The Kagero Diary

Michigan Monographs in Japanese Studies

Number 19

Center for Japanese Studies

The University of Michigan
 The Kagero Diary
A Woman's Autobiographical Text
from Tenth-Century Japan

Translated with an Introduction and Notes

by Sonja Arntzen

Center for Japanese Studies

The University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, 1997
Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program.

© 1997 The Regents of the University of Michigan

Published by the Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 108 Lane Hall,
204 S. State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1290

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Division

Michitsuna no Haha, ca. 935-995.

[Kagero nikki. English]
The Kagero diary : a woman's autobiographical text from tenth-century Japan /
translated with an introduction and notes by Sonja Arntzen.
xv, 415 p. 23.5 cm. — (Michigan monograph series in Japanese studies; no. 19)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-939512-80-7 (cloth: alk. paper). — ISBN 0-939512-81-5 (paper: alk. paper)
1. Michitsuna no Haha—ca. 935-995—Diaries. 2. Authors, Japanese—Heian period,
794-1185—Diaries. I. Arntzen, Sonja, 1945-. II. Title. III. Series.
PL789.F8
895.6'813—dc21
[B] 97-15880
CIP
Jacket and cover illustration: Tale of Genji Screen (detail), Japanese, Edo period, early 17th
century. One of a pair of six-panel screens, ink, colors, and gold on paper. Asian Art Museum
of San Francisco, The Avery Brundage Collection (1991.65.1).

Jacket and cover design: Seiko Semones

This publication meets the ANSI/NISO Standards for Permanence of Paper for Publications
and Documents in Libraries and Archives (Z39.48—1992).

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-939512-80-5 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-0-939512-81-2 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-472-12745-0 (ebook)
ISBN 978-0-472-90140-1 (open access)

The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons

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License: [Link]
 Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Preface ix
Introduction 1

The Kagero Diary

Book One 53
Book Two 165
Book Three 273
The Poetry of Michitsuna's Mother 381
Bibliography 405
Index 409
 Illustrations

Example of calligraphy in "woman's hand" by the contem-

porary Japanese calligrapher Shiko Kataoka. 108
Example of calligraphy in "man's hand" by the contem-
porary Japanese calligrapher Shiko Kataoka. 109
Pampas grass, susuki. 130
Heartvine, afuhi/aoi. 131
Pathway at Fushimi Inari Shrine. 138
Uppermost shrine at Fushimi Inari. 139
Prayer tags tied on sakaki leaves. 140
Tree in a Shinto shrine precinct. 141
Uji River. 154
Ox-drawn carriage. 155
Ox-drawn carriage (close-up). 212
Court slippers. 213
White horse presented as an offering. 288
Kiyomizu Temple. 289
Procession entering Kamo Shrine. 366
Man in Heian costume leading a horse. 367
Kamo Festival musicians. 368
Kamo Festival musicians during a break in the proceedings. 369

All photos by the author, Sonja Arntzen.

 Preface

The catalyst for the project to create a new translation of the Kagero Diary
came from my attending a conference at the University of Calgary in
1986, entitled, "The Effect of the Feminist Approach on Research Meth-
odologies." That conference opened up new fields of vision for me. In a
word, what I saw was the possibility in exploring difference. I began to
read Virgina Woolf, starting with A Room of One's Own, and became in-
trigued with the question of whether there might be such a thing as a
woman's voice, language, and syntax. If such a distinction could be
drawn, then classical Japanese literature of the Heian period (794-1185),
with its large number of foundational works by women, should be of
great interest to the world. Moreover, when I was reading Woolf, I had
an eerie sense that she was writing English in a style that had some affin-
ity with the prose style shaped by classical Japanese women authors. At
about the same time, I happened to hear the contemporary Canadian
author, Daphne Marlatt, reading exceprts from her recently completed
autobiographical novel, Ana Historic, and was even more struck by how
the style of this author, who is very consciously exploring a woman's
voice, resonated with what I knew of classical Japanese women's writing.
Further reading brought awareness of questions that were en-
gaging feminist critics, such as the construction of women's "self" in lit-
erature and the link between women writers and the autobiographical
mode. Here again, Japanese classical literature of the Heian period is fer-
tile material for study since it contains many autobiographical texts by
women. As I read through books examining the relation between women
and autobiography, I wondered why, except for a chapter by Richard
Bowring in Domna Stanton's The Female Autograph, the Japanese example
was virtually unmentioned.
Intrigued to see whether the sense of similarity between the style
of some modern feminist writers and that of Heian Japanese women
would hold up under closer scrutiny, I decided to give a close reading to
 PREFACE

