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WORK TITLE: Mapping Courtship and Kinship in Classical Japan
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Bargen, Doris Gertrud
BIRTHDATE: 1948
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info. : http://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/archive/1999/091799bargen.html * http://www.umass.edu/asianasianamstudies/faculty.html * https://www.umass.edu/asian/member/doris-g-bargen
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RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1948.
EDUCATION:Tübingen University, Germany, Ph.D., 1978.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Scholar, educator, and writer. University of Massachusetts Amherst, associate professor of Japanese studies.
AWARDS:
National Endowment for the Humanities grants, 1989, 1991-92; Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including Approaches to Teaching Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji, edited by Edward Kamens, Modern Language Association of America, 1993. Contributor to periodicals, including Monumenta Nipponica, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Mosaic, Genji kenkyū, and Trans-Asia Photography Review.
SIDELIGHTS
Japanese studies professor Doris G. Bargen is known internationally as a scholar of the Japanese classic titled The Tale of Genji and has lectured on the topic in both the United States and Japan. Her areas of research are classical Japanese literature, Japanese women writers, Japanese film, and Japanese theater. She has also contributed essays about The Tale of Genji to periodicals and books.
A Woman's Weapon
In her book titled A Woman’s Weapon: Spirit Possession in the Tale of Genji, Bargen examines the depictions of five female characters in The Tale of Genji, which is a Japanese saga written by female author Murasaki Shikibu around 1000 A.D. The five women are possessed by various spirits. Bargen analyzes the book from a perspective that she and critics described as “radical.” Instead of focusing on the experiences of those who observe and interact with the possessed women, she focuses on the women themselves, arguing that each one “is not a passive victim but an active agent who uses—subconsciously, surreptitiously, subversively—” the possession as a form of empowerment.
A Woman’s Weapon “is an impressive model of erudition,” Sonja Arntzen wrote in History of Religions, adding: “The copious notes constitute almost another book in themselves and are a treasure trove of sources for further research.” Pacific Affairs contributor Barbara Hartley remarked: “Regardless of whether or not readers fully accept Bargen’s interpretation, the ground has been laid for interesting and productive future debate.”
Suicidal Honor
In her next book, Suicidal Honor: General Nogi and the Writings of Mori Ōgai and Natsume Sōseki, Bargen examines two prominent suicides in Japan in 1912 within the context of Japanese society and politics and how the suicides influenced two of Japan’s best-known writers. General Nogi Maresuki disemboweled himself on the day of the emperor’s funeral, supposedly to repay an old debt of honor. His wife also committed suicide. The suicides led to a nationwide debate about the samurai code, Japan’s moral codes in general, and why the seppuku ritual form of suicide was still being practiced even though it had been outlawed.
Bergen is primarily interested in why Maresuki’s public display of loyalty resulted in such an influence on the Japanese writers Mori Ōgai and Natsume Sōseki, who were the literary giants of Japan at the time. She examines this influence within the context of a time when Japan was undergoing a significant transition from traditional ways to a more modern society. In the process, many questions arose about Japan’s national identity and the longtime concept of personal honor. Stephen Dodd, writing for Monumenta Nipponica, noted: “Her book’s major contribution is to deepen our understanding of Nogi’s act significantly by locating it in its broader context.”
Mapping Courtship and Kinship in Classical Japan
In her book titled Mapping Courtship and Kinship in Classical Japan: The Tale of Genji and Its Predecessors, Bargen takes a different approach from most literary critics who have focused on the adventures of the story’s hero in The Tale of the Genji. Instead, Bargen primarily explores the story within the context of the complex polygynous kinship system in Japan at the time the story was written and the role this system played in influencing courtship within Heian aristocratic society. Heian courtship was typically aligned with efforts to achieve higher positions at the royal court and the desire to have a geological line of descendants connected with the imperial line. As a result, Bargen explains how interpreting courtship within this genealogical connection is important to understanding the politics of interpersonal behavior as depicted in various literary works of the period.
Bergen writes that the authors did not depict these courtship practices as being conscious acts by the various stories’ characters. Nevertheless, she notes both the authors and readers were well aware of the major reasons for the romances depicted. A major focus is on kaimami courtship ritual, which typically begins with what Bergen called the “uniquely Japanese form of erotic hide and seek,” as noted by Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries contributor S. Arntzen, who went on to note that Mapping Courtship and Kinship in Classical Japan is “generously illustrated and written with verve.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Bergen, Doris G., A Woman’s Weapon: Spirit Possession in the Tale of Genji, University of Hawaiʻi Press (Honolulu, HI), 1997.
PERIODICALS
Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, April, 2016. S. Arntzen, review of Mapping Courtship and Kinship in Classical Japan: The Tale of Genji and Its Predecessors, p. 1163.
History of Religions, August, 2001, Sonja Arntzen, review of A Woman’s Weapon: Spirit Possession in the Tale of Genji, p. 76.
