THE REED-CHOKED HOUSE
TITLE
The title, “Asaji ga yado,” denotes a neglected house overgrown with chigaya reeds.
The wording recalls a waka in the “Kiritsubo” (The Paulownia Court) chapter of The
Tale of Genji:
Even here above the clouds [at court] the autumn moon is blurred with tears.
How then could it be clear, and how can you dwell, in a house overgrown with reeds [asaji fu no yado]?1
The phrase asaji ga yado appears in chapter 137 of Yoshida Kenkō’s Tsurezuregusa
(Essays in Idleness, early fourteenth century), which is more closely related to
Akinari’s story:
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Does the love between men and women refer only to the moments when they
are in each other’s arms? The man who grieves over a love affair broken off
before it was fulfilled, who bewails empty vows, who spends long autumn nights
alone, who lets his thoughts wander to distant skies, who yearns for the past in a
dilapidated house [asaji ga yado]—such a man truly knows what love means.2
CHARACTERS
Like “Shiramine” and “The Chrysanthemum Vow,” “The Reed-Choked House” has only
two important characters, the fictional Katsushirō and Miyagi, supported by minor
figures. Unlike the previous stories, however, this tale focuses on the lives of
peasants, who were second on the Tokugawa social scale, below the samurai class
but above artisans and merchants. Katsushirō and Miyagi are remarkably literary
peasants, given to quoting and alluding to court poetry. This has the effect of
elevating them to a status closer to that of the characters in the previous two stories.
PLACES
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“The Reed-Choked House” is centered on the village of Mama, now part of the city of
Ichikawa, just east of Tokyo, in Chiba Prefecture (formerly, Shimōsa Province). Mama
is implicitly contrasted with the sophistication of Kyoto (the capital) and Ōmi Province
(Shiga Prefecture).
TIME
Spring of 1455 to summer of 1461.
BACKGROUND
The historical events mentioned in “The Reed-Choked House” provide a factual
background for the strange story, but the details have no direct bearing on the lives of
Katsushirō and Miyagi.3
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AFFINITIES
“The Reed-Choked House” draws from a number of Chinese and Japanese sources,
the most important being the story “In Which a Wife, After Her Death, Meets Her
Former Husband” (27:24), in the late-Heian setsuwa collection Konjaku monogatari
shū (Tales of Times Now Past, ca. 1120); Qu You’s “Aiqing zhuan” (The Story of
Aiqing), in Jiandeng xinhua (New Tales After Trimming the Lamp, 1378); Asai Ryōi’s
adaptation of “Aiqing zhuan”: “Fujii Seiroku yūjo Miyagino o metoru koto” (In Which
Fujii Seiroku Marries the Courtesan Miyagino), in Otogibōko (Talisman Dolls, 1666);
and the “Yomogiu” (The Wormwood Patch) chapter of The Tale of Genji. The story
also contains parallels to Zeami’s nō play Kinuta (The Fulling Block) and allusions to
a number of other Japanese classics, including Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise, ca. 947)
and Genji. Many waka from imperial anthologies and other sources are alluded to or
quoted.
OTHER OBSERVATIONS
“The Reed-Choked House,” along with “A Serpent’s Lust,” was the basis for
Mizoguchi Kenji’s film Ugetsu monogatari (1953).
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n the province of Shimōsa, Katsushika District, in the village of Mama, lived a
man named Katsushirō. Since his grandfather’s time, his family had lived here in
comfort, holding many paddies and fields; but being by nature indifferent to details,
Katsushirō came to dislike farming as he grew up, finding it irksome, so that finally the
family grew poor. Mortified to see that he had lost favor with many of his relatives, he
considered various schemes to revive the family fortunes. In those days, a man
named Sōji of Sasabe came down from the capital every year to stock up on dyed
silk from Ashikaga.4 Having distant relatives in the village, he often came to visit and
had been on familiar terms with Katsushirō for some time. Katsushirō pleaded that
he, too, wanted to become a merchant and go up to the capital. Sasabe agreed
immediately. “Let me see, when will the next trip be?” he said. Delighted that he could
now rely on Sasabe, Katsushirō sold off his remaining paddies, used the gold to buy
a large supply of plain silk, and prepared for his journey to the capital.
