THE YANG KUEI-FEI LEGEND IN JAPANESE LITERATURE (CHINA)

Yang Kuei-fei, the renowned Chinese beauty, who died tragically in A.D. 756, was the favorite consort of the T\u27ang Emperor Hsuan-tsung (r. 712-756). Her equivalent in Japanese history is the ninth-century poetess Ono no Komachi. Yang\u27s brilliant career at court and her sudden demise at Ma-wei have inspired literary men in China and Japan and nurtured numerous works in verse and prose on this personality. Po Chu-i\u27s The Song of Everlasting Sorrow was enthusiastically welcomed in Japan during the ninth century, and since then the Yang Kuei-fei theme has been told and retold by the Japanese. To this day, her story has remained one of the most popular Chinese themes in Japan. This study addresses itself to the evolution of the Yang Kuei-fei legend in Japanese literature. In this dissertation, I shall first examine Yang Kuei-fei in history and her legend in China to determine the historical background of her story and the Chinese role in forging its Japanese version. I shall then proceed to a chronological analysis of accounts of her in Japanese literature. This analysis assumes the following order: the initial and medieval phases, and the Edo and modern periods. Major topics include popularization of the Yang Kuei-fei theme, the introduction of new characters, and Yang Kuei-fei\u27s deification. Although the present study covers a period extending from the ninth century to the present, the most important features in the evolution of the legend occurred during medieval times (late twelfth to early seventeenth centuries)--all being synthesized in the early seventeenth-century puppet play called the Yokihi monogatari (A Tale of Yang Kuei-fei), a translation of which I include in this dissertation. During medieval times, Yang Kuei-fei\u27s story took hold in Japanese, and a native literary tradition on this theme was established. In a general way the Yang Kuei-fei legend in Japan evolved on two levels: the adaptation of the Chinese legend and the development of an account infused with universal values. These two areas are not always discrete, but often blend in Japan