Abstract

Classical Japanese court diaries (nikki bungaku) constitute an interesting research topic for narratological investigations as they subsume works which differ considerably regarding plot structure, time conceptions and voice of the narrator. Among the female court diaries (joryû nikki), the Izumi Shikibu nikki (Diary of Izumi Shikibu) constitutes a particularly interesting field of research as literary specialists disagree on authorship, genre and degree of fictionality of the œuvre. By applying a systematic frame which – according to the distinction between “story” (histoire) and “discourse” (discours) in narrotological theories – differentiates typologically between “fictivity” (referring to the content level) and “fictionality” (referring to the text level), this paper aims at investigating the problem of fictivity/fictionality of the Izumi Shikibu nikki by means of the methodological approach of “structural narratology”.