Katsushirō’s wife, Miyagi, was a woman of arresting beauty, intelligence, and
steady disposition. Dismayed to hear that he had bought merchandise and was going
to the capital, she used every argument she could think of to dissuade him; but she
was helpless before his obstinacy, now worse than ever, and so, despite her
misgivings about how she would fare in the future,5 she applied herself with alacrity to
his preparations. As they talked together that night about the painful separation to
come, she said, “With no one to depend on, my woman’s heart will know the
extremities of sadness, wandering as though lost in the fields and mountains.6 Please
do not forget me, morning or night, and come back soon. If only I live long enough, I
tell myself,7 but in this life we cannot depend on the morrow, and so take pity on me
in your stalwart heart.” He replied, “How could I linger in a strange land, riding on a
drifting log? I shall return this autumn, when the arrowroot leaf turns over in the wind.8
Be confident and wait for me.” Thus he reassured her; the night sky brightened with
dawn; and leaving the East Country, where the roosters crow, he hurried toward the
capital.9
In the summer of 1455, the shogun’s deputy in Kamakura, Lord Ashikaga Shigeuji,
had a falling out with the family of Uesugi, his own deputy, and so when troops burned
his palace to the ground, he took refuge with an ally in Shimōsa. From that moment,
the lands east of the barrier were thrown into chaos, and each man did just as he
pleased.10 The aged fled to the mountains and hid; the young were conscripted;
women and children, hearing the rumors—“They will burn this place today! The enemy
will attack tomorrow!”—fled weeping, now east, now west. Katsushirō’s wife, Miyagi,
too, wanted to escape, but relying on her husband’s words—“Wait for me this fall”—
she lived on, anxiously counting the days. Autumn came, but there was no word, not
even in the wind. Sad and resentful that the heart of man proved to be as unreliable
as this world itself, she composed in her despondency:
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I
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“No one will report my misery, I fear—
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oh decorated cock of Meeting Hill, tell him autumn too has passed.“11
And yet she had no way to communicate with him, since many provinces separated
them. Men’s hearts grew more villainous in the turbulence of the world. Passersby,
noting Miyagi’s beauty, tried to seduce her with comforting words, but, firmly guarding
her chastity, she would treat them distantly, close the door, and refuse to meet them.
Her maidservant departed; her meager savings melted away; and that year, too,
came to a close. The New Year brought no peace. What is more, in the autumn of the
old year the shogun had bestowed the flag on Tō no Tsuneyori,12 governor of
Shimotsuke and lord of Gujō, Mino Province, who went down to the domain of
Shimōsa, made plans with his kinsman Chiba no Sanetane, and attacked; but
Shigeuji’s forces defended their position resolutely, and so there was no end in sight.
