by Donald Keene
The Shrine of the Little Pine
This is an important episode for many reasons. First, it provides an excellent illustration of the connection between the imperial line and Shinto religion in the Heian period. Second, since ancient times the god of Sumiyoshi has been revered as the deity of Japanese poetry; this episode, centring as it does on an exchange of poems between the hero of the Tales, Narihira, a great poet himself, and the god of Sumiyoshi, probably played an important role in the later dissemination of this belief. Sumiyoshi has been used as a setting in many literary works, including the Sumiyoshi monogatari (Tale of Sumiyoshi) and chapter 14 of The Tale of Genji, as well as being portrayed in art countless times. The exchange is also fascinating because it illustrates the belief that deities could appear at shrines and convey messages to humans.
Though it is not made clear in the text, the first poem is thought to have been composed by the hero. Ostensibly in praise of the ancient pine – the diminutive ‘Little Pine’ (hime-matsu) a poetic name for a fresh young tree – it is really an enconium to the longevity of the god/shrine.
The Sumiyoshi deity then appears to recite the second poem, which speaks of the close relationship, unbroken since ancient times, between the deity and the imperial house. ‘You’ (kimi) refers to the emperor. The word shiranami (literally, ‘do you not know?’) can be translated as ‘white waves’, with nami (waves) as an associative word (engo) for ‘water’. The word mizūgaki refers both to the sacred fence surrounding a shrine and to the shrine itself. Another example of metonymy (like the pine/god/shrine above), it also serves as a pillow word (makura kotoba) for hisashiki (‘since ancient times’). Mizu in mizūgaki is also associated with water, but it carries more of the sense of ‘fresh and lovely’ (mizumizu shi), conveyed by the beautiful maritime setting: ‘on the white-waved shore’.
The first of the two poems is included in the Kokinshū (no. 905), topic and author unknown, and this episode was probably constructed around it.
Sumiyoshi Shrine: This is located in the present-day Sumiyoshi-ku, Osaka (see Map 2). Four deities are worshipped there: three sea gods and Jingu Kogo, regarded as an ancestor of the imperial house. Because of extensive land reclamation in the area, the shrine is now far from the sea, but originally it stood near the coastline, which was covered with beautiful pine trees.
118
Creeping Vine
The interest of Episode 118 lies in the clever poem stating that a visit from an inconstant man holds no interest for the lady. The lines ‘as you crawl up / so very many trees’ (hau ki) liken the action of the vine creeping up a tree to the hero’s attempting to worm his way into the affections of many women. ‘Crawl’ (hau) was the actual verb used for men entering the rooms of ladies, so the metaphor is both witty and cutting, likening the hero to someone who creeps like a vine into the rooms of too many women. I had to repress the urge to title this episode ‘Creepy Vine’. (See also Episode 36.)
This poem is included in the Kokinshū (no. 709), and the present episode is thought to be based on it. As Katagiri points out, this episode, like nos. 119, 120 and 122, are all striking in their depiction of strong female characters.
119
Keepsake Enemies
This is one of the rare episodes in which the woman is the central character and the tale is told from her perspective. Viewing the keepsakes left by a man who abandoned her, the lady composes a poem stating that, because these make her unable to forget her lover, they have become her ‘enemies’. Due to the conventions of classical orthography (kana – see Appendix 4), the word ata can be read as both ada (unfaithful) and ata (enemy), and the play on these two words adds considerable humour in the Japanese.
The poem appears as an anonymous poem in the Kokinshū (no. 746), and the present episode is thought to be based on it. See also Episode 31 for a woman’s cold reprimand to a former lover.
120
Festival of Pots
Episode 120 contains an amusing poem that also reveals the rather open attitude towards sexual matters in ancient Japan. On discovering that the lady to whom he is making advances is in a relationship with another man, the hero composes a poem that states how he will take revenge on her at the Tsukuma festival by counting the number of pots she is able to carry on her head to estimate the number of lovers she has had in the past.
