The following passage is adapted from a book titled A History of Japan by J.C. Caiger and R.H.P. Mason (© 1997 by J.C. Caiger and R.H.P. Mason).
- Literature was taken very seriously
- by the Heian Court. In those early
- days, anyone interested in fine
- writing needed a knowledge of
- Chinese and – to a lesser extent –
- Buddhism, as Japanese culture was
- still very much subject to direct
- influences from the mainland.
- Therefore, there was a close
- association between literature
- and learning.
- This association led, in turn, to
- literature being closely connected
- with public administration on the
- one hand and private conduct on
- the other. The Confucian and
- Buddhist texts were the courtier’s
- manuals for good government,
- and knowledge of them opened
- the way to official advancement.
- At the same time, these books
- gave their readers guidance on
- matters of general behavior. They
- were the basis of personal and
- family, as well as political morality.
- Thus scholarship, public
- promotion and private ethics were
- all involved in literary studies,
- and it is not surprising that
- literature should have been
- so highly regarded.
- As in the Nara period, writing was
- overwhelmingly upper-class and
- aristocratic and metropolitan in
- tone, because only aristocrats and
- priests were literate, and for a time
- it remained largely Chinese in
- language as well as inspiration,
- owing to the continuing difficulty of
- writing Japanese when using only
- Chinese characters. This situation
- altered radically about the year 900
- with the development of a phonetic
- system which made it possible to
- write readily intelligible Japanese.
- The invention of phonetic letters
- allowed the composition of
- enduring Japanese language prose
- works from the tenth century.
- Nevertheless, Chinese continued
- for some time as the main
- language for business and official
- documents, philosophical treatises,
- partly because of tradition but also
- because it had a fuller and more
- precise vocabulary suited to
- such purposes.
- Heian literature therefore has two
- very different streams. One
- consists of writings in the Chinese
- language and ideographic script,
- and is associated with men. The
- other is made up of works written
- in Japanese with considerable
- recourse to the native phonetic
- script, and is associated with
- women. The latter is more
- important in terms of literary
- merit, although it should be noted
- in passing that the Heian-period
- Chinese writings are a rich and
- largely unexplored source of
- historical information and do
- indeed have some artistic worth.
- Why did men tend to use Chinese
- and women Japanese? And how did
- Japanese women come to write
- so superbly?
- It is often argued that men
- considered it beneath them to
- write in Japanese. Questions of
- dignity and education may have had
- some significance, but this
- explanation is not satisfactory since
- some men did write Japanese,
- especially some verse, and some
- women studied Chinese. The
- divergence can perhaps best be
- explained by differences in the
- occupations of men and women and
- by the suitability of the two
- languages for different purposes.
- Men, accustomed to coping with the
- everyday affairs of government,
- their estates, and their households
- in comparatively concise and
- concrete Chinese, doubtless found
- it easier to compose memoirs,
- family testaments, and private
- records of public events in that
- tongue. By contrast, the life of
- introspection and sociable leisure
- led by women at court and at home
- encouraged them to write and
- circulate among themselves
- compositions in Japanese.
- Japanese, after all, was their mother
- tongue, and its tenth-century form,
- however vague and limited it might
- have been in some respects, had
- a marvelous potential for
- communicating subtle emotions.
- This potential the court ladies
- taught themselves to exploit.
- Last, but not least, the splendid
- flowering of feminine literary
- talent in the Heian period was
- made possible by a degree of social
- and intellectual freedom enjoyed
- by women of the upper class.