The Tales of Ise (Penguin Classics)

by Donald Keene

  Mount Shinobu: The poem plays on the place name Mount Shinobu (Shinobūyama; see Map 1), which is located in the northern part of present-day Fukushima city. The name here acts as a ‘preface’ (jokotoba) introducing shinobu (‘in secret’).

  16

  Robes of a Heavenly Maiden

  This episode provides one of the best illustrations of friendship in the Tales, though the relationship between the actual historical figures is concealed. Ki no Aritsune, in reality Narihira’s father-in-law, is introduced here as a friend, and no mention is made that his daughter was Narihira’s wife (see the commentary to Episode 19). Aritsune’s younger sister was Shizuko, the mother of Prince Koretaka and Princess Yasuko, later the Priestess of Ise at the Ise Shrine (see Episode 69). If Prince Koretaka had become emperor, both the Ki and Ariwara families would have thrived. However, in the second half of the ninth century the northern branch of the Fujiwara family was in the ascendant. The head of the family at the time, Yoshifusa, succeeded in marrying his daughter Akirakeiko (see Somedono Empress) to Emperor Montoku and in establishing her son Korehito as crown prince instead of Koretaka. In his position as chancellor, Yoshifusa wielded great political power, enabling him to place Korehito on the throne while he was still a boy. After his grandson’s ascension as Emperor Seiwa, Yoshifusa became regent, initiating a period of direct control of court affairs by Fujiwara regents that lasted for several hundred years. Despite being eclipsed in power by the Fujiwara clan, the Ki and Ariwara families remained tied by bonds of deep friendship.

  All of the episodes, including this one, that give the actual names of their protagonists were composed at a later stage of the Tales. The preference for using real names and appearing to narrate historical fact rather than fiction (though they actually mix both) marks a change of style in the Tales. Several episodes seem to stand alone in the Tales, and this is one of them. It is not known why it was placed immediately after the sequence concerning the journey to the east, but it shares the theme of friendship with the first part of the journey (see Episodes 8 and 9).

  This episode describes Aritsune as a man of great integrity, who, desisting from fawning on the powerful, maintains a life of honest poverty. In reality, as a courtier of fairly high rank, the historical Aritsune is likely to have been well off. The episode should be read, instead, as a sympathetic account of the nobility of mind of people who live cut off from the centre of power.

  The first poem can be interpreted as saying that Aritsune had been married to his wife for either four decades or fourteen years. Forty years is the standard interpretation – and one that I have followed – though Katagiri argues that this would be too long and that a woman in her sixties would not abandon her husband. In the third poem, Aritsune’s praise of the robes he receives as ‘celestial’ is a reference to a legend – mentioned also in the tenth-century Taketori monogatari (Tale of the Bamboo Cutter), one of the oldest narrative tales in Japan with a great influence on subsequent literature – according to which ‘celestial robes’ (ama no hagoromo) were worn by heavenly beings as they flew through the skies. The word ama (celestial) puns on ama (nun).

  There are many fictional elements in the episode. For example, it is unlikely that Aritsune’s friend really gave his own used clothes to the lady, though it was, indeed, a custom at the time for a man of high status to give the robes he had been wearing to a person of lower rank – usually male, though sometimes female – as a mark of special esteem. Episode 62 provides one such example. Here, Narihira, as the grandson of two emperors, would have actually been of higher status than Aritsune. It is also more likely that, rather than his own clothing, he would present a garment appropriate for a nun.

  He ended the letter with a poem: See poetic exchanges between men.

  17

  Fickle Blossoms

  The remarkable feature of Episode 17 is the ostensible love exchange between two men. Male poetic exchanges occur several times in the Tales (see poetic exchanges between men); it was not uncommon for men to assume a female persona during such exchanges (see gender mixing), of which there are many examples in the other great works of the period, including the Kokinshū and The Tale of Genji. The ‘host’ (aruji) in this episode has been interpreted both as a man and as a woman, though it is most likely a man; the visitor is Narihira. In the first poem, the poet compares himself to cherry blossoms, protesting sarcastically that he has been waiting faithfully the entire year for a friend who hardly visits. The friend asserts in reply that had he come the following day instead, the host’s feelings would have changed, as they are like the fickle cherry blossoms that perish quickly and ‘scatter like snow’. Both poems appear in the Kokinshū (nos. 62 and 63), not in the section on ‘Love’ but in the one on ‘Spring’. The text of the headnote to each of the poems there is similar to that in the Tales, suggesting that the exchange was not read as one between lovers but, rather, as one between two close male friends teasing each other.

