Dream Balloons in China and Japan
International one-day symposium, Friday, April 3rd, 2026
Location: Room Françoise Héritier, Collège de France, 11 place Marcelin-Berthelot, 75231 Paris cedex 05
The event will be held in person with a virtual attendance option (link provided upon request)
Contact (information and Zoom link: marianne.simon-oikawa@u-paris.fr)
Event organized with the support of the East Asian Civilizations Research Centre (CRCAO)
Presentation
Between the seventeenth and early twentieth centuries, dream representations in China and Japan made extensive use of speech balloons. Typically, a character has a dream that is represented within a balloon. However, many examples do not fully conform to this pattern, as it can vary depending on the type of dream or psychic phenomenon being depicted. What exactly does the balloon contain? What forms does it take? How does it interact with other delimiting devices, such as clouds? What similarities can be identified among China, Japan, and the West?
This international one-day symposium is the second event organized within the Histoires de bulles program (CRCAO, East Asian Civilizations Research Centre, 2025–2029), which aims to study the speech balloon as an object of knowledge, both in terms of its intrinsic characteristics and its visual and broader cultural ecosystem, with the ultimate goal of identifying an “economy of the balloon” and perhaps even sketching the outlines of a general theory.
Website:
https://www.crcao.fr/recherche/formes-du-texte-usages-de-limage-dans-les-livres-japonais/?lang=en
Program
09:30-09:45. Coffee and tea
09:45-10:00. Marianne Simon-Oikawa (Université Paris Cité): opening remarks
Morning session
Chair: Annick Horiuchi (Université Paris Cité)
10:00-10:45. Vincent Durand-Dastès (Inalco): Dream Balloons in Late Imperial Chinese Books’ Illustrations: A Tentative Typology
Narratives from late imperial China, such as novels, dramas, and religious anecdotes, contain a significant number of dream scenes. These can be broadly classified into three main types: dreams forecasting glory (usually success in the imperial examinations) or failure; “spring dreams” (chunmeng), in which frustrated lovers dream of each other; and “hell dreams” (yinmeng), in which the protagonist makes a night-long visit to the Netherworld. We will demonstrate how these different narrative types give rise to different kinds of images in late imperial Chinese books, in which the dreamer may be situated either inside or outside the “dream balloon,” and the protagonists may meet or part within it.
10:45-11:30. Marie Laureillard (University Paris Nanterre): Dream Balloons in the Illustrations of Liaozhai zhiyi: From Early Editions to Lianhuanhua
Written by Pu Songling (1640–1715) between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (Liaozhai zhiyi) gives central importance to dreams, visions, and illusions, as evidenced by stories such as “The Wolf’s Dream” (Meng Lang). This paper examines the visual representation of these dreamlike states through a corpus of illustrated editions (engraved or painted) produced during the Qing dynasty and extending into the Republican period, as well as later lianhuanhua adaptations.
The graphic devices used to depict dream spaces will be examined in detail, including distinctive frames, vaporous motifs, and ambiguous spatial continuities. The illustrations of the Liaozhai zhiyi display great formal and semantic diversity in these “dream balloons”: some are delimited by cloud-like contours, while others are defined by smooth lines. The element linking them to the character — what may be termed an “oneiric tail” or “connective loop” — may be twisted, coiled, or simply left plain. These graphic variations refer not only to dreams in the strict sense, but also to a variety of mental and narrative states, including visions, hallucinations, spiritual revelations, imaginary projections, and liminal spaces between the real and the supernatural. I therefore propose a classification based on both iconographic criteria (shape, contour, and type of linkage) and semantic and narratological criteria. This approach makes it possible to distinguish among the different modes of representing interiority and the supernatural that are specific to the Liaozhai aesthetic.
11:30-12:00. Q&A
Afternoon session
Chair: Laura Moretti (University of Cambridge, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies)
13:30-14:15. Marianne Simon-Oikawa: Representing the Handan Dream in Early Modern Japanese Visual Culture
Among depictions of dreamers in Japanese visual culture, many refer directly or indirectly to a Chinese story: the Yellow Millet Dream, also known as the Handan Dream. The story concerns a young man who hopes to take part in the imperial examinations in order to achieve glory. While staying at an inn, he falls asleep and dreams of a lifetime of ups and downs. When he wakes, he realizes that his dream lasted only a few minutes. Numerous representations — variations and reinterpretations of this archetypal story — depict dreams that last only a moment, from Kinkin sensei ega no yume by Koikawa Harumachi (1775) to Miru ga toku issui no yume by Hōseidō Kisanji (1781), to name but a few examples. Balloons are frequently used in these books. We will analyze their forms and functions, defining their specificity through comparison with a range of examples drawn from other books and prints.
14:15-15:00. Julie Nelson Davis (University of Pennsylvania): Haunted Dreams: The Nightmare in Edo Prints and Illustrated Books
When sleepers dream in Edo-period prints and illustrated books, their dream balloons often represent scenes of good fortune and wish fulfillment. To dream of Mt. Fuji, falcons, and eggplants foretold an auspicious year to come and was a commonly referenced scene in ukiyo-e sheet prints. Other prints show dream balloons where the sleeper’s deepest desires are fulfilled in prosperity as well as in matrimony. Yet scary dreams of monsters, shapeshifters, and things that go bump in the dark are much rarer. In this presentation, we will consider the aesthetics of the nightmare, its iconographical references, and the potential of the dream balloon to function as a space of parody and social inversion. Through selected examples, we will attend to the different ways that the nightmare was presented in sheet prints and illustrated books as well as to the problem of when monstrous parody went too far and had to be suppressed.
15:30-15:45. Florence Dumora (Université Paris Cité): Counterpoint: Dreams and Balloons in the West