ABSTRACT
Itinerant bards travelling the length and breadth of the Japanese archipelago over a long period of time were instrumental in circulating a body of narratives. The narratives they performed were continually re-told and recycled in different versions and formats, contributing to a sense of a shared Japanese identity that extended spatially – because it defined the geographical extent of ‘Japan’ – and temporally – because it created a sense of history as ‘Japanese’ and a connection with the past. Thus the wide circulation of oral narratives in medieval Japan contributed to the creation of what can be called an incipient ‘national literature’ (Ruch 1977). Shared cultural practices enable people to feel part of an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983), extending beyond their face-to-face daily contacts. Whereas Anderson emphasized the role of the print media in early modern European society in this regard, in Japan performed narratives have provided a similar shared cultural heritage, giving people a sense of belonging to an extended community.
