Shōmonki: The Story of Masakado's Rebellion by Judith N. RabinovitchReview by: Haruo ShiraneJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 107, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1987), pp. 343-344Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/602855 .

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Reviews of Books 343

all right in itself; it is, however, largely responsible for the tortured form of this English version. More careful editing might have taken care of such infelicities as these in both the poems and the prose, but if these really represent the applica- tion of Backus' methods as he describes them, they are surely not methods that should be emulated.

Backus takes the trouble to protest that he is "neither a specialist in the Heian period nor a literary critic" but a "generalist" (p. vii). This is offered as an explanation for what he has and has not put into the introductions to the collection and to each story. These are, in fact, quite informative and carefully considered, though he does perhaps devote too much energy to guesswork about the sex of the unknown authors. His comments on the "literary qualities" of the stories are well judged. He says that he "had recourse to a couple of Japanese studies of Heian literature" beyond the annotated texts he chose to use (besides Teramoto's, he refers to Yamagishi Tokuhei's Tsutsumi Chuinagon monogatari zenchiikai'2); he should also have had recourse to the more recent scholarship of Suzuki Kazuo, but there is no mention of him in Backus' commentary, notes or Bibliography.'3

Backus has made Tsutsumi Chuinagon monogatari very accessible. If he did not try to please more than just general readers, there would be less to criticize. Some further polishing of the translation technique, and perhaps some rethinking of the ideas behind it, would perhaps have made this book even better than it is. The Standford University Press has put it together handsomely.

EDWARD KAMENS

YALE UNIVERSITY

1 Yamagishi Tokuhei, Tsutsumi Chuinagon monotagari zen- chuikai (Tokyo: Yilseid6, 1962).

13 See note 1. A lifetime of work on Tsutsumi Chuinagon monogatari is brought together in Suzuki's modestly entitled Josetsu.

Sh5monki: The Story of Masakado's Rebellion. Translated and edited by JUDITH N. RABINOVITCH. Pp. 168, with illustrations, fold-out map. (Monumenta Nipponica Mono- graph, No. 58) Tokyo: MONUMENTA NIPPONICA, SOPHIA

UNIVERSITY. 1986. $16.00 cloth, $10.00 paper.

Mid-Heian literature is generally associated with the great flowering of classical poetry and prose: the Genji monogatari, the Makura no soshi, the Ise monogatari, and the Kokinshui. These works, all of which are in the vernacular, reflect an aristocratic civilization in its maturity, an elegant, refined, aesthetically oriented culture centered on the capital and the

imperial palace. It is not until the late Heian period, with the appearance of the Konjaku monogatari sha and other more popular anecdotal (setsuwa) literary forms, that we begin to have a better glimpse of the provinces, of the perimeter of Heian society, and of those social elements-the samurai, the priesthood, the semi-autonomous provincial governors-that would eventually come to the fore in the medieval period. The Shomonki, which provides a dramatic picture of the rebellion and chaos caused in the Eastern Provinces by Taira no Masakado in the 930s and 940s, is a vivid reminder that many of these social elements, particularly the samurai and the provincial governors who acted as local chieftains, were active even at the height of the Heian period. Institutional historians often remind us of the rapid breakdown of the Ritsuryo system and its effect on the provinces, but the extant literature, most of which is written by aristocracy at the imperial court, rarely gives us a glimpse, as the Shomonki does, of this aspect of Heian society.

The Shlmonki is more than a historical chronicle: it has a highly didactic element reminiscent of later Buddhist anec- dotes. In the first half of this work, Masakado is largely triumphant. By the last part, however, when Masakado is defeated and killed, he becomes the embodiment of evil, a villain deserving of punishment and death. The ending is unusual: in a message conveyed from the other world, Masa- kado's spirit repents for the sins he committed while on earth.

The Shomonki was written not long after the first appear- ance of the Ise monogatari (928, 961), but in contrast to these vernacular tales, the Shomonki is composed in hentai kambun, or variant Chinese. (The Japanese, it should be noted, have traditionally read this work in the kundoku form, in which the variant Chinese is rearranged and read in a manner close to classical Japanese.) The Shomonki, which has a distinct Sinitic flavor, is interspersed with numerous references and allusions to Chinese history and literature. These embellish- ments, which often take the form of adages and sayings, give the work an ornate, occasionally didactic, and sometimes (at least for the modern reader) artificial, tone, particularly in the dialogue. As Rabonovitch points out, about one-third of the Shomonki employs Chinese parallel prose (pien wen) in one form or another and is the longest hentai kambun piece to employ this technique. Compared to its vernacular counter- parts, however, the work itself is extremely short, coming to no more than twelve pages in the Iwanami Nihon shis& taikei series.

