274. Eldest son of Fujiwara no Takaie (979–1044), brother of the late Empress Teishi.
275. These are the daughters of the Eighth Prince in The Tale of Genji, who moved to Uji after his residence in the capital burned down. The courtship of these sisters, the untimely death of the elder sister, and finally the installation of their half sister Ukifune at Uji by Kaoru make up the content of the so-called Uji chapters of The Tale of Genji. This remark also is evidence that the author of The Tale of Genji was being referred to by the nickname Murasaki by this succeeding generation of readers.
276. This is the villa of Fujiwara no Yorimichi, Princess Yūshi’s adoptive grandfather and therefore in a sense the author’s employer. This is likely why she was able to tour the villa. Seven years after this date, Yorimichi rebuilt the villa magnificently and eventually had it consecrated as a temple, the Byōdō-in, which survives.
277. Another reference to the Uji chapters of The Tale of the Genji.
278. Mount Kurikoma was notorious for bandits.
279. Isonokami Shrine was in the village of Furu, a place-name homophonous with the words “to age” and the “passing of time.” Hence it became an uta-makura, a poetic toponym for growing old.
280. Lady Myōbu is the mistress of the inner chambers of the imperial palace.
281. The famous Inari Shrine at Fushimi, south of the capital.
282. The fish weirs at Uji were a favorite subject for poetry.
283. The three children that the author had with Toshimichi.
284. Toshimichi.
285. Toshimichi received a post as the governor of the province of Shinano (present-day Nagano Prefecture).
286. This is apparently an older daughter from an earlier marriage.
287. Their eldest son is about seventeen years old.
288. Shinano was a little more than half the distance to the east country.
289. “Soul fire” is the translation of hitodama, a bluish ball of light that was thought to depart from a person who was soon to die.
290. It seems that her husband was given permission to leave his post. His health may have been weakened by the severe winters of the mountainous Shinano region.
291. The text itself does not state explicitly that “he died” but merely speaks of feeling as though one were having a bad dream.
292. A reference to the mirror her mother had had cast and sent as an offering to Hatsuse Temple in order to try to divine her future as a young woman.
293. Here readers are finally given the precise content of the hopes she had entertained for practical success in the world.
294. The year 1055 was three years before the death of her husband. This is the only time in the diary that the author gives such a complete date.
295. A sacred hand gesture.
296. This reference has puzzled commentators because the author never before mentions having as many as six nephews.
297. Abandoned Aunt, or Obatsuteyama, literally, “the mountain where old aunts are abandoned,” is an uta-makura, a poetic toponym with complex associations. Obatsuteyama is in the Sarashina District of Nagano and is famous both for its connection with the folk belief about an ancient custom of abandoning old women and for being a beautiful place to view the moon. The touchstone for the place-name’s association with the moon is Kokinshū, no. 879: “My heart finds it hard to be comforted. Ah Sarashina! On Mount Abandoned Aunt, I see the bright moon shining.” The place-name has a further personal association for the author because Sarashina and Obasuteyama are in the province of Shinano, the last posting for her husband. The traditional title for this diary, Sarashina nikki, is derived from this poem.
298. At this time, Yasutane held the post of naiki, or secretary in the Nakatsukasa-shō, a bureau of the government that handled imperial edicts, petitions, and other documents. “Clerk at the foot of the pillar” was a Chinese term for such a secretary.
299. When Confucius fell ill, one of his disciples asked to be allowed to pray for him, but Confucius replied, “I’ve been praying for a long time now” (Analects, 7:34).
300. Emperor Wen reigned from 179 to 157 B.C.E.; Bo Juyi (772–846), whose poems were greatly admired in Japan, wrote prose pieces that provided the model for this work by Yasutane; the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove were a group of Chinese poet-philosophers of the third century who gathered to drink, play the lute, and discuss philosophy.
301. The latter part of the sentence is a conventional Chinese expression indicating architectural extravagance and should not necessarily be taken literally.
302. Bo Juyi’s Collected Works. Mañjuśrī (J. Monju) is the bodhisattva of wisdom.
303. Vimaladatta’s (J. Jōtoku) conversion of her husband, with the help of an impressive magic display by her two sons, is the subject of the twenty-seventh chapter of the Lotus Sutra.
