THE TALES OF ISE - C. 950 A.D.

All translation in this section are by Kenneth L. Richard, but reference is made, as well, to appropriate page numbers in the following texts:

Keene, Donald ed. Anthology of Japanese Literature from the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century. , and to

Bownas, Geoffrey et. al. The Penquin Book of Japanese Verse.

伊勢物語

BY AN ANONYMOUS MALE WRITER(S),BUT ATTRIBUTED TO THE GREATEST LOVER IN JAPANESE HISTORY, ALSOTHE MOST HANDSOME MAN, ARIWARA NO NARIHIRA 在原業平（825-880 A.D.）

ESSENTIALLY A STRING OF UNRELATEDANECDOTES AND POEMS EXCHANGED BETWEEN A NUMBER OF MEN AND WOMEN(A FEW SECTIONS CONTAIN POEMS OF SAME SEX CAMARADERIE AND BONDING),THE TALES, IN THEIR CURRENT ARRANGEMENT, SERVE TO DOCUMENT THE LIFE AND TIMES OF AN UNNAMED MAN, OF AN ERA PREVIOUS TO THE ONE IN WHICH THE TALES WERE WRITTEN DOWN, FROM HIS FIRST YOUTHFUL INFATUATION WITH TWO SISTERS, TO HIS FINAL SOLIPSISTIC DEATH POEM. IN TRUTH, THE TALES ARE A COMPOSITE OF A NUMBER OF AMOROUS SITUATIONS INVOLVING A NUMBER OF MEN AND WOMEN OF VARYING DISPOSITIONS. PARTOF THE INTEREST OF THE TALES LIES IN THE LARGE VARIETY IN HUMAN CHARACTER AND ITS RESPONSES TO AMOROUS OVERTURES. THE TALES ARE ARRANGED IN A ROUGHLY BIOGRAPHICAL SEQUENCE AND CONTAIN 209 TANKA 短歌POEMSIN 125 SECTIONS, AT A RATE OF APPROXIMATELY ONE EXCHANGE, OR ONE ENCOUNTER, PER SECTION.

AS THE TALES BECOME INCREASINGLY MORE FAMOUS AND WIDELY READ AFTER THE TENTH CENTURY, THE NAME OF ARIWARA NO NARIHIRA BECOMES ASSOCIATED AS THE MALE AS WELL AS THE AUTHOR OF THE TEXT.

SOME OF HIS ISE POEMS ARE DOCUMENTED ELSEWHERE AS LEGITIMATELY HIS, AND SO THE ATTRIBUTION STICKS. THERE IS NO MAIN FEMALE CHARACTER WHO APPEARS AS REGULARLY AS HER MALE COUNTERPART IN THE TALES OF ISE, BUT TWO NAMES APPEAR PROMINENTLY: THE EMPRESS TAKAIKO WITH WHOM NARIHIRA IS SAID TO HAVE HAD AN ILLICIT RELATIONSHIP, AND THE VESTAL VIRGIN OF ISE WITH WHOM NO MAN WAS ALLOWED TO HAVE SEXUAL RELATIONS, BUT WITH WHOM NARIHIRA SEEMS TO HAVE SUCCEEDED.

THE POINT TO BE MADE IS THAT THE MAIN MALE CHARACTER OF THE TALE IS A COURTIER WITHOUT RANK OR OFFICE, IN OTHER WORDS, AN UNWANTED MALE IN MEN'S EYES, BUT EXTREMELY ATTRACTIVE IN WOMEN'S EYES, WHILE THE NAMED FEMALE CHARACTERS ARE BOTH COURT WOMEN OFTHE HIGHEST RANK, ONE INACCESIBLE TO ALL BUT THE EMPEROR, ANDTHE OTHER TO NO ONE AT ALL. THE MAJORITY OF THE AVAILABLE WOMEN,UNNAMED, IN THE TALES OF ISE, ARE FROM THE CONTRYSIDE IMMEDIATELY SURROUNDING THE ADMINISTRATIVE CAPITALS OF NARA AND KYOTO. THE WORK IS, UNLIKE THE TALE OF GENJI, OBVIOUSLY A MASCULINE WORK BECAUSE IT EROTICIZES WOMEN AS EITHER UNATTAINABLE, OR AS PLEASURABLY ATTAINABLE WHILE BEING BEYOND SOCIAL REPONSIBILITY. EACH SECTION OF THE TALE IS CONCEIVED AS BEING A CLEVER AND ELEGANT VARIATION ON LOVE OUTSIDE OF MARITAL OBLIGATION, ANOTHER REASON FOR ASSUMING THE WORK HAS BEEN WRITTEN FOR THE PLEASURE OF MEN.

