Intertextuality and the Question of Origins: A Japanese Perspective

Author(s): Jean Yamasaki Toyama

Source: Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 27, No. 4 (1990), pp. 313-323
Published by: Penn State University Press
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Comparative Literature Studies

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Intertextuality and the Question of Origins:

A Japanese Perspective
JEAN YAMASAKI TOYAMA

In recent years intertextuality has informed, in one way or another, most

of the critical activity occurring in literary studies. It has emerged as one
of the most productive, if often arcane, strategies for dealing with litera*
ture. But the very term, "intertextuality," despite its usefulness, has been
subject to interpretation and, indeed, controversy.2 In its least problematic form intertextuality deals not only with the work itself but with the
"text." Over fifteen years ago Michel Foucault suggested a break from
what was then the current critical practice: "The book is not simply the
object that one holds in one's hands; and it cannot remain within the
little parallelepiped that contains it; its unity is variable and relative. As
soon as one questions that unity, it loses its self-evidence; it indicates
itself, constructs itself, only on the basis of a complex field of discourse."3
The book or work is really a text which extends beyond the reaches of the
page to include other works from which direct citations or transformed or
assimilated fragments are taken.4 It is the link between these fragments
embedded in the focused text - the text under study - and taken from
other texts that has been labeled the intertextual relationship. The most
controversial and problematic part of such studies has been establishing
the origin of intertexts; that is, recognizing the embedded or transformed
fragment of text within the focused text, and determining its source. How
does one identify an intertext within a focused text and determine where
it came from?

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES, Vol. 27, No. 4, 1990.

Copyright 1990. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

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314 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

In this study I propose to address these issues through an examination of

certain fundamental practices of Classical Japanese poetry - conventions

that may be labelled "intertextual" - as a means of understanding intertextuality in the West. Of necessity I limit my discussion to Japanese
Classical poetic discourse, acknowledging that it is not unique in its practice and that the Chinese poetic tradition serves as the intertext of Japan's.

When questions of identity of intertext arise in the study of Classical

Japanese poetry, the scholar is not without resources. While the Western
critic must depend primarily on his own mastery of the literary discourse
based on his personal reading, his counterpart, also having a firm grasp of
the literary discourse, can in addition turn to a resource reference like the
Kokka taikan. This is a two-volume index that gives access to the major
collections of Japanese poetry, the Mariysh and 21 imperial anthologies
as well as the Shiriysh and the poems contained in 30 major histories,
diaries, and narratives.5 One volume contains the complete texts of the
poems contained in these works, conveniently numbered for identification. The other volume is a concordance of these poems arranged by
different lines. Because certain lines are repeated in different poems, each
line serves as a category through which can be found the whole poem. For
example, in looking up aki kaze no (the autumn wind) one can find over one
hundred poems containing this very line, accompanied by a different second line. Also listed is the name of the anthology and its location within
the Kokka taikan. Since the great majority of Classical Japanese poems, or
waka> are composed of only 5 lines (5-7-5-7-7), one has immediate access
to practically every waka of importance that uses the line in question.
Because of the extent of this compendium, one could safely say that most of

the poems recognized as important are at the scholar's fingertips.

Because we place such a premium on originality, finding embedded or

transformed intertexts in Western poetry is not as simple. Rather than
make obvious the origins of their metaphors or the inspiration for their

poems, Western poets especially since the Romantic period are wont to
disguise their sources. The kind of exact repetitions found in waka would
be considered flawed because trite and contrived, proof of the failure of
creativity. Stamos Metzidakis suggests that the Western poet in search of

his own voice must "forget what he already knows," even though he is
unable to do so.6 1 believe that the Japanese poet must remember and join

his voice with those who preceded him.

