ABSTRACT
Japanese literature can be traced back to the seventh and eighth centuries, when the Japanese first began employing the Chinese graph system to write. In this early period, when China represented the model for almost all aspects of civilization, the most esteemed literary genres were, as in China, histories, religious and philosophical writings, and poetry, all of which were written in Chinese, the official language of government and religion. Of these genres, only poetry developed a significant native counterpart. The first major works are the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters, 712), a historical narrative that records many of the early Japanese myths, and the Man’yōshū (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves, 745–759), a vast compendium of over four thousand Japanese poems. Like almost all other early Japanese prose works, the Kojiki is written almost entirely in Chinese, while the Man’yōshū primarily employs Chinese graphs phonetically, to record poetry in Japanese. It is not until the development of a Japanese syllabary, or kana, in the late ninth and early tenth centuries, that the Japanese begin writing “Japanese” prose literature, that is to say, vernacular prose written in the native syllabary. This development, which was pioneered by aristocratic women who were largely excluded from the world of Chinese writing, led to the great flowering of Japanese prose literature in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, to Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari), Sei Shonagon’s Pillowbook (Makura no sōshi), and to such literary diaries as the Gossamer Years (Kagerō nikki), by the Mother of Michitsuna, and the Sarashina Diary (Sarashina nikki), by the daughter of Takasue. Though the Chinese literary tradition continued to have a profound impact on Japanese views of literature and though prose and poetry written in Chinese (by Japanese) remained an integral part of the Japanese literary tradition until the modern period, from the tenth and eleventh centuries the Japanese wrote primarily in their own language and developed a wide variety of native genres—poetry, essays, literary diaries, prose fiction, historical narratives, folk narratives (setsuwa).
