Genji and the Scope of Things.

Remember this: There is always an eye looking through the cross-hairs, hedges, or the peep hole.

Disclaimer: Before you read ahead make sure you've talked to your parents about the birds and the bees, and don't get the itchy finger to google the word Shunga.

Valentine's Day is upon us. Love or resentment is in the air. Card, candy and flower companies are dancing in the streets and grown women everywhere are fearing they will get a plush teddy bear instead of a three day weekend to Paris, the City of Love.

There are probably many a man co-miserating with his brethren, as are women. To extend the olive branch, I wondered to myself in the spirit of hunting, what could possibly be explored in the way of love, Japanese literature, guns, and hiccups. Hiccups are like love. You never know when it's going to hit you. You then flop around like fish trying to get rid of it. You could hyperventilate in a brown paper bag; works for love and hiccups.

I will be the first to admit; I have no idea what I am doing here.

Onward.

Somewhere in time a poet put to pen a sonnet, dripping with emotion. What exactly that emotion was depended on how upset or enamored the poet was with the object of affection. This could have been done privately, publicly or completely withheld. Rejection is an awful shame, no matter where it's passed off.

I haven't met a hunter that would stop, write a bit of prose before he shot an animal; unless he's multi-tasking.

One book of privilege to read is The Tales of Genji. In the Tales of Genji, a classic Japanese work written by noblewoman and lady-in-waiting, Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11^th century, you find lots of intrigue. The phrase, “I will make you love me” comes to mind.

Upon my reading, all things are up for debate. Moving on with the idea here, the story is about a man, a woman , and a lot of forbidden love. What could make Valentine's Day any better than a good forbidden love saga, kidnapping and Stockholm syndrome? Secrets...lots of secrets. There is also the mention of hunting.

One interesting word that is used is kaimami or “peeking”. This could also be a version of Peeping Tom-isms or voyeurism. If you've elevated peeping to an art form maybe you're just playing out a past life where screen action was all you got. Oh that love-from-afar. The time period for this tale is during the Heian and Kamakura courts. There seem to be a lot of reference to forced or coerced sexual encounters. The end game fact being, the woman's acknowledgment of being the conquest. Nowadays, if a man or woman forces themselves off on another it's rape, assault or stalking. You can't force a person to love you but these Japanese characters seem to do a bam up job of it. Even Pepe LePew got the cat to love him in the end. Stink and all.

There is four ways this kaimami plays itself out:

1. One night stands (Yep!)
2. Sexual initiation by the woman (Yep!)
3. Period of unrequited love, unacknowledged or even secret love ending as the man acts out his desires on the object of his affection. (Say what? I weighed the number of chicken shits in this world. Yep, nature is definitely out of balance.)
4. Both parties are already in love and care for each other as a natural progression of sentiment. (Like mold on bread).

As you travel through the story, you find incidents that are parallel to hunting in some rather humorous and beautiful ways. The act of hunting itself is worked into the stories fabric as analogous to courtship. These particular passages uphold the male hunter as the aggressor, so not to point the ugly finger at men, we'll just set that fact aside because it doesn't seem fair. We'll blame the Amazons later to make it even.

Here is a passage to read and reflect:

“In the first episode of the Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise; 905), a poem-tale (uta monogatari) that greatly influenced Murasaki Shikibu, a man of exemplary courtly sensitivity is hunting near the ruined old capital of Nara when he catches a glimpse of two beautiful sisters through a gap in their hedge. Courtship is here analogous to the hunt, or an extension of it, with the women as the symbolic prey and the hedge as the enclosing wilderness. Following the homo neccans pradign, the man is compelled to aggression; but instead of killing the prey, he sublimates his violence by tearing a strip from his hunting robe to dash off an elegantly allusive poem about the fabric’s random design and his amorous confusion. The poem suggests that the forceful rubbing of a moss-fern pattern onto the cloth reflect the sisters’ powerful imprint on the poet’s heart.” (Bargen 1)

I recall previous writings, where the hunter is stumbling through the woods when he encounters a beautiful woman, much to his downfall. Here you have a hunter going through the woods, spying on women (prey) through a gap in 'their hedge'. The hedges are the enclosing wilderness as a barrier to the women.Yet he is compelled to aggression. Why is this?

I wondered if this weren't another one of those sneaky symbolic switcher-ma-roo moments where “hedges”,  “enclosing wilderness” and “moss-fern pattern”meant a woman's body part and that made the man aggressive, whilst rubbing in amorous confusion. It doesn't take a scientist, after you peruse a lot of Japanese Erotic Art (Shunga) such as Katsushika Hokusai, The Adonis Plant, to figure it out.  I do snicker at the ones with the octopi which make me think someone was taking a jab at old dudes back in the day. They were probably all arms, hands, and gums. No dentures need apply.

Community Service: Just look at great art. It will change your life.

What makes a man crazy? What makes a woman crazy? Prolonged isolation during this time period could make a man crazy. Those long lonely nights. On the other hand, the writer could have just as easily gave the character a Pepe LePew attitude. I then think of the current day. Men and women are just or if not more so aggressive in this endeavor. One could wonder if it's the idea  all hunting is an aggressive act, like shopping on Black Friday. Not to say, this hunter was a savage but the terms, “ exemplary courtly sensitivity” sprang up so we could assume there was a certain amount of reserve building up. Once “in the wilderness” man wants to revert back to his bush-whacking state.

I know....I am awful.