Bandits threw up strongholds here and there, set fires, and pillaged. No haven
remained in the Eight Provinces; the losses were appalling.13
Katsushirō accompanied Sasabe to Kyoto and sold all his silk. Because it was an
age when the capital delighted in luxury, he made a good profit.14 As he prepared to
return to the East Country, word spread that Uesugi troops had toppled the shogun’s
deputy and then had pursued and attacked him. Katsushirō’s home village would be
the battlefield of Zhoulu, bristling with shields and halberds. Even rumors close at
hand are frequently untrue; his home was in a distant land beyond myriad layers of
white clouds.15 Anxiously, he left the capital at the start of the Eighth Month. Crossing
the pass at Misaka in Kiso, he found that robbers had blocked the road, and to them
he lost all his baggage.16 Furthermore, he heard reports that new barrier stations had
been established here and there to the east, where even travelers were not allowed
to pass. In that case, there would be no way to send any message at all. His house
had surely been leveled by the fires of battle. His wife would no longer be alive. His
village would have become a den of ogres, he told himself, and so he turned back
toward the capital; but as he entered the province of Ōmi, he suddenly felt unwell and
came down with a fever. In a place called Musa lived a wealthy man named Kodama
Yoshibei.17 This being the birthplace of Sasabe’s wife, Katsushirō pleaded for help;
and Kodama did not turn him away, but summoned a physician and devoted himself to
Katsushirō’s care. Feeling well again at last, Katsushirō thanked Kodama deeply for
his great kindness. He was still unsteady on his feet, however, and so he found
himself still there when they greeted the New Year. Presently he made new friends in
the town, where he was admired for his unaffected honesty, and formed close ties
with Kodama and many others. Thereafter, he would call on Sasabe in the capital and
then return to stay with Kodama in Ōmi, and seven years passed like a dream.
In 1461 the struggle between the Hatakeyama brothers in the province of Kawachi
showed no sign of ending, and the turmoil approached the capital.18 What is more,
corpses piled up in the streets as an epidemic swept through the city in the spring.
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Thinking that a cosmic epoch must be coming to an end, the people lamented the
impermanence of all things.19 Katsushirō pondered his situation: “Reduced to this
pointless existence, how long should I drag out my life, and for what, lingering in this
distant land, depending on the generosity of people with whom I have no ties of
blood? It is my own faithless heart that has let me pass long years and months in a
field overgrown with the grass of forgetfulness, unmindful even of the fate of her I left
at home.20 Even if she is no longer of this world and has gone to the Land of the
Dead, I would seek out her remains and construct a burial mound.” Thus he related
his thoughts to those around him and, during a break in the rains of the Fifth Month,
said farewell. Traveling for more than ten days, he arrived at his village.
Although the sun had already sunk in the west and the rain clouds were so dark
that they seemed about to burst, he doubted he could lose his way, having lived for
so long in the village, and so he pushed through the fields of summer; but the jointed
bridge of old had fallen into the rapids, so that there could be no sound of a horse’s
hoofs;21 he could not find the old paths because the farmland had been abandoned to
grow wild, and the houses that used to stand there were gone. Scattered here and
there, a few remaining houses appeared to be inhabited, but they bore no
resemblance to those in former days. “Which is the house I lived in?” he wondered,
standing in confusion, when about forty yards away, he saw, by the light of stars
peeking through the clouds, a towering pine that had been riven by lightning. “The tree
that marks the eaves of my house!” he cried and joyfully moved forward. The house
was unchanged and appeared to be occupied, for lamplight glimmered through a gap
in the old door. “Does someone else live here now? Or is she still alive?” His heart
pounding, he approached the entrance and cleared his throat. Someone inside heard
immediately and asked, “Who is there?” He recognized his wife’s voice, though
greatly aged. Terrified that he might be dreaming, he said, “I have come back. How
strange that you should still be living here alone, unchanged, in this reed-choked
moor!“22 Recognizing his voice, she quickly opened the door. Her skin was dark with
grime, her eyes were sunken, and long strands of hair fell loose down her back. He
could not believe that she was the same person. Seeing her husband, she burst into
wordless tears.
Stunned, Katsushirō could say nothing for a time. Finally he spoke: “I would never
have let the years and months slip by had I thought that you were still living here like
this. One day years ago, when I was in the capital, I heard of fighting in Kamakura—
the shogun’s deputy had been defeated and taken refuge in Shimōsa. The Uesugi
were in eager pursuit, people said. The next day, I took my leave from Sasabe and,
at the beginning of the Eighth Month, left the capital. As I came along the Kiso road, I
was surrounded by a large band of robbers, who took my clothing and all my money.
