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Media type:
E-Article
Title:
The Nue and Other Monsters in Heike Monogatari
Contributor:
Oyler, Elizabeth
Published:
Harvard-Yenching Institute, 2008
Published in:
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 68 (2008) 2, Seite 1-32
Language:
English
ISSN:
0073-0548;
1944-6454
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
Elizabeth Oyler discusses the Kakuichi-bon Heike monogatari's "Nue" episode, a eulogistic piece that commemorates the aged Minamoto warrior Yorimasa as an embodiment of "poetic and military skills" (bunburyōdō). Appearing immediately after Yorimasa's suicide in a failed uprising, "Nue" describes paired sets of events that mark Yorimasa's life and culminate in two subjugations of a weird creature called a nue. Despite its celebratory form, the "Nue" episode treats Yorimasa's skills as poet and warrior with ambivalence, using the nue subjugation to reveal the monster as a mirror image of Yorimasa. By having the monster mirror Yorimasa's hybrid identity as poet and warrior, the "Nue" episode suggests that such a combination, the product of the tumultuous environment in which the Heike circulated, was unnatural.