On the first of the Sixth Month in 776, Hiromushime took to her bed and stayed there for many days. On the twentieth of the Seventh Month she called her husband and eight sons to her bedside and told them about the dream she had had.
“I was summoned to King Yama’s palace13 and was told of my three sins. The first one was using too much of the property of the Three Treasures and not repaying it; the second was making great profits by selling diluted rice wine; and the third was using two kinds of measuring cups and scales, giving only seven-tenths for a loan but collecting twelve-tenths for a debt. ‘I summoned you because of these sins. I just want to show you that you should receive a penalty in this life,’ he said.”
The woman died on the same day that she related the dream. For seven days, her husband and sons did not have her cremated but called thirty-two monks and lay brothers to pray to Buddha for her for nine days. On the evening of the seventh day the woman was restored to life and opened the lid of the coffin. When they came to look at her, the stench was indescribable. Above the waist her body had turned into an ox with four-inch horns on her forehead, and her two hands had become hooves, with the nails cracked like the insteps of an ox hoof. Below the waist her body had a human form. The woman did not like rice but preferred grass and, after eating, ruminated. She did not wear any clothes but lay in her filth. Streams of people from the east and west hurried to gather and look at her in wonder. In shame, grief, and pity, her husband and children prostrated themselves on the ground, making numerous vows. In order to atone for her sins, they offered various treasures to the Miki-dera Temple, and seventy oxen, thirty horses, fifty acres of fields, and four thousand rice bundles to the Tōdai-ji. They wrote off all debts. At the end of five days, after the provincial and district magistrates had seen her and were about to send a report to the central government, she died. All the witnesses in that district and province grieved and worried about her.
Being unreasonable and unrighteous, the woman did not know the law of karmic retribution, but we know that this was an immediate penalty for unreasonable deeds and unrighteous deeds. Since the immediate penalty comes as surely as this, how much more certain will be the penalty in a future life.14
One scripture says: “Those who don’t repay their debts will atone for them, by being reborn as a horse or an ox.”15 The debtor is compared with a slave, the creditor with a master. The former is like a pheasant, the latter a hawk. If you make a loan, don’t use excessive force to collect the debt, for if you are unreasonable, you will be reborn as a horse or an ox and made to work by your debtor.
[Adapted from a translation by Kyoko Nakamura]
ONO NO KOMACHI
Little is known about the life of Ono no Komachi (fl. ca. 850), one of the most prominent early female waka poets, but her poetry and stories about her life have attracted popular and scholarly attention for centuries. The poems most reliably attributed to her are the eighteen attributed to her in the early-tenth-century Kokinshū, the first and most prestigious of the imperial waka anthologies. Komachi is praised in the Kokinshū by its chief compiler, Ki no Tsurayuki, as one of the six outstanding poets of “recent times” (who are known collectively as the Rokkasen, or Six Poetic Immortals).16 She also is included in another grouping of notable poets, the Sanjūrokkasen, or Thirty-six Poetic Immortals, identified by the influential critic Fujiwara no Kinto (966–1041) as the greatest poets of the ancient and early Heian periods. In his Kana Preface to the Kokinshū, Tsurayuki comments, “Ono no Komachi is of the same lineage of Princess Sotoori of old. [Her poetry] is moving but not strong, resembling a beautiful woman afflicted by illness.”17 Tsurayuki was probably comparing the style of Komachi’s poetry with that of Princess Sotoori, two of whose poems appear in the Nihon shoki.18 Princess Sotoori’s best-known characteristic—although she later was canonized as a deity of waka—was her radiant beauty. Subsequent interpretations of Tsurayuki’s comments as referring to the physical appearance rather than the poetic skill of Komachi and Princess Sotoori became the basis of the legends about Komachi.
These legends foreground Komachi’s amorousness, beauty, and fickleness, and their origins can be found in these comments by Tsurayuki and in Komachi’s poems—for example, no. 554, in which the poet is overwhelmed by longing; no. 113, in which she laments the fading of her beauty; and no. 623, in which she rejects a persistent suitor. The nō play Stupa Komachi (Sotoba Komachi), translated later in this anthology, is one of the best-known dramatic treatments of Komachi and the medieval legends about her. In addition to her appearance as a character in nō plays and medieval prose narratives, interest in Komachi is evident in the compilation of the Komachi Poetry Collection (Komachishū) by unknown editors. Most of the 117 poems in the longest version of this collection are apocryphal, but their attribution to her reveals the ongoing fascination with Komachi legends. The poems most reliably attributed to Komachi, however, are those found in the Kokinshū, among which are those translated here.
