akanaku ni How can the moon
madaki no tsuki no hide itself
kakururu ka before we are satisfied?
yama no ha nigete I wish the mountain rim would flee
irezu mo aranamu so the moon might stay in view.
In place of the prince, Ki no Aritsune replied:
oshinabete I wish the peaks
mine mo taira ni one and all
narinanamu might be leveled:
yama no ha naku wa if there were no mountain rims
tsuki mo iraji o the moon would not hide.
In the Shade of Wisteria Blooms (101)
In the past, there was a commander of the left guards called Ariwara no Yukihira. Hearing that there was a batch of good wine at his house, some people who were at court visited, among them the middle controller of the left, Fujiwara no Masachika, who served as guest of honor for the day.
Since Yukihira was a man of sensibility, he had placed flowers in a vase. Among the flowers was a striking and unusual bough of wisteria extending more than three feet in length. Those present composed poems with that as their topic.
Just when they were finished, a brother of the host,115 hearing that Yukihira was entertaining guests, came to join them. They cornered him and demanded he compose a poem. Claiming he knew nothing of poetry he declined,116 but when they insisted, he made this:
saku hana no How many they are
shita ni kakururu who take refuge in the shade
hito o oomi of wisteria that are
arishi ni masaru greater now than
fuji no kage kamo ever before!117
When someone asked, “Why did you compose a poem like that?”118 he replied, “I was thinking of the chancellor’s glorious ascent and the great successes of the Fujiwara clan.” No one could find fault with his answer.119
Rain Test (107)
In the past, there was a man of some distinction. Someone called Fujiwara no Toshiyuki, who was a private secretary,120 began to pursue a girl of the man’s household. The girl, however, was very young, knew little of writing, had no command of diction, and could hardly compose a poem. The man prepared a draft of a poem and had her write it out and send it off. The recipient was quite dazzled.121 He composed this in reply:
tsurezure no Helpless to meet you,
nagame ni masaru I can only gaze on these
namidagawa endless rains,
sode nomi hichite a river of tears
au yoshi mo nashi drenching my sleeves.
In reply the man wrote, again on the girl’s behalf:
asami koso
How shallow
sode wa hitsurame
a river of tears
namidagawa
that wets only your sleeves:
mi sae nagaru to
when I hear you are drowning
kikaba tanomu
I’ll trust the depths of your love.
On receiving this, Toshiyuki122 was so overwhelmed that he rolled it up and to this day is said to keep it in his letter box.
Toshiyuki sent a letter to the woman. This was some time after he had won her consent. “I’m afraid it may rain. If I am fortunate, the rain won’t fall.”123 As before, the girl’s employer composed a poem on her behalf and had it delivered:
kazukazu ni
It is not for me
omoi omowazu
to ask if I matter
toigatami
or not to you:
mi o shiru zo
rain like falling tears
ame wa masareru
will tell.
On receiving this, he left both raincoat and hat behind and rushed blindly to her, drenched in rain and tears.
Deep Grasses (123)
In the past, there was a man. He must have grown weary of a woman who lived in Fukakusa, since he sent her this poem:
toshi o hete
If I leave this village
sumikoshi sato o
my home all these years
idete inaba
will it become
itodo fukakusa
a moor
no to ya narinamu
of ever deeper grasses?
The woman replied:
no to naraba
If it becomes a moor
uzura to narite
I will become a quail
nakioramu
and cry.
kari ni dani ya wa
Would you then come back,
kimi wa kozaramu
even for a while, as a hunter?
Moved by her reply, the man gave up the thought of leaving her.