NARIHIRA HAD AL READY BEEN NAMED AS ONE OF THE SIX SAINTS OF JAPANESE POETRY (六歌仙ROKKASEN)BY KI NO TSURAYUKI IN HIS PREFACE TO THE KOKIN WAKASHU IN 905A.D., BUT TSURAYUKI'S ASSESSMENTOF NARIHIRA'S CHARM WAS NOT EXACTLY COMPLIMENTARY. HE SAID: "THE MAN HAS FAR TOO MUCH EMOTION AND TOO LITTLE WORDS, MUCH AS A WITHERED FLOWER HAS THE SHAPE BUT NOT THE INTIMATE FRAGRANCE OF ITS BEST MOMENT."

WELL, IF NOT IN TOTALLY ACCEPTABLE BALANCE, NARIHIRA IS, NEVERTHELESS, VERY GOOD INDEED.

MAIN POINTS:

THE FIRST OF SEVERAL UTAMONOGATARI OR 'POEM TALES' OF THE HEIAN ERA IN WHICH POETRY IS THE MAIN FOCUS WITHIN PROSE SETTINGS.

AS A FICTIONAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN AMOROUS HERO, THE WORK STANDS AT THE FORMATIVE STAGE OF THE HISTORY OF JAPANESE PROSE FICTION. THE PROSE SETTINGS TO THE POEMS IN THIS TALE ARE OF EQUAL IMPORTANCE TO THE POEMS THEMSELVES.

THEME:

COURTLY ELEGANCE (雅MIYABI)- HOW TO BE A SUCCESSFUL LOVER AND A GOOD POET.

LESSONS IN EROTIC BEHAVOIUR(色好IROGONOMI) CHARACTERIZED BY 'SINCERITY'(誠MAKOTO), 'LOVE'(愛AI), AND 'AWILL FOR A SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION'(志KOKOROZASHI).

LITERARINESS:

PERFECT FUSION OF POEM AND PROSE CONTEXT. THE POEM BECOMES INEXTRICABLY WOVEN INTO THE TEXT. TAKEN OUT OF THE PROSE CONTEXT, THE POEM HAS A POSSIBLE SECOND LIFE, OR EVEN OTHERS. THE JAPANESE POEM IN A PROSE CONTEXT, OR IN A SEQUENCE, IS EXTREMELY ADHESIVE TO CONTEXT, AND FLEXIBLE IN ITS APPLICATION.

SAMPLE SECTIONS:

SECTION ONE

"Long ago a man went through the initiation rites of receiving a cap denoting rank. Having access to the village of Kasuga in the old capital of Nara, he set out on a hunting expedition. In the village lived an extremely charming and fashionable pair of sisters. The man caught a glimpse of them through a fence. His heart was taken immediately by the fact of such beauty going to waste in such an outdated place. He knew not what to do. Tearing off the sleeve of his hunting garment, he used it to write a poem to send to the ladies. He was wearing a pattern of disordered leaves and ferns.

Like young shoots of murasaki growing on the Kasuga Plain, I

Suddenly come upon you;

My heart is as confused and unknowing as

The random pattern of my sleeve.

Is it hiding something?

春日野の、若紫の、すりごろも、しのぶのみだれ、かぎり知られず。

This was the poem he wrote, as accomplished as any adult. It had the feeling of another poem:

Far road to the North

I keep to myself, enduring the rubbed and random

Patterns of the cloth,

But to whom is my heart'sunrest directed?

It is not I who began such wild passion.

みちのくの、しのぶもぢずり、誰ゆゑに、みだれそめにし、我ならなく に

My, how the previous generation knew how to be spontaneously elegant! (KLR)

(See Keene 67-68, and Bownas 72)

SECTION TWO

Long ago there was a man. At a time when Nara was no longer the capital and this new one was not highly populated, he took up with a lady in the Western precincts.She was more beautiful than anyone in the palace. It was her heart more than her appearance which he liked. It also appeared that he was not the only one. He spoke once of this situation to her, then left to go home. It was the first day of the third month.He sent a poem to her in the softly falling rain:

Neither do I rise, nor do I sleep.

Throughout this night, I lie awake

Thinking this is what Spring means:

Gazing through the long rains into the blackness of night.

起きもせず、寝もせで夜を、あかしては、春のものとて、ながめ暮しつ

(KLR)

(See Bownas 75-76)

SECTION FOUR

Long ago, her majesty the dowagerEmpress lived in the eastern sector of the Fifth Ward. Another lady resided in the Western wing of this palace. Though deeply interested despite the danger that his feelings could never becompletely known, he visited the second lady there, but on approximately the tenth day of the New Year, she moved in secret to another place. He heard of the place to which she had gone, but knowing he would find it impossible to visit her there, he grew depressed. At the next New Year, when the plum blossoms were at their peak, yearning for time to stop, he went back to the that former residence and stood looking, then sat down to look, but the more he looked, the more he knew that nothing resembled the year before. He began to sob. Lying on the ruined floor, the boards now all that was left of the building, looking up until he saw the moon setting, he reminisced about the year before and wrote:

Is this the moon, and

Is this the Spring, the same

Spring as it was before?

