Perfumed Sleeves and Tangled Hair: Body, Woman, and Desire in Medieval Japanese Narratives

Pandey suggests that "woman" in medieval Japanese narratives does not constitute a self-evident and distinct category, and that there is little in these works to indicate that the sexed body was the single most important and overarching site of difference between men and women. She argues that the body in classical and medieval texts is not understood as something constituted through flesh, blood, and bones, or as divorced from the mind, and that in the Tale of Genji it becomes intelligible not as an anatomical entity but rather as something apprehended through robes and hair. Pandey provocatively claims that "woman" is a fluid and malleable category, one that often functions as a topos or figural site for staging debates not about real life women, but rather about delusion, attachment, and enlightenment, issues of the utmost importance to the Buddhist medieval world.