The Road All Must Travel (125)
In the past, a man fell ill and felt that he would soon die.
tsui ni yuku
I had heard
michi to wa kanete
there is a path
kikishikado
that all must follow
kinō kyō to wa
but didn’t think yesterday
omowazarishi o
that I’d be going today … 124
[Introduction and translations by Jamie Newhard and Lewis Cook]
SEI SHŌNAGON
Sei Shōnagon (b. 965?) was the daughter of Kiyohara no Motosuke, a noted waka poet and one of the editors of the Gosenshū, the second imperial waka anthology. (The Sei in Sei Shōnagon’s name comes from the Sino-Japanese reading for the Kiyo in Kiyohara.) Around 981, Sei Shōnagon married Tachibana no Norimitsu, the first son of the noted Tachibana family, but after she bore him a child the next year, they were separated.
In 990 Fujiwara no Kaneie, the husband of the author of the Kagerō Diary, stepped down from his position as regent (kanpaku) and gave it to his son Fujiwara no Michitaka, who was referred to as middle regent (naka no kanpaku). Michitaka married his daughter Teishi to Emperor Ichijō (r. 986–1011) in 990, and she soon became a high consort (nyōgo) and then empress (chūgū). Sei Shōnagon became a lady-in-waiting to Teishi in 993, the year that Michitaka became prime minister (daijō daijin). In 994 Korechika, Michitaka’s eldest son and the apparent heir to the regency, became palace minister (naidaijin). In 995 Michitaka died in an epidemic, and in the following year Korechika was exiled in a move engineered by Michitaka’s younger brother and rival Michinaga, and Teishi was forced to leave the imperial palace. Sei Shōnagon continued to serve Teishi until Teishi’s death in childbirth in 1000. In the meantime, in 999, Shōshi, Michinaga’s daughter and Murasaki Shikibu’s mistress, became the chief consort to Emperor Ichijō, marking Michinaga’s ascent to the pinnacle of power.
Political context for Sei Shōnagon
THE PILLOW BOOK (MAKURA NO SŌSHI, CA. 1000)
The Pillow Book, which was finished after the demise of Teishi’s salon, focuses mainly on the years 993 and 994, when the Michitaka family and Teishi were at the height of their glory, leaving unmentioned the subsequent tragedy. Almost all the major works by women of this time were written by women in Empress Shōshi’s salon: Murasaki Shikibu, Izumi Shikibu, and Akazome’emon. Only Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow Book represents the rival salon of Empress Teishi. Like many other diaries by court women, The Pillow Book can be seen as a memorial to the author’s patron, specifically, an homage to the Naka no Kanpaku family and a literary prayer to the spirit of the deceased empress Teishi. One of the few indirect references to the sad circumstances that befell Teishi’s family is “The Cat Who Lived in the Palace,” about the cruel punishment, sudden exile, and ignominious return of the dog Okinamaro, who, like Korechika, secretly returned to the capital and later was pardoned.
The three hundred discrete sections of The Pillow Book can be divided into three different types—lists, essay, and diary—that sometimes overlap. The list sections consist of noun sections (mono wa), which describe particular categories of things like “Flowering Trees,” “Birds,” and “Insects” and tend to focus on nature or poetic topics, and adjectival sections (monozukushi), which describe a particular state, such as “Depressing Things,” and con
tain interesting lists and often are (particularly in the case of negative adjectives) humorous and witty. The diary sections, such as “The Sliding Screen in the Back of the Hall,” describe specific events and figures in history, particularly those related to Empress Teishi and her immediate family.
The essay sections sometimes focus on a specific season or month, but unlike the diary sections, they bear no historical dates. The textual variants of The Pillow Book treat these three section types differently. The Maeda and Sakai variants separate them into three large groups. By contrast, the Nōin variant and the Sankan variant, which is translated here and has become the canonical version, mix the different types of sections. The end result is that The Pillow Book appears ahistorical; events are not presented in chronological order but instead move back and forth in time, with no particular development or climax, creating a sense of a world suspended in time, a mode perhaps suitable for a paean to Teishi’s family.