Thus, the concealment of intertexts makes identification of the origin

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INTERTEXTUALITY AND THE QUESTION OF ORIGINS 315

or discovery of the source one of the focal points of intertextual study in

the West. The critic must prod the silent voices, recover "forgotten"
memories. Although at times Julia Kristeva argues against simple source
study intertextuality, even she indulges in this practice in her study of
Lautramont: "Pour comparer le texte prsuppos avec le texte des Posie
II, il serait ncessaire d'tablir quelles ditions de Pascal, de Vauvenargues, de la Rochefoucauld, Ducasse a pu utiliser, car les versions varient
beaucoup d'une dition une autre."7 Such a hunt for the specific edition
of a particular source is fraught with complications. Must one prove that a
poet had a certain edition of a work? But even possession does not prove
reading. (How many books do we possess that we have never read?) Short
of specific references made to the influence of a certain work, it is very
difficult to identify "sources." How can such studies go beyond the realm
of guesswork or coincidence? When intertextuality deals with what the
poet knew or did not know, it flirts dangerously with some form of "inten^

tional fallacy."
To skirt this issue of sources some critics have moved the locus of origin
from the writer to the reader. Metzidakis writes, "I hasten to add that the

models advanced in my study must not be thought of as the sources or

transcendent origins for the prose poems I have chosen to investigate.
Rather, they are no more or less than simple reference points that have
helped to guide my own personal readings."8 In order not to be subject to

the questions of sources and origin intertextual readings are said to be

"personal readings" based on the idiosyncracies of an individual critic,
who must ultimately demonstrate that his peculiar reading is firmly
grounded in a common literacy made apparent by his keener knowledge of
discursive practices and thus not in danger of the "affective fallacy."
Before discussing the problem of this other "fallacy" in respect to read'

ing waka, I would like to consider what happens in Classical Japanese

poetry when the precedents are known, when the "origins" are in fact
multiple. For the Westerner it would be an embarrassment of riches. Take

for instance the line I mentioned above, aki kaze no. Are all 102 poems
beginning with aki kaze no intertexts of each other? Would any poem
containing this line be a part of the autumn wind intertextual constellation? What of the hundreds of poems that begin with aki kaze ni (in, to, or
by the autumn wind)? Would this line qualify as a variation of aki kaze no

(the autumn wind)? What would be the criteria used to determine

whether a poem is included or excluded from the pool of intertexts? Can

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316 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

there be only one intertext for a work? Such are the questions that might
come to mind in this predicament.

The abundance of intertexts presents as many problems as their paucity. In both situations the principles of inclusion and exclusion have yet
to be delineated; where they exist, they appear arbitrary and self-serving.
Foucault might have noted that within the discourse of intertextuality the
principles of power and desire are alive and well.

In Classical Japanese poetry the whole question of origin and source

seems to be erased or at least obfuscated by the multiplicity of repetitions,
both exact and transformed. While identification of the intertext in the

West is often impossible because the origin is hidden or lost, in Classical

Japanese poetry it is "lost" because there are too many sources. Both
situations indicate the necessity of going beyond the question of origins
and sources. It is obvious that being original, as we understand the term,

was not one of the primary purposes of writing waka. (What American
poet would ever think of beginning a poem with a line that had hundreds
of precedents, except perhaps in parody? Where could such an example be
found?) It is clear that repetition, convention, location within a tradition

are the hallmarks of its discourse. Practically every poetic device used
makes connections, whether those links are within the poem itself or
stretch out like tendrils to other poems. One could say that this poetic
discourse is basically an intertextual one.
The makura kotoba or "pillow-word" is a poetic intertextual device of
the most basic kind. It is usually a conventional 5-syllable epithet for
certain words. For example, shirotae no (white linen) is the conventional
attribute for sode (sleeve).9 Its repetition gives a traditional patina to
poems; we would probably think it hackneyed. However, what we might
consider trite could be comforting to the reader who needs landmarks to
situate his reading, a kind of guide for his response. For example, since the
expression harugasumi (spring haze) often accompanies the theme of parting it evokes all of the emotions of that event and other waka dealing with

that subject. Since the waka is so short this "putting into context" is a
useful device. The afterglow of the word's past enlightens its present
surroundings and supports it like a pillow. Even when the word's literal
meaning has been obscured, it carries the weight of tradition and therefore legitimacy.

