The Everyday Calligrapher in Heian Japan - האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים

Brenda Danet

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The Everyday Calligrapher in Heian Japan - האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים

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• Arts

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• Publié par: iwudawap
• Nombre de lectures: 57
• Langue: Français
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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Brenda Danet Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Emerita)/ Yale University [e-mail] Home page:http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~msdanet/ 

Revised, October, 2005

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The Everyday Calligrapher in Heian Japan:

Toward An Archaeology of Writing Practice in

Early Japanese Court Culture

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Abstract

The real-time writing and sharing of waka, 31-syllable poems, was an important aspect of everyday life at court in Heian Japan, a thousand years ago. This paper examines everyday writing practice and writing implements in Heian times through the lens of an ethnographer of communication, interested in the history and functions of writing and in its materiality. The paper asks: how did Heian courtiers write so much and so often, given the many logistic obstacles they faced? What were these logistic obstacles? What solutions and improvisations did they invent to overcome them? What evidence is there for the beginnings of portable writing equipment? The analysis assembles evidence from texts such as poetic diaries and The Tale of Genji, depictions in visual art, and surviving writing implements. 

Keywords: Japanese calligraphy; logistics of writing; history of writing technology; social functions of writing; portability. 

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Introduction 1

This paper is an exploration of calligraphic practice in the everyday lives

of aristocrats in Heian Japan (794-1192 AD). The Heian period was a glorious

Golden Age in Japanese culture. Life at court was highly aestheticized, and the

visual arts, music, and literature all flourished to an unprecedented extent

(Hempel, 1983; McCullough, 1999). Originally imported from China centuries

earlier, along with many other aspects of the much older Chinese culture,

calligraphy became a cherished, increasingly indigenously rooted art form

(Nakata, 1973; Boudonnat and Kushizaki, 2002, 2003).

In this paper I focus not on the appreciation of surviving great

calligraphic works, the evolution of Japanese scripts, or connoisseurship of

calligraphic implements,  nor on the literary study of Heian texts--all subjects of

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1 This is a revised version of a paper presented at the joint meeting of the European Association for Japanese Studies and JAWSJapan Anthropology Workshop, University of Vienna, August 31-September 3, 2005, panel on Anthropological Approaches to Literature. The research was inspired by Edward Kamens course at Yale University on The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon, and has benefited from his help and comments, as well as those of Andrew Pekarik, Flora Margalit, Sadako Aoki, Russell Stutler, and Amy Franks. 

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venerable traditions of scholarship in both Japan and the West. Rather, my

focus is on everyday writing practice and writing implements,viewed through

the lens of an empirically oriented social scientist and ethnographer of

communication, interested in the history, materiality, and social functions of

writing, and in the process of writing more than the product. 2 By materiality I

mean the surfaces on which texts are inscribed, the materials and implements

used to do the inscribing, and other logistic aspects of their creation. My

primary target audience is empirically oriented researchers interested in the

history and ethnography of writing, though specialists in Japanese studies may

also find the paper of interest.

Despite enormous differences in technology between our own times and

Heian Japan, certain aspects of writing in these two eras share a somewhat

similar immediacy. Just as in todays instant messaging, SMS (short message

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2 On ethnographic approaches to communication, see Gumperz and Hymes (1986); Bauman and Sherzer (1989); Saville-Troike (1989); Finnegan (2002). For ethnographic approaches to literacy and writing, see Heath (1983); Shuman (1986); Basso (1989); Barton and Ivanic (1991); Street (1993, 1995); Danet (1998). On the materiality of writing, see Haas (1996); Danet (1997); Hall (2000); Zeitlin and Liu (2003). 

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