304. Alex Wayman and Hideko Wayman, trans., The Lion’s Roar of Queen Shrimala (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974).
305. The Tale of Genji actually contains only fifty-four chapters. Medieval commentators, however, often ascribed sixty chapters, suggesting that this number had been selected by the author to correspond to the sixty chapters of the principal scriptures of the Tendai school of Buddhism.
306. Hachinomiya, the Eighth Prince.
307. Ōigimi, the Eighth Prince’s daughter.
308. The Suzaku emperor.
309. The twelfth chapter of the Lotus Sutra, in which the Buddha relates how he himself forsook his throne to seek enlightenment.
310. Probably referring to Vasubandhu’s Trsimika vijnapti-karika (J. Yuishiki sanjū ronju, Daizōkyō 1586).
311. According to the Chinese Fayuan zhulin, a certain mountain immortal was going to the bathroom in a bucket when he caught sight of two deer copulating and instantly became highly aroused. Afterward, the female deer came along and lapped up some of the mixture of urine and sperm, presumably mistaking it for water. She became pregnant. She gave birth to a human baby rather than a deer, a human with one horn: the One-Horned Immortal of this tale.
312. The five regions are the north, the south, the east, the west, and the center.
313. The sixteen kingdoms were located in the northwest of what is now India, centered on the Ganges River.
314. The direction of the cow and the tiger is the northeast. This direction was the so-called demon’s gate, from which supernatural forces mounted their attacks. Neither the direction of the cow and the tiger nor the soothsayer is mentioned in the source text.
315. Udraka-Ramaputra was so famous that he was sought out by Shakyamuni himself, but he lost his powers when he went to court and touched the hand of the king’s favorite wife.
316. “Kekara” seems to be a corruption of Gandhara, which was a region of modern Pakistan.
317. Their meeting with the immortal might encourage them to become Buddhist nuns.
318. The Han dynasty lasted from 202 B.C.E. to 220 C.E. Emperor Yuan, the tenth to rule the Han, lived from 75 to 33 B.C.E. and reigned from 49 B.C.E. to his death.
319. The land of Hu was found to the northwest of Han.
320. The Ebisu were inhabitants of what is now eastern Japan who refused to submit to the power of the center. It likely was a general term for rebellious people who live far from the capital.
321. The dates of Wang Zhaojun’s birth and death are uncertain, but it is said that she was presented to Emperor Yuan at the age of seventeen. Later ages created legends about her beauty.
322. Deity of Kumano, literally, “avatar of Kumano.” The deity in question is a Shinto deity, and “avatar” (gongen) refers to the idea, widespread in the medieval period, that the Shinto kami are manifestations of buddhas. Pilgrimages to Kumano, in the Kii Peninsula (now Wakayama Prefecture), have been popular among all classes of society since the early tenth century. To have sexual relations with the woman would be not only a violation of the monk’s Buddhist vows but a defilement, and thus highly offensive, in the eyes of the Shinto deity. The p
aper strips (mitegura, long strips of paper attached to either side of a pole) and lamps, in the following passage, are characteristic offerings at Shinto shrines.
323. In other words, at the cost of his last earthly possessions.
324. Coins imported from China.
325. Thus—by having sexual longings—making himself an easy victim for foxes, as the Japanese readers would have recognized. The original readers would have been expected to spot more subtle clues: when the young woman, asked her name, says “I’m no one”; when the worried relatives, wondering whether he is not off on a secret love affair, suggest jocosely (and all too accurately) that he may be “crawling” about somewhere.
326. Miyoshi no Kiyotsura (or Kiyoyuki, 847–918) was, among other things, a scholar of Chinese. Among his numerous works is a collection of anecdotes of the supernatural. This is one of the few places in which the compiler of the Konjaku may be explicitly acknowledging his immediate source.
327. That is, from the south. (Settsu is part of modern Hyōgo Prefecture.)
328. The Rashōmon Gate was at the southern end of the capital. In historical sources, it is described as splendidly ornamented, but it fell into disrepair at an early time, and its upper story—it had two stories—was thought to be the abode of supernatural beings and worse.
