Traditional Japanese Literature

by Haruo Shirane

160. Old Commentary: “I already have you to love, why should I long for anyone else?” The verse could be taken as a literal question, but in the context is more likely meant rhetorically.

  161. Old Commentary: “How unlikely that there could be anyone better than you.” Inevitably, the mind seeks a comparison. The conclusion here is that the one he or she loves is beyond compare.

  162. Old Commentary: “The courtyard garden has grown old, no image of what I once saw there.” The word “even” in the maeku is taken here to mean “too,” not “let alone….” The previous verse by itself is a love verse, but in the link “that visage” becomes the appearance of a ruined capital, overgrown with shrubs and grasses.

  163. Old Commentary: “Still recalling the garden of my old dwelling, which I can’t bring myself to abandon, I resent even those shrubs and grasses.” A lament by someone who has not been able to sever attachments to the world.

  164. Old Commentary: “Since you are within three years of your father’s death, take comfort in what you still recall.” This world is a place of pain, but there are some memories for which to be thankful.

  165. Old Commentary: “Until just recently the groves were withered by frost, but this morning, mist begins to appear.” Winter has been long and hard, but now spring mist rises through the groves.

  166. Old Commentary: “The smoke is seen as mist.” In the winter, smoke rising from a hut only reminds one of the surrounding cold, but as spring begins, the smoke—really spring mist—makes a serene impression.

  167. Old Commentary: “The poet recasts [torinashi-zuke] the meaning of ‘quietly’ as ‘in prosperity.’” Even among the peasants, the speaker says, some are prosperous enough to live in peace. Smoke rising from hearth fires is a conventional symbol of peace and prosperity in the nation.

  168. Old Commentary: “If all is in order, then everyone, from the lowest to the highest, is able to live in peace.” The Way lies clear before all, even the peasants, who live in peace as long as the state maintains order. The first verse alludes to a poem by the retired emperor GoToba, and the last verse evokes the imperial way as a force for stability. The verse is meant to be taken as a prayer for peace in a time of political uncertainty.

  169. The term otogi-zōshi derives from the name of a boxed-set anthology of short medieval fiction (Otogi bunko [The Companion Library, ca. 1716–1729]) published by the Osaka bookseller Shibukawa Seiemon. In its strictest sense, it refers only to the twenty-three works in Shibukawa’s collection. Since at least the early nineteenth century, however, the term has also been used to refer to the larger corpus of medieval tales from which the Otogi bunko texts were drawn.

  170. Matsumoto’s 1982 catalog of extant otogi-zōshi, 122–124.

  171. Translated by Chigusa Steven in “Hachikazuki: A Muromachi Short Story,” Monumenta Nipponica 32 (1977): 303–331.

  172. Margaret H. Childs, Rethinking Sorrow: Revelatory Tales of Late Medieval Japan (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1991), 26–27.

  173. Virginia Skord, trans., Tales of Tears and Laughter: Short Fiction of Medieval Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1991), 205–220.

  174. The name Hijikasu may be a combination of hiji (dirt) and kasu (dregs). Now a common personal name, Tarō was once associated with the first and best among many, hence in the present context, the filthiest or dirtiest.

  175. The ken was a linear measure about six feet in length.

  176. “Saemon no jō” refers to his formal court post, sixth rank or below, which was granted to men of his position.

  177. Tarō presumes that the naga of nagabu (laborer) refers to a long object, which is suggested here in the English translation by the word “longshoreman” but, of course, does not appear in the original.

  178. Genpuku, a coming-of-age ceremony performed when a youth was between twelve and fifteen years of age, at which time he puts on adult trousers, ties up his hair, and takes an adult name.

  179. A monthly festival day at Kiyomizu-dera, a popular trysting place that houses the Tsuma Kannon, a deity believed to provide wives for single men and, by extension, companions for any supplicants.

  180. Literally, the thirty-two physical marks and eight minor marks of a buddha or heavenly being.

  181. A list of famous sites in and around the capital.

  182. Underpine (Matsu no moto); Brightstone Bay (Akashi no ura). In this and the following riddles, the places that Tarō correctly identifies are genuine place-names, translated into English to preserve the point of the riddles.