Another category, which overlaps with the others and resembles anecdotal literature, is the “stories heard” (kikigaki)—that is, stories heard from one’s master or mistress—which provided knowledge and models of cultivation. Indeed, much of The Pillow Book is about aristocratic women’s education, especially the need for aesthetic awareness as well as erudition, allusiveness, and extreme refinement in communication. Sei Shōnagon shows a particular concern for delicacy and harmony, for the proper combination of object, sense, and circumstance, usually a fusion of human and natural worlds. Incongruity and disharmony, by contrast, become the butt of humor and of Sei Shōnagon’s sharp wit. The Pillow Book is often read as a personal record of accomplishments, with a number of the sections about incidents that display the author’s talent. Indeed, much of the interest of The Pillow Book has been in the strong character and personality of Sei Shōnagon.
The Pillow Book is noted for its distinctive prose style: its rhythmic, quick-moving, compressed, and varied sentences, often set up in alternating couplets. Although the typical Japanese sentence ends with the predicate, the phrases and sentences in The Pillow Book often end with nouns or eliminate the exclamatory and connective particles so characteristic of Heian women’s literature. The compact, forceful, bright, witty style stands in contrast to the soft, meandering style found in The Tale of Genji and other works by Heian women. Indeed, the adjectival sections in particular have a haikai-esque (comic linked verse) quality, marked by witty, unexpected juxtaposition.
The Pillow Book is now considered one of the twin pillars of Heian vernacular court literature, but unlike the Kokinshū, The Tales of Ise, and The Tale of Genji, which had been canonized by the thirteen century, The Pillow Book was not a required text for waka poets (perhaps because it contained relatively little poetry) and was relatively neglected in the Heian and medieval periods. But The Pillow Book became popular with the new commoner audience in the Tokugawa (Edo) period and was widely read for its style, humor, and interesting lists. By the modern period, The Pillow Book was treated as an exemplar of the zuihitsu (meanderings of the brush) or miscellany genre, centered on personal observations and musings. Since then, it has been regarded in modern literary histories as the generic predecessor of An Account of a Ten-Foot-Square Hut (Hōjōki) and Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa).
In Spring It Is the Dawn (1)
In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful. As the light creeps over the hills, their outlines are dyed a faint red, and wisps of purplish cloud trail over them.
In summer the nights. Not only when the moon shines but on dark nights, too, as the fireflies flit to and fro, and even when it rains, how beautiful it is!
In autumn the evenings, when the glittering sun sinks close to the edge of the hills and the crows fly back to their nests in threes and fours and twos; more charming still is a file of wild geese, like specks in the distant sky. When the sun has set, one’s heart is moved by the sound of the wind and the hum of the insects.
In winter the early mornings. It is beautiful indeed when snow has fallen during the night, but splendid too when the ground is white with frost; or even when there is no snow or frost, but it is simply very cold and the attendants hurry from room to room stirring up the fires and bringing charcoal, how well this fits the season’s mood! But as noon approaches and the cold wears off, no one bothers to keep the braziers alight, and soon nothing remains but piles of white ashes.
The Cat Who Lived in the Palace (8)
The cat who lived in the palace had been awarded the headdress of nobility125 and was called Lady Myōbu. She was a very pretty cat, and His Majesty saw to it that she was treated with the greatest care.
One day she wandered onto the veranda, and Lady Uma, the nurse in charge of her, called out, “Oh, you naughty thing! Please come inside at once.” But the cat paid no attention and went on basking sleepily in the sun. Intending to give her a scare, the nurse called for the dog, Okinamaro.
“Okinamaro, where are you?” she cried. “Come here and bite Lady Myōbu!” The foolish Okinamaro, believing that the nurse was in earnest, rushed at the cat, who, startled and terrified, ran behind the blind in the imperial dining room, where the emperor happened to be sitting. Greatly surprised, His Majesty picked up the cat and held her in his arms. He summoned his gentlemen-in-waiting. When Tadataka, the chamberlain,126 appeared, His Majesty ordered that Okinamaro be chastised and banished to Dog Island. All the attendants started to chase the dog amid great confusion. His Majesty also reproached Lady Uma. “We shall have to find a new nurse for our cat,” he told her. “I no longer feel I can count on you to look after her.” Lady Uma bowed; thereafter she no longer appeared in the emperor’s presence.
