Riverside Mansion Mythologies

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_chapter_7060
dc.contributor.author	Smits Ivo
dc.title	Riverside Mansion Mythologies. Retextualising the Past in Poetic Commentary
dc.type	Chapter
dc.language.iso	en
dc.description.abstract	This essay explores one reading of Roland Barthes’ notion of myth and intertextuality as a potential approach to understand how what I call the Riverside Mansion myth may be a model for the creation of cultural memory in late classical and medieval Japan. I argue that medieval commentaries (so-called kochūshaku) to Kokin wakashū and Ise monogatari constitute a method of creation of a Barthesian myth. The case study is Kawara-no-in (Riverside Mansion), a historical estate created by the ninth-century statesman Minamoto no Tōru (822-895), which became famous, among other things, for its supposed recreation of Shiogama, a place in northern Japan. Specifically, this essay considers as a so-called ‘base-text’ not the classic texts but the image of Riverside Mansion, and looks at elaborations in medieval commentaries of the concrete features of Tōru’s reconstruction as creative forms of creating an understanding of the cultural role and meaning of Riverside Mansion.
dc.relation.ispartof	Ca’ Foscari Japanese Studies
dc.relation.ispartof	Arts and Literature
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Venice University Press, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.issued	2022-08-30
dc.dateAccepted	2022-02-06
dc.dateSubmitted	2021-12-13
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-609-1/riverside-mansion-mythologies/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/978-88-6969-608-4/001
dc.identifier.issn	2610-8976
dc.identifier.eissn	2610-9395
dc.identifier.isbn	978-88-6969-609-1
dc.identifier.eisbn	978-88-6969-608-4
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
item.fulltext	with fulltext
item.grantfulltext	open
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Commentaries
dc.subject	Ise monogatari
dc.subject	Kawara-no-in
dc.subject	Kokin wakashū
dc.subject	Metatextuality
dc.subject	Mythologies
dc.subject	Roland Barthes

Chapter
open access peer reviewed

Riverside Mansion Mythologies

Retextualising the Past in Poetic Commentary

Ivo Smits Universiteit Leiden, Nederland

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abstract

This essay explores one reading of Roland Barthes’ notion of myth and intertextuality as a potential approach to understand how what I call the Riverside Mansion myth may be a model for the creation of cultural memory in late classical and medieval Japan. I argue that medieval commentaries (so-called kochūshaku) to Kokin wakashū and Ise monogatari constitute a method of creation of a Barthesian myth. The case study is Kawara-no-in (Riverside Mansion), a historical estate created by the ninth-century statesman Minamoto no Tōru (822-895), which became famous, among other things, for its supposed recreation of Shiogama, a place in northern Japan. Specifically, this essay considers as a so-called ‘base-text’ not the classic texts but the image of Riverside Mansion, and looks at elaborations in medieval commentaries of the concrete features of Tōru’s reconstruction as creative forms of creating an understanding of the cultural role and meaning of Riverside Mansion.

Published

Aug. 30, 2022

Accepted

Feb. 6, 2022

Submitted

Dec. 13, 2021

Language

ISBN (PRINT)

978-88-6969-609-1

ISBN (EBOOK)

978-88-6969-608-4

Keywords: Commentaries • Roland Barthes • Mythologies • Kokin wakashū • Ise monogatari • Kawara-no-in • Metatextuality

permalink: http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-608-4/001

Copyright: © 2022 Ivo Smits. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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