Dancer, Nun, Ghost, Goddess: The Legend of Giō and Hotoke in Japanese Literature, Theater, Visual Arts, and Cultural Heritage

by Roberta Strippoli

Dancer, Nun, Ghost, Goddess explores the story of the dancers Giō and Hotoke, which first appeared in the fourteenth-century narrative Tale of the Heike . The story of the two love rivals is one of loss, female solidarity, and Buddhist salvation. Since its first appearance, it has inspired a stream of fiction, theatrical plays, and visual art works. These heroines have become the subjects of lavishly illustrated hand scrolls, ghosts on the noh stage, and Buddhist and Shinto goddesses. Physical monuments have been built to honor their memories; they are emblems of local pride and centerpieces of shared identity. Two beloved characters in the Japanese literary imagination, Giō and Hotoke are also models that have instructed generations of women on how to survive in a male-dominated world.

244 pages, Hardcover

Published December 7, 2017

About the author

Roberta Strippoli teaches Japanese literature at the University of Napoli "L'Orientale." She has published a collection of medieval Japanese tales in Italian translation titled La monaca tuttofare, la donna serpente, il demone beone. Racconti dal medioevo giapponese (Venezia: Marsilio, 2001) and Dancer, Nun, Ghost, Goddess (Leiden: Brill, 2018) a monograph that explores the reception of a character from the fourteenth-century military narrative Heike monogatari over six centuries across literary, visual, performance genres and cultural heritage.

Reviews

[Chiara Rizzarda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A paramount study on one of the most beautiful episodes within the Heike monogatari: Giō and Hotoke are two dancers that the men in power wish to be rivals, and yet they chose otherwise. Roberta Srippoli is an amazing scholar, and the book is one of my most prized possessions, though its price is disgracefully high if you don't have an academic institution to back you up in your research.
Still, I loved it and I wished it could be made more accessible. The story and its evolutions through the centuries have much to teach even to the layperson.