa period women. As ever more writings by these women come to light, the often-claimed gap of almost one thousand years between representations of the female self in the Heian period and modern times is becoming increasingly problematic.
This paper will introduce and compare various autobiographical texts that reflect a conscious process of self-representation by women. By correlating the autobiographical accounts of the philosopher Tadano Makuzu (1763-1825) with the works of the writer Iseki Takako (1785-1844), I will illustrate the problems inherent in this genre. While all these authors share gender as a co mmon element, the form of their literary activity distinguishes them, as does their social status. Western critical theories on women's autobiography that suggest the inscription of gender and genre into political discourse can contribute to a more sensitive reading of texts such as those written by Tokugawa women. With questions about their aims in writing and what kind of strategies these women use, a thorough reading will give us a glimpse of how Tokugawa women portrayed and created themselves within their particular social environment.
Gregory Smits (Pennsylvania State University)
Sai On (1682-1761) was the Ryûkyû Kingdom's most influential politician and political theorist. He advocated a distinctive variety of Confucianism as means of clarifying Ryûkyû's ambiguous political status and solving what he regarded as the kingdom's most vexing social and economic problems. Sai On's Confucianism placed an unusually heavy emphasis on the power of individual agency. Late in his life, Sai On wrote a brief autobiography, the first such work to appear in Ryûkyû. Although ostensibly a straightforward account of his life and career, Sai On's autobiography is actually a more complex text that served the rhetorical function of reinforcing his overall political agenda. This paper examines the allegorical elements in Sai On's autobiography and compares his rhetorical approach with that of select eighteenth-century autobiographical writings by Japanese writers.
Elizabeth Leicester (University of California, Los Angeles)
Watatsuya Sei'eimon (1804-1865) was the adopted son of a Kanazawa brothel owner who spent his life working in the prostitution and theater industries in the first half of the nineteenth century. The sometimes prodigal son of a family of neighborhood officials, he wrote a memoir, compiled as the Watatsuya Sei'eimon jikki, which recounts his experiences and travels in the entertainment trades. And late in his life, he erected a monument to seven outcastes executed for an 1858 rice riot in Kanazawa. Sei'eimon's memoir has been used as a source of information about prostitution in the 1820s, but it also demonstrates the political and historical consciousness of a provincial townsman living at the margins of respectable society. The autobiographical form here blends the genres of history-writing, literary self-representation, and political co mmentary. The structure of the text follows a codified form of prostitution histories, provides candid co mment on ulterior motives and sullied policies of government officials, and provides an intimate narrative of the fluidity of movement and contact among dominant and semi-legitimate social groups. This paper explores the multivalent levels of historical and literary representation through the autobiographical text and historical context of this dubious figure, focusing on his self-representation as a historical actor, his political co mmentary, and his position as an associate of outcaste rebels enshrined in legend.