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Time and Emotion in Medieval Japanese Literature

Team Members

Prof. Dr. Simone Müller

Principal Investigator
Professional Profile: AOI UZH Simone Müller
Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer Japanese Studies
 
 
Contact: 
E-mail: simone.mueller@aoi.uzh.ch
Tel.: +41 44 634 07 39
 
I am a senior lecturer of Japanese studies and PI of the SNSF Project “Time and Emotion in Medieval Japanese Literature” at the University of Zurich. I studied Japanology, Sinology, and Philosophy at the University of Zurich, at Tōkyō University of Foreign Studies and Dōshisha University, and received my Ph.D. on classical Japense dream poetry and postdoctoral degree (habilitation) on intellectual discourses in interwar and postwar Japan at the University of Zurich. I conducted research stays at Sophia University (Tōkyō), at Kyōto University of Technology and at Cornell University. My research interests are in the field of Japanese literature and intellectual history.
My recent publications include “A Young Lady’s Longing for a Lost Past. A Chronotopic Analysis of the Medieval Memoir ‘Utatane’ (‘Fitful Slumbers’)” (BmE 2020), Zeit in der vormodernen japanischen Literatur / Time in Premodern Japanese Literature (de Gruyter 2021) and “‘Etiquette to Change the World’? Fictional Time-Order and Imperial Power at the Court of Emperor Go-Daigo” (Legenda 2023).
From 2017 until 2023 I was involved in the Horizon Europe funded ERC Advanced Grant Project "Time in Medieval Japan" (TIMEJ) (PI Raji C. Steineck, 01.09.2017 – 31.08.2023), supervising the Research Area “Time at the Court and the Bakufu”. Within the SNSF Project “Time and Emotion in Medieval Japanese Literature” I probe into time-related emotions in medieval court diaries and court tales. I am notably interested in how in these two genres temporal emotions such as expectation, nostalgia, boredom, and melancholia are aesthetically objectified.

Dr. Nathalie Phillips

Postdoc SNSF Project
 
Contact:
E-mail: nathalie.phillips@aoi.uzh.ch
Tel. +41 44 634 07 28
 
I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich. After completing my undergraduate degree in Japanese Studies and Linguistics at the University of Cologne, I studied Classical Japanese Literature at the University of Oxford, receiving an MSt, and then continued to pursue my research interests at the University of Edinburgh, where I was awarded a PhD in 2020. For my doctoral thesis, I investigated the function of ambiguous beliefs commonly presented in simplistic terms as supernatural entities from the tenth until the twelfth centuries (mid- to late Heian period), focussing in particular on the significance of such discourses for the explanatory paradigm and their impact on the body politic. As a recipient of a grant provided by the Japan Foundation Endowment Committee in 2015 and the Japan Foundation Fellowship from 2016 to 2017, I was able to spend extended periods of time in Japan collecting materials at the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo and conducting research at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto. While my general areas of interest include premodern Japanese history, literature, beliefs, and thought, I am particularly fascinated by the construction of period-specific cosmologies and worldviews, which has presented an ongoing theme in my research and is now enriched by the opportunity to focus on the aspect of time.

Dr. Léo Messerschmid

Postdoc SNSF Project
 
Contact:
E-mail: leo.messerschmid@aoi.uzh.ch
Tel. +41 44 634 07 28
 
I am a Japanologist focusing on the premodern period, especially on the middle ages. I read Japanese studies, Sinology and religious studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, with a strong emphasis on religion and intellectual history. I completed my master’s degree with a thesis on the complicated relationship between the early Heian-period monks Saichō and Kūkai. I then embarked on a PhD project at the University of Hamburg on the religious and mundane authority in medieval Japan, focusing on the Keiran shūyōshū, a 14th century compendium of Tendai esotericism. I have held a position as research assistant at the University of Hamburg from 2015 to 2016 and have continually taught classes there. Since January 2023 I am a postdoctoral researcher at the SNSF project “Time and Emotion in Medieval Japanese Literature” at the University of Zurich, focusing on the intersection between religion and literature by analysing setsuwa and otogizōshi.

