Of Mice and Maidens: Ideologies of Interspecies Romance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Japan
type: CreativeWork
description: Interspecies marriage (irui kon'in) has long been a central theme in Japanese literature and folklore. Frequently dismissed as fairytales, stories of interspecies marriage illuminate contemporaneous conceptions of the animal-human boundary and the anxieties surrounding it. This dissertation contributes to the emerging field of animal studies by examining otogizoshi (Muromachi/early Edo illustrated narrative fiction) concerning relationships between human women and male mice. The earliest of these is Nezumi no soshi ("The Tale of the Mouse"), a fifteenth century ko-e ("small scroll") attributed to court painter Tosa Mitsunobu. Nezumi no soshi was followed roughly a century later by a group of tales collectively named after their protagonist, the mouse Gon no Kami. Unlike Nezumi no soshi, which focuses on the grief of the woman who has unwittingly married a mouse, the Gon no Kami tales contain pronounced comic elements and devote attention to the mouse-groom's perspective. By elucidating the contrast between Nezumi no soshi and the earliest Gon no Kami manuscript and tracking the development of subsequent versions of Gon no Kami, I demonstrate mounting disenchantment with the irui kon'in trope as a means of telling stories about mice. Tales of interspecies marriage often end tragically; however, in fiction about mice, audience interest came to center on the utopian aspects of the imaginary mouse realm. Thus, mouse-human romance was displaced by storylines more conducive to happy endings, as in mid-seventeenth-century otogizoshi like Yahyoe nezumi ("The Mouse Yahyoe") and Kakurezato ("The Hidden Village"), or slightly later kusazoshi (woodblock-print books) like Nezumi no yomeiri ("The Mouse's Wedding"). The works above belong to a larger body of fiction about mice produced from the late Muromachi to mid-Edo. Previously, mice had received scant literary attention in irui kon'in tales and elsewhere. The sudden boom of "mouse tales" was driven by increased rodent-human c…
abstract: Interspecies marriage (irui kon'in) has long been a central theme in Japanese literature and folklore. Frequently dismissed as fairytales, stories of interspecies marriage illuminate contemporaneous conceptions of the animal-human boundary and the anxieties surrounding it. This dissertation contributes to the emerging field of animal studies by examining otogizoshi (Muromachi/early Edo illustrated narrative fiction) concerning relationships between human women and male mice. The earliest of these is Nezumi no soshi ("The Tale of the Mouse"), a fifteenth century ko-e ("small scroll") attributed to court painter Tosa Mitsunobu. Nezumi no soshi was followed roughly a century later by a group of tales collectively named after their protagonist, the mouse Gon no Kami. Unlike Nezumi no soshi, which focuses on the grief of the woman who has unwittingly married a mouse, the Gon no Kami tales contain pronounced comic elements and devote attention to the mouse-groom's perspective. By elucidating the contrast between Nezumi no soshi and the earliest Gon no Kami manuscript and tracking the development of subsequent versions of Gon no Kami, I demonstrate mounting disenchantment with the irui kon'in trope as a means of telling stories about mice. Tales of interspecies marriage often end tragically; however, in fiction about mice, audience interest came to center on the utopian aspects of the imaginary mouse realm. Thus, mouse-human romance was displaced by storylines more conducive to happy endings, as in mid-seventeenth-century otogizoshi like Yahyoe nezumi ("The Mouse Yahyoe") and Kakurezato ("The Hidden Village"), or slightly later kusazoshi (woodblock-print books) like Nezumi no yomeiri ("The Mouse's Wedding"). The works above belong to a larger body of fiction about mice produced from the late Muromachi to mid-Edo. Previously, mice had received scant literary attention in irui kon'in tales and elsewhere. The sudden boom of "mouse tales" was driven by increased rodent-human c…
author: Nuffer, Laura
language: en
date published: 2014-01-01
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:47:17Z
provider: University of Pennsylvania
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Pennsylvania