Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900

by Shirane, Haruo, ed.

  Mitsuuji’s eyes, too, were moist, and he blinked. “Our relationship was very special,” he said. “We must have been brought together by some karma in our previous lives. We’ve known each other only a short time, but you loved me truly with your whole heart.

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  “And you cared very deeply for me. How could I ever forget your great kindness? Your mother has confessed her crimes, and she is no longer bound to them. Both of you will surely be reborn in the Pure Land and sit on lotuses there. Please save a space on your lotus and wait for me to come.”

  At that Tasogare smiled a wide smile. “You are my priest,” she said softly, barely able to breathe, “and you have spoken the final words for us that will lead us to paradise. I am happy now. I will gladly become a buddha.”

  Mitsuuji turned to Shinonome and said, “When I saw Karukaya and asked Tasogare to invite her in, you used Karukaya’s old name, Kikyō, and were very surprised to see her. That made me suspicious for the reason you mentioned, and I was planning to ask her later about what had happened between you. But many years ago she tried to kill me. She’s unreliable, and I decided not to ask her. I was afraid she might mention to someone that I was making secret trips to look for the sword. So I never knew that you were married to Dorozō or that Tasogare was Dorozō’s daughter. Your father was killed and his clan destroyed because he was disloyal and led a rebellion against the shōgun. His death was his own doing. You don’t seem to have a grudge against me personally, and it was natural for you, as a woman, to think of my clan as the enemy of yours. But you have committed suicide,35 and I have no more bitter feelings toward you at all. Your daughter hardly knew what was happening. She loved me with a true love, and she was so overwhelmed by it she killed herself. It is sorrowful beyond words. The least I can do for her is take care of her child. Where is the girl now?”

  “Ah, Mother,” Tasogare said, “you’ve gone and told him something very strange. My hair isn’t tied up yet, and my teeth aren’t blackened. I’m not married, so how could I possibly have a child? Don’t say things like that.” She was almost dead, but she still felt deeply ashamed of the child. She was so upset that blood spurted from her throat as she spoke. Choking, she collapsed onto the floor. She crawled about until finally she lay silent.

  Slowly Shinonome pulled herself over to Tasogare’s body. When she reached it, she took her daughter’s hand and began sobbing. “My husband and I were your enemies,” she said to Mitsuuji, “but our daughter loved you so much she was willing to die for you. It all must have been her karma from a previous life. Soon everyone, even children, will be talking and spreading rumors about us. It is too shameful even to think about. Ah, daughter, let me hear your voice again!” She began weeping uncontrollably.

  Nikki Kiyonosuke went into the next room, and now, in privacy, Mitsuuji gently came and held Tasogare in his arms. He looked at her. She was cold now, and her breathing had stopped. “We had such a short time together,” he said to her and then put one sleeve over his face to hide his tears. Soon Kiyonosuke reappeared. He had changed back into his ordinary clothes and had on his long and short swords, which he had hidden earlier. When he came in, Mitsuuji stepped back from the body and pretended to have his emotions completely under control.

  Kiyonosuke placed his fingertips on the floor and bowed deeply to his lord. “Talking with Shinonome is surely a waste of time,” he said. “Why not ask her about the man she gave the sword to?”

  “Her spirit is stronger than any man’s,” Mitsuuji said, laughing. “If she’s vowed never to tell the man’s name, do you think she’d ever give a clear answer?

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  “Asking her whom she gave it to would truly be a waste of time,” Mutsuuji said. “Well now, Shinonome, I understand you, and I sympathize with you. So how about telling me something very indirectly? That way, I won’t have asked you and you won’t have told me anything.”

  The blood-smeared dagger drops from the hand of the dying Tasogare. Shinonome holds the reed blind with the Mount Fuji design upside down.

  The suffering woman smiled. “I am moved,” she said, “by your kindness toward my daughter. You even wish to raise my granddaughter and asked where she lives. I would like to tell you many, many things, but as you say, I’ve made a vow of secrecy. The man’s money allowed me and my daughter to survive, and I owe a debt to him. I could never tell you his name. Try to understand with this.” She unrolled the see-through reed screen with its Mount Fuji design and lifted it upside down.

