This chapter explores three works by modern Japanese women writers that function as threads in the intertextual web originated by the twenty-third episode of Tales of Ise (10th century). It seeks to demonstrate how ties to this premodern text—connections based in plot, imagery, language, and even direct quotation—have enriched these narratives, and how, ultimately, this classic has been creatively repurposed and made to resonate with the concerns of Japanese women from the various periods in which these authors wrote and lived.

Introduction

Why allude to the classics? What is gained by repurposing or reimagining what has already been written? This chapter will seek answers to these questions through an exploration of the works of three modern authors who drew upon past works to infuse their writing with resonances dating back to the 10th century. Higuchi Ichiyō (1872–1896), writing in the Meiji period, was well-known for mobilizing scenes and motifs from classical texts in her work, as well as for writing in an archaic style that was quickly losing popularity as Japan embraced “genbun itchi,” an initiative calling for the unification of the spoken and written word. Her 1894 novella, “Takekurabe” (Child’s Play*) famously references the twenty-third episode of the 10th-century Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise*) in its title and content, presenting a grim view of what it means to “grow up” in an era on the cusp of modernity. Although Ichiyō’s premodern idiom had long ago yielded to the colloquial by the time Kurahashi Yumiko (1935–2005) turned her attention to the classics nearly one hundred years later, this author’s later work demonstrated that the content of the ancient poems and stories could still bear evocative fruit. Kurahashi’s 1989 short story, “Tonsei” (Seclusion) plays with the ideas of Ise 23 and the medieval Noh play it inspired to create a fantasy that celebrates compassion and sexual pleasure from a female perspective. In a third section, this chapter will examine the allusions to Ichiyō’s “Child’s Play,” now a modern “classic” in its own right, in contemporary writer Kawakami Mieko’s (1976–) 2019 novel Natsu monogatari (Breasts and Eggs*), tracing the influence of Ise 23 right up to the present day.