Navigating Narratives: Tsurayuki's Tosa Diary as History and Fiction
This talk will outline several unique insights into Heian Japan provided by Ki no Tsurayuki’s Tosa nikki (Tosa Diary), which is ostensibly the record of an ex-governor’s voyage back to the capital kept by an anonymous woman in his entourage. The resulting split between fictional female narrator and historical male author has usually led Tosa nikki to be viewed as either the first Heian woman’s memoir or the last aesthetic manifesto of one of the Japanese poetic tradition’s foremost figures. In lieu of these narratives, it will be argued that the diary merits attention for the discursive practices, representational conventions and non-elite social contexts it illuminates.
Gustav Heldt is professor of Japanese literature in the Department of East Asian Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Virginia. He is the author of The Pursuit of Harmony: Poetry and Power in Early Heian Japan (Cornell East Asia Series, 2008), The Kojiki: An Account of Ancient Matters (Columbia University Press, 2014) and Navigating Narratives: Tsurayuki’s Tosa Diary as History and Fiction (Harvard Asia Center, 2024).
Date:
11 February 2025, 17:00
Venue:
St Antony's College, 62 Woodstock Road OX2 6JF
Venue Details:
Pavilion Room, 4th Floor, Gateway Building, St Antony's College
Speakers:
Professor Gustav Heldt (University of Virginia),
Professor Sho Konishi (University of Oxford - History/OSGA),
Dr Pan Tomé Valencia (University of Oxford - AMES)
Organising department:
Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies
Organiser:
Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies
Organiser contact email address:
administrator@nissan.ox.ac.uk
Part of:
Nissan Institute Seminar in Japanese Studies
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Robin Nicholson
