Episode 341 - The Femme Fatale

History of Japan

Isaac Meyer

Japan, History, Japanese

4.8 • 744 Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2020

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we're focusing on the story of Ono no Komachi, a mysterious poet from the 800s whose poems were used to construct a fictional persona entirely separate from who she actually was. How did this happen? Why does it matter? And what can we learn from telling the history of a made up character?

Show notes here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week's episode is brought to you by Audible.
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0:13.1	For listeners of the show, Audible is offering a free 30-day trial membership, complete with credit for a free audiobook of your choice.
0:20.4	You can cancel any time and
0:21.8	keep the free book or keep going with one of Audible's subscription offers. Go to audibletrial.com
0:27.6	slash Japan to claim your offer. This week I'm going to recommend So You Want to Talk
0:33.5	About Race by Ijioma Oluo. I think, frankly, this is one of the best introductory texts on dealing with racial
0:40.9	politics in the United States ever written, and if you haven't checked it out, well,
0:45.8	I mean, there's really no better time than right now to do so.
0:49.2	Go to audible trial.com slash Japan to claim your copy.
1:09.1	Thank you. trial.com slash Japan to claim your copy. Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 341, the Fem Fatal.
1:16.9	This week, I want to tell you a story about one of the most famous women in Japanese history
1:21.7	who may not even have existed at all. Wait, what? Well, yes, though that's a bit of dramatic over-exaggeration on my part.
1:30.2	It's pretty clear that somebody named Ono No Comachi existed at some point, but frankly, we know
1:36.8	nothing pretty much about who she was. In many ways, that's what makes her so interesting.
1:43.1	But let me back up. Who even is this person?
1:46.8	Well, it's very hard to say. You see, she lived in the 800s CE. She was born somewhere between
1:53.8	820 and 830 CE as a member of Japan's courtly aristocracy. But the 800s were a bit of, let's call it,
2:02.5	uneven time in terms of consistent written records. There's a reason most of the stories from
2:08.2	the Heon era that I can tell on this podcast are from like 900 or later. That's really when,
2:14.5	at least relatively speaking, the written record starts to be more consistent.
2:19.3	Functionally, we know almost nothing about who Onono Komachi actually was.
	...

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