This festival is associated with the Tsukuma Shrine, in Omi Province (see Map 2), located in the present-day city of Maibara in Shiga Prefecture. It is also known as the ‘pot (nabe) festival’ because every woman attending it was required to balance as many pots on her head as she had had lovers/husbands. The pots were then presented to the shrine as offerings. The poem is thought to be an old folk song, and the redeployment of it in this new narrative setting adds to the episode’s humour.
121
Plum-Blossom Bonnet
Episode 121 contains an exchange that can be read as being between two men assuming male and female personae (see gender mixing). The hero composes a poem on seeing someone getting drenched by rain as he emerges from the Plum Pavilion. This was one of the buildings in the inner, residential section of the palace, named for the plum trees that grew in its garden. The imperial consorts and concubines resided here with their numerous ladies-in-waiting. The person emerging from the pavilion and getting wet in the rain is probably a nobleman quietly returning from a visit to the quarters of a lady-in-waiting.
In the first poem, the hero offers to lend a hat to the man to stop him getting wet. Though an imaginary object, the ‘plum-blossom bonnet’ provided poets with an elegant image for a real hat (see also Kokinshū, no. 1081). The word omoi in the second poem in its original spelling, omohi, was commonly used as a metaphor for burning passion because the last syllable of the word (hi) also means ‘fire’ (hi).
The text mentions only a ‘person’ (hito) emerging from the Plum Pavilion, so there is some debate as to the sex of the individual in question. Some critics believe that the exchange is between two men, while others (Katagiri among them) argue that the person exiting the pavilion is actually a lady-in-waiting. According to Katagiri’s interpretation, the robust response by the lady is appropriate because of the position this tale occupies in the Tales – near other episodes depicting strong female characters. This reading is possible, but the humour is intensified if we imagine the scene as taking place between two men playfully teasing each other by adopting the conventions of male–female exchanges. Moreover, as women spent most of their time indoors and men usually returned home before dawn to avoid being seen, it is more likely that the person braving the rain to leave unseen was indeed a man, and this is the view of Yamamoto. Readers are free to choose either or savour both interpretations.
122
Waters of Promise
Episode 122 is a depiction of the hero’s rejection by a lady who has broken her promise to marry him. The poem uses complex rhetorical devices. The word tanomi means both ‘to drink from one’s hand’ (ta-nomi) and ‘to trust’ (tanomi) someone. The first three lines of the poem act as a preface (jokotoba) to this word. The phrase te ni musubi means ‘to scoop water in both hands’, but also suggests chigiri o musubi, ‘to make a pledge (of love) to each other’.
Yamashiro’s Ide spring: The spring was located in the present-day town of Ide in Kyoto Prefecture. The Tama River flows there, with wordplay on its name in the word tamamizu (literally, ‘waters of the Tama’), which also means ‘gem-like water’ or ‘clear-water promise’, as it appears in the translation.
123
Becoming a Quail
Episode 123 contains one of the most famous and moving of the poems in the Tales. The hero wearies of his relationship with a lady in a place known as Fukakusa (located in present-day Fushimi Ward, in Kyoto; see Map 3), then loses all desire to leave her after he receives her wonderful poem in reply to his.
In the first poem, the hero states that if he leaves the lady, the place where they are living will gradually become ‘a plain of deep grasses’ becaus
e there will be no one to flatten the grass with regular visits. The poem puns on the place name ‘Fukakusa’, which means ‘deep grasses’. In her reply, the lady states that if the man leaves her, she will become a quail and cry out in the hope that he will visit her, even if only when out hunting. The word naki means both ‘cry out’ or ‘sing’, as a quail would, and ‘weeping’ (see also Episode 114); the words kari ni mean both ‘briefly’ and ‘out hunting’. Moved by the beauty of the woman’s sentiment and her poetic skills, demonstrated through this wordplay, the hero changes his mind.
