The Excremental Imagination: Disgust, Compassion, and Laughter in Medieval Japan

This lecture takes the reader on a journey into uncharted territory, tracking the presence of faecal matter in the diverse narratives of medieval Japan. It addresses a subject which, for the most part, has been excised from public and intellectual life because it is seen as too disgusting or infantile to merit serious academic attention. 

The body and excrement, it argues, were neither maligned nor celebrated in medieval Japan, as was usually the case in medieval Christian writings, but instead carried significations that are likely to strike us as surprising and unexpected. Excrement was used as a metaphor for the foul and evanescent nature of the body, while at the same time made to work as a positive force, as an instrument of compassion, that ensured the salvation of humans, animals, and hungry ghosts who were associated with it. The humorous tales about shit and farts in medieval Japan, it suggests, were less about transgressing social norms and more in the nature of literary games. 

Here we encounter a high-born lady who farts in her lover’s presence, an eccentric monk who defecates in the imperial precincts, and a noted calligrapher who uses an imperial anthology of poetry to mop up his diarrhea. Urging us to cast aside our contemporary prejudices, this lecture invites us to better understand and appreciate a world very different from our own.

JRC Meiji Jingu Autumn Lecture 2025

The Japan Research Centre Meiji Jingu Autumn Lecture is sponsored through the generosity of the Meiji Jingu-Intercultural Research Institute.