  Mitsuuji stared at the hanging screen, his head at an angle, lost in thought. “Fuji is the most famous mountain in the world,” he said, “but if you read ‘famous mountain’ upside down. . . . Yes, of course, of course.”36 As Mitsuuji was speaking, Shinonome slit her throat and finally died. It was a painful death, and Mitsuuji pitied her. He picked up the rush hat and paid his last respects to her by placing it over her face. Then he looked over at Tasogare’s face. She seemed to be sleeping. Once when they had been saying gentle things all night, Tasogare had given him her underrobe as a symbol of her heart and her true wish to sleep with him. He had given her his own underrobe then, and it was still wrapped around her body. But now it was covered with blood stains as bright as wet red autumn leaves floating on the Akuta River.37 He had taken Tasogare away from her home, only for this to happen. Mitsuuji stood as if in a trance, staring at Tasogare’s body and remembering their time together.

  Mitsuuji stands and weeps beside Shinonome, whose head is now covered with the sedge hat. Her dagger lies beside a pool of blood. Kiyonosuke (left) wraps Tasogare in the reed blind. The Mount Fuji cutout reveals the yūgao design of her robe.

  Seeing Mitsuuji’s expression, Kiyonosuke wrapped the reed blind around Tasogare’s body where it lay. But Mitsuuji could still see her attractive hairline and her lustrous hair spreading across the floor. Mount Fuji was fabled to have an elixir of eternal life, but the Fuji on the reed screen had done nothing to help Tasogare, who was dead at only nineteen or twenty. The smoke rising from its peak suggested to him the smoke that would soon rise from Tasogare’s body while it was being cremated.38 Mitsuuji found himself overcome by tears. For some time he stood, unable to move.

  Then Mitsuuji heard the sounds of a gong and drum and turned his head to see where they were coming from. Near the board-roofed building facing the visitors’ quarters was a hall of worship. Some lamps in front of a buddha image were barely visible inside, and the caretaker monk seemed to be chanting Amida Buddha’s name over and over in a muted voice so as not to bother his visitors. Mitsuuji called the monk over and asked him to take great care in praying for the two bodies and having them cremated. While he spoke, a rooster crowed in the distance.

  Kiyonosuke strikes the fish-shaped wooden block to announce the departure of Mitsuuji, who now wears clogs and has two swords at his side. The moon lights the paths of Mitsuuji’s men as they emerge from the fields in the upper-left corner.

  Kiyonosuke bowed to Mitsuuji. “Dawn has come already,” he said. “You need to be going home now.”

  Mitsuuji nodded. “I was planning to capture Shinonome last night and question her,” he said, “so I had the temple surrounded. My men are all ready, just waiting for someone to beat on that fish-shaped wooden block over there.39 That’s the signal. It’s time to leave now.” He stepped calmly down from the temple porch onto the ground. “Well, what are you waiting for?”

  Kiyonosuke finally understood and went over to the hollow wooden fish hanging from the eaves and began beating on it. At its sharp sound, Akamatsu and Otokawa40 warriors appeared in the distance, bringing Mitsuuji’s glittering, decorated horse and leading a large number of men. With the moon setting behind them, the warriors pushed their way through the long grass, and the moonlight glinting on their armor made them look like stars as they lined up in the temple garden. Kiyonosuke told the men they were going back to Mitsuuji’s mansion, and Mitsuuji stepped lightly up into his saddle and began to ride off through the dew-wet g
rass. Early morning mist rose everywhere, and he wandered here and there, his mind lost and troubled by his deep karmic ties to Tasogare, which bound both of them as tightly together as the reins he held in his hands. Only when the sky grew light was he able to turn away from his sorrow and spur his horse quickly on toward his mansion in Saga.

  [Nise Murasaki inaka Genji, SNKBT 88: 150–174, translated by Chris Drake]

  ________________________

  1. Rokujō, actually the location of the licensed quarter in the early seventeenth century, suggests Lady Rokujō in The Tale of Genji.

  2. Korekichi and his sick mother suggest Koremitsu and his mother in The Tale of Genji.

  3. A climbing variety of wild melon with round red fruit; it flowers in the evening in midsummer.

  4. Shinonome means Dawn.

  5. The name Tasogare (Twilight) suggests the woman Yūgao, named after the evening-blooming moonflower in The Tale of Genji.