I barely escaped with my life. Then the villagers said that travelers were being
stopped at new barriers on the Tōkaidō and Tōsandō.23 They also said that a general
had gone down from the capital the day before, joined forces with the Uesugi, and set
out for battle in Shimōsa. Our province had long since been razed by fire, and every
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inch trampled under horses’ hoofs, they said, and so I could only think that you had
been reduced to ashes and dust or had sunk into the sea. Returning to the capital, I
lived on the generosity of others for these seven years. Seized in recent days with
constant longing, I returned, hoping at least to find your remains, but I never dreamed
that you would still be living in this world. I wonder if you might not be the Cloud of
Shaman Hill or the Apparition in the Han Palace.“24 Thus he rambled on, tediously
repeating himself.
Drying her tears, his wife said, “After I bid you farewell, the world took a dreadful
turn, even before the arrival of the autumn I relied on,25 and the villagers abandoned
their houses and set out to sea or hid in the mountains. Most of the few who
remained had hearts of tigers or wolves and sought, I suppose, to take advantage of
me now that I was alone. They tempted me with clever words, but even if I had been
crushed like a piece of jade, I would not imitate the perfection of the tile, and so I
endured many bitter experiences. The brilliance of the Milky Way heralded the
autumn, but you did not return.26 I waited through the winter, I greeted the New Year,
and still there was no word. Now I wanted to go to you in the capital, but I knew that
a woman could not hope to pass the sealed barrier gates where even men were
turned away; and so, with the pine at the eaves, I waited vainly in this house, foxes
and owls my companions, until today.27 I am happy now that my long resentment has
been dispelled. No one else can know the resentment of one who dies of longing,
waiting for another to come.“28 With this, she began to sob again. “The night is short,”
he said, comforting her, and they lay down together.
He slept soundly, weary from his long journey and cooled through the night as the
paper in the window sipped the pine-breeze. When the sky brightened in the fifth
watch of night, he felt chilly, though still in the world of dreams, and groped for the
quilt that must have slipped off. A rustling sound wakened him. Feeling something cold
dripping on his face, he opened his eyes, thinking that rain was seeping in: the roof
had been torn off by the wind, and he could see the waning moon lingering dimly in
the sky. The house had lost its shutters. Reeds and plumed grasses grew tall through
gaps in the decaying floorboards, and the morning dew dripped from them, saturating
his sleeves. The walls were draped with ivy and arrowroot; the garden was buried in
creepers—even though fall had not come yet, the house was a wild autumn moor.29
And where, come to think of it, had his wife gone, who had been lying with him? She
was nowhere in sight. Perhaps this was the doing of a fox? But the house, though
dilapidated in the extreme, was certainly the one he used to live in: from the spacious
inner rooms to the rice-storehouse beyond, it still retained the form that he had
favored. Dumbfounded, he felt as though he had lost his footing; but then he
considered carefully: since the house had become the dwelling place of foxes and
raccoon-dogs—a wild moor—perhaps a spirit had appeared before him in the form of
his wife. Or had her ghost, longing for him, come back and communed with him? It
was just as he had feared. He could not even weep. “I alone am as I was before,” he
thought as he walked around.30 In the space that was her bedroom, someone had
taken up the floor, piled soil into a mound, and protected the mound from rain and
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dew. The ghost last night had come from here—the thought frightened him and also
made him long for her. In a receptacle for water offerings stood a stick with a
sharpened end, and to this was attached a weathered piece of Nasuno paper,31 the
writing faded and in places hard to make out, but certainly in his wife’s hand. Without
inscribing a dharma name or date, she had, in the form of a waka, movingly stated
her feelings at the end:
“Nevertheless, I thought, and so deceived
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I have lived on until today!“32
Realizing now for the first time that his wife was dead, he cried out and collapsed. It
added to his misery that he did not even know what year, what month and day, she
had met her end. Someone must know, he thought, and so, drying his tears, he
stepped outside. The sun had climbed high in the sky. He went first to the nearest
house and met the master, a man he had never seen before. On the contrary, the
man asked him what province he had come from. Katsushirō addressed him
respectfully: “I was the master of the house next door, but to make my living I spent
seven years in the capital. When I came back last night, the house had fallen into
ruins and no one was living there. Apparently my wife has left this world, for I found a
burial mound, but there is no date, which makes my grief all the more intense. If you
know, sir, please tell me.” The man said, “A sad story indeed. I came to live here only
about one year ago and know nothing of the time when she was living there. It would
seem that she lost her life long before that. All the people who used to live in this
village fled when the fighting began; most of those who live here now moved in from
somewhere else. There is one old man who seems to have lived here for a long time.
