The Matrilineal Project: Twins, Excess, and Lineage in Late Autumn Rains at Kowata (Kowata no shigure)
Speaker: TERRY KAWASHIMA, Professor of Japanese, University of Massachusetts Boston
Moderator: MELISSA MCCORMICK, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Japanese Art and Culture and Chair, Dept. of East Asian Languages and Civilizations ,Harvard University
This presentation examines how a medieval narrative, Kowata no shigure (author unknown, ca. 14th~16th c.), reimagines the societal contexts of famous Heian-era fictional works upon which it is modeled. Through various tropes of multiplicity, Kowata envisions a paradigm of matrilineal dominance and patterns of inheritance that went against the grain of practices typical in the 11th- century era of the models on which it draws, as well as the medieval times when it was actually composed.
Reischauer Institute Japan Forum Lecture Series