Dr. Sebastian Balmes

Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer Japanese Studies
Postdoc in SNSF project “Time and Emotion in Medieval Japanese Literature” (01.01.2023-03.31.2026)
 
Contact:
E-mail: sebastian.balmes@aoi.uzh.ch
Tel.: +41 44 634 31 16
 
"I am a Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of Japanese Studies at the University of Zurich, and also hold a postdoc position in the SNSF project “Time and Emotion in Medieval Japanese Literature.” I received my PhD from LMU Munich for a dissertation on narratological characteristics of Japanese texts from the tenth to fourteenth century that are related to linguistic issues. A revised version of the thesis, in which I adapt narratological theory to classical and medieval Japanese literature, has been published with De Gruyter in 2022. I am editor of Narratological Perspectives on Premodern Japanese Literature (2020) and co-editor of a special issue on Time in Premodern Japanese Literature (2021). I have also published on other aspects of Japanese religion and culture, such as on the Buddhist reception of fictional literature and Genji kuyō. Currently, I am working on the Shintōshū with a special focus on the legends of Kōzuke Province, translating several of them. Within the SNSF project, I will conduct narratological analyses of different versions of these origin tales (engi) with regard to time and emotion, and I am also excited to use new methods such as historical discourse analysis. Furthermore, I take an interest in issues of orality and performance."

 

Dr. Carina Roth

Research Associate SNSF Project
 
Contact:
E-mail: carina.roth@aoi.uzh.ch
 
I am a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich, and a senior lecturer at the Department of East Asian Studies of the University of Geneva, where I teach classes in Japanese and Asian religions. I hold a PhD from the University of Geneva and studied in various qualities at the universities of Tōhoku, Oxford, Kyōto and UC Santa Barbara. My main field of specialization is the history and culture of Japanese religions, in particular Shugendō, the “Way to Powers through Practice,” a religious movement that systematizes the numerous religious practices and representations linked to mountains in Japan.
While my dissertation focused on the emergence of Shugendō as a distinct religious movement against the religious and cultural backdrop of medieval Japan, I am also very interested in Shugendō’s contemporary declensions, or in the evolution of En no Gyōja as its traditional founder.
Among my other research interests are yamauba, ‘mountain hags’, transgressive and liminal female figures who straddle the border between life and death in different ways from the medieval period to the present, and the evolution of mizuko kuyō, “memorial rites for ‘water children’”, rites connected to abortion and perinatal death in Japan, as well as in other countries, both Asian and Western.
Within the framework of the SNSF project, I will look at the ways in which time and emotion unfold and are expressed in the context of recluse literature, especially through the media of dreams and oracles. The main focus of my research will be the writings of a thirteenth century Tendai monk named Shōgetsubō Keisei 証月坊慶 (1189-1268).

Dr. Daniel Schley

Research Associate SNSF Project (01.10.2024-31.10.2025)
 
Contact:
E-mail: daniel.schley@aoi.uzh.ch

I specialised in early medieval (10th–14th century) Japanese history. Following my graduate studies of European history at the University of Hamburg, I continued my research on medieval conceptions of sacred kingship, turning my attention this time on Japan. For this purpose, I was a visiting scholar at the Historiographical Institute at the University of Tōkyō between 2008 and 2012 and received my PhD from Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich in 2013, publishing my thesis in the following year (LIT-Verlag). Also in 2014, I took up a position at LMU Munich as an Academic Researcher and was appointed Assistant Professor (Juniorprofessor) für Japanese Studies at Bonn University in 2017, continuing untill 2024. During this time, I participated in the DFG Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) “Macht und Herrschaft” (Mathias Becher) as Co-leader of the Japanese Studies subproject and thought classes in premodern intellectual and religious history. I am co-editor of a special issue of the Bochumer Jahrbuch zur Ostasienforschung (Band 45 (2022): “Historisches Erzählen im vormodernen Japan”) and published several articles and book chapters on medieval kingship, historiography, religion and violence as well as on Watsuji Tetsurō. In the academic year 2023/24, I was a Visiting Research Scholar at the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyōtō, where I prepared a book on Miki Kiyoshi’s Philosophy of History. In October 2024, I joined the SNSF project “Time and Emotion in Medieval Japanese Literature” at the University of Zurich. I investigate early medieval historiographies, among else the 12th century kanbun chronicle Fusō ryakki, with consideration of perceptions of contingency in particular.

 

Melanie Müller, MA

Research Associate SNSF Project

Contact: melanie.mueller@aoi.uzh.ch

I am currently working as a teaching and research assistant at the chair of Japanese philology at the University of Zurich. Simultaneously I’m also a PhD candidate at the same chair examining so-called ryūheihō texts dating from the early Edo-period. There I’m focusing on the Echigo Ryūheihō, martial methods and ideology based on the heritage of Uesugi Kenshin and his battle advisors. Through the study of this early modern text, I will work on acquiring insights into the conservation and transmission of knowledge in the Edo-period and how samurai earned their living as strategy teachers and advisors and how they preserved their warrior identity in times of peace. Up until this PhD project during my BA and MA studies, I had my focus on medieval Japan, with the following two research topics: letter writing and etiquette during the Sengoku period and gunki monogatari (Hōgen monogatari, Heiji monogatari, Jōkyūki). In the scope of my part-time appointment in the SNSF project, I work on time and emotion in the Hōgen monogatari.

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