A more sophisticated form of intertextuality was in vogue during the

Kamakura Period (1186-1332). According to the great classical poet and

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INTERTEXTUALITY AND THE QUESTION OF ORIGINS 317

critic, Fujiwara Teika (1 162-1241), a device called honkadori (taking of a

foundation poem) was reserved for only the best poets. Honkadori is "the
echoing of the words, situation, or conception of a well-known poem in a
way that evokes that earlier poem but incorporates recognizable elements

of it into a new meaning. The response to the original poem's situation,

tone, and meaning distinguishes this technique from simple borrowing."10

Here is an example of intertextual exploitation that may resemble, in

musical terms, variations on a theme. There are specific criteria that must
be followed in order that one text be the intertext of another. Although
this is a deliberate evocation of another poem, which is recognized or not
according to the competence of the reader, there are instances when the
identity of the foundation poem has been "lost." In such cases "looking for
the intertext" becomes a fruitful pursuit, but Robert Brower admits that

the effort to find the foundation poem sometimes leads one into the
"vague realm of instinct and guesswork."11 One has the same impression
about the intertextual enterprise of the West.

Variations of other intertextual techniques include the following:

honzetsu or honsetsu (foundation story) - "the term indicated allusion to

the prose context, real or fictitious, of an old poem instead of the poem
itself, or allusion to a famous incident or situation in an old Chinese work

or Japanese romance. . . . the technique was tolerated increasingly for

allusions to famous Japanese prose works, particularly the collections of
utamonogatari, or 'tales of poems' "; omokage (memory shadow) - a tech-

nique in which "the allusion was very general - to a chapter, book, or

section of a work rather than to any specific action or relationship."12 The

"ambiance" rather than specific details was evoked.

Based on principles of intertextuality, Classical Japanese poetry exploits the connections between and among vodka, rather than accentuates
each as an entity unto itself. To be sure, each waka contains within its
scant thirty-one syllables a tight network of connections, but such links
spread out beyond its own boundaries. For this reason the arrangement of
an anthology is just as important as each discrete part. The anthologist
must consider the flow of the "energy" from each waka to the next,
balancing an especially strong one with other weaker ones.13 As individual waka remind the reader of other waka, one anthology responds to
another. Thus, the poetic discourse produced ensures not only the life of
each individual waka but the sustenance of a tradition.
It is perhaps our own obsession with individuality that has blinded us to

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318 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

and confused us about the intertextual nature of our own poetry. It has
taken us many years to understand that "the text is an intertextual con-

struct, comprehensible only in terms of other texts which it prolongs,

completes, transforms, and sublimates."14 Japanese poetry on the whole
remains inaccessible to a large Western audience which often considers it
boring. The primary cause may be that it is read as if it were Western
poetry - that is to say, not in an intertextual manner.
To the Westerner addicted to originality the repetition of already existing lines of poetry in a new poem must seem indicative of a lack of
creativity. However, when originality that tries to distance itself from
tradition is not the creative principle of poetry, originality through repeti-

tion may be considered a more refined form of creativity. Rather than a

recycling necessitated by a lack of resources, "borrowing" is an exploitation of the poetic lode, a building up of allusions that create new effects
from the juxtaposition of familiar fragments. It is the conscious creation of

a literary discourse that reveres tradition and reinforces connections with

the past thus forging an intertextual network that buttresses the subjectiv-

ity of a whole people. Since certain lines of poetry permeate the literary
discourse, their repetition cannot but echo in the collective psychology of

the Japanese people.

