158
Containing China
and alleyways.”
66
Protestations notwithstanding, however, both collec-
tions interact with “China” to a greater or lesser degree and, moreover,
do so in ways that help shed light on the imagery in
The China Mirror
and its ostensible appeal. As
Ten Teachings
is the text that tackles China
most directly, I will first consider the issue of China in it before turning
to the more circumspect representation of China in
Notable Tales Old and
New.
Ten Teachings
, a collection of
setsuwa
that appeared around 1252 with
the promise to guide young readers along a proper path, is of particular
value in ascertaining whether Shigenori’s China is representative of any-
thing beyond an individual vision. Admittedly, there is a basic difficulty
in determining whose interests the text initially represented, and conflict-
ing theories about its authorship abound. For example, Asami Kazuhiko
has made a tantalizing case for attributing the work to a Kamakura-based
individual with an eye for a warrior readership.
67
He even goes so far as
to speculate that its original “target audience” could have been the young
companions of Imperial Prince–Shogun Munetaka.
68
All of this would
mean that
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