the original of one of the Heian women's diaries, and I picked the Kagero
Diary as a place to start. I had not liked the text when I had read it many
years ago in English translation, mainly because I thought the author
complained too much, but I was aware nonetheless how extraordinary a
text it was for its candor and acuteness of psychological observation. It
seemed "modern" even though that term is so difficult to define. Con-
tact with the original validated my initial perception of the affinity in
women's prose styles across language and time and revealed a text of
great beauty and complexity. I realized then that while The Gossamer Years,
Edward Seidensticker's deft and clear translation of Kagero nikki, con-
veyed the content of the text, it gave little sense of the style, and perhaps
the style was critical. In the style was the material of interest to those engag-
ing in questions of the construction of the female self in literature, the issue
of truth and fiction in autobiography, and the distinctiveness of woman's
voice and language in literature. A new translation seemed essential.
I have broken with the long and distinguished tradition of trans-
lating the kagero of the diary title as "gossamer." Arthur Waley began the
tradition by entitling his partial translation of Kagero nikki the "Gossa-
mer Diary" when he appended it to the second volume of his translation
of the Tale ofGenji (The Sacred Tree [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1926]). Ed-
ward Seidensticker followed Waley's lead on the reasonable justification
that Waley's "title makes up in poetic worth for what it lacks philologi-
cally" (The Gossamer Years, p. 8) Recently, Helen McCullough has followed
suit with the "Gossamer Journal" as the title for her translation of book
one included in her Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology (Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 1990). So why do I now fly in the face of a tradition estab-
lished by those in the field whom I revere? It is just that I want to retain
the complexity of the double meaning of kagero. It means both "mayfly"
and "the shimmering of heat waves" and thus stands for both the ephem-
erality of a life and its insubstantiality. The only way to keep the double
meaning was to keep the word in Japanese and explain the complexity
with a note. Clearly I cannot resort to this strategy often. If I did, I might
as well give up translating entirely and take up a mission instead to teach
the rest of the world classical Japanese. In this one instance, however, I
trust it may be allowed, and should a non-Japanese reader want to speak
about the text to a Japanese person, at least the title will be mutually
understood.
As I worked on this translation, my sense of whom I wanted to
share the translation with grew beyond specialists in the field of classi-
cal Japanese literature and critics interested in women's writing to in-
clude my friends, relatives, neighbors, and anyone interested in Japa-
nese culture or literature in general. This has had ramifications on the
 PREFACE

process of the translation. Feeling a musical orality in the original, I

wanted to have the translation sound well when read aloud. Thus, even
at the early stages, I have read passages aloud to anyone who would
listen. Somehow, due to this process, it has become a translation, I am
told, that with its long, run-on sentences looks a little formidable on the
page but makes sense when read aloud. Someone at a recent conference
where I presented some of the translation even suggested publishing the
text with an accompanying tape of it being read. I have not done that,
but if, from time to time, readers find that the line of thought in a pas-
sage seems hard to follow, I would recommend trying to read it aloud.
When I read passages to listeners, I found myself stopping here
and there to supply information and interpretive comments as a way of
opening up the listener's appreciation. One of my early listeners, Jane
Munro, said, "You should model the notes after the way you are speak-
ing to me right now. They should be a voice in conversation with the
reader." This is what led to the current format of the work with the text
on the right- and notes on the left-hand page. The reader will find that
the text and the notes are two different worlds. The text unfolds in psy-
chological time, slipping between past and present, moving by associa-
tion from memory to thought to conversation. Emotional states are given
more weight and attention than events. The text is disjunctive in the sense
that the narrative is constantly being interrupted by poems, the quota-
tion of voices of others, and the intrusion of the author's own thoughts
as bits of interior conversation. The notes exist in a more solid, if ulti-
mately equally illusory, world of linear time in which chonology is clari-
fied and names and dates ground the reader. The notes flesh out events
only alluded to in the text and provide background wherever possible
for the figures the author mentions so fleetingly. Fragments in the text
are knit together in the notes. The intention is for the reader's eye to be
able to float across to the left, acquire some grounding, perhaps contem-
plate a little, and then slide back into the text. The presence of the notes
makes the reading experience a little more disjunctive than if they were
not there, but as I mentioned above, the Kagero Diary can be perceived as
already a disjunctive text, and thus breaking up the reading may even
suit it.
A note about some technical matters is in order. Japanese names
are given in Japanese order, that is, surname first. Except for the years
mentioned in the notes and the introduction, dates are not converted to
the Western calendar. So, for example, the designation "fifth month" re-
fers to the month in the old lunar calendar. Since the lunar New Year
generally began between our January twenty-fifth and February twenty-
fifth, one gets the seasons right if one thinks of the Japanese months as
xi
 PREFACE