Occasionally he goes to that house and performs a service to comfort the spirit of the
departed. This old man must know the date.” Katsushirō said, “And where does the
old man live?” The man told him, “He owns a field thickly planted with hemp, about
two hundred yards from here, toward the beach, and there he lives in a small hut.”
Rejoicing, Katsushirō went to the house, where he found an old man of about seventy,
terribly bent at the waist, sitting in front of a hearth on a round, wicker cushion and
sipping tea. Recognizing Katsushirō, the old man said, “Why have you come back so
late, my boy?” Katsushirō saw that he was the old man called Uruma, who had lived
in the village for a long time.
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“Leaning on his staff, he led the way.”
Katsushirō congratulated the old man on his longevity and then related everything in
detail, from going to the capital and remaining there against his true desires, to the
strange events of the night before, and expressed his deep gratitude to the old man
for raising a burial mound and performing services there. He could not stop his tears.
The old man said, “After you went far away, soldiers began to brandish shields and
halberds in the summer; the villagers ran off; the young were conscripted; and, as a
result, the mulberry fields turned quickly into grasslands for foxes and rabbits.33 Only
your virtuous wife, honoring your pledge to return in the fall, would not leave home. I,
too, stayed inside and hid, because my legs had grown weak and I found it hard to
walk two hundred yards. I have seen many things in my years, but I was deeply
moved by the courage of that young woman, even when the land had become the
home of tree spirits and other ghastly monsters.34 Autumn passed, the New Year
came, and on the tenth day of the Eighth Month of that year she departed. In my pity
for her, I carried soil with my own hands, buried the coffin, and, using as a grave
marker the brush marks she left at the end, performed a humble service with
offerings of water; but I could not inscribe the date, not knowing how to write, and I
had no way to seek a posthumous name, as the temple is far away. Five years have
passed. Hearing your story now, I am sure that the ghost of your virtuous wife came
and told you of her long-held resentment. Go there again and carefully perform a
memorial service.” Leaning on his staff, he led the way. Together they prostrated
themselves before the mound, raised their voices in lamentation, and passed the night
invoking the Buddha’s name.
Because they could not sleep, the old man told a story: “Long, long ago, even
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before my grandfather’s grandfather was born, there lived in this village a beautiful
girl named Tegona of Mama.35 Since her family was poor, she wore a hempen robe
with a blue collar; her hair was uncombed, and she wore no shoes; but with a face
like the full moon and a smile like a lovely blossom, she surpassed the fine ladies in
the capital, wrapped in their silk brocades woven with threads of gold. Men in the
village, of course, and even officials from the capital and men in the next province, all
came courting and longed for her. This caused great pain for Tegona, who sank deep
in thought and, the better to requite the love of many men, threw herself into the
waves of the inlet here. People in ancient times sang of her in their poems and
passed down her story as an example of the sadness of the world. When I was a
child, my mother told the story charmingly, and I found it very moving; but how much
sadder is the heart of this departed one than the young heart of Tegona of old!” He
wept as he spoke, for the aged cannot control their tears. Katsushirō’s grief needs no
description. Hearing this tale, he expressed his feelings in the clumsy words of a
rustic:
“Tegona of Mama, in the distant past—
this much they must have longed for her, Tegona of Mama.”