  6. The shamisen was brought from the Ryukyu Islands to Osaka in the late sixteenth century. Tanehiko continues to overlap imagery from the early Edo period, when the three-string instrument had become popular, with the medieval setting.

  7. Alludes to a love poem in the Kokinshū: “When darkness comes, I burn hotter than any firefly—does he not come because he cannot see my light?” (no. 562). The allusion suggests that the house is lit by Tasogare’s love and that Mitsuuji has seen that light.

  8. A saibara song contemporaneous with the historical Tale of Genji. Mitsuuji recalls elegant “curtains” (tobari) used in upper-class houses, because they are homophonous with “clothes-drying boards.”

  9. Kiyonosuke’s daughter, who suggests Nokiba no Ogi in The Tale of Genji.

  10. Karaginu suggests Utsusemi, and Kiyonosuke, the vice governor of Iyo on Shikoku in The Tale of Genji.

  11. Mitsuuji is embarrassed because on the night he stayed at Kiyonosuke’s house, he later went into the bedroom of Kiyonosuke’s young wife, Karaginu, and tried to seduce her, thinking that she was Kiyonosuke’s daughter Muraogi. Later, with the aid of Karaginu’s younger brother, he entered the house secretly, spied on Karaginu, and again tried to seduce her but discovered she was only pretending to be Muraogi. Karaginu escaped, but Mitsuuji did not find consolation with her younger brother, as Genji did in The Tale of Genji. Meanwhile, Muraogi is angry that her desire for Mitsuuji has been thwarted.

  12. Alludes to the kana preface of the Kokinshū, which describes the unpolished poet Kuronushi as a woodsman resting under a blossoming cherry tree.

  13. Alludes to the poems exchanged by a woman and Narihira in The Tales of Ise, sec. 22. In the Edo period, “exchange vows” also meant lovemaking.

  14. A common euphemism for lovemaking. Mitsuuji assumes that Karukaya also has spent the night with a lover.

  15. Lady Futaba, Mitsuuji’s wife, suggests Lady Aoi, Genji’s first wife in The Tale of Genji.

  16. Owned by Futaba’s father, Akamatsu Masanori, minister of the left.

  17. Autumn begins with the Seventh Month, in early or middle August.

  18. Akogi suggests Lady Rokujō in The Tale of Genji.

  19. It was customary to change into lined sleeping robes at the beginning of the Ninth Month.

  20. In the Edo period, montage-design robes sewn from patches of fabrics from different periods were considered very fashionable.

  21. Mount ō mine. On this sacred mountain, climbed by mountain monks, such as the one who appears later, the bodhisattva Maitreya was believed to wait until he came to save the world, eons in the future.

  22. Son of a famous general, minister of the left, and brother of Lady Futaba, thus Mitsuuji’s brother-in-law. He suggests Tō no Chūjō in The Tale of Genji.

  23. Famous for guiding dead souls safely to the other world.

  24. A phrase used by tantric Shingon-sect believers, who believed that Saint Kōbō (Kūkai) walked every step with them.

  25. Many textile wholesalers were located on Muromachi Avenue, as was the shōgunal palace.

  26. Suggests Lady Aoi’s oxcart in the “Heartvine” chapter of The Tale of Genji, where Aoi’s oxcart and entourage come into conflict with Lady Rokujō’s oxcart and entourage at the Kamo Festival. The oxcart wheel is also the wheel of the Buddhist law and of karma.

  27. The image of Akogi at Sixth Avenue and the words of the spirit suggest the angry spirit of Lady Rokujō, Genji’s neglected lover, who tries to kill Aoi, Genji’s wife, in the nō play Lady Aoi (Aoi no ue). Tanehiko overlaps Lady Rokujō and Akogi, a leading courtesan in the Rokujō (Sixth Avenue) licensed quarter. In the picture, Akogi’s spirit is shown leaving her body while she naps, while in the text the spirit is said to be that of Futaba, Mitsuuji’s wife. The demon woman wears Lady Rokujō’s demon mask from the nō play.

  28. Suggests the mountain monk who soothes the angry spirit of Lady Rokujō in the no play Lady Aoi.

  29. Small Crow (Kogarasu-maru), a sword believed to have been brought from heaven by a shamanic crow and given to Emperor Kanmu (r. 781–806).

