Love and Loss Quiz B

Native Japanese script, principally used for vernacular women's writing, emerging late 8th–early 9th century.

Kana

Middle tier of Heian elites (~900 of 1,000 nobles at court), responsible for collecting provincial taxes, whose daughters high nobles liked to marry

provincial governor class (zuryō)

Miscellaneous jottings work (zuihitsu) by a lady-in-waiting to Empress Teishi, mixing diary-like anecdotes, opinion lists, and mono-zukushi catalogues, famous for its opening "In spring, the dawn…”

The Pillow Book (Makura no soishi)

Author (b.c. 966) of The Pillow Book, daughter of poet Kiyohara no Motosuke and great-granddaughter of Kiyohara no Fukayabu, rival of Murasaki Shikibu

Sei Shōnagon

Diary covering the self-critical court portraits and literary rivalries (Izumi Shikibu, Sei Shōnagon, Akazome Emon) written by the author of The Tale of Genji.

Diary of Lady Murasaki (Murasaki Shikibu nikki)

Author (c. 978–c. 1016) who served Empress Shōshi, secretly tutored her in Chinese poetry, and was nicknamed "Lady Chronicle"

Murasaki Shikibu

Term (also "diary" or "memoir") literally meaning a daily record, used for both men's Chinese-language court records and women's vernacular prose accounts.

nikki (journal)

Clan name of Kaneie, the husband whose infidelities and courtship are chronicled in the Kagerō Diary, and of the regent-branch family whose men were known for marrying into imperial lines.

FUJIWARA

Diary (971–974) by an author who calls her own life "the diary of a mayfly" and recounts her husband Kaneie's affairs, especially with the "Machi Alley" woman

Kagerō Diary (Kagerō nikki)

Diarist/poet (936–995?) known by her son's name because her own is unrecorded, married to Fujiwara no Kaneie

Mother of Michitsuna

"World's first novel" (c. 1000), 54 chapters, by Murasaki Shikibu

The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari)

Term (thing telling) often translated "tale" or "fiction," though not necessarily meaning invented falsehood

monogatari

Hero of the Tale of Genji, given the surname 源氏 ("a commoner of the Minamoto family") after his father removes him from the royal line to protect him.

Genji

Genji's stepmother, who resembles his dead mother and shares his "Shining"/"Sunlight" nickname pairing.

Fujitsubo

Genji's wife, daughter of the Minister of the Left, given a name only in chapter 9

Aoi

Genji's best friend, rival, and brother-in-law, son of the Minister of the Left

Tō-no-chūjō

Trope describing men's hope of discovering a worthy but hidden/unknown woman, central to the "rainy night's discrimination of women" debate in Chapter 2.

"hidden flower" (trope)

Term, literally "to look through a gap in a fence," for the peeping/glimpsing device by which Genji first sees women such as the ten-year-old Murasaki.

kaimami

The Haven, an older widow of high rank whom Genji disappoints in Chapter 4 and whose spirit is never confirmed as Yūgao’s killer; the text only has Genji dream of a woman at his pillow, and his later remark that a spirit “had taken a fancy to him” (p. 79) suggests the haunted mansion, not her:

Rokujō

Low-ranked woman Genji meets anonymously via a poem on a fan, who dies mysteriously at an abandoned mansion; her daughter becomes Tamakazura.

Yūgao (the Twilight Beauty)

Trope ("the strangely appealing one who lives by herself, hidden away in some ruinous, overgrown old house") describing the decayed mansion where Yūgao dies

"abandoned house" / "ruinous, overgrown old house"

Ten-year-old girl Genji glimpses through a fence in the Northern Hills, daughter of His Highness of War (Prince Hyōbu, Fujitsubo’s brother), who resembles Fujitsubo because Fujitsubo is her aunt. Her name means “purple gromwell,” a plant of affinity and lasting passion:

Young Murasaki

Term for the malevolent/possessing spirit used in the text to explain Fujitsubo's illness (and elsewhere in the novel to cover over inconvenient truths like pregnancy or death), the only vocab term given for this not-yet-covered topic.

mononoke

Name given to the author at court, taken from the character after the Tale became famous, not her birth name. Don’t confuse it with the character Murasaki or the chapter “Young Murasaki”

Murasaki Shikibu

The two tropes you can point to in “Young Murasaki,” the peeping scene (a nun first, then the sparrow-crying girl) and the girl as a secluded bud who is nonetheless well-bred and ready to be molded:

kaimami trope and “hidden flower” trope

Order the women’s prose works: Kagerō Diary, Pillow Book, Tale of Genji

Kagerō Diary (971–974), Pillow Book (c. 995–997), then Tale of Genji (c. 1000) and the Diary of Lady Murasaki (1000–1010)

Which came first, second, and third: Mother of Michitsuna, Sei Shōnagon, Murasaki Shikibu?

1. Mother of Michitsuna, 2. Sei Shōnagon, 3. Murasaki Shikibu

The Kagerō Diary (Kagerō nikki) was written by

Mother of Michitsuna

The Pillow Book (Makura no sōshi) was written by

Sei Shōnagon