Chapter 3
THE KAMAKURA PERIOD
The Kamakura period began in 1183 with the establishment of the bakufu, or military government, in Kamakura, near present-day Tokyo, by Minamoto Yoritomo, the leader of the Minamoto (Genji) clan, which defeated the Heike (Taira) in 1185. The Genpei war between the Genji and the Heike is vividly recounted in the epic narrative The Tales of the Heike, part of which is translated here. After the end of the Genpei war, a struggle broke out between Yoritomo and his younger brother Yoshitsune, a prominent Minamoto military leader, who was killed in 1189 by Fujiwara no Yasuhira, a general of the Fujiwara clan in Ōshū (northeast Honshū). Yoritomo, in turn, destroyed the Fujiwara forces, thus ending all major domestic armed conflict. The legends surrounding Yoshitsune can be found in The Story of Yoshitsune (Gikeiki).
After Yoritomo’s death, control of the bakufu passed from the Minamoto to the Hōjō family, led by Hōjō Masako (1157–1225), the wife of Yoritomo and the mother of Minamoto Sanetomo (1192–1219), the third shogun and a noted waka poet. A key political turning point in the Kamakura period was the Jōkyū rebellion in 1221, when, in an attempt to regain direct imperial power from the military, the retired emperor GoToba (r. 1183–1198, 1180–1239) attacked the Hōjō but was soundly defeated and exiled to the small and remote island of Oki. The Jōkyū rebellion revealed the weakness of the nobility and the emperor and the growing strength of the samurai class, whose power had risen in the late Heian period. GoToba’s exile to Oki is nostalgically recounted in The Clear Mirror (Masukagami, 1338–1376), a vernacular historical chronicle, in a section translated in this book.
The Kamakura period ended in 1333 with the defeat of Hōjō Takatoki (1303–1333) and the Hōjō clan by Emperor GoDaigo (r. 1318–1339, 1288–1339), who gained power briefly, for two years, during the Kenmu restoration (1333–1336), before being defeated by another military clan, the Ashikaga. GoDaigo retreated to Yoshino, south of the capital, and established the Southern Court and the beginning of the rival court system known as the Northern and Southern Courts period (1336–1392). The political career of Emperor GoDaigo and his failed attempt at imperial restoration is one of the focal points of the Taiheiki (Chronicle of Great Peace, 1340s–1371), a major military chronicle whose highlights are included here.
The Kamakura period marks the beginning of the so-called medieval period, a four-hundred-year span from the fall of the Heike (Taira) clan in 1185 to the battle of Sekigahara in 1600, when Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616) triumphed over his rivals and unified the country under his control. Sometimes the beginning of the medieval period is pushed back as far as the beginning of the Heian period (794–1185), and sometimes the end of the medieval period is pushed forward as far as the end of the Tokugawa (Edo) period (1600–1867). Generally, however, the Kamakura period (1183–1333), the Northern and Southern Courts (Nanbokuchō) period (1336–1392), and the Muromachi period (1392–1573), when warrior society came to the fore, are considered to be the three main historical divisions of the medieval period.
The Muromachi period extended from the rule by the Ashikaga clan, based in Kyoto (in the Muromachi quarter), through the end of the Northern and Southern Courts era to the defeat of the fifteenth shogun Ashikaga Yoshiaki by Oda Nobunaga in 1573. The latter half of the Muromachi period is referred to as the Warring States (Sengoku) period, from the beginning of the Ōnin war (1467–1477) to 1573, when Oda Nobunaga destroyed the Ashikaga bakufu and unified the country. The Azuchi-Momoyama period (1573–1598) refers to the short period of time when two powerful generals, first Oda Nobunaga and then Toyotomi Hideyoshi, gained national power before eventually succumbing to Tokugawa Ieyasu at the battle of Sekigahara in 1600. The most striking cultural and literary changes occurred between the early medieval period, from the fall of the Heike clan in 1185 to the fall of the Kamakura bakufu in 1333, and the late medieval period, from the Kenmu restoration onward, with a particularly significant break after the Ōnin war that forced the aristocratic culture, centered in the capital for many centuries, to disperse to the provinces.
