Though often overlooked, a thematics of homosocial bonding among heroines and minor female characters pervades the court fiction and female- authored memoir literature of the mid to late Heian period. While critical attention since at least the time of Motoori Norinaga has focused on the more dramatic episodes of feminine rivalry and the murderous consequences of female jealousy (the target of which is most often other women, not the errant, irogonomi male who provokes the rivalry), recent work by Norma Field, Tomiko Yoda, Kojima Naoko, and Mitamura Masako draw attention to the positive female friendships and non-marital feminine social networks that haunt the margins, and sometimes even take center stage at a number of crucial junctures in the canonical texts of Heian court literature.
This paper will seek to complicate the picture of feminine homosociality in Heian court tales by highlighting the often vertical class/rank components of their female alliances, coupling that analysis with a look at the (sinking) trajectory taken by the figure of the "lover of love" or irogonomi male in late Heian fiction. The paper is part of a larger study that explores the play (sometimes ludic, sometimes dysphoric) with gender norms which emerges as a central theme in late Heian and early Kamakura fiction. While drawing generally on earlier moments in mid Heian court women's literature, this paper will focus on several key passages from later Heian and early Kamakura texts: episodes in which homosociality crosses over into the realm of (pseudo) homoeroticism in the Torikaebaya monogatari; the light-hearted, Buddhist-inspired parody of feminine gender norms in "Mushi mezuru himegimi;" and the extended critique of heroes and heroines, men and women in Mumyoozoshi. Using the framework of theorizations of the homosocial as a point of departure, a case will be made for the figuration of gender in late Heian fiction as a forum for the court aristocracy's thinking through of cultural ideals whose political and aesthetic currency was beginning to face serious social and intellectual challenges