While readers of Japanese literature from the Heian and Kamakura periods often find it difficult to determine when a sexual encounter has actually taken place, there are certain textual indicators that writers can use to make it plain that something carnal has, in fact, occurred. Writers may speak of the night as "dreamlike," or describe the woman as "pliant" or "vulnerable," and the use of these latter two terms hints at the fact that the encounter may have been more coercive than consensual. Some encounters are written to indicate so much forcefulness that they seem to the Western reader to be nothing less than rape. It is these forced encounters that I propose to examine in this paper.
http://www.sengokudaimyo.com/Forced_Affection.html Author's homepage Nihon Zatsuroku An Online Japanese MiscellanyThe author
I am Anthony J. Bryant. Primarily, I am a Japanese historian, with a focus on Kamakura, Muromachi, and Momoyama period warrior culture, but I also have a strong interest in Heian-period court structure and society. Additionally, I enjoy Japanese literature — especially historical and court literature.
Within the SCA, I am known as Baron Edward of Effingham, Companion of the Orders of the Pelican and Laurel, and also (occasionally) known as Hiraizumi Tôrokurô Tadanobu. Although my Laurel was awarded for Japanese research, I am also actively interested in Western armouring, costuming, calligraphy, illumination, Russo-Byzantine iconography, and about a hundred other things.
SCA = The Society for Creative Anachronism
