| This study examines the theme of exile in Heian Japanese religion, literature, and law (794--1185 C.E.). While exile was only one of five categories of punishment mentioned in the early Japanese law codes, no other sanction came to occupy so great a place in the Heian Japanese imagination. Myths, literature, and religious cults from Nara and Heian Japan abound with stories of the exile of gods, tales of exile from the moon, and the worship of spirits of exiled nobility. To address this widespread trope I adopt a cultural studies approach, examining the Ritsuryo legal codes, works of literature such as the Taketori Monogatari and Genji Monogatari, and oracle texts and historical chronicles associated with the transformation of the exiled courtier Sugawara Michizane into the deity Tenjin. In each instance, I analyze how themes of exile and divinity provided particularly resonant means by which groups re-imagined the constellation of power within Heian society. I begin and conclude by examining the theories of the 20th century scholar Orikuchi Shinobu, showing how the act of imagining exile, far from disappearing with the advent of modernity, continued to provide a means by which people re-imagined both Heian society and the contemporary social order. |