SELECTED POEMS
The poems by Komachi in the Kokinshū are mostly love poems, reflecting the prevailing trend in Heian and later classical poetry toward the depiction of dissatisfaction and discord in love. All the love poems in the Kokinshū are arranged in narrative order, describing the progress of love from beginning to end, and Komachi’s poems are given here in the order in which they appear in the Kokinshū. Dreams are a major image in classical love poetry and feature prominently in Komachi’s works. She describes the world of dreams as an alternative—often preferable—reality in which the social restrictions of the waking world might be overcome. Yet even this dream world is not a perfect escape from the constraints of waking life, and Komachi’s dream poems, set within the larger narrative arc of the Kokinshū love poems, reveal a gradual disillusionment with dreams as a venue for love. Indeed, the dream imagery in Komachi’s poetry can be seen as one manifestation of her larger concern with the tenuous boundaries between illusion and reality, as seen, for instance, in no. 797, which questions the misleading nature of appearances. Both the perception of appearances as deceptive—in a world that is itself barely distinguishable from dreams—and concern with the passage of time are ultimately rooted in Buddhist teachings on the illusoriness of the phenomenal world. The concept of impermanence informs the preeminent Heian aesthetic ideal, seen in the Kokinshū and elsewhere, of mono no aware, often translated as “the pathos of things,” according to which beauty is enhanced by its very ephemerality.
Komachi’s poetry is noted for its rhetorical complexity and makes extensive use of pivot words (kakekotoba), a kind of pun characteristic of Kokinshū poetry. This technique allows the poet to compress multiple layers of meaning within the brief bounds of the waka form. Komachi’s poems also frequently feature word associations (engo), images conventionally linked in classical waka; that is, one such image suggests others associated with it, evoking resonances in the reader’s mind and, as with pivot words, intensifying the meaning without exceeding the prescribed length of the poem.
113
hana no iro wa The color of the flowers
utsuri ni keri na has faded—in vain
itazura ni I grow old in this world,
waga mi yo ni furu lost in thought
nagame seshi ma ni as the long rain falls.19
552
omoitsutsu Longing for him
nureba ya hito no I fell asleep—
mietsuramu is that why he appeared?
yume to shiriseba Had I known it was a dream
samezaramashi o I would never have awakened.20
553
utatane ni Since seeing in my sleep
koishiki hito o the one whom I love,
miteshi yori it’s these things
yume chō mono o called dreams
tanomi someteki I’ve learned to trust.21
554
ito semete In desperation,
koishiki toki wa pressed hard by longing,
mubatama no this berry-black night
kaeshite zo kiru turned inside out.22
623
mirume naki Is it because
waga mi o ura to he does not know
shiraneba ya there is no seaweed in this bay
karenade ama no that the fisherman comes so often,
ashi tayuku kuru his legs growing weary?23
656
utsutsu ni wa In the waking world
sa mo koso arame perhaps it must be so,
yume ni sae but even in my dreams
hitome o moru to to see him hide from others’ eyes
miru ga wabishisa is misery itself.24
657
kagiri naki In boundless desire
omoi no mama ni lit by the fire of love
yoru mo komu this night at least
yumeji o sae ni may you tread the path of dreams
hito wa togameji and no one blame us.25
658
yumeji ni wa On the path of dreams
ashi mo yasumezu my feet never rest
kayoedomo as I run to see you,
utsutsu ni hitome though it’s not worth a glimpse
mishigoto wa arazu of your waking self.26
797
iro miede What fades away
utsurou mono wa its color unseen
yo no naka no is the flower
hito no kokoro no of the heart
hana ni zo arikeru of those of this world.27
938
When Fun’ya no Yasuhide became the third-ranked official of Mikawa Province and invited me to come sightseeing in the provinces, this was my reply:
wabinureba Lonely and forlorn
mi o ukikusa no as a drifting weed:
ne o taete should flowing waters
sasou mizu araba beckon
inamu to zo omou I think I’d follow.28
[Translated by Anne Commons]
SUGAWARA NO MICHIZANE
The early Heian period was marked by the heavy influence of Chinese culture and Chinese literature, with Chinese the written language of the court and the emperors sponsoring imperial anthologies of the best examples of Chinese poetry by Japanese poets. Sugawara no Michizane’s grandfather, who had visited China as a diplomat, established a family tradition of Sinological scholarship. Signs of change, however, began to appear in the middle of the ninth century with a revival of interest in waka and the emergence of the Fujiwara regency. The rise of the Fujiwara signaled the weakening of Sinified administrative institutions and the new enthusiasm for vernacular literature eventually led to a partial decline in enthusiasm for literature written in Chinese.
Writing in Chinese required mastery of both classical Chinese and the vast body of lore alluded to in Chinese literature. Having been born into a scholarly family, Sugawara no Michizane (845–903) received extensive training in Chinese, and his career resembled that of Chinese literati officials. After studying at the state university, he passed a civil service examination and held a series of posts until 877, when he was made a professor of literature, making him a dominant figure among court intellectuals. Nine years later, he was appointed governor of Sanuki (now Kagawa Prefecture) in Shikoku. Although he objected to his rustication, Michizane wrote some of his most interesting poetry in the province. Perhaps the novelty of the setting inspired a more imaginative approach to his art, or perhaps he simply had more time to write. After his return to the capital in 890, the new emperor promoted him to high office as a counterbalance to the Fujiwaras’ power, arousing the enmity of Michizane’s rivals, both political and academic. As a result, he was slandered and, in 901, exiled to Kyushu, where he died two years later, still protesting his innocence.
