Richard R’s Reviews > A Tale Unasked > Status Update

How is this so far, Richard?

Noel wrote: "How is this so far, Richard?"

I finished it last night. Japanese noblewomen were often highly literate but had little formal responsibilities or duties, hence having both the means and time to write about their surroundings, which is essentially the sort of pre-requisite for writing that Woolf wrote about in A Room of One's Own.

Much of the text is concerned with Nijo's sexual relationships with both the Emperor and various lovers. Buddhism is rather less puritanical than Christianity on these matters: pregnancies are quietly dealt with through adoption rather than being a great cause of scandal. Nonetheless, Nijo is very aware of karmic principles and spends time considering whether her behaviour was sinful or not. It should particularly be pointed out that Nijo had limited agency over this, given the powerful men she's surrounded by: for example, the first sexual encounter described in the memoirs is non-consensual and occurs when she's only 14.

If you look at a lot of writings by medieval women in Europe, then religion was often a way of gaining greater autonomy and that also follows here: Nijo encounters a former concubine who later becomes a Buddhist nun and eventually follows in her footsteps after being expelled from the court. It's noticeable that her pilgrimages are one of the first times when she's able to act independently rather than being constrained by court ritual and male privilege.

I've put the above as a review: one of the other things that leapt out is that I'd forgotten how much the Japanese nobility used to communicate with each other through poetry.