Extinguishing the Flame: Cycles of Suicide in Tameyo no sôshi (Harvard Art Museum)
R. Keller Kimbrough (University of Colorado, Boulder)
Among the more intriguing works of late-medieval Japanese Buddhist fiction is an otogizôshi by the name of Tameyo no sôshi, “The Tale of Tameyo.” Of the two known manuscripts in which the story survives, only one is illustrated: the two-scroll emaki in the Harvard Art Museum. Tameyo no sôshi tells the heartbreaking tale of a fourteenth-century noble named Tameyo who abandons his wife and two small children in order to take Buddhist vows. His embrace of the monastic life suggests a kind of ritual suicide—an annihilation of the self—which is emphasized within the narrative by his orphaned children’s later suicide by drowning.
In my presentation, I will explore the theme of religious suicide, both metaphorical and ostensibly “real,” within the Harvard Tameyo no sôshi emaki and related works of Muromachi fiction. I will focus in particular on issues of spiritual and material attachment, renunciation, and voyeurism (because, like the reader, the not-so-disinterested father watches as his children die). In addition, I will discuss the trope of “deathly devotion,” or “suicidal piety,” in late-medieval popular fiction and Tendai Buddhist discourse as I consider the place of Tameyo no sôshi within the broader context of Japanese literary, religious, and art historical studies.
煩悩消滅物語 —『為世の草子』における自殺連鎖—
ケラー・キンブロー （コロラド大学）
中世後期の仏教物語『為世の草子』は二つの伝本が現存するが、絵入はハーバード大学美術館所蔵の絵巻（二巻）のみである。仏道を歩むために妻子を捨てた十四世紀の為世の心痛む話だ。為世の出家は一種の儀式としての自殺的行為、すなわち「自己の放擲」を示唆し、この話では孤児になった主人公の二児の溺水自殺にも強調されている。
Click here to download paper in Japanese.
Click here to download paper in English.
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