Ichi no miya: strumentalizzazione politica della "possessione" nello Yoru no Nezame

In spite of the appreciation shown by the researchers who studied it, the Yoru no Nezame (Wakefulness at Night 1060-1080) has never been as popular as the Genji monogatari (Tale of Genji ca. 1008), by which it had been inspired. The main reason for that is likely the lack of a large part of the original text: all extant manuscripts do indeed share the same gaps, whose reconstruction was proposed on the basis of excerpts quoted in later works. Nevertheless, the surviving portion of this monogatari offers a strikingly peculiar approach to tropes typical of Heian-period (794-1185) narratives, such as the possession (mononoke) of a woman by the spirit of her love rival, whose conventional literary pattern had been established since the Genji monogatari. The female protagonist of the Yoru no Nezame is falsely accused of having attacked her rival Ichi no miya, first consort of the male protagonist and sister of the reigning emperor, in the form of a living spirit. As a matter of fact, the incident depicted in the Yoru no Nezame is totally different from the ones narrated in the Genji monogatari. The goal of this paper is therefore to analyse the episode of Ichi no miya’s possession in political terms, highlighting its significance as the literary representation of the dual system of government in the late Heian period.