Caroline: I guess why one variant over the other? Like what’s the advantages over one? What do you enjoy about each one? What are the drawbacks?
Bialock: What I discovered was they were radically different work. It was quite… much different from the Kokuichi Heike. I ended up spending a good part of… well all of it quite a few months plowing my way through the Angluobon, and became completely fascinated by that particular variant and decided that rather than focus on the Heike as an epic explore it as a multitude of variant and try to use them to shed light on the other. What really struck me as being compared to the Anlguobone initially was the beginning. I actually compare the two beginnings.
It begins with an outcast… it moves into a text about an outcast who is going to preach a Buddhist sermon. This text does not appear in the Kokuichi Heike. What fascinated me about it was that he was an outcast. He lived beneath the floorboards of the temple. What I saw was that this was interesting. We know the biwahoshi are recited by blind men and here we have a text where it begins with an outcast who is actually preaching a Buddhist sermon. I though that was an interesting contrast. And that completely bold me over and I couldn’t really stop reading that text.
C: That’s fascinating!
B: And I decided that it would be kind of interesting… it would be interesting to try to kind of look at the Heike as an assemblage of of different variants rather than one long epic. That was the focus of my research.
C: Yeah I guess that makes sense. Because you’re able to get different perspectives that way. And I guess that’s informative in its own way, I suppose.
B: Exactly! And you find out that the Angulabon text was managed partially by Buddhist priest. Right? So it gives you a much different window into medieval culture, medieval society because it reflects the viewpoints, the goals, the ambitions of these Buddhist temple which probably supported the Heike reciters in the early stages of the Heike formation. So you get a completely different view of these medieval Japanese culture.
C: I read a few of your dragon cult work, do you want to talk more on that and how it relates to the variants?
B: Yeah in reading the Heike, there is a lot about dragon deities going all the way back to the Kogiki myth. In fact, the Kogiki myth is in one of the climatic moments in the Tale when the emperor Antoku drowns… the heike… the sword one of the three regalia is lost at sea. The loss of the sword becomes a very important event in medieval Japanese culture particularly in how it mythologized, because of course one of the three regalia is associated with the imperial line. That episode in the Kockuichi, the myth from the Kogiki the myth is actually quoted when Susuanoo one of the deities in the kogiki after he is exiled to Ismbo he is actually asked to help with… there’s an older couple and they’ve been losing all of their children to a serpent deity and Susanoo is asked to save one of their daughters by slaying the serpent. When he slays the serpent he retrieves the sword. That becomes Kusanochi and that’s origin account of the one regalia and they quote that myth when the sword is lost in the Heike. In the medieval period the sword is very important to Buddhist culture. In Buddhist doctrine the dragon deity in the Buddhist tradition becomes conflated to the serpent deity in the mythological tradition. They all contain dragon and serpent dirties in the variations. The ones that go back to the mythological and Buddhist tradition. And in the Angulabon the dragon lore is very well developed. That was one another aspect of the Angulabon. And actually… it fascinated… see al these stories and accounts about lore and myth about dragons as deities. Of course dragon deities are linked to earthquakes and that’s an aspect that’s been central to the Heike because there have been a couple large earthquakes that strike that have narrated in the tale of the Heike and the cause of those earthworks have been a concern. In the Angulabon the cause is attributed to the dragon deity that belongs to the Buddhist traditions. I became very interested in that aspect of the Heike and I’m still interested in it because I’m interested in it as not only a text about the warriors and particularly the Heike and Genji warriors. But also a text that affected a group of texts as it were. In a way trying to come to grips with questions of not only war and human disaster, but also natural disaster and calamity because this medieval period, not only a period of war fare and social change but it was also a period characterized by drought, by earthquakes and all of that became entangled in the Heike narrative. So in a way the Heike is as much a story about the natural disaster as it is the human disasters brought about by war. In fact, they are inextricably combined and entangles and that certainty one of the reasons why the Heike was recited because the recitation of the text actually performed a a kind of ritual function… maybe a placatory function. I think one of the interest… one of the interesting parts of Royal Tyler’s translation is the way he was able to convey the some of the qualities of the performed text through his translation by creating a form which was not strictly prose but leads to the... at least to an English reader reads mores like poetry in places so that kind of oral dimension is well served in his translation. And also when the Heike was recited we know when we look at some of the earliest manuscripts of the Heike in the medieval periods there are some notations for these different musical notes there very few of them in Edo period and the names have multiplied and their different names for the musical modes. They were made to match them to content… like differ in modes and would be used for different parts of the narrative so if you were reciting a battle narrative you might use one of form of musical recitation. If you were performing something about the court you might use a different musical note. He’s able to convey that through his translation you know by alternating what appears to be a more prose like style, a more open, more rhythmical. Thats where a translation can really come in and bring a text to life.
C: That’s amazing! I’ve enjoyed talking to you. Thank you so much for your time
B: Thank you.