Healing and Averted Illness: Narrative Functions of Abdominal Illness in Classical Japanese Literature

Abstract

This study examines representations of abdominal illness in classical Japanese literature across folktales, military chronicles, and historical narratives. Abdominal illness fulfills varied functions—comic effect, healing, religious conversion, anticipated rupture, and omission—shaped by narrative form, severity, and social rank. High-ranking figures rarely receive explicit symptoms, while descriptions are often minimized. These findings clarify how bodily specificity interacts with narrative aims and provide a basis for comparing abdominal illness with representations of other body parts.