The Shomonki has long been regarded as the "fountain- head" of the gunki mono, or war-tale genre, which was to see its heyday in the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. Rabino- vich argues that the Shomonki is in fact more "realistic" in character portrayal than later war tales and that the heroes of the Heike monogatari and later gunki mono lack "psycho- logical depth and complexity" (pp. 66-67). In this reviewer's opinion, however, one of the great touches of the Heike

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344 Journal of the American Oriental Society 107.2 (1987)

monogatari (particularly the popular Kakuichi-bon) is the subtlety with which the narrative depicts the relationships among warriors, their families, and their retainers, and the inevitable emotional and psychological strains and conflicts that the war imposes upon these relationships. In the Shomonki, by contrast, we rarely enter into the thoughts and emotions of Masakado, not to mention his followers, and there is little attention given to Masakado's personal relation- ships. The interest of the narrative lies more in the larger social landscape.

The Shomonki, which was almost certainly written by a male scholar, is perhaps more significant as a social and political document than as a work of literature. As the title (literally, the "Record [Ki] of Masakado [Shomon]") suggests, this work is closer in many ways to the early and mid-Heian chronicles and biographies (den)-all of which are written in variant or pure Chinese-than the Heian vernacular tales, or monogatari, which were to set the tone and style for the medieval gunki monogatari, or war tales. Indeed, one wishes that Rabinovitch could have compared the Shomonki, which is, after all, a kind of den, recounting the unusual exploits of a single historical individual, to some of the other den, such as the Fujiwara no Yasunori den (ca. 907), which were written at approximately the same time by other male scholars.

This translation is a welcome addition to the growing corpus of English translations of Heian literature. Rabinovitch has managed to translate into readable English an extremely difficult text-one which Japanese scholars have struggled with for some time. Judging from the Shimpukuji text available in the standard Iwanami Nihon shis3 taikei series (which, for some reason, Rabinovitch never mentions), her translation is accurate and the ample notes explicate the many obscure words and phrases that appear in this work. Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the introduction, which delves into both historical and literary problems, is Rabinovitch's analysis of language and style, specifically the evolution of hentai kambun, the "variant Chinese" style, an area that, despite its importance, has been generally ignored or bypassed by Western scholars.

HARUO SHIRANE

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Shinze: Hachiman Imagery and its Development. By CHRIS- TINE GUTH KANDA. Pp. 135, with 76 plates. (Harvard East

Asian Monographs, No. 119) Cambridge, Mass. and Lon- don: COUNCIL ON EAST ASIAN STUDIES, HARVARD UNIVER-

SITY. 1985.

Shinz5 are wooden statues of kami, the deities of Japanese Shinto. Hachiman is one of the most prominent kami. The

evolution of Hachiman worship is a case study of the interac- tion of native Shinto beliefs and imported Buddhist practices. Originating in the sixth century on the island of Kyushu, Hachiman gradually acquired national attention as he became associated with healing, seafaring, metal working, and-most of all-with imperial ancestors. In 749, he was installed as a guardian of Buddhism at the state temple of Thdai-ji in Nara, and through his oracles, gained increasing authority as pro- tector of the purity of the imperial line. His influence on the court aristocracy and the Buddhist establishment in the eighth century deepened in the ninth, as Hachiman (like other Shinto kami) was appropriated by esoteric Buddhist priests as an enlightened guide to Buddhist understanding. The first sculp- tured images of Hachiman appeared during the ninth century, showing the kami as a Buddhist monk.

Christine Guth Kanda's study of Hachiman sculptures is not a narrowly conceived footnote to the mainstream of Japanese art history. Rather, Hachiman images serve as a concrete focus for analysis of the interaction of Shinto and Buddhist religious practices and sculptural forms during the Heian and Kama- kura periods, from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries. By concentrating on the Shinto side of the interaction-by focusing on shinz5 rather than butsuz5, or Buddhist sculpture -she is able to give primary attention to features important to native Japanese expression, in contrast to those borrowed from imported Chinese and Korean figures of foreign deities. By analyzing the forms created for indigenous kami, she also sheds light on the way continental models for Buddhist images were steadily acclimatized to meet the religious require- ments of the Japanese people.

The book is divided into two parts, bracketed by an introduction to shinz5 and a conclusion summarizing major points. Part I, consisting of chapters 1 through 4, examines the cultural, aesthetic, and religious foundations of shinz6 and the evolution of Hachiman belief. Particularly useful are chapters 2 and 3, which survey the sculptural styles, artists, and patronage of Shinto sculpture within the context of primary developments in Buddhist artistic production. Part II, chapters 5 through 7, presents "case studies" that analyze a chronological sequence of existing Hachiman images. The focus of chapter 5 is the ninth-century wood-core lacquer Hachiman triad at Toji, in Kyoto; chapter 6 begins with the tenth-century wood-style Hachiman triad of Yakushiji, in Nara; chapter 7 discusses at length Kaikei's 1201 multiple- woodblock-style Hachiman at Thdaiji, in Nara.

Each of the three chapters of Part II begins with close scrutiny of the exemplary Hachiman image (description, date, and documentation), but also treats other shinz5 of the era (Early Heian, Fujiwara, or Kamakura) to provide a complete picture of the range of expression at each stage of the development. As a result, the handling of the material is somewhat open-ended, raising questions unanswered within the proscribed limits of the book, and leaving the reader

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