It can be said that an inability to express even a fragment of one’s thoughts is more
moving than the feelings of one skilled with words.
This is a tale passed down by merchants who traveled often to that province and
heard the story there.
NOTES
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1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Murasaki Shikibu, Genji monogatari, ed. Yamagishi Tokuhei, Nihon koten bungaku taikei, vol. 14 (Tokyo:
Iwanami, 1958), p. 41.
Yoshida Kenkō, Essays in Idleness: The “Tsurezuregusa” of Kenkō, trans. Donald Keene (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1967), pp. 117–118.
George Sansom provides a good summary of the “absurd situation” in A History of Japan, vol. 2, 1334–1615
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1961), p. 241.
Sasabe was a village northwest of Kyoto, later incorporated into the city of Fukuchiyama; Ashikaga, in
Ibaraki Prefecture, north of Tokyo, was noted for its dyed silk.
An allusion to an anonymous, alternative version of Man’yōshū, no. 2985:
Though I know not how I will fare in the [catalpa bow] future, my heart is with you.
6.
An allusion to a poem by Sosei, who, having taken holy vows, wonders where to live away from society:
Where shall I loathe this world?
Whether in fields or in mountains my heart will surely wander. (Kokinshū, no. 947)
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7.
An allusion to a poem by Shirome: “Composed when parting from Minamoto no Sane at Yamazaki, as he
set out for the hot springs of Tsukushi”:
If only life obeyed the wishes of our hearts
what pain would we feel in our partings? (Kokinshū, no. 387)
8.
This sentence contains a pun on kaeru, which means both “to return” and “to turn over.” Arrowroot, being
one of the “seven autumn grasses,” signifies autumn.
9. “roosters crow” (tori ga naku): a pillow-word for Azuma, the East Country, an old name for the region now
called Kantō, or greater Tokyo. The image is further enriched by the truism that roosters crow at dawn and
the fact that the word “Azuma” is often written with characters signifying “my wife.”
10. “lands east of the barrier”: refers to the eight provinces to the east of the barrier station at Hakone: Sagami,
Musashi, Awa, Kazusa, Shimōsa, Hitachi, Shimotsuke, and Kōzuke (corresponding to the modern Kantō
prefectures of Kanagawa, Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, Ibaraki, Tochigi, and Gumma).
11. “decorated cock of Meeting Hill”: cocks decorated with mulberry-cloth ribbons were occasionally sent to the
barrier stations around Kyoto, including the Ōsaka Barrier, as part of a purification ritual. On the Ōsaka
Barrier, see the introduction to “Shiramine.” Since “Ōsaka” (the barrier, not the city) means “Meeting Hill,”
poets frequently used the name in a double sense, as in this anonymous poem:
Does the decorated cock of Meeting Hill, like me,
long for someone, and that is why we cry in vain? (Kokinshū, no. 536)
and in a poem by Kan’in: “Sent to the Middle Counselor Lord Minamoto no Noboru, when he was ViceGovernor of Ōmi”:
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If only I were the decorated cock of Meeting Hill,
crying, I could watch you come and go. (Kokinshū, no. 740)
12. “bestowed the flag on”: in the autumn of 1455, the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa appointed Tsuneyori (1401–
1494), a leading poet and commander, to subdue the disloyal Shigeuji and his supporters.
13. Shimotsuke corresponds to the modern Tochigi Prefecture; Mino Province, to Gifu Prefecture.
“domain of Shimōsa”: Akinari mistakenly wrote “Shimotsuke” instead of Shimōsa.
“Eight Provinces”: see note 10.
14. Yoshimasa’s reign (1443–1490) was a golden age in culture, as the shogun led the way in promoting garden
design, architecture, nō theater, and other arts. His Ginkaku (Silver Pavilion) in Kyoto, with its splendid
garden, is the most famous relic of the period.
