Sewing Together the Gokan: Text Through Image in the Nise Murasaki Inaka Genji

• Main Author: Mueller, Charlotte
• Other Authors: Walley, Akiko
• Language: en_US
• Published: University of Oregon 2013
• Subjects: Edo; Gokan; Inaka Genji; Kuzushiji; Tale of Genji; Text and image
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1794/12976

The gokan is a medium of pre-modern Japanese literature where the story is told through a mixture of text and image on every page, with the narrative and dialogue of the story surrounding the image illustrations on all sides. The Nise Murasaki inaka Genji (A Rustic Genji by a Fake Murasaki, 1829-42), written by Ryutei Tanehiko (1783-1842) and illustrated by Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865), was one of the most popular gokan of the Edo Period (1605-1868) and has been republished approximately twenty-four times from the end of the nineteenth century until today. By examining how these works handle text and image, this thesis seeks to gain a deeper understanding about how image functions in the gokan genre. When text must be translated and the image altered from the original layout to make it comprehensible to modern readers, the resulting text and image combinations, or lack of image, offer insight into the importance of the role of image in gokan.