Zhuangzi and the search for coherence in Ise monogatari

This study proposes a reorientation of Ise monogatari’s intertextuality beyond an exclusively Japanese perspective. The Ise monogatari text we have today is analysed as a single poetic-prose narrative entity, taking account of narrative patterns, paronomasia and other linguistic or rhetorical features. It is argued that Zhuangzi 荘子(J. Sōshi) at a general level appears to have been used as an ideological pretext to construct a valorized episteme that grounded knowledge, perception and action in the ultimate immediacy beyond subjective or conventional distinctions. Further, a detailed analysis of six core sections proposes that specific passages in Zhuangzi may plausibly have inspired motifs and material details. The contention is that this approach, which breaks with the tradition that has long given primacy to historicizing methods, captures the philosophical coherence of the text without excluding incremental views of its production.