15. An allusion to a poem by Ki no Tsurayuki: “Composed for a person who was going to Michinokuni”:
Even far away where white clouds pile in myriad layers
let not your heart grow distant from him who thinks of you. (Kokinshū, no. 380)
16. Misaka in Kiso is an old name for Magome Pass, on the Nakasendō (highway through the mountains
between Kyoto and Edo), at the border of Gifu and Nagano Prefectures.
17. Musa is now part of the city of Ōmi Hachiman, Shiga Prefecture, on the shore of Lake Biwa, about twenty
miles northeast of Kyoto.
18. The Hatakeyama brothers Masanaga and Yoshinari fought for some years over which should hold the office
of shogun’s deputy (kanrei). Their dispute was one of several that led to the infamous Ōnin War (1467–
1477), which devastated the capital. Kawachi corresponds to the eastern part of the modern Ōsaka
Prefecture, just southwest of Kyoto.
19. “cosmic epoch” (kō): kalpa, a Sanskrit word for an almost unimaginably long period of time. Here the
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reference is to the second kalpa, during which there is life on earth. Epidemics and famines occurred
throughout Japan in the 1450s. This sentence echoes Kamo no Chōmei’s description of Kyoto in 1182, in
Hōjōki (An Account of a Ten-Foot-Square Hut, 1212).
20. “grass of forgetfulness” (wasuregusa): a kind of daylily (Hemerocallis aurantiaca), mentioned in section 100
of Tales of Ise: “Long ago, as a man was passing by the Kōrōden, a high-ranking lady sent a message out
to him, saying, Do you refer to the grass of forgetfulness as grass of remembrance? to which he replied
with a poem:
This may look to be a field overgrown with grass of forgetfulness,
but it is remembrance, and I shall continue to depend on you.”
21. An allusion to an anonymous poem:
I wish for a horse whose hoofs would make no sound.
Across the jointed bridge of Mama in Katsushika would I always go to her. (Man’yõshū, no. 3387)
22. This paragraph contains several echoes of the “Yomogiu” (The Wormwood Patch) chapter of The Tale of
Genji, in which the Hitachi Princess has waited for ten years for another visit from Genji (Murasaki Shikibu,
Genji monogatari, NKBT, vol. 15, pp. 155–160). Her mansion has fallen into ruin, most of her servants have
left, and she is almost without resources, when Genji happens to notice her dilapidated estate. He sends in
his attendant, Koremitsu, to learn whether the princess still lives there. Koremitsu first lets his presence be
known by clearing his throat, in response to which an aged voice asks, “Who is there? Who are you?” He
recognizes the voice, that of an attendant. After identifying himself, he says, “If the princess has not
changed, then my lord’s desire to visit her, too, has not ceased.” The aged voice replies, “If my lady had
changed, would she still be living in this reed-choked moor [asaji ga hara]?” When Genji finally meets the
princess again, he composes a waka for her:
Copyright © 2008. Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
I found it hard to ignore the waves of wisteria blooms
because the pine they drape on is the mark of your waiting house.
23. Kiso road refers to the section of the Nakasendō between Nakatsugawa (Gifu Prefecture) and Shiojiri
(Nagano Prefecture). The Tōkaidō ran along the Pacific coast between Kyoto and Edo; the Tōsandō,
through the mountains between Kyoto and the northern tip of Honshū.
24. “Cloud of Shaman Hill”: refers to a story in the Wenxuan (Anthology of Writing, sixth century), edited by Xiao
Tong, in which King Xiang of Chu dreams that he has slept with a woman at Shaman Hill (Wushan, in
Sichuan) who turns out to have been a cloud (Sun Yü, “The Kao T’ang Fu,” in The Temple and Other
Poems, trans. Arthur Waley [New York: Knopf, 1923], pp. 65–72).
“Apparition in the Han Palace”: derives from a story in the Han shu (History of the Former Han Dynasty),
by Ban Gu (32–62), in which the Han emperor Wu, grieving the death of a beloved lady, commands a
sorcerer to summon her spirit.
