Japanese cultural history progresses differs from the characteristic Western

pattern in w o respects, First, in Japan new approaches and new solutions m

problems often do not displace preexisting ones; the new find a place along-
side the old. This phenomenon is particularly salient in both the history of
art and the history of selihood. Second, as in the history of religion, we find
in the history of sdt'hood a high degree of toterance for mutually exclusive
views (nor necessarily held by the same parties).
Careful study of Japanese selfhood shows it to be (and to have been from
vcry early times) a congeries of complex and interrelated phenomena-a cat-
egory in which I include not only kinds of selves bur also views of what
selves are. (Since we may now take it as established fact that selves are shaped
and evolve at Ieast partly in response to the views of what sdves are and can
and should be, these kinds of selves and views of selihood are very closely
interrelated indeed.)2
The similarities b e t w e n Japanese and Western forms and vicws of self-
hood have become easier to perceive over the past fifteen years, and for two
reasons. First, students of East Asia have come to recognize the vital roles
played by the individual wicbin Confucianism, most notably in the context
of "self-cultivation."' Second, Western students of selfhood have begun to
do historically iniormed and culture-specific studies4 guided by the recogni-
tion that selfhood is socially construcccd rather than a God-given fact or a
metaphysical postulate and are starting to recognize the ideological commit-
ments that lurk within apparently objective notions of individualism and the
Subject.5
The inforlnation one gleans about Japanese selfhood varies enorlnously
depending on the source(s) studied (e.g., it may be influenced by the disci-
pline or nationality of the writer), but also on the ryye of evidence being ex-
anlined (wlletller behavior, written texts, o r works of art), Buddhist and
Confucianist texts, for example, frequently possessed highly normative
agendas that adopted an explicit: bias against thc Self, albeit in differem w q s
and stemming from different concerns. However, the evidence afforded by
the visual and performing arts-including that found in Buddhist and Con-
fucianist cvork-reveals a high degree of self-consciousness and self-rcflcc-
tiveness, an enjoyment of individual difference, and a keen awareness of
moral dilemmas of conflicts between individuals 2nd society that are hidden
by the more didacr-ic tcxts.Und the e-vidence from natural Ianguage suggests
both a systematic destabilization of the Subject or Self (at least prior to the
heavy influence wielded by Indo-European languages), yet paradoxically re-
yuires a degree of autonomy on the part of speakers &at most Indo-Euro-
pean native speakers find quite unnerving.
This chapter began as a comparative study of selihood in Oedipus Ren and
&c tenth-century Japanese novel The Tale uf Genii. 1 immediately discov-
ered, however, that it was impossible to write about Genji without first dis-