It is like saying my body is

The same body that was hers.

月やあらぬ、春やむかしの、春ならぬ、我が身ひとつは、もとの身にして

Slowly the first light of dawn appeared. Still in tears, he went home. (KLR)

(See Bownas 71, Keene 71. TheDowager Empress living in the palace in the Fifth Ward was Fujiwara Nobuko, the mother of Emperor Montoku who reigned 850-857. The lady in the Western wing was Fujiwara Takaiko. Women'sdates are never as clear as for men, but the dating of his episode must surely, thus, be the mid-ninth century, the same era as that of Narihira.)

SECTION SEVEN

Long ago there was a man. Having no further reason to live on in the capital, he set out for the east and came to the border of the lands between Ise and Owari.He looked out at the surface of the sea and noticed how the waves crested whitely. He wrote this poem:

Farther and farther away

I pass from the way I've come into

A beyond that makes me yearn for

Such envious waves as can go back

When I know I can not. （KLR）

いとどしく、過ぎゆくかたの、恋ひしきに、うらやましくも、かへる波かな

(See Bownas 74. At the end of Yasujiro Ozu's film Banshun, the old man, realizing that his youth will never come back, and that his daughter will leave him, looks out over the night sea of Kamakura. I am always reminded of this poem from Ise monogatari. Ozu must certainly have known it.)

SECTION NINE

Long ago there was a man. And this man came to be regarded as unfitting for court office and was asked to seek out some other place to live in the lands to the East. And he went. He went with a few of his closest male friends. None of them knew the way and they became lost. They found themselves at a place called Yatsuhashi, eight bridges, in the Province of Mikawa. The reason the place was called 'eightbridges' was in reference to the way in which the water flowed in shallow rivulets like a spider's web, over which were laid eight bridges. They dismounted in the shade of the trees at the edge of the marsh, and had a meal of dried rice. A form of small flowering iris was in bloom in the marsh. Seeing them, one of the members of the party composed this poem on being asked to encapsulate the experience of the word 'iris'in the words of the poem, while also making reference to the spirit of their journey:

If I am reminded of the splendid

Robe my wife always wore,

I am fully distanced by each stitch in mind

Such an endless journey clocks in my spirit.

唐衣、きつつなれにし、つましあれば、はるばるきぬる、旅をしぞ思ふ

When they heard this, everyone shed tears into their meager meal, causing the rice to swell.

Onward they went until they reached the Province of Suruga. On the way to Mt. Utsu, the mountain of melancholy as it is called, the road we were attempting to follow grew extremely dark and narrow, thick with vines and maple branches. Just as we were feeling quite bereft and wondering what misfortune might befall us, we met a pilgrim coming the other way. When we asked the nature of the road we were on, we realized that we knew him. I wrote a poem and gave it to him to take back to the other person in my life in the capital:

On the mountain road in Suruga

The mountain of melancholy,

Never in reality would I have dreamed

Of meeting the man who carried this note to you.

駿河なる、宇津の山辺の、うつつにも、夢にも人に、逢わぬなりけり

At the summit of Mt. Fuji, now in the Fifth Month, we saw that snow was falling whitely.

On the ageless mountain,

On that high peak of Fuji,

Since when has

The snow fallen in patches likethe spots on a deer's back?

時しらぬ、山は富士の嶺、いつとてか、鹿の子まだらに、雪の降るらむ。

By comparison to the mountains of home, this mountain is twenty times as high as Mt. Hiei, and its shape is like a perfect salt cone.

Onward we went until we came upon a very large river between the Provinces of Musashi and Shimotsufusa.It is called the Sumida. We sat in a huddle on the shore sighing to ourselves about how long a journey this had been, when the ferryman remarked that we had better board the boat before the sun set. As we were ferried across the river, all of us felt the isolation from loved ones at home in the capital. At that very moment, however, we saw a flock of white birds with red beaks and legs, about the size of water rails, swooping over the surface of the water to catch fish. Since we had never seen such a bird at home, we could not identify them. The boatman replied, on being asked, that the birds were what he called appropriately 'capital birds.'

With such a famous name

Let us ask of you

Fair birds of the capital,

Is the one of whom I always think

Alive and well?

名にしおはば、いざこと問はむ、都鳥、わが思ふ人は、在りやなしやと

Everyone in the boat cried. (KLR)

(See Bownas 76-77.)