elf" (p. 123). In the case of an individual whose historical record is so sketchy, most of the information about her and her place in history must be inferred from secondary sources, and Kawashima's argument is that such sources have intentionally lessened Komachi's importance by the way they have categorized and catalogued her. One of the ways these scholars have marginalized Komachi, Kawashima ( ) argues, is by first emphasizing her beauty and wealth in order to then show these qualities "to be ultimately ineffective and meaningless in the face of old age and poverty" (p. 127).
Kawashima contends that those who have marginalized Komachi were male and were both religious and secular leaders, each with their own reasons for needing to dilute the poet's female power and importance. For religious supporters, lessening Komachi's power allowed them to promote "particular Buddhist notions about material and sexual wealth," while the military class that was taking control of the government could use her as a cautionary figure to discourage followers from getting too involved with powerful women (Kawashima, __, p. 127).
Three other modern writers have their own theories about why the public figure of Komachi underwent transformations during the medieval period. Strong ( ) argues, "The early medieval critics . . . were, almost without exception, male . . . [who] objectified both the women authors and their meanings so that the two entities (author and text) were melded together into a readily graspable, sharply defined female image" (p. 394). In their reading, what Komachi wrote about became fused with who the critics saw her as. These interpretations then became the basis for subsequent dramatizations and mythologies of Komachi's character. Where this matched their view of her as a strong, powerful woman, a femme fatale, or a shrewish older woman paying for her youthful indiscretions, they believed they were seeing her true natu...