Because the Classical poetic discourse of Japan was so integrated and its

producers and its audience were so homogeneous, it can provide a model

for intertextual study of the kind suggested by Roland Barthes and his
interpreter, Jonathan Culler. For these critics, intertextual study should
attempt to transcend mutations of traditional source and influence studies

by involving "explicit conventions of a genre, specific presuppositions

about what is already known and unknown, more general expectations
and interpretive operations, and broad assumptions about the preoccupation and goals of a type of discourse."15
Accustomed as we are to so many different varieties, forms and formlessness in poetry, we speak now not of poetry but of the "poetic function,"

indication that the conventions governing poetry have become more

elusive. Since much of our literature has been a purposeful destruction of
conventions, we have become unconscious of those that remain and must
search to identify them. On the other hand, conventions form the visible
scaffolding of Classical Japanese poetry. Existing for almost one thousand

years (ca. 550 - 1500) the distinctions between literary and ordinary discourse grew out of a conscious effort to create an art language, designed

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INTERTEXTUALITY AND THE QUESTION OF ORIGINS 319

for poetry and no other function.16 It precluded any words of foreign

origin, i.e., Chinese, and through the years conventionalized images to
the point that only certain references could be made in conjunction with
certain subjects. For example, in poems dealing with the subject autumn,
one would expect maple leaves, the milky way, the moon, quail, dew, the
wind, the chrysanthemum or one of the seven other flowers of this season,

the motif having been codified to this extent. Mention of a flower not in
this group, though actually blooming in autumn, might have been consid-

ered a breach of the code. Thus, certain words acquired a poetic patina
"with ever deepening traditions of what words imply"17 that distinguished

them from the pedestrian vocabulary. Donald Keene suggests that what
was and was not poetic was so deeply ingrained in the Japanese psyche
that "Japanese poets found it hard to sense overtones in words without
poetic ancestry."18
Thus, it is through poetry that feelings became codified, conventionalized. More importantly, it "defined the features of experience and exprssion" that are Japanese. 19 Earl Miner is so convinced of this that he writes

that "to this day Japanese aesthetic perceptions . . . derive essentially

from the court traditions of a thousand years ago."20 In fact, ". . . the
court established once and for all the sensibility that the Japanese themselves regard as particularly Japanese."21

Through this poetry the Japanese learned how to feel in response to

nature and, more importantly, to their literary intertext. Through this
literary discourse they learned the code of human and esthetic perception.
Therefore, a reader who knows this poetic discourse and responds through

feeling rather than analysis theoretically would not be subject to the

affective fallacy, would not have an idiosyncratic or a putative personal
reading of a waka. Feeling in this case is supposedly collective.
Human feeling and reflection on nature and the divine - the essence of
Japanese literature - are then not simply a question of personal response.
True, it is a response to the direct encounter with nature but one shaped

by the influence of poetry. Here the "natural" form of the response is a

formalized experience - that is to say, one subject to convention and
culture.22

Such an understanding of feeling is totally foreign to the Westerner,

still under the influence of Romanticism. What more individual and

personal, independent and unique response could there be than one's own
feelings? Within the Japanese tradition the poet is in harmony with

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320 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

nature to the extent that his reaction is not personal but a merging, then

emerging of an emotion that transcends the individual. Such a notion

flies in the face of the romantic self, who "deems himself not to be a
member of the community but uniquely an individual, not a spokesman
for society but an exile, martyr, or prisoner, a creator allegedly without a
public, one not sure for whom he is supposed to be creating."23

Although battered and frayed, this romantic image lingers on in our

conviction of our individuality. We are apt to deny that our feelings or
responses could originate anywhere else except in ourselves; certainly our

feelings could never be conventionalized. After all, having spent a lifetime cultivating our own uniqueness and "getting in touch with our feel-