The two poems are included in the Kokinshū (nos. 971 and 972) as an exchange between Ariwara no Narihira and ‘someone’ (hito) as he prepares to leave Fukakusa. Commentators maintain that the ‘someone’ here was, in fact, a man living in Fukakusa. What comes over, between two men, as humorous banter is transformed in the Tales into a much more poignant exchange between a man and a woman.
A more literal translation of the first poem would read: ‘If I leave this village / where we’ve been together / for all these years, / it will indeed become / a plain deep in grass.’ I added ‘without my visits’ in my translation to help the modern reader, who would not be expected to know that husband and wife lived separately (see here) and what kept the grasses flat was the hero’s regular visits.
The episode and its poems are some of the most famous in the entire work. The prominent late-Heian poet Shunzei (see here) used them as the source material for one of his most famous poems (Senzai wakashū, no. 258):
As evening falls, I’m pierced through
by an autumn wind
blowing through the fields;
and in the deep grasses of Fukakusa,
the plaintive cry of a quail!
(Yuu sare ba / nobe no akikaze / mi ni shimite / uzura naku nari / fukakusa no sato)
124
Not a Soul …
In the simple poem in Episode 124, the hero bemoans the fact that there is no one with whom to share his thoughts. What makes the poem important, however, is its position just before the death poem in the last episode: placed thus, a somewhat insignificant poem is transformed into one of deep emotional impact.
Because the poem appears just before Narihira’s final poem, we are clearly meant to think of it as the hero’s musings as he looks back on his life. Again, in the characteristic style of the Tales, the narrator’s obfuscation of the significance of the episode with an ambiguous remark only deepens its emotional impact. Yamamoto argues that the episode has been deliberately placed here to create this effect, but others claim that the poem actually loses its impact by being placed in such an obvious location as there is no longer any ambiguity. The former argument is more convincing: it is hard to believe that in a work in which such meticulous care and attention were put into arranging the episodes throughout, this one in particular would have been casually placed where it is.
125
This Day
Episode 125 brings the Tales to a conclusion with the simple but magnificent death poem of the hero. It also forms a pair with Episode 1, thus bestowing on all the intervening episodes a semblance of reality and historical veracity, as if we have been reading Narihira’s biography throughout.
In Japan, it was common to compose ‘death poems’ (jisei no uta); most have a Buddhist flavour and speak of the emptiness of the world, often as though composed from the standpoint of someone who has achieved enlightenment. This poem is an exception, in that it describes the hero’s feelings just as they are, without any rhetorical embellishment. Through it, we can see see the individuality of the central character of the Tales and of its model, Ariwara no Narihira.
This poem is also included in the Kokinshū (no. 861) as Narihira’s death poem.
Appendix 1
Glossary of Literary and Social Conventions
chi no namida (tears of blood): This expression derives from a folk belief that, in extreme grief, tears become mixed with blood. It was widely used figuratively to signify deep sorrow. It is believed to come from the Chinese story of Bian He, who cries tears of blood when he is wrongfully accused of having presented a fake piece of jade to the King of Chu. See Episodes 40 and 69, among others.
crowing of the cock: In Heian romance, the crowing of the cock announces the dawn and the mandatory parting of lovers. The Tales contains several instances of the cock crowing, making it an important trope. In Episode 14, for example, it is used to highlight the naivety of the countrywoman: the hero leaves before the cock crows, a show of rudeness that the woman blames on the cockerel rather than her heartless lover. In Episode 53, by contrast, the hero laments the crowing of the cock, as he would like his encounter with the lady to go on much longer. The trope features in a similar way in Episode 22.
daisaku (proxy composition): When a person called on to produce a poem was unable or unwilling to do so, it was considered acceptable for someone else to write on their behalf. (See also gender mixing below.) This was often the case when a man wanted to send a proposal of marriage to a young lady. The poem would still be regarded as having been composed by the suitor, however, rather than by the actual poet. Narihira (see here) was a great poet, so it was natural that he should compose a poem on someone else’s behalf. Episode 107 is a humorous example of this practice.
