石川郎女ノート : 彼女をとりまく婚姻慣行をめぐって

抄録

It is a remarkable characteristics that there are a great many poems of love on Manyoshu. The poets of Manyoshu, both men and women, expressed their love with vividness. Especially most of the poems written by women are those of love, which are of real excellence. Well, it would be worth thinking about the problem why thare are so many poems of love on Manyoshu. Would it be because they had many chances to fall in love ? No, it would not. We could understand that if we read them one by one. It would be better to say that they had few chances to do so. During the age when the poems of Manyorhu were written, the matrimony form, on the one hand, was changing into the monogamy system (for women, but the polygamy for men); however, at the same time, many people were obliged to obey the ancient custom, on the other hand, that husband and wife should live in separate places. It was owing to the law of the ancient state which was a new system entirely different from the custom of the day and was enacted for the sake of the coming age. It could be said that the poems of love on Manyoshu were those chanted by lovers a crying for each other so as to conquer those obstacles. Therefore we could say that it would be the key point when we think about the poems of love, to make clear concretely and historically the strength that made them conquer the new situations and their obstacles. I intended to try to search for it on this short thesis through a woman called Ishikawa-no-Iratsume who was thought to have lived from the late 7th century to the early part of the 8th century. And I have come to the conclusion that it really exists in the democratic matrimony custom of the ancient days-tte polygamy system for men and the polyandry for women supposed to be remains of the group marriage-; which was not bound by the monogamy system, kept and continued to exist at least around her life during the time she was alive.