ings," we prize our spontaneity and our "naturalness." To be sure, we

would disagree with George Steiner when he writes, "We are so much the
product of set feeling patterns, Western culture has so thoroughly stylized
our perceptions, that we experience our 'traditionality' as natural."24
If Steiner is right, why have we been so blind to our own conventionality? In part the answer must be the "Romantic" discourse that has dominated the last century. Barthes explains: ". . . literature is that ensemble
of objects and rules, techniques and works, whose function in the general
economy of our society is precisely to institutionalize subjectivity."25 The
result of Romantic discourse is belief in our uniqueness and individuality.
While we may think that our responses are individual, they are really a
result of a myriad of influences that, unknown to us, manage - govern them. Steiner confirms the pervasive, but invisible effect of literature:
"Thoughts, feelings, events as set down in books do not come raw; . . .
all literature has behind it human experience of the kind which previous
literature has identified as meaningful. The act of writing for the printed
page as it conjoins with the reading response is intensely 'axiomatized' or
conventionalized however fresh and turbulent the author's impulse. The
past is strongly at his back; the current moves between bounds of established possibility."26
In the wake of Romanticism and its twentieth-century metamorphoses,
dada and surrealism, we only dimly remember its struggle with a tradition
laden language that threatened to strangle rather than let breathe the
feelings of the new individual.27 As poets, especially on the French scene,
sought new ways to feel through their liberation from and through language, the idea that the poet's voice was, or at least ought to strive to be,
unique and individual gained sway. This pursuit of originality fostered a

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INTERTEXTUALITY AND THE QUESTION OF ORIGINS 321

vision of the literary work as a self-contained and self referential entity,
one created by the artist whose vision gained in greatness as it was sufficient unto itself, disguising rather than revealing its origins.

American literary criticism, that is to say, New Criticism, reflected

these presuppositions by pursuing a putatively objective approach to literary studies that treated the work as a discrete entity to be examined for its

own originality. The reading remained "inside" the work by considering it

alone in all its structural and meaningful unities and by shunning the
pressures imposed on it by the "outside" author, world, and reader, tenden-

cies that were denigrated with terms like intentional, referential, and
affective fallacies.

My examination of Japanese Classical poetry shows how intertextual

practices, by questioning the existence of the self-contained, selfreferential entity, unravel the seams of the Romantic self. The flaws inher-

ent in the neat distinctions between inside and outside have become so
glaring that what was once a simple notion, the "work," has engendered a

confused and confusing controversy concerning the "text." The naive

proposition that the work is that material existence contained on paper and
held between covers while the text exceeds those confines to embrace

whatever lies beyond only appears to establish boundaries. Critical theorists focusing on this difference have wondered where the "text," if it indeed

exists, is located: in the writer, the reader, the work, or the world?
As the "work" became the "text" what Foucault indicated has come to

pass. The work cannot exist, cannot construct itself except within the
field of discourse from which it sprang. That this discourse is complex and

eludes our understanding should not daunt us. The problems that face
such study are the very ones that New Criticism tried to solve by banishing the writer, the reader, and the world through its cautions against the
so-called intentional, affective, and referential fallacies. The pursuit of a
putatively objective approach necessitated this separation, this cutting off
from discourse. By treating the work as a discrete entity to be examined
for its own originality, the critic remained "inside" resisting the pressures

imposed by the "outside."

Intertextual studies which also claim objectivity must address the same
problems "solved" by these cautionary fallacies or be subject to criticisms
of relativity, coincidence, or inscrutability. Recuperation of the "outside"
must deal with the issues raised by these fallacies.
It would certainly be a serious omission, a kind of suppression of a facet

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322 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

of Barthes, if I were to imply that the intertextuality suggested by his work

argued for a reading of a text centered in a particular time, anchored

within a constraining history; for certainly he is not recuperating another
"spirit of the time." Moreover, the "conformity" of reading, the apparent

management of sensibility, suggested by my presentation of the in*

tertextual nature of Classical Japanese poetry would be anathema to his
liberation of the text. His L'Empire des signes was after all in praise of
decentering, of empty centers. When he looked at his own mythical
image of Japan, he saw the possibilities of "a kind of exercise of emptiness"

liberated from the weight of "meaning."28

I have not yet reconciled my "idea" of Classical Japanese discourse,

which almost mimics our stereotype of the Japanese themselves (conform-

ing, unoriginal, homogeneous - qualities we usually perceive as negative), with Barthes' positive image of Japan. Of course, he would be the
first to warn against confusing the two; his was after all a Japan in quotation marks. But if L'Empire des signes is really a meditation on criture, I
cannot but think that the circle he decenters, the metaphysical system he

critiques, protects our idea of originality and individuality. Perhaps, his

"Japan" including Classical Japanese discourse offers another model for
creativity.

