The feminine voice of subversion and inversion: a comparative reading of “The Story of Yingying” and The Tale of Genji

Abstract

This paper intends to bring the interrelation between premodern Chinese and Japanese literature under the scope of comparative literature. Anglophone studies of Chinese influence on Japanese literature are scarce due to the legacy of Japan’s emphasis on its own “national literature” and the contemporary criticisms of influence study. Through a comparative reading of the “The Story of Yingying” from China and the Japanese canonical work The Tale of Genji, this study argues that it is insufficient to read Genji within the frame of Japanese “national literature,” which presumes a homogenous Japanese culture and tradition. In my analysis, a theme of feminine power represented in Chinese narrative is shown to be further developed in Genji. I find that female characters in these Chinese and Japanese literary texts are not always presented as weak or fragile, rather they speak up for themselves audaciously and directly. I suggest that this feminine voice that subverts and inverts power relations in the Genji is a case of a normally covert activity being practised in plain view, what I call an “open smuggling” of feminine power which is also discernible in “The Story of Yingying”.