about one month later than the number of the month would suggest.
Thus, the fifth month is more like June.
Explanation is also needed for the romanization system used to
transcribe the originals of the poems. Romanization of classical Japanese
presents special problems because the sound values for certain graphs of
the Japanese syllabary and pronunciation patterns in general have
changed over time. The greatest sound change has happened in the ha
line, that is, the five syllables {i £> *i> ^v £5 for which the modern
pronunciation is ha, hi,fu, he, ho. Furthermore, there seems to have been
a distinction in classical Japanese between those voiced sounds derived
from (again in their modern pronunciation) O tsu and ~f" su, which in
modern kana usage are pronounced the same and generally rendered
with a single graph, ~f~ zu, but if one wanted to make the distinction,
they would be better rendered as dzu and zu. With romanizing classical
Japanese texts, one has three choices these days. The first one, which has
been the conventional practice, is to transpose the classical text into a
modern Japanese reading; so, for example, the word for the plant heart-
vine, written in the classical language as fojp&h afuhi, would be
romanized in terms of the word's pronunciation in modern Japanese, aoi.
The second is to use a romanization system based on the attempts of lin-
guistic scholars to reconstruct the sound of Heian Japanese; thus, heart-
vine becomes aFuFi, in which the capital F stands for a conjectural con-
struct of an initial sound somewhere between/and h. The third method,
which I first noticed in the works of Joshua Mostow, is to literally tran-
scribe the graphs in terms of the sound values of the modern language as
expressed in the Hepburn romanization system, which produces for heart-
vine, afuhi. This struck me as a good if not perfect compromise solution
to the problems of the first two methods, which I would summarize as
follows. The first method creates the illusion that there is no difference
in sound between the classical and the modern language. Moreover, the
puns that are a critical part of Heian poetics are obscured. For example,
the word for "love and longing" in the classical language, omohi, has em-
bedded in it a pun on hi "fire/' which is used to poignant effect in many
poems. In the transposition to modern pronunciation, omoi, that pun is
effaced. In the reconstruction method, where omohi becomes omoFi, the
capital F signals an ultimately unknowable sound. Whenever I read omoFi,
I find myself transposing it back to omohi, whereas having gotten used to
reading omohi, I do not find myself transposing back to omoi. Recogniz-
ing that the hi sound I am using is not the sound used in the Heian pe-
riod, I can still give voice to something that is different from modern
Japanese. The third method, then, seems to offer recognition of differ-
ence and makes visible the puns based on older pronunciation without
 PREFACE

taking the romanization out of the realm of pronunciation. Accordingly,

this is the romanization system that I have used to romanize the poems;
the standard modern romanization is used for peoples names, terms, and
so on in the introduction and notes. So, for example, the title of this work
will be the Kagero Diary as opposed to the Kagerofu Diary, which would
be the historical spelling, and aside from the context of talking about
usage in a particular poem, the plant, heartvine, will be cited as aoi.
The text I have followed for this translation is that of the Nihon
koten bungaku zenshil, vol. 9 (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1973), with notes and
commentary by Kimura Masanori and Imuta Tsunehisa. In abbreviation,
since there will be frequent citation, these will become the Zenshil text
and Zenshil commentators. There are no manuscripts for the Kagero Di-
ary that predate the seventeenth century, and it is generally lamented
that all extant manuscripts are flawed by many lacunae and copyist's
errors. The gaps, while regrettable, can simply be left as blanks. How-
ever, where the text is so corrupt as to be incomprehensible and the col-
lation of texts does not resolve the problem, the various commentators
over the years have suggested corrections, which come from their own
interpretative framework. Where different opinions as to the emenda-
tion of texts result in alternate interpretations, my policy has been to fol-
low the Zenshil interpretation unless I felt strongly that an alternate one
was better. When I do follow an alternate interpretation, it will be noted.
My source for alternate interpretations came mainly from the
monumental work by Uemura Etsuko, the Kagero nikki kaishaku taisei,
(Compendium of Interpretations of the Kagero Diary). It contains all the
pertinent interpretations for every line of the text starting from the work
of Keichu, a seventeenth-century scholar, up to the most recent commen-
taries, including the joint commentary produced as a series of articles by
Akiyama Ken, Kimura Masanori, and Uemura Etsuko over a nine-year
period from 1962-71, which formed a kind of foundation for the work.
Since there will be frequent citation of Kagero nikki kaishaku taisei in the
notes, it will be abbreviated to Taisei. Lastly, I consulted very closely the
interpretive commentary to the Kagero Diary provided by Sumiko Shino-
zuka in a series of short monthly aritcles, entitled Kagero nikki noto (Kagero
Diary Notes), over a fourteen-year period from 1977 to 1991 for the jour-
nal, Keisei, which is devoted to Japanese tanka* poetry. Professor Shino-
zuka of Kyoritsu Women's University is a tanka poet herself as well as a
scholar of classical and comparative literature. I found her interpreta-
tions most illuminating, and citations of her work will accordingly occur

