Inscribed Personalities: Thoughts on Author, Narrator, and Character as One Continuum in Premodern Japanese Literature

Abstract As a form of art, literature is always concerned with human experience. The human agents inscribed in works of literature are commonly divided into several levels, the main categories being author, narrator (or lyrical subject), and character. As key concepts of literary studies, these are usually discussed based on modern definitions, and with good reason. This introduction to the special issue on “Author, Narrator, and Character in Japanese Literature to 1900,” however, takes a different approach and focuses on the historical dimension of these concepts. It traces changing notions of authorship in the textual traditions of court tales ( monogatari ) and women’s diary literature ( nikki bungaku ) from the Heian to the Edo period. It also examines the responsibility of scribes and readers as well as the authority of the text as an entity, considering characteristics of premodern Japanese manuscript culture. While a distinction between author and narrator was not perceived in the modern sense, there are exceptions to this rule. Furthermore, it can be shown that there is a close affinity between authors and certain characters. An analysis of different configurations of author, narrator, and character leads to the conclusion that these may be regarded as part of one continuum.