  An interesting feature of this episode is that it is the only one in the Tales that does not begin in the original Japanese with the words ‘long ago’ (mukashi – see here), which has puzzled commentators down the ages. Despite centuries of exegetical work, the reason for the omission is unclear and likely to remain so.

  18

  From White to Red

  Noteworthy in this episode is the way in which the hero subtly rebuffs the lady by blithely pretending to be unaware of her entreaties. Most rebuffs in the Tales are colder or more inflamed with passion. The term shirazu yomi means to pretend not to understand the meaning of a letter when replying, and the reply in this episode is of this kind. Katagiri, agreeing with the early Edo-period scholar Keichu (1640–1701), asserts that this episode is very similar in atmosphere to poems by Tsurayuki (see here), the main editor of the prestigious poetic collection the Kokinshū. The poems in question may be found in the Tsurayuki-shū (nos. 860 and 861), and there is, indeed, a strong possibility that this episode was based on this pair of poems.

  In the first poem, the lady complains that she can see no indication of the man’s reputed qualities as a passionate lover: ‘where is passion’s red?’ she teases. The way in which white chrysanthemums turned slightly reddish-purple when touched by frost was considered extremely beautiful. Indeed, the change of colour was repeatedly celebrated in poems of the Heian period. The man’s reply, while cleverly incorporating the same phrase (Kurenai ni / niou) – ‘passionate red’ in the first poem and ‘sensual red’ in the second – deliberately ignores the lady’s intended challenge and focuses only on the colour of her sleeve. But at the same time it also gives the impression that the lady’s sleeve is partially red – like the chrysanthemum – and thus she is the real mistress of passion. Ladies of the nobility wore several robes of different colours, and these layers, slightly separated – an effect known as kasane (layering) – were visible at the sleeves and hem.

  Commentators are divided about whether the person in the opening section, referred to as a writer of poems, was the hero or the lady, but from the context it seems clear that it was the lady. Being ‘confident in her ability’, she decides to test the man. The word namagokoro (literally, ‘raw heart’) has invited a number of interpretations, from ‘second rate’ and ‘inexperienced’ to ‘pretentious’; in the pre-modern period, it was thought to mean ‘fickle’. It is translated here as ‘of affected ways’.

  19

  A Raging Gale

  Worth noting in Episode 19 is the way in which poems from another text are placed in a new fictional setting (an innovative feature of the Tales – see here). Both poems in this episode appear in the Kokinshū (nos. 784 and 785), but the headnote to the first differs considerably from the text of the Tales. According to the Kokinshū headnote, Narihira and his wife (Aritsune’s daughter) had quarrelled, and for a while he visited her only in the daytime and not at night. After some time, she sent him the first poem, to which Narihira replied with the second poem (the first two lines of the second poem
in the Kokinshū read slightly differently: ‘Coming and going / I live only within the sky’ – yukikaeri / sora ni nomi shite). In the Tales, the marital quarrel is changed into a tale of a workplace love affair centring on a lady who cheats on her lover, and as both parties serve as nobles at court, they cannot avoid seeing each other even after their estrangement.

  The first poem accuses the hero of being ‘as distant / as clouds in the sky’. The reply cleverly employs the metaphor of the ‘gale / raging on the mountain’ to accuse the lady of having an affair with another man and thus of being the cause of the cloud’s inability to embrace the mountain.

  they both served at court: The word miyazukae (serving the emperor or a person of noble birth), referring originally to serving only the emperor at the palace, came to refer also to serving high-born aristocrats. The setting of this episode, however, is still most likely the court, and that is how I have translated the word here.

  20

  No Such Thing as Spring

  This is one of several episodes that describe the damage to love affairs caused by the hero when he leaves or returns to the capital (see also Episodes 24 and 115). Such depictions are another example of the way in which the Tales influenced The Tale of Genji, with Genji’s departure from the capital also being the cause of heartbreak.