Both tales bespeak a confusion of illusion and reality.
25. “autumn I relied on” (tanomu no aki): a pun on tanomu no hi (the day relied upon / the day of the fruits of the
field), a harvest and gift-exchanging festival on the first day of the Eighth Month. Compare a poem by the
Sesshō Daijōdaijin: “On the returning geese”:
Do not forget, oh geese who rise from the sheltering marsh by the fields,
the wind on the rice leaves in the evening of autumn. (Shinkokinshū, no. 61)
26. The Milky Way, which brightens as the air becomes less humid in the autumn, is associated with the
Tanabata festival, the seventh night of the Seventh Month, the only night when, in Sino-Japanese legend, the
Oxherd (the star Altair) may cross the River of Heaven (the Milky Way) to meet his love, the Weaver Maid
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(the star Vega).
27. Miyagi employs the usual pun on matsu, which means both “pine tree” and “to wait.” The pine also echoes
the tree that leads Katsushirō to his house, and Genji to the mansion of the Hitachi Princess, where he finds
foxes and owls.
28. An allusion to a poem by Taira no Kanemori:
If unknown to him I die of longing while I wait for him to come,
for what shall I say I have exchanged my life? (Goshūishū, no. 656)
29. An allusion to a poem by Priest Henjō:
The house is ruined, the people are grown old—
garden and brushwood-fence have both become a wild autumn moor. (Kokinshū, no. 248)
30. An allusion to a poem by Ariwara no Narihira:
The moon is not that moon nor the spring the spring of old,
and I alone am as I was before. (Tales of Ise, sec. 4; Kokinshū, no. 747)
Copyright © 2008. Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
31. Nasuno, in Shimotsuke Province (Tochigi Prefecture), produced a thick, sturdy paper of high quality.
32. Miyagi’s waka is borrowed from the collection of the courtier and poet Fujiwara no Atsutada (905?–943):
Gon Chūnagon Atsutada kyō shū, in Hanawa Hokiichi, comp., Gunsho ruijū (Classified Collection of Various
Books) (1819), vol. 9, no. 235.
33. The proverb Sōden henjite sōkai to naru (mulberry fields [sōden] change into blue seas [sōkai]) refers to the
world’s mutability.
34. “home of tree spirits and other ghastly monsters”: another echo of the mansion of the Hitachi Princess in
“The Wormwood Patch” chapter of The Tale of Genji.
35. The legend of Tekona (or Tegona, the pronunciation that Akinari preferred) of Mama is told in the Man’yõshū,
nos. 431–433, 1807–1808. The old man’s narrative is based on a long poem by Takahashi Mushimaro, “Of
the Maiden of Mama of Katsushika” (Man’yõshū, no. 1807). See The Manyōshū: The Nippon Gakujutsu
Shinkōkai Translation of One Thousand Poems (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), pp. 223–224.
“riding on a drifting log”: signifies rootlessness and anxiety, as in the “Matsukaze” (The Wind in the Pines) chapter of
The Tale of Genji (Murasaki Shikibu, Genji monogatari, ed. Yamagishi Tokuhei, Nihon koten bungaku taikei, vol. 14
[Tokyo: Iwanami, 1958], p. 199):
How many autumns have come and gone as I was dwelling here—why now
should I return, riding on a drifting log?
Zhoulu: in the present Hebei Province, China, the scene of an ancient battle involving the legendary Yellow Emperor.
“crushed … tile”: that is, “I would not prolong my life [the perfect tile] by being unfaithful, even though death [the
crushed jade] might be the consequence.”
“fifth watch”: the time between sunset and sunrise was divided into five equal watches of about two hours each. The
fifth watch corresponded roughly to the period from 4:00 A.M. until daybreak.
“dharma name” (hōmyō or kaimyō): a posthumous name, usually composed by a Buddhist priest and inscribed on
a gravestone with the date of death.
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