The hunter turns poet as the dynamic of his acts and mind change. There is also the symbolic rubbing of the moss-fern pattern to consider. I am thinking this might be symbolic of a more erotic nature. Depending on how fast he wrote and rubbed said strip of fabric.

Fast forward to this century, man is still spying through the hedges dressed in Mossy Oak, feeling all poetic up in that tree, or deer stand; aggressively amorous and confused at the same time. Logging on to the internet, those same hunters are spying on women through the internet peep hole; probably still dressed in Mossy Oak, feeling amorous and unfulfilled. It's a hazard. Simultaneously peeping through a rifle scoop at deer, lusting after their horns and meat. Whatever the eyes see, the eyes covet.

When you consider looking into the cross-hairs, that is a form of spying through the hedges except you are looking at wild game, which in other views can be analogous to women. Hunters and huntresses still desire the animals they view within the scope, binocular, or even lazy eye.

Courtship-wise not much is happening because people are truly isolated and apprehensive. Herein, there is a substitution of sacrifice for the dark shadow the hunter feels towards the women by tearing a strip off the old hunting robe to write about the design. Oh distraction! There has also been comparison to hunting as a dance or courtship between hunter and prey. The prey ends up dead.

I don't know any hunters that would be moved off the task of hunting because if they want to see a beautiful naked girl can google that while in a deer stand and go on a self-date. People don't need each other anymore. We have become obsolete in seductive circles. Reproduction wise a doctor can do that for you without even so much as an orgasm. Where is the fun in that? Living in deprivation I tell you!

As we look at another passage:

In a myth recorded in the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters; 712), a male desire and longing lead to the violation of taboo and to pursuit by female furies. In the archetypal hunt, life requires killing and killing necessitates sacrificial ritual. By retaining the hunt as an aristocratic pastime and sacrifice as an aesthetic gesture, the opening episode from the Ise monogatari signals the transition to the prevalent form of Heian courtship ritual, in which the aggressive gesture of kaimami seems totally absorbed into aesthetic pleasure. While the kaimami courtship ritual in the Ise episode still reflects elements of the underlying archetypal patter of raw force and the confrontation with death in a hunt, kaimami in the Genji is almost entirely dissociated from this pragmatic function. Only the occasional hunting disguise remains. In the Genji, the raw violence of hunting is reduced to a male social discourse of cunning necessitated by the sequestering of women. (Bargen 1-2)

The sequestering of women? Get out of here. All you have to do is look at a person's social media wall. If you have all that to look at why would you need me?

Kaimami's aggression turns into aesthetic pleasure for some people because all they want to do is peep. The moment said peeper decides to act on his ambitions and in what way, is what causes the problem. Not having the aptitude to stop oneself is a red flag you need some help. Every time we turn on the television to watch anything we become voyeurs. People love to watch their soft porn love scenes because it's their guilty pleasure. We could think in terms here of a hunter looking through his scope at a ten point buck and his ambitions are on the deer.He instantaneously lusts after it. This does end in violence if he hits the target; then there is meat for all.

Turning our attention to a scope on a gun or even binoculars, we find hunters and huntresses spying on things close up and far away. Some even spy on land owners or each other.

Now class lets delve into a woman's “mono no ke”. This term loosely means monster or spirit but the term is not always what it appears in the Japanese language. I would think its that aspect of the vision of a woman that dries men crackers. Same for women.....just one whiff is all it takes. What confuses me is the idea that looking through a hole gives you power over another thing. Maybe that is why we see a lot of eyeball art. Eyeballs everywhere; even on the one dollar bill.

“The hole in the fence not only serves men to access their power over women; it is also the site of women’s mono no ke - the spirits who intimidate their audience and aim to correct men’s excessive vision.” (Bargen 3)

I read this and this song was in my head:

There is a place in France,

Where the naked ladies dance

There's a hole in the wall

Where the men can see it all.

With that being said, this is what fathers are for: to poke those eyes out.

“In the Genji it is not the fulfillment or frustration of desire that becomes the focus of the narrative so much as the elegant and elaborate process of courtship: the poetry, the carefully chosen words, the calligraphy, the choice of paper, the evocation scent, the overheard music.” (Bargen 5)

When you stand back and look at hunting, it is elegant and elaborate as a process and past time from early man, to present day trials and tribulations. Somewhere in the down scaling of hunting as an art, with its social interactions, we have lost something; the rituals. When I say rituals, I don't mean wearing the same dirty underwear or carrying around a dried up rabbit foot, but the intercourse between people who can form relationships where no relationship existed. You could find this in other ways but people are not. The competitive spirit robs these acts as well because its a back biting industry. Then you have the paranoid.

Courtship is almost non-existent in this day and age. People have no clue what they are doing. Now it's speed dating, cyber-sex, self-help books, and geographical abstinence.

What of our lovelorn hunters and huntresses? There is no ritual exchange of poetic emotion or the revealing of innermost feelings. It's a desert with no water or cracker in sight.

Lastly.......

“Never “I love you” in the unmistakably direct emotional cascade of Romantic Love that flooded through the courts of Europe several hundred of years later; but, above all, never “I hate you.” (Bargen 5-6)

Written by: W Harley Bloodworth

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Sources Cited:

Bargen, Doris G. A Woman's Weapon: Spirit Possession in the Tale of Genji. Hawaii, USA: University of Hawai'l Press. (1997). pp.1-6, Print.