Between mask and face

Mimi Yiengpruksawan. "What's in a Name? Fujiwara Fixation in Japanese Cultural History." Monumenta Nipponica, 49:4, 1994. pp. 423 - 453.

A spirited (and no doubt controversial) critique of the dominant image of eleventh- and twelfth-century court culture. Yiengpruksawan digs through kanbun nikki (diaries of male courtiers written in Chinese) as though they were treasure troves, pulling up countless invaluable novelties. On the basis of this and other evidence, both documentary and stylistic, she argues that the paradigm of Fujiwara as representing a unified and unifying period, culture, and style (what she calls the Fujiwara construct) is based on the privileging and totalizing (and, I would add, suppressive) of select cultural artifacts. It's hard to get away from such a monolithic construct: for example, I recall my Japanese history professor in college lecturing romantically about the splendor, sensuality, and effeteness of the Heian court from the eleventh century onward. But the Fujiwara construct has led us to dwell so much on the mask that we have transformed it into a face, forgetting that there exists something underneath.