6th International Symposium Oriental Studies

45 The 6 th International Symposium on Oriental Ancient Documents Studies Diana Kiknadze The Role of an Anonymous Authorin Japanese Setsuwa Story-tales of the 12–13 th Centuries The report will analyze the impact of anonymous authors on the late Japanese setsuwa story-tales. Since the 10 th –11 th cc. setsuwa were divided into secular and pure Buddhist, and as a consequence of genre secularization, learned aristocrats, who wanted to remain anonymous, became the main authors of setsuwa story-tales. Due to the “change” of the authors from monks to aristocrats, critical assessment of the events of many old borrowed stories appears in secular setsuwa. Such a stories were under rigorous editing according to mentality, education, taste of compilers, as well as current ideas of Japanese society of a certain period. The paper will show some examples of old borrowed stories edited by aristocrats in late setsuwa, as well as explain the reasons of such a transformation. Key words: setsuwa , anonymous authors, Buddhist literature, Japanese society of the 10th–11th c., secular stories.