  183. A village where the sun sets would be dark, so it must lie in the depths of Dark Mountain (Kurama no oku).

  184. Because lamps are lit with tallow, Lampwick Lane (Tomoshibi no Kōji) indicates Tallow Lane (Abura no Kōji).

  185. A shy village (hazukashi no sato) would be hidden from sight, hence Hidden Village (Shinobu no sato).

  186. Robes are made of fabric, so a village of cloaks (uwagi no sato) indicates Brocade Lane (Nishiki no Kōji).

  187. Meeting a love brings solace, so a land of solace (nagusamu kuni) would be in Love-Tryst Province (Afumi no kuni, a pun on Ōmi Province).

  188. The verse puns on fushi (lie down) and fushi (bamboo joint).

  189. The verse incorporates the puns of the preceding poem, extending it with puns on yo: “world,” “stalk,” and “night.”

  190. The verse puns on itome (eyes [of a net]) and hitome (eyes of others).

  191. The meaning of the last two lines is unclear. Karatachibana refers to Chinese orange blossoms, reddish or white in color, and murasaki is lavender. Here murasaki may refer to murasaki-sō, a flower with white blossoms similar to Chinese orange blossoms. Alternatively, the gate may simply be planted with both types of flowers.

  192. Tying paper to a stick may have been a medieval practice demonstrating humility to an unknown person when making inquiries.

  193. It was common for a high-ranking woman to be referred to by the office of a male relative. Jijū (chamberlain) was of middle rank; tsubone was a term of respect for aristocratic women.

  194. Women were thought to be burdened by the Five Hindrances (goshō), which prevented them from becoming a Brahma god-king, the god Sakra, King Mara, a sage-king turning the wheel, or a buddha-body. The Three Duties (sanjū) refer to the teaching that women are subordinate first to their fathers, then to their husbands, and finally to their sons. The Five Hindrances and the Three Duties often appear together in medieval literature to express the inferiority of women.

  195. This involves a pun on kuri (chestnut) and kurigoto (repetition). I have altered the original wording to create a pun in English.

  196. This is a pun on nashi (pear) and nashi (none) (she has no other men).

  197. The verse puns on umiwataru (to ripen) and umi wataru (to cross the sea). Tsu is an old name for Settsu, in the vicinity of Osaka, and thus the persimmons would not have been transported by sea.

  198. Tarō puns on kami (paper) and kami (god).

  199. Tarō’s response puns on kotowari (“reason, excuse” and “to break a koto”).

  200. The meaning of the office title is unclear.

  201. Ninmyō (833–850) is usually listed as the fifty-fourth emperor. He had many sons, some of whom succeeded to the throne, but nothing is known about the exile in question.

  202. Reigned from 850 to 858.

  203. The Three Heats (sannetsu) are torments that gods of the earth, owing to their association with dragons, must undergo. They are a hot wind and a sandstorm that burns them, an evil wind that strips them, and an attack by a phoenix.

  204. An allusion to a song of the east country, Kokinshū, no. 1095, which also mentions Mount Tsukuba: “There is shade near and far on the peak of Mount Tsukuba, but none better than the protecting shade of my lord’s grace.”

  205. Both Naniwa (Osaka) and Waka Bay (Wakanoura) appear in poems quoted in the preface to the Kokinshū.

  206. The preface refers here to lines fr
om the “Weizheng” book of the Confucian Analects and to the preface to the Kokinshū.

  207. “A frog in the well knows nothing of the sea,” a proverb about parochial ignorance, appears in Zhuangzi. “A dried plum of a monk in a forest” combines a pun on umeboshi (dried plum) and hōshi (monk) with overtones of a legend in Shishuo xinyu in which Cao Cao (Emperor Wu) tells his thirsty men that he knows of a plum tree up ahead, at the mere mention of which his men’s mouths start to water.

  208. “Those who look for pears but pick up chestnuts” refers to the kurinomotoshū (literally, “those beneath the chestnut tree”), meaning those who pursue haikai, in contrast to the kakinomotoshū, those who follow Kakinomoto (literally, “beneath the persimmon tree”) Hitomaro—that is, classical renga poets. “Look for pears” (nashi o motome) is homophonic with “look for nothingness.” “Pears” and “chestnuts” are associated words.

  209. In classical poetry, autumn was closely associated with sadness. The link here parodies that aesthetic association by making the cause of sadness a very secular matter of accumulating debt.

  210. “Ruined” (tsuburu) can suggest any number of disasters, such as going bankrupt or losing face. The added verse unexpectedly invokes ripe persimmons, an autumn delicacy, some of which have fallen and some of which have not.