The following years were marked by the untimely deaths of some of Michizane’s former rivals, most conspicuously in 930, when lightning struck the palace and killed four of them. Michizane was posthumously pardoned, promoted, and deified as Tenjin (Heavenly Deity). Shrines were built to worship Tenjin, the oldest being at the site of his grave in Kyushu and another, built in 947, at Kitano, just north of the capital. Although people originally had feared Tenjin’s wrath, by 986 the court literati were presenting poems to Kitano Shrine and describing Tenjin as “the progenitor of literature, the lord of poetry.” Reverence for Tenjin spread, and today, shrines dedicated to him are among the most numerous in Japan. They often were centers of literary activity, although in recent years Tenjin has come to be worshiped as a patron of all trying to pass university examinations.
Michizane may have been deified to placate his angry ghost, but his poetry, particularly that written in Chinese, continues to find an audience for its literary qualities. Michizane excelled at composition in Chinese at a time when it was first beginning to lose its monopoly on literary and cultural prestige and to be eclipsed by waka. In contrast to the brevity of waka and its relatively narrow range of topics, Chinese poetry allowed more detailed exposition and favored some topics excluded from waka, as seen in the following examples.
Formal robe (sokutai) for noblemen and emperor.
Michizane’s works in Chinese are preserved in two anthologies. The first is Kanke bunsō, roughly translated as Literary Drafts of the Sugawara Family. Michizane himself compiled and presented this anthology to the emperor in 900, along with the now-lost works of his father and grandfather. Kanke bunsō begins with six books of poetry arranged chronologically, followed by another six books of prose, subdivided by genre. Shortly before his death, Michizane sent the poems he had written in exile to a disciple in the capital, who compiled them into a second anthology, Kanke kōshū (The Later Collection of the Sugawara Family). Examples of Michizane’s waka are preserved in several imperial anthologies. The following selections from Michizane’s writings are grouped by topic, which have been arranged to leave some of the poems in their original chronological order. The headings to the individual poems were written by Michizane himself.
CHILDREN
Children were not a central concern of waka. By contrast, following the conventions of Chinese poetry, Michizane wrote affectionately about his children but barely mentions his wife and says nothing of the concubines he must have had if we are to believe the claim that he fathered twenty-three children. In addition to the examples translated here, both dating from his years in Sanuki, Michizane composed a poem recalling a son who had died in childhood and another to comfort the children who had accompanied him into exile.29
Speaking of My Children
This poem was written in 888 when Michizane, then forty-four, was governor of Sanuki. In this example, the disparaging remarks about his children and the elegiac tone might be read as clichés, but the concerns expressed may have been real. Michizane was certainly far from home, and the Sugawara held only middling status among court aristocrats. Their success was based on the literary skills of Michizane and his immediate forebears.
260
My sons are foolish, my daughters ugly: such is their nature.
The proper times to celebrate their adulthood have slipped by.
Flowers that bloom on a winter tree lack crimson hue.
Birds raised in a dark valley are slow to take wing.
My family has no property; it must rely on me.
My profession is literature, but who shall inherit it?
Such thoughts are as pointless as lamenting old age,
yet when I speak of my children so far away, I feel sad.
CAREER
Whereas the vernacular literature leaves the impression that Heian courtiers devoted most of their time to romance and poetry, Michizane’s writing in Chinese reminds us that most poets had official careers as well. During his years in high office, virtually all Michizane’s poetry consisted of the formal verse needed for court ceremonies; presumably he did not have time for the more personal poems that require fewer footnotes for modern readers. The third poem in this section is a waka from this period, included here to illustrate the type of occasion requiring poetry from a high off
icial. It also demonstrates how waka adapted a poetic technique, a metaphor in the form of feigned confusion, found in Chinese poetry, as in the first poem.
Through the Snow to Morning Duties
This poem was written in 876 when Michizane was the deputy assistant minister of popular affairs. The court offices held morning and evening rites, and Michizane is reporting for the former.
73
Wind-sent tolling of palace bell: I hear the sound of dawn,30
encouraging me on my way through powdery snow.
Matching my status, I wear a fur coat three feet long;
just right to warm my mouth, two drafts of wine.
I wonder if it could be floss my groom is clutching,
and am startled to see my tired horse trod drifting clouds.31
In my office, not a moment’s rest:
puffing on my hand a thousand times, I keep drafting documents.32
Professorial Difficulties
Written in 882, five years after Michizane was appointed professor of literature, this poem suggests that students at the court university took a serious interest in advancing their career, if not necessarily their studies.
Traditional Japanese Literature Page 13