THE SAMURAI AND LITERATURE
One of the principal aspects of medieval society was the emergence of a warrior government and culture. As a result of the Hōgen (1156) and Heiji (1159) rebellions, the Heike (Taira), a military clan, displaced the Fujiwara clan which had dominated the throne and the court for most of the Heian period. If the ascendance of the Heike is considered the beginning of the warrior rule then the medieval period begins with the first year of Hōgen (1156). But the Heike elite emulated the Fujiwara regents before them, continuing the court bureaucratic system based in Kyoto, and they soon were defeated by the Genji (Minamoto), who established a military government in Kamakura, between 1183 and 1185. Minamoto Yoritomo’s establishment of a bakufu in Kamakura resulted in two political centers—a court government in Kyoto and a military government in the east—thereby laying the foundation for a system of dual cultures.
During the medieval period, the bakufu in the east gradually increased its control to the point that the court government in Kyoto lost its political power. Seeing their fortunes waning, the aristocrats in Kyoto occasionally tried to restore the imperial authority of the court-centered government. But the Jōkyū rebellion in 1221 ended in failure, and the Kenmu restoration lasted for only two years. The extended struggle during the Northern and Southern Courts period, when the imperial court was split, eventually ended these attempts and dispersed the nobility, with the political power permanently shifting to the military. The result in the Muromachi period was the full emergence of a samurai-based society and culture.
As the social and economic status of the samurai rose, their cultural activities multiplied as well. During the early medieval period, the samurai were drawn to aristocratic culture and the culture of the capital, which they tried to imitate. Although there were very few samurai waka poets during the Heian period, their number steadily increased during the medieval period. The most prominent was Minamoto Sanetomo (1192–1219), the third Kamakura bakufu shogun (1203–1219), who took an interest in Man’yōshū-style poetry. In the late medieval period, scholars and poets of samurai origin such as Imagawa Ryōshun (1326–1414), Tō no Tsuneyori (1401–1484), and Hosokawa Yūsai (1534–1610) became prominent, and a number of renga masters had samurai origins.
The first major works of “warrior” literature during the medieval period are the military chronicles (gunki-mono), which were organized chronologically and focused on the lives and families of samurai. Relatively few samurai actually helped produce these chronicles, however. More often, they were the work of fallen or lesser aristocrats (often recluses) or Buddhist priests, who gave military narratives lik
e The Tales of the Heike a heavily Buddhistic and aristocratic coloring. Likewise, in the latter half of the medieval period, the founder of kōwakamai (ballad drama), Momonoi Kōwakamaru (1393–1470), the scion of a warrior family, gave kōwakamai a samurai flavor. The other playwrights of nō drama and kōwakamai were not samurai, although samurai did form an important part of the audience.
THE SPREAD OF BUDDHISM AND THE WAY OF THE GODS
The Genpei war and subsequent military struggles left their survivors with a deep sense of the impermanence of the world. For followers of Buddhism, the situation was so apocalyptic that it signaled for them the latter age of the Buddhist law (mappō). Buddhism promised worldly benefits (protection, rewards in this life) as well as future salvation, a sense of sustenance amid turmoil and uncertainty. Buddhism had entered Japan from China as early as the sixth century and, especially Tendai and Shingon Buddhism, had become a central institution in Heian aristocratic society, but not until the late Heian period did it begin to penetrate commoner society at large.
Innovative priests who had become disillusioned with the older, established Buddhist institutions in the capitals of Nara and Kyoto created new Buddhist schools that appealed to commoners, who often were unable to read the Buddhist scriptures. Hōnen (1133–1212) founded the Jōdo (Pure Land) sect, which had a profound influence on medieval culture, and his disciple Shinran (1173–1262) created the Shinshū (New Pure Land) sect. A generation later, Ippen (1239–1289) founded the Jishū (Time) sect. These Pure Land sects, which stressed the recitation of the name of the Amida Buddha, promised an easily attainable way to salvation, relying on the power of grace and the benevolence of the Amida Buddha. The hymns and personal writings of these Pure Land leaders, particularly those by Hōnen, are included here both because of their high literary quality and as a necessary context for understanding medieval literary texts like The Tales of the Heike, which are based on Kamakura Pure Land beliefs. Zen Buddhism, which was imported from China in the medieval period and welcomed by the samurai in Kamakura, stressed meditation, non-dualism, and a frugal, minimalist lifestyle.
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