『蜻蛉日記』下卷の記事の乱れについての一考察

A Study on Documentary Inconsistency in the Third Volume of The Kagerou Nikki

The third volume of The Kagerou Nikki documents the state of affairs from 973 to 974 but it has inconsistency between the description of incidents and that of their dates, namely the text “After that incident, that person did not visit my place, and the year ended.” (late September, 973) and the text “November had started. December has also gone.” (New Year’s Day, 974). In the present article, I explore reasons for this inconsistent description and propose a modified, consistent perspective from which the narrative story can be more coherently portrayed. Previous studies have presented the “omission of sentences” hypothesis, the “incorrect pagination” hypothesis, the “entering by mistake” hypothesis, the “stoppage of diary writing” hypothesis, and so on. In this article, I presume that it was brought about by copying error concerning the phrase hodoni ‘during,’ and propose to reorganize the texts, relocating the part “November had started. December has also gone.” after hodoni in the text (5) and then relocating the part “the time for deed has gone” after “in a pilgrimage to Kamo Shrine” (New Year’s Day, 974). The upshot is that the appropriate order of the events described in the diary is as follows. She gave birth at her “father’s place” in November 973; while they were celebrating it, the time flied, as in “November had started. December has also gone.”; after a pilgrimage to Kamo Shrine, she caught cold, and while she was taking a rest in a bed, “the period of the early-year Buddhist service had gone.”