University of Hawaii at Manoa

NOTES
1. Research for this article was supported by a grant from the University of Hawaii
Japan Studies Endowment - funded by a Grant from the Japanese Government.
2. It would be impossible to discuss the intricacies of this controversy. The best I can
do is urge that Robert Weimann's article, "Textual Identity and Relationship," be read (in
Identity of the Literary Text, eds. Mario J. Valds and Owen Miller [Toronto: U of Toronto

P, 1985] 274-93).

3. Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New

York: Pantheon Books, 1972) 23.
4. "One particularly productive way of defining the intertextual relationship is to think
of it metaphorically as a form of citation in which a fragment of discourse is accommodated
or assimilated by the focused text. Describing it in this way allows us to view the intertext
as having two separate identities: (a) as an independent text functioning in its own right,

which may be unknown, forgotten or even lost; (b) as an assimilated or accommodated

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INTERTEXTUALITY AND THE QUESTION OF ORIGINS 323

version embedded in some way in the focused text" (Owen Miller, "Intertextual Identity,"
in Identity of the Literary Text 21).

5. Matsushita Daizabur and Watanabe Fumio, Kokka taikan, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Kyobunsha, 1903). The second series of the Kokka taikan or Zoku kokka taikan continues the work
of the first two volumes by listing some 41,000 poems in 1 12 different anthologies, individual collections, and other sources. Along with the first two volumes the Zoku is composed

of 4 vols. (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1951-58). The latest authority is, of course, the
Shimpen kokka taikan (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1983).
6. Stamos Metzidakis discusses this forgetting in Repetition and Semiotics (Birmingham:
Summa Publications, 1986) 43.

7. Quoted by Jonathan Culler in "Presupposition and Intertextuality," MLN 91

(1976): 1385.
8. Metzidakis 3.

9. Robert H. Brower and Earl Miner, Japanese Court Poetry (Stanford: Stanford UP,

1961) 508.

10. Fujiwara Teika's Superior Poems of our Time, trans. Robert H. Brower and Earl Miner

(Stanford: Stanford UP, 1967) 141.

11. Robert H. Brower, Fujiwara Teika's Hundred Poem Sequence of the Shoji Era, 1200

(Tokyo: Sophia UP, 1978)21.

12. Brower, Fujiwara Teika s Hundred Poem Sequence 21-22.

13. This is somewhat like the contrast of styles between the mon (pattern or design) and

the ji (background) that are used in waka, renga and N. I would like to thank Professor
Nobuko Ochner for this insight. See also Brower's Fujiwara Teika's Hundred Poem Sequence.
14. Culler 1386.
15. Culler 1388.

16. Earl Miner, Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1968) 19.
17. Miner 21

18. Donald Keene, Landscapes and Portraits (Tokyo: Kodanasha International Ltd.,
1971) 146.
19. Miner 1.

20. Miner 4.
21. Miner 8.

22. Please refer to Robert Huey s and Sucan Matisoffs very cogent comments on Lord
Tamekane's Notes on Poetry" in Monumenta Nipponica 4 (1985): 127-32 (especially 131).
I would also like to thank Professor Huey for his generous and invaluable help in writing

this article.

23. William Calin, In Defense of French Poetry (University Park and London: The
Pennsylvania State UP, 1987) 138.
24. George Steiner, After Babel (New York and London: Oxford UP, 1975) 462.
25. Roland Barthes, On Racine, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang,
1964) 172.
26. George Steiner, On Difficulty and Other Essays (New York and Oxford: Oxford UP,
1978) 191.
27. The intertext for this image is of course George Steiner's After Babel
28. In no way am I attempting to mimic Barthes' VEmpire des signes. While exoticism
may not be the subject of his book, he uses it in his reading of Japan; that is to say, he
projects his own desire and imagination to fill the empty space of the other, of the text

(Geneva: Skira, 1970).

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