  In the first poem, the hero compares his passionate feelings to red maple leaves and attaches his poem to a maple branch when he sends it. Here, ‘maple’ refers to young shoots of late spring that have reddened, rather than the red maple leaves of autumn. The third month of the lunisolar calendar – translated as ‘the end of spring’ – falls between the present-day 20 April and 20 May, when trees sprout new leaves. (For further commentary on this poem, see here.)

  This episode is remarkable for the lady’s humorous retort, which puns on two words: aki, which means both ‘autumn’ and ‘to grow tired of’; and utsurou, which can mean both ‘to change colour’/‘to fade’ and ‘to tire of’ one’s partner as love fades. The man’s poem refers to ‘autumn’, but the lady cleverly turns it on its head by invoking the other meaning of the word.

  Punning on these words was extremely common in classical poetry, and countless examples may be found. The lady’s sophistication here is shown not only in her witty reply but also in her timing its delivery after the hero’s arrival at the capital.

  a lady of whom he had caught a glimpse: See kaimami (glimpsing).

  Yamato: The ancient province of Yamato (see Map 2) covered approximately the same area as the present-day Nara Prefecture.

  21

  Seeds of the Forgetting-Grass

  As Katagiri points out, perhaps the best way to read Episode 21 is to see it as forming a pair with Episode 22, just as Episodes 14 and 15 can most fruitfully be read together. All four episodes illustrate similar situations in which the hero’s relationship with two separate women ends differently.

  In Episode 21, the woman leaves the hero, and although they rekindle the relationship, they end up going their separate ways. Episode 22 illustrates a nearly identical situation, in which the woman leaves, but the episode concludes with the man and woman having an even stronger love than before. Each episode documents a failure followed by a success in the relationship between the man and the woman. The extended exchange of poems is another noteworthy aspect of Episodes 21 and 22.

  The lady writes the first poem on a surface somewhere within the house as she leaves. In the Japanese, it is not stated whether it is a wall or pillar, or whose house it is, but, for clarity, I have translated it as ‘a wall in their house’. There are many similar instances in both Chinese and Japanese literature of songs or poems being written upon departure on a wall, pillar or other such surface within a house.

  In the second poem, the hero laments the loss of the lady whom he loves with all his heart. In the third, he expresses how he is unable to forget the lady and haunted by a ‘lingering image’ (omokage) of her. In the Heian world, reference to a vision of this kind in dreams or elsewhere expressed deep love. There is a similar poem in the Man’yōshū (no. 149) in which the poet sees the other person before him in the form of a vision or as an illusion, and elements of this are thought to have been included here (see also Episodes 46 and 63). The fourth poem is from the lady, who is no longer able to refrain from letting the hero know her true feelings. She tells him that she does not want him to sow the ‘seeds of the forgetting-grass’ (wasuregusa) in his heart – that is, that she does not want him to forget her. It was said that if a person planted forgetting-grass, he would forget the past, though it is unlikely that they were actually planted by heartbroken lovers.

  The fifth poem, a reply to the fourth, is open to different interpretations. In Katagiri’s view, the hero is stating that if he heard that the lady was planting forgetting-grass, then he would know that she had been thinking of him. This interpretation seems to be the most straightforward, and the one that fits best with the rest of the narrative. Fukui’s interpretation suggests, by contrast, that it is the man who is sowing the seeds: ‘If you heard I sow / forgetting-grass seeds, / what can it mean / but that up to now, / I was thinking of you.’ As with so many of the episodes in the Tales, it is this sort of ambiguity that creates both challenges for the translator and pleasures for the reader.

  In the sixth poem, the hero says he is filled with doubt that she might forget him, which causes him even greater sadness. There is a similar poem in the Kokinshū (no. 718), of which this may be an adaptation. In the seventh poem, the lady compares herself to a fleeting cloud, unable to return to her former life. The word ‘mid-air’ (nakazora), referring to the space between the sky and the earth, is a metaphor for being in a state that is neither one thing nor another.

  Breaking into tears: See otoko naki (crying of men).