  30. The eighth Ashikaga shōgun (r. 1443–1473), during the period of the Ōnin Wars; here, Mitsuuji’s father, Yoshimasa.

  31. A wooded area in the Lower Kamo Shrine in Kyoto.

  32. Kikyō, Dorozo’s sister, is now the nun Karukaya.

  33. Mitsuuji’s mother, who suggests Kiritsubo in The Tale of Genji.

  34. At the end of book 1, Kikyō changes her name to Karukaya and goes to work for Hanagiri, her mistress’s rival, in order to kill Hanagiri’s son, Mitsuuji. After Hanagiri dies, Kikyō’s brother Dorozō, now a wandering monk, stops at the mansion, and in the dark Kikyō stabs her brother, thinking that he is Mitsuuji. She then becomes a wandering nun and prays for the souls of Hanagiri and her brother.

  35. True to her samurai upbringing, Shinonome has committed ritual suicide (the first step of which is cutting open her stomach) in order to take responsibility for her actions and atone for them.

  36. When the character for “famous mountain” (meizan) is read in reverse order, the Japanese reading is “Yamana,” suggesting Yamana Sōzen, the powerful lord who wants to displace the Ashikaga shōgun Yoshimasa.

  37. An allusion to The Tales of Ise, sec. 6, in which Narihira takes a woman away from her home and crosses the Akuta River with her, only to have her killed by a demon in the middle of the night.

  38. Tasogare’s graceful hairline with sharp angles at the temples resembles the peak of Mount Fuji.

  39. Used in temples at certain hours to mark the time.

  40. Suggests the Hosokawa clan headed by Katsumoto, a main supporter of shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimasa.

  Chapter 21

  GHOSTS AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY KABUKI

  Kabuki’s focus on evil was one of its characteristics in the nineteenth century, especially in the work of Tsuruya Nanboku, who—along with Chikamatsu, Namiki Sōsuke (Senryū), and Mokuami—was one of the leading kabuki-jōruri playwrights of the early modern period. In contrast to earlier plays in which the evil male character is the opposite of the good male character and thus basically a foil for the hero, in Nanboku’s plays the evil male character is the protagonist and is simultaneously attractive and repulsive, erotic and loathsome. During this period as well, two new evil characters were created in kabuki, the “poisonous wife” (dokufu) and the “evil woman” (akuba), both onnagata roles (a male actor playing a female part), which traditionally had been that of the elegant, highly feminine, younger woman. Kabuki was also moving away from the speech-based drama that had dominated the genre to one that emphasized the actor’s physical expressiveness in the henge buyō (transformation dance), in which he moved swiftly from one character to another within a single dance; in the tachimawari (fight scene); and, most of all, in the hayagawari (quick change), in which the same actor played several different roles in a single play.

  Nanboku’s plays transformed the nature of kabuki by depicting a world in which the sociopolitical order was crumbling, causing a profound sense of material loss
or decay and leaving little foundation for spiritual order. It is not surprising, therefore, that Nanboku also was one of the pioneers of the ghost-story genre (kaidan mono) in kabuki. Value, it seems, could be found only in an individual’s life force or energy, which was embodied in the “quick change” and other physical aspects of the acting, as well as in the strong, tenacious characters, who are often evil or horrifying. Nanboku was noted, as well, for his kizewa (literally, raw contemporary life) plays, which realistically depicted the lives of people at the bottom of society, thus capturing a dark side of late Tokugawa society that the printed literature often overlooked. The term “realistic,” however, is not entirely satisfactory. As some modern critics have pointed out, Nanboku’s Ghost Stories at Yotsuya (Yotsuya kaidan, 1825), for example, is not “realistic” in that it depends heavily on ghosts and the supernatural. Rather, the word is better understood to mean that even though Nanboku uses the “world” (sekai) of history plays and of powerful samurai houses, he fills this world with outcasts or “nonhumans” (hinin) from the lower classes, such as masterless samurai (rōnin), beggars, grave diggers, and tobacco sellers. Into this drama, Nanboku intersperses erotic love scenes, brutal murders, and frightening ghost stories—all of which made for immensely popular and effective theater.