Monumenta Nipponica, autumn, 2007, Stephen Dodd, review of Suicidal Honor: General Nogi and the Writings of Mori Ōgai and Natsume Sōseki, pp. 383-386.
Pacific Affairs, spring, 1998, Barbara Hartley, review of A Woman’s Weapon, p. 263.
Reference & Research Book News, February, 2007, review of Suicidal Honor.
ONLINE
Japan Times Online, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/ (April 1, 2017), Hiroaki Sato, “Mapping Courtship and Kinship in Classical Japan Explores Peeping Tomism and Aristocratic Polygamy.”
University of Massachusetts Amherst Web site, http://www.umass.edu/ (April 1, 2017), author faculty profile.
LC control no.: n 80064168
Descriptive conventions:
rda
Personal name heading:
Bargen, Doris G.
Variant(s): Bargen, Dorris G.
Affiliation: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Profession or occupation:
College teachers
Found in: A woman's weapon, c1997: CIP t.p. (Doris G. Bargen) data
sheet (b. 1948)
Her The fiction of Stanley Elkin, 1979: t.p. (Doris G.
Bargen)
NUCMC data from Washington Univ. Libr. for Elkin, S.
Papers, 1955-1983 (Bargen, Dorris G.)
Washington University Libraries. Guide to the modern
literary manuscripts collection, c1985 (Bargen, Dorris
G.; German author)
Mapping courtship and kinship in classical Japan, 2015:
title page (Doris G. Bargen) jacket (Doris G. Bargen is
professor of Japanese studies at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst)
Associated language:
eng
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Doris G. Bargen
Prof. Bargen is an Associate Professor of Japanese. She receive her Ph.D. at Tubingen Universitv (Germany) in 1978. Her areas of research are Classical Japanese Literature, Japanese Women writers, Japanese Film, and Japanese Theater. Her teaching responsibilities include Classical & Medieval Japanese Literature, Modern Japanese Literature, Women in Japanese Literature & Film and Classical Japanese. She can be reached in Herter 439, 413-545-4955, and at dgbargen@asianlan.umass.edu.
Doris G. Bargen
Professor
Doris G. Bargen, PhD, Universität Tübingen, is Professor of Japanese Studies and Honors Program Director for Japanese at UMass Amherst. She is known internationally as a scholar of the Japanese classic, The Tale of Genji, and has lectured on the topic in Japan and the United States. Most recently, she was invited to the Humboldt Universität Berlin to present a paper on Mori Ōgai at an international symposium. She has been active in organizing lectures, conferences, and symposia, and she served on many University committees and councils, such as the Research Council and the Commonwealth Honors College Council.
Her essays on The Tale of Genji have appeared in Mosaic (1986), The Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (1988 and 1991 [rpt. in Harold Bloom’s collection on The Tale of Genji, 2004]), Approaches to Teaching Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji (1993), Genji kenkyū (1999), and a Festschrift for Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit (Iudicium, 2008). Bargen’s publications on Heian culture culminated in two interdisciplinary studies, A Woman’s Weapon: Spirit Possession in The Tale of Genji (University of Hawai`i Press, 1997) andMapping Courtship and Kinship in Classical Japan: The Tale of Genji and its Predecessors (University of Hawai`i Press, forthcoming 2015).
She has also published a number of essays on modern Japanese literature, including one on Kawabata Yasunari in the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies (1992), two on Enchi Fumiko – in Monumenta Nipponica (1991) and in The Woman’s Hand: Gender and Theory in Japanese Women’s Writing(Stanford, 1996), and two on Mori Ōgai – in Monumenta Nipponica (2012) and in “Ōgai” – Mori Rintarō: Begegnungen mit dem japanischen homme de lettres (Harrassowitz, 2014). In her monograph, Suicidal Honor: General Nogi and the Writings of Mori Ōgai and Natsume Sōseki (University of Hawai`i Press, 2006), Bargen explored the national crises that exposure to the West triggered during the Bakumatsu and Meiji-Taishō periods. Her current research is about assassins and avengers in Japanese literature.