The imperial guards quickly succeeded in catching Okinamaro and drove him out of the palace grounds. Poor dog! He used to swagger about so happily. Recently, on the third day of the Third Month,127 when the controller first secretary paraded him through the palace grounds, Okinamaro was adorned with garlands of willow leaves, peach blossoms on his head, and cherry blossoms around his body. How could the dog have imagined that this would be his fate? We all felt sorry for him. “When Her Majesty was having her meals,” recalled one of the ladies-in-waiting, “Okinamaro always used to be in attendance and sit across from us. How I miss him!”
It was about noon, a few days after Okinamaro’s banishment, that we heard a dog howling fearfully. How could any dog possibly cry so long? All the other dogs rushed out in excitement to see what was happening. Meanwhile, a woman who served as a cleaner in the palace latrines ran up to us. “It’s terrible,” she said. “Two of the chamberlains are flogging a dog. They’ll surely kill him. He’s being punished for having come back after he was banished. It’s Tadataka and Sanefusa who are beating him.” Obviously the victim was Okinamaro. I was absolutely wretched and sent a servant to ask the men to stop, but just then the howling finally ceased. “He’s dead,” one of the servants informed me. “They’ve thrown his body outside the gate.”
That evening, while we were sitting in the palace bemoaning Okinamaro’s fate, a wretched-looking dog walked in; he was trembling all over, and his body was fearfully swollen.
“Oh dear,” said one of the ladies-in-waiting. “Can this be Okinamaro? We haven’t seen any other dog like him recently, have we?”
We called to him by name, but the dog did not respond. Some of us insisted that it was Okinamaro; others that it was not. “Please send for Lady Ukon,” said the empress, hearing our discussion. “She will certainly be able to tell.” We immediately went to Ukon’s room and told her she was wanted on an urgent matter.
“Is this Okinamaro?” the empress asked her, pointing to the dog.
“Well,” said Ukon, “it certainly looks like him, but I cannot believe that this loathsome creature is really our Okinamaro. When I called Okinamaro, he always used to come to me, wagging his tail. But this dog does not react at all. No, it cannot be the same one. And besides, wasn’t Okinamaro beaten to death and his body thrown away? How could any dog be ali
ve after being flogged by two strong men?” Hearing this, Her Majesty was very unhappy.
When it got dark, we gave the dog something to eat, but he refused it, and we finally decided that this could not be Okinamaro.
On the following morning I went to attend the empress while her hair was being dressed and she was performing her ablutions. I was holding up the mirror for her when the dog we had seen on the previous evening slunk into the room and crouched next to one of the pillars. “Poor Okinamaro!” I said. “He had such a dreadful beating yesterday. How sad to think he is dead! I wonder what body he has been born into this time. Oh, how he must have suffered!”
At that moment the dog lying by the pillar started to shake and tremble and shed a flood of tears. It was astounding. So this really was Okinamaro! On the previous night it was to avoid betraying himself that he had refused to answer to his name. We were immensely moved and pleased. “Well, well, Okinamaro!” I said, putting down the mirror. The dog stretched himself flat on the floor and yelped loudly, so that the empress beamed with delight. All the ladies gathered round, and Her Majesty summoned Lady Ukon. When the empress explained what had happened, everyone talked and laughed with great excitement.
The news reached His Majesty, and he too came to the empress’s room. “It’s amazing,” he said with a smile. “To think that even a dog has such deep feelings!” When the emperor’s ladies-in-waiting heard the story, they too came along in a great crowd. “Okinamaro!” we called, and this time the dog rose and limped about the room with his swollen face. “He must have a meal prepared for him,” I said. “Yes,” said the empress, laughing happily, “now that Okinamaro has finally told us who he is.”
Traditional Japanese Literature Page 19