"Never Had I Known Such Sorrow": Death and Emotional Standards in Heian Japan

Death is perhaps the only universal human experience, yet emotional reactions to it are neither natural nor universal. Although every person experiences emotions, socially constructed standards shape how an individual conceives, perceives, and expresses a given emotion. As failing to comply with a society’s standards is a serious and damaging social mistake, researching standards of emotion provides an opportunity to bring forward new aspects of complex social relationships. In this thesis, the aristocratic society of Heian Japan (794-1185 CE) is studied from the perspective of emotional history, focusing upon expressions of sadness in response to death as described in nikki, a popular form of literature. After establishing the emotional standards of departures for the purpose of comparison, the thesis moves on to establish the standards for the deaths of loved ones and of the emperor. Compared to other aspects of life, death allowed for far more extreme expressions of sadness.M.A