著者

坂倉 篤義

出版者

国文学研究資料館

雑誌

国際日本文学研究集会会議録 = PROCEEDINGS OF INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON JAPANESE LITERATURE (ISSN:03877280)

巻号頁・発行日

no.8, pp.98-114, 1985-03-01

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Currently available dictionaries of pre-modern Japanese (kogojiten) tend to be biased towards representing the lexicon of classical literary texts. For example, entries under the word okashi in such dictionaries, with one or two exceptions, give, first of all, definitions such as (1) interesting, (2) tasteful or suggestive, (3) superior, or (4) lovely, and only supply in last place the definition (5) comical or funny. In some cases this last definition is omitted altogether.In the literature of the Heian court, especially the Makuranosōshi, noted for its thematization of okashi, the value of okashi, together with aware, occupies a dominant position, and in the case of this literature, it is indeed true that okashi can be understood, as a rule, within the compass of definitions (1) through (4) offered above. This usage of okashi remains, however, a distinctive feature of classical narrative literature of genres such as the nikki (diary) or monogatari (tale, recit). For other narrative genres, e.g. setsuwa (fables, anecdotal tales), definitions (1) through (4) of okashi are often inapplicable. Of the 94 instances of okashi in the Konjakumonogatari, (a setsuwa-shū) for example, as many as 42 call for the 5th definition above. (Such examples are especially frequent in books 24 and 28 of that work.) The infrequent appearance of okashi with sense (5) in Heian nikki snd monogatari is attributable to the subject matter of these genres. In texts of the medieval period and after, although okashi appears in sense (1) through (4) in the archaistic prose of the Tsurezuregusa and other texts, as an instance of bungo (the "literary style"), such occurences elsewhere are rare, and in general, okashi, in this period and after, always has sense (5), "laugh provoking" or "odd". In short, the word okashi has been used consistently with the senses of "laugh-provoking", "strange" ever since it was defined in the early Heian lexicon Shinsenjikyo as "waraubeshi anaokashi," and these are its original senses. The use of okashi in other senses in Heian literature represents a temporary expansion of the meaning of the term in literary language.If editors of dictionaries of pre-modern Japanese intend to present faithfully the lexicon-historical realities, they will have to make a departure from the tradition, which dates back to the Edo period, of inflating the importance of classical literary texts.