  22

  A Thousand Nights

  Episode 22 is unusual in that it describes a mostly happy and passionate relationship between two lovers, whereas many episodes in the Tales end in tears. As noted above, this episode forms a pair with Episode 21, where further commentary may be found.

  A lady who parts from the hero just after their affair has blossomed sends him a poem, and as a result they become much closer than before. In the hero’s reply, the word kawashima acts as a pun that also functions as a pivot word (see kakekotoba) linking kawashi (exchanging (feelings of love)) and kawashima (island in the middle of a river): just as the waters of the river flow on uninterruptedly on both sides of an island, so the hero wants their love to continue despite the temporary rupture. The hero’s poem suggests that he is prepared to wait patiently for a long time. ‘Despite saying that’, the narrator dryly observes, he goes to see his beloved that very night.

  The third poem employs the metaphor of counting autumn nights, since in both Japanese poetry (waka) and Chinese verse, autumn nights are said to be the longest of the year. I have changed ‘eight thousand’ to ‘ten thousand’ in the translation as it is more idiomatic in English, and both simply mean many, many nights. There is no clear consensus on whether the author of this poem was the hero or the lady, but it was common practice for the man to send the first poem in this situation (see here). The fourth poem, a response to the third, speaks of the lady’s love, too deep to be described in words, even if she had a thousand long autumn nights to do so. The mention of the crowing of the cock is a standard expression for the man having to return home in the morning.

  23

  The Measuring Well

  Episode 23 has been one of the most popular and widely read of the Tales since the time of its completion. The famous Noh play Izutsu (‘The Measuring Well’ or ‘The Well Cradle’) is based on it, and it has been widely illustrated in art. Along with Episodes 6 and 9, it is one of the episodes that have come to represent the work as a whole. The tale’s unevenness – in its latter part, the focus shifts to the second wife, diluting the force of the first section – has not detracted from its popularity.

  Structurally, Episode
23 can be divided into three parts: (1) the first two love poems; (2) the third (and most well-known) poem, by the first wife; (3) the fourth and fifth poems by the second wife. Since the third poem (part 2) is also found in the Kokinshū (no. 994), with an almost identical commentary, it is thought that Episode 23 was initially based on this and that the first and third parts were added later.

  In the first poem, the hero seeks the lady’s hand. The poem displays one of the finest examples of alliteration in the Tales: Tsutsuitsu no / izutsu. The word tsutsui describes a round (or tubular) well, while izutsu is the rim. Thus Tsutsuitsu no izutsu is the rim of a round well.

  The second poem is the lady’s response to the hero. The word furiwakegami denotes a child’s hairstyle – parted in the middle and falling to the shoulders – that was common in both girls and boys. The verb agu (in the form agubeki in the poem), literally ‘to put up’, refers to the ceremony of ‘putting up one’s hair’ (kami-age), which was a girl’s coming-of-age ritual, as was a similar one known as mogi (donning adult robes). In many instances, ‘putting up one’s hair’ took place at the time of a girl’s betrothal. ‘If not to wed you, / for whom shall I put it up?’ refers to the original form of the ceremony, in which it was the prospective husband who tied up the girl’s hair. At the time that the Tales was composed, the act was usually performed by an elder member of the family.

  The two marry as they wish, but after the wife’s parents die, things become difficult financially. As it was the wife’s family that maintained the husband (see here), the hero seeks economic support by marrying a second, wealthier lady living in Takayasu (see Map 2), now part of the present-day city of Yao in Osaka Prefecture. Suspicious that his wife does not seem to resent his visits to his new wife, he hides in the garden to spy on her – an example of ‘watching in secret’ or kaimami (see also Episodes 1 and 63). With her husband gone, the woman attends to her appearance and composes a poem to express her fears for her husband as he crosses Mount Tatsuta on the way to Kawachi. The first two lines, ‘As the wild winds blow / and the white waves rise’ (Kaze fukeba / oki tsu shiranami), serve as a preface (jokotoba) for tatsu (to rise) as it appears in the fourth line within Tatsuta-yama or Mount Tatsuta (see Map 2), part of the Ikoma mountain range on the border of Yamato (present-day Nara Prefecture) and Kawachi (Osaka Prefecture).