Research Areas
Classical, Medieval, and Modern Japanese literature and culture
samurai culture
Japanese art and architecture
Japanese film
Publications
A Woman’s Weapon: Spirit Possession in The Tale of Genji (University of Hawai`i Press, 1997)
Suicidal Honor: General Nogi in the Writings of Mori Ōgai and Natsume Sōseki (University of Hawai`i Press, 2006)
Mapping Courtship and Kinship in Classical Japan: The Tale of Genji and its Predecessors (University of Hawai`i Press, forthcoming 2015)
articles in Monumenta Nipponica, the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Mosaic, Genji kenkyū, Trans-Asia Photography Review
chapters in various scholarly books
Awards and Accolades
CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book Award; Honors Coordinator Award
Fulbright-Hays, National Endowment for the Humanities, Social Science Research Council, Japan Foundation, Healey Endowment Grant, Research Support Grant
Courses Recently Taught
Japanese 135: Japanese Arts and Culture
Japanese 143: Courtly Romance and Warrior Epic
Japanese 499C: The Samurai
Japanese 499D: Rebels and Martyrs
Bargen, Doris G.: Mapping courtship and kinship in classical Japan: The tale of Genji and its predecessors
S. Arntzen
53.8 (Apr. 2016): p1163.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Bargen, Doris G. Mapping courtship and kinship in classical Japan: The tale of Genji and its predecessors. Hawai'i, 2015. 372p bibl Index afp ISBN 9780824851545 cloth, $59.00
(cc) 53-3382
PL726
2015-9226 CIP
This meticulously researched work succeeds brilliantly in mapping the tight web of kinship that dominated Heian aristocratic society. Bargen (Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst) is convincing in arguing that plot lines of courtship in literary works of the period are animated by a genealogical desire to have one's descendants linked into the imperial line. Whereas this desire was not depicted as conscious on the part of fictional characters, Bargen posits that the authors and audience of these works understood this driving force behind tales of romance. Bargen also maps the architectural and geographical space within which these dramas of courtship took place, and devotes appropriately serious attention to kaimami, the "uniquely Japanese form of erotic hide and seek" with which so many fictional courtships begin. Bargen's interpretive thrust is primarily psychological, but she is careful to ground her analysis in close textual reading. Joining other interpretive work--in both Japanese and English--on the Tale of Genji, this thought-provoking book raises many interesting issues. Generously illustrated and written with verve, it will engage not only students of Japanese literature but also those in history, anthropology, and comparative psychology. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.--S. Arntzen, University of Toronto
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Arntzen, S. "Bargen, Doris G.: Mapping courtship and kinship in classical Japan: The tale of Genji and its predecessors." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Apr. 2016, p. 1163. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA449661513&it=r&asid=358ea03c1997164e9be1ae47b0ef156d. Accessed 28 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A449661513
Suicidal honor; General Nogi and the writings of Mori Ogai and Natsume Soseki
22.1 (Feb. 2007):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2007 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
9780824829988
Suicidal honor; General Nogi and the writings of Mori Ogai and Natsume Soseki.
Bargen, Doris G.
U. of Hawai'i Pr.
2006
289 pages
$42.00
Hardcover
DS884
General Nogi Maresuki paid a decades-old debt of honor by disemboweling himself on the day of his emperor's funeral. Nogi Shizuko, his wife, joined him in self-inflicted death. News of their suicide split opinion throughout the Japan of 1912 and brought into full view long-simmering questions about traditional morality within the samurai code, the intrusion or improvements of modernity, and the many and complex reasons why the ritual of seppuku was forbidden but still practiced. Bargen (Japanese literature and culture, U. of Massachusetts Amherst) explores these acts in themselves within their historical and political contexts. She also examines how these acts influenced two of Japan's greatest writers in a time of significant and painful historical transition and redefinition of national identity, when Japan was still defining what it was as a nation and what was meant by national and personal honor.
([c]20072005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Suicidal honor; General Nogi and the writings of Mori Ogai and Natsume Soseki." Reference & Research Book News, Feb. 2007. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA159047951&it=r&asid=87f8187b89025c82bd4839e71549a9e5. Accessed 28 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A159047951
‘Mapping Courtship and Kinship in Classical Japan’ explores peeping tomism and aristocratic polygamy
by Hiroaki Sato
Special To The Japan Times
Mar 26, 2016
Article history
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Peeping tomism plays a pivotal role in the elegant world of Murasaki Shikibu’s “The Tale of Genji,” Doris Bargen argues in her new book, “Mapping Courtship and Kinship in Classical Japanese.” This may surprise readers as much as the argument in her 1997 monograph, “A Woman’s Weapon.” In that erudite book, she refuted the traditional understanding of mononoke (“spirit possession”) in Shikibu’s grand romance. Mononoke is the spirit central to such haunting noh plays as “Aoi no Ue.”
Mapping Courtship and Kinship in Classical Japan, by Doris G. Bargen
371 pages
University of Hawaii Press, Nonfiction.
The original Japanese word for “peeping tomism” is kaimami (“looking through a gap in the fence”). It doesn’t necessarily presuppose a fence or a woman, as it means “furtive observation.” At any rate, it often works as a trigger to courtship in “The Tale of Genji.” The Kyoto aristocracy depicted in the novel is a closed and close society, and polygamous. What Bargen calls “affinal incest” is prevalent, rampant.
At the time when the book was written, sexual acts were open, sometimes blatant. So you might say Murasaki Shikibu needed the softening glow of kaimami to romanticize the rather sordid reality she had to tell. Bargen provides sumptuous reproductions of kaimami paintings of later periods: pictures of palatial interiors, and diagrams of the relations among the characters in “The Tale of Genji.” These diagrams help the reader disentangle the complicated web of sexual relationships that Genji, an emperor’s semi-illegitimate son, weaves as he wanders from one woman to another, creating sorrow, heartbreak, jealousy and resignation.
From: Monumenta Nipponica
Volume 62, Number 3, Autumn 2007
pp. 383-386 |