Mit, obraz, metafora w kulturach Azji i Afryki

The research topic of the text is the image of female jealousy and its description in selected works of Japanese classic epics. The great fear of female jealousy had a religious and mystical background in Japan. It was believed that jealousy could create an evil power known as “spirit possession” (mono no ke). It was an unfriendly spirit that left the body of its owner and entered the body of another, bringing disease and even death upon him. In addition, the person in whom the evil spirit had settled was completely unaware of its activity. Descriptions of this spirit possession appear not only in court tales (monogatari), such as, for example, Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji), but also in historical chronicles and bourgeois novels belonging to the genre of ukiyozōshi (books of the fleeting world) or yomihon (reading books). Japanese people of the time not only tried to avoid jealous women, they were even afraid of them. The Yōrō-ritsuryō legal code, which was introduced in 720, gave seven cases for a man’s right to divorce, one of the most important of which was female jealousy