15 - Heian literary diaries: fromTosa nikkitoSarashina nikki

Summary

This chapter focuses on five major diaries or nikies of the Heian period: Tosa Diary, Kagero Diary, Izumi shikibu Diary, Murasaki shikibu Diary, and Sarashina Diary. The Tosa Diary chronicles a fifty-five-day journey taken by the author Ki no Tsurayuki, his family and entourage back to the capital in 934 after his period of service as provincial governor in Tosa province. Although his official career was not distinguished and he composed the Japanese preface to that anthology, which was the first attempt to write discursively in vernacular Japanese. The major diaries of the Heian period were all reproduced in woodblock editions during the Tokugawa period, making them available to a general audience. These diaries were given an important place in the modern canon of Japanese literature. They were first hailed as early forerunners of the "I-Novel", a form of autobiographical fiction that dominated Japanese literary production in the Meiji and Taisho periods.