In medieval tales with fantastic elements, it is not uncommon to come across unusual experiences regarding the flow of time or a subjective awareness of the passage of time that is at odds with the world the protagonists inhabit. This case study seeks to investigate what can be deduced from the sources regarding the conceptualisation and perception of time and how the narratives themselves portray the experience of the passage of time. Reflecting the emotions associated with the inescapable finality and irreversibility of time, the tales play with hypothetical temporalities that run counter to actual temporal experience. In this sense, they provided a means of mental escape from the confines of everyday existence and enabled the exploration of other possibilities and “what-if” scenarios, allowing us to gain more insight into the medieval Japanese worldview.
Since prominent temporal variations occur when the protagonist undertakes journeys to other worlds or encounters beings belonging to other realms of existence in the world they inhabit, this case study focusses specifically on setsuwa collections and Muromachi-period tales, which present a rich and diverse foundation for this kind of investigation. One of the most famous examples is undoubtedly Urashima Tarō, whose three-year stay in the Dragon Palace amounts to several hundred years in his homeland. Many other tales survive that contain such intriguing temporal permutations and thus attest to an interest in the concept of time and a creative stance that probed into its nature and parameters. To highlight their deviation from experience, temporal variations are preceded by a point of rupture, which marks the departure from the regular space-time continuum and provides the causal basis for the unusual events that follow. The analysis will thus centre on these breaks and transitions into temporally variegated orders. The fact that other worlds are posited, with their own temporal and spatial parameters, and that travel to them is possible in these tales, underscores the relativity of time in correlation with space and as such presents a fascinating avenue for enquiry.
It is through the establishment of contrast with the real-world experience of the passage of time that interesting features begin to emerge regarding the subjective experience of time within a culturally specific framework of constructed time as it was shaped, in particular, by the Buddhist cosmological framework. This aspect emerges all the more poignantly with regard to the brevity of the human life span when contrasted with more stable and long-lasting forms of existence, which presents a pervasive theme in the sources and is symbolically expressed through the notion of mujō (impermanence) and figurative language. Other recurring motifs that will form the crux of this study include the four-seasons garden, day-night binarity, and transformative intervals, which correspond to the fundamental experiences of simultaneity, succession, and change while subverting expectations derived from real-world experience. An investigation of these aspects will help to shed more light on how time was perceived and experienced through its representation in medieval Japanese tales and the attitudes held towards time.