  211. “While filled with awe” (osorenagara mo) in the previous verse suggests a forbidden coupling between a low-ranking man, perhaps a servant, and a highborn woman. This scene is subverted by the added verse in which the man’s diffidence comes from his reluctance to defile with his dirty foot the water, an image of purity in Buddhism, and the reflection in the basin of the moon, a Buddhist symbol of enlightenment. A variant is in Inu Tsukubashū, nos. 140–141.

  212. In the medieval male monastery, pederasty was common, and haikai depict the relationships between priests and temple boys (chigo) in varying degrees of explicitness. The acrobatic improbability of the first verse is explained in the second by the use of the shōgi (Japanese chess) board as a pillow, with a horse piece finding its way beneath them. The mountain temple suggests Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei, center of the Tendai Buddhist sect.

  213. The first verse recalls the way that many romances begin in The Tale of Genji and other classical tales, when a young noble peeps at a lady through a fence. But in the added verse here, the man is only frustrated by the titillating view of the lady’s private parts, and so takes matters into his own hands. Anata (across the way) phonically implies ana (hole).

  214. Two of the so-called Six Poetic Immortals of the Kokinshū era were Priest Henjō and Ono no Komachi. The added verse implies that despite their intimacy, Komachi remains concerned about her poetic rival’s reading her “poem-pillow” (utamakura), a list or handbook of poetic material, a term doubly appropriate in the context of sleeping together. The scene recalls an episode related in both Gosenshū and Yamato monogatari (NKBT 9:335–341) in which Komachi, on a pilgrimage, has a chance encounter with Henjō, whom she had known before he took the tonsure. She composes a waka asking to borrow a robe against the cold, and he responds with another saying that since he has only one, they will have to share it as they sleep. In that story, their relationship goes no further.

  215. An implicitly lewd verse is wittingly transformed into something surprisingly innocent. A hidden joke lies in the fact that a woman’s private parts were vulgarly known as the “tea jar” (chatsubo) and the man’s parts as a “big bag” (ōbukuro). A variant appears in Inu Tsukubashū (Tōkyō daigaku toshokan ms.), no. 257.

  216. The maeku, identified as a spring verse by the seasonal word “haze” (kasumi), is a puzzle, asking the next verse to explain how the “robe of haze” (kasumi no koromo, an elegant waka expression) can be soaked at the hem. The poet, perhaps Sōkan himself, rises to the challenge by clothing Saohime, the eminently refined goddess of spring, in the robe of haze and then abruptly undercutting the elegant image with the earthy last line, introduced by a kakekotoba (pivot word) between “Spring has come” (haru tachi) and “stands” (tachinagara).

  217. The first verse indicates impossible love due to differences in social station. The second verse twists that into impossible male–male sex because the difference in height is insurmountable. This also appears in Chikuba kyōginshū, nos. 139–140.

  218. This fourteen-syllable maeku is followed by three alternative seventeen-syllable tsukeku, each of which gives a different interpretation to the same maeku. This set and the next are from a different variant than that of the SNKS.

  219. The previous verse about groping for hair has lewd implications, which are humorously transformed into a priest trying to find out whether he has shaved his head completely.

  ENGLISH-LANGUAGE BIBLIOGRAPHY

  THE ANCIENT PERIOD

  Kojiki

  Fuminobu, Murakami. “Incest and Rebirth in Kojiki.” Monumenta Nipponica 43, no. 4 (1988): 455–463.

  Kawai, Hayao. “The Hollow Center in the Mythology of Kojiki.” Review of Japanese Culture and Society 1, no. 1 (1986): 72–77.

  Kōnoshi, Takamitsu. “The Land of Yomi: On the Mythical World of the Kojiki.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 11, no. 1 (1984): 57–76.

  Philippi, Donald L. “Ancient Tales of Supernatural Marriage.” Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 5 (1960): 19–23.

  Philippi, Donald L. “Four Song-Dramas from the Kojiki.” Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 5 (1960): 81–88.

  Philippi, Donald L., trans. Kojiki. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1968.

  Nihon shoki

  Aston, W. G, trans. Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697. Tokyo: Turtle, 1972.

  Mythohistory

  Akima, Toshio. “The Myth of the Goddess of the Undersea World and the Tale of Empress Jingū’s Subjugation of Korea.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 20, nos. 2–3 (1993): 95–185.

