In this episode, Allison Alexy talks with Prof. Vyjayanthi Selinger, a scholar of Japanese literature and culture. Her research examines literary representations of conflict in medieval Japan, using conflict as the key node to examine war memory, legal and ritual constraints on war, Buddhist mythmaking, and women in war. Our conversation centers on two articles she has published recently. First we discuss “War Without Blood? The Literary Uses of a Taboo Fluid in the Heike monogatari,” published in Monumenta Nipponica in 2019, and “The Rāmāyana and the Rhizome: Textual Networks in the Work of Minakata Kumagusu” published in Verge: Studies in Global Asias in 2021. Topics of discussion include: blood as symbol and taboo, The Tale of the Heike (Heike monogatari), Buddhism and bodily pollution, research methods and surprises, literary representations of law, Hachinoki (Noh play), the Rāmāyan in Japan, translation, homology and adaptation, Chinese translations of Latin, doctoral requirements for training in language and theory, and Lady Triệu in Watchmen (TV show).

Dr. Vyjayanthi Selinger is the Stanley F. Druckenmiller Associate Professor of Asian Studies at Bowdoin College. Her first book, Authorizing the Shogunate: Ritual and Material Symbolism in the Literary Construction of Warrior Order,exploreshow texts from fourteenth century Japan harnessed symbolic understandings of authority to evoke order and contain rupture. 

If you're interested in learning more about her work, please watch her presentation in the Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy Project. You can find her on Twitter @jayselinge, where she would be especially happy to discuss the TV show Watchmen and the character Lady Triệu.

Michigan Talks Japan is produced by Robin Griffin, Justin Schell, and Allison Alexy and is supported by the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan.