Acknowledgments; abbreviations; a note to the reader; hidden texts; the yin and the yang of power; recovering the daoist text; royalizing the realm and the ritualization of violence; peripheries of power; china in the medieval imaginary; reimagining late heian and early medieval space; the apocryphal history of kiyomori; epilogue; notes; bibliography; glossary of chinese characters; index
Summary
After 'The Tale of Genji' (c.1000), the greatest work of classical Japanese literature is the historical narrative 'The Tale of the Heike' (13th-14th centuries). In addition to opening up fresh perspectives on the Heike narratives, this study draws attention to a range of problems centred on the interrelationship between narrative, ritual space, and Japan's changing views of China as they bear on depictions of the emperor's authority, warriors, and marginal population going all the way back to the Nara period
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 403-433) and index