  Aoki, Michiko Y. Ancient Myths and Early History of Japan: A Cultural Foundation. New York: Exposition Press, 1974.

  Ellwood, Robert S. “A Japanese Mythic Trickster Figure: Susa-no-o.” In Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms, edited by William J. Hynes and William G. Doty, 141–158. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993.

  Grapard, Allan G. “Visions of Excess and Excesses of Vision: Women and Transgression in Japanese Myth.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 18, no. 1 (1991): 3–22.

  Kato, Genchi, and Hikoshiro Hoshino, trans. Kogoshūi: Gleanings from Ancient Stories. 3rd and enlarged ed. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1972.

  Kurosawa, Kōzō. “Myths and Tale Literature.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 9, nos. 2–3 (1982): 115–125.

  Littleton, C. Scott. “Yamato-takeru: An ‘Arthurian’ Hero in Japanese Tradition.” Asian Folklore Studies 54, no. 2 (1995): 259–274.

  Matsumae, Takeshi. “The Heavenly Rock-Grotto Myth and the Chinkon Ceremony.” Asian Folklore Studies 39, no. 2 (1980): 9–22.

  Nakanishi, Susumu. “The Spatial Structure of Japanese Myth: The Contact Point Between Life and Death.” In Principles of Classical Japanese Literature, edited by Earl Miner, 106–129. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985.

  Ancient Songs

  Akima, Toshio. “The Songs of the Dead: Ritual Poetry, Drama, and Ancient Death Rituals of Japan.” Journal of Asian Studies 41, no. 3 (1982): 485–509.

  Brannen, Noah, and Wm. Elliott, trans. Festive Wine: Ancient Japanese Poems from the Kinkafu. New York: Walker/Weatherhill, 1969.

  Philippi, Donald L., trans. This Wine of Peace, This Wine of Laughter: A Complete Anthology of Japan’s Earliest Songs. New York: Grossman, 1968.

  Provincial Gazetteers

  Aoki, Michiko Yamaguchi. Records of Wind and Earth: A Translation of Fudoki, with Introduction and Commentaries. Monograph and Occasional Papers Series, no. 53. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Association for Asian Studies, 1997.

  Prayers to the Gods

  Philippi, Donald L. Norito: A Transl
ation of the Ancient Japanese Ritual Prayers. Tokyo: Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics, Kokugakuin University, 1959.

  Man’yōshū

  Cranston, Edwin A. “Five Poetic Sequences from the Man’yōshū.” Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 13 (1980): 5–40.

  Cranston, Edwin A. “The River Valley as Locus Amoenus in Man’yō Poetry.” In Studies in Japanese Culture, edited by Saburo Ota and Rikutaro Fukuda, 1:14–37. Tokyo: Japan P.E.N. Club, 1973.

  Cranston, Edwin A. “Water Plant Imagery in Man’yōshū.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 31 (1971): 137–178.

  Cranston, Edwin A., trans. A Waka Anthology: The Gem-Glistening Cup. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993, 1998.

  Doe, Paula. A Warbler’s Song in the Dusk: The Life and Work of Ōtomo Yakamochi (718–785). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.

  Ebersole, Gary L. Ritual Poetry and the Politics of Death in Early Japan. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989.

  Levy, Ian Hideo. Hitomaro and the Birth of Japanese Lyricism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984.

  Levy, Ian Hideo, trans. The Ten Thousand Leaves: A Translation of the Man’yōshū, Japan’s Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry. Vol. 1. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981.

  Miller, Roy Andrew. “A Korean Poet in Eighth-Century Japan.” Korea Journal 25, no. 11 (1985): 4–21.

  Miller, Roy Andrew. “The Lost Poetic Sequence of the Priest Manzei.” Monumenta Nipponica 36, no. 2 (1981): 133–172.

  Nippon gakujutsu shinkōkai, ed. The Man’yōshū: One Thousand Poems. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.

  Wright, Harold, trans. Ten Thousand Leaves: Love Poems from the Man’yōshū. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1986.

  Yasuda, Kenneth K., trans. Land of the Reed Plains: Ancient Japanese Lyrics from the Man’yōshū. Rutland, Vt: Turtle, 1960.

  THE HEIAN PERIOD

  LaMarre, Thomas. Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archeology of Sensation and Inscription. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000.

  Ramirez-Christensen, Esperanza, and Rebecca L. Copeland, eds. The Father/Daughter Plot: Japanese Literary Women. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001.