engo (associative word(s)): Clusters of semantically related words may be embedded within a poem and highlighted through punning or another rhetorical device to give supplementary meanings and as a show of verbal artistry intended to surprise and delight the reader. The poem about ‘robes’ in Episode 9, for instance, while expressing longing for a distant partner, also contains numerous other words related to clothing (see the commentary). In a similar vein, editors of poetry collections (kashū) would arrange poems in sequences so that they resonated lexically in some way, creating unified clusters of poems that were originally discrete.
gender mixing: In Heian-period Japan, it was not uncommon for a male courtier to adopt the persona of a woman when composing a poem. Poems were often composed on set topics (dai), sometimes from the perspective of a character in a painting, and wit and humour were highly appreciated. Proxy composition (daisaku) was also widely practised, and it was not uncommon for men to compose poems on a woman’s behalf and vice versa. The ideal Heian man was, in fact, rather ‘feminine’ by the standards of later periods; for example, men were expected to cry (see otoko naki below). In The Tale of Genji, Genji’s friends wish that he were a woman so that they might become lovers with him.
Gosenshū (Gosen wakashū; Later Collection of Waka): Usually shortened to Gosenshū, this collection, compiled in 951, is the second of the imperially commissioned waka anthologies. Compared to the Kokinshū, it features more poems by women and a much larger number of poetry exchanges (zōtōka). The prose headnotes (kotobagaki) are much longer and more elaborate, reflecting the literary preferences of the age.
Hyakunin isshu (One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each): A compilation of poems dating to 1230–40 by the renowned poet and scholar Fujiwara no Teika (see here). As well as being the best-loved and most widely read of all Japanese poetry collections, the Hyakunin isshu was also the first work of Japanese literature to be translated into English – by Frederick Victor Dickins in 1865. A collection of one hundred of the best poems, each by a representative poet, it provides a primer of the finest Japanese poetry from the late seventh to the early thirteenth centuries. Its influence on Japanese literature, culture and the visual arts is inestimable. Every major Japanese print (ukiyo-e) artist has illustrated the entire collection, while countless other works derived from it – paintings, commentaries, even a card game – have helped to maintain its popularity for centuries after its compilation.
imperial consorts: Women of high rank close to the emperor were known as kisaki. These included the empress, the mother of the emperor and the grandmother of an emperor. From the Nara period (710–94) onwards, the title chūgū was used for the empress, though what it actually signified is not c
lear. In the Heian period (794–1185), the word used at the time, kōgō, was virtually a synonym of ‘empress’. This meant that the emperor could have two official consorts. In the year 1000, the regent, Fujiwara no Michinaga, referred to his brother’s daughter Teishi, who was the original consort of Emperor Ichijo (r. 986–1011), as kōgō, and his own daughter Shoshi as chūgū, when she became a consort of the emperor, thereby creating a system that allowed the emperor to have two official consorts, and this became the precedent. Offices were set up to administer the households of the chūgū, kōgō and kōtaigō (dowager consort, or mother of the reigning emperor), and ladies-in-waiting were appointed to them.
The emperor could take any number of secondary consorts – court officials of varying social status who looked after the needs of the emperor, which included producing heirs. These were known by the title of nyōgo (junior consort) or kōi, a lower-ranking lady of the chamber. The word kōi (distinct from koi, meaning ‘love’) – literally, ‘clothes changer’ – is generally translated as ‘concubine’ or ‘wife’.
jokotoba (preface): The initial segment of a poem serving as a ‘preface’ to a word introduced later in the poem, to which it is linked via homophony or metaphor. The preface is often unrelated semantically to the content of the main part of the poem, giving rise to two distinct layers of meaning within the same short poem. An example can be found in the third poem of Episode 23. The first two lines, ‘As the wild winds blow / and the white waves rise’ (Kaze fukeba / oki tsu shiranami), serve as a preface for tatsu (to rise) as it appears in the fourth line within Tatsuta-yama or Mount Tatsuta. The jokotoba is similar to the makura kotoba in that it serves to embellish and introduce a word, but tends to be longer, extending for at least two lines in translation.