*Tanka is the thirty-one-syllable form of poetry that has a tradition going back to the eighth
century in Japan. In the classical context, it is more often referred to as waka.
 PREFACE

frequently. She has just recently compiled and edited her "Notes" into a
single volume, Kagero nikki no kokoro to hydgen (Tokyo: Benseisha, 1995).
The Kagero nikki text is sprinkled with allusions to poetry by other
authors. Most of the allusions are to Kokinshil, which is available in many
Japanese editions, but the poem numbers are the same in all editions.
Therefore, I have cited Kokinshil poems by number alone. As for English
translations of Kokinshil poems, I have generally used those of Laurel
Rasplica Rodd {Kokinshil [Princeton University Press, 1984]). When no
translation is noted, then the translation is my own. For allusions to po-
etry outside Kokinshil, when poems come from texts that are available in
the the major collections of classical works like Iwanami's Nihon koten
bungaku taikei, I have cited them in one of those collections. However,
when the allusion is to a poem from a text for which no commonly avail-
able modern edition exists, such as the Kokin rokujo, I cited the Zenshil
text of Kagero nikki, which includes in its commentary all the original
texts for alluded poems.
When one gets to the end of a project like this one, the sense of
gratitude toward all those who have contributed to it is quite overwhelm-
ing. I will begin by thanking the Japan Foundation for the senior fellow-
ship that enabled me to spend one full year working on this translation
project with the guidance of Akiyama Ken on the beautiful campus of
Tokyo Women's University. Professor Akiyama was unfailingly patient
with my questions, so thorough and insightful in his answers, and ever
generous with his time. Sumiko Shinozuka welcomed me as a kindred
spirit, provided me with a compete set of copies of her articles for Keisei,
and spent hours in coffee shops with me responding to questions and
engaging in animated discussion. She also read the entire translation in
draft form and gave valuable suggestions. Another scholar who was gen-
erous with his time and wisdom was Kondo Jun'ichiro of Hokkaido Uni-
versity. Professor Kondo passed away suddenly in the autumn of 1995,
and I am one of the many who miss him sorely. Then there are the gener-
ous souls who either read or listened to the manuscript at various stages
and contributed many insights: Ann Altmann, Bob Amussen, Pamela
Asquith, Valerie Arntzen, Rob Croach, Charmian Johnson, Maya Koizumi,
Beverly Maize, Joshua Mostow, Jane Munro, Valerie McDonnel, Catherine
Nelson-McDermott, Manjot Randhawa, Ingrid Takahashi, Rob and Mar-
guerite Todd, and my daughter, Samara Van Nostrand. Several classes of
students in my Classical Japanese Women's Literature course worked with
drafts of the translation and helped shape its final form; I thank them all.
Finally, I want to acknowledge my editor, Bruce Willoughby, who showed
an early interest in this project and accepted right from the start the idea
of placing the notes next to the text. With his patience and fine attention
 PREFACE

to detail, he has contributed enormously to the final form of this work.

As the snow drifts down in this land where winter lasts forever, I am
moved by how much I owe to others.

Sonja Arntzen
Edmonton, March 1997
 Introduction
Reclaiming an Ancestress

"For we think back through our mothers if we are women."

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own1

It is just that in the course of living, lying down, getting up,

dawn to dusk, when she looks at the odds and ends of the old
tales, of which there are so many, they are just so much fantasy,
that she thinks perhaps if she were to make a record of a life
like her own, being really nobody, it might actually be novel,
and could even serve to answer, should anyone ask, what is it
like, the life of a woman married to a highly placed man, yet the
events of the months and years gone by are vague, places where
I have just left it at that are indeed many.

With these few lines of remarkable self-awareness, the author of this di-
ary, a woman of a thousand years ago known to us only as Michitsuna's
Mother (936-95?), declares her purpose in writing about her life. Her text
is part of a corpus of distinguished literary texts by women in the Heian
period (794-1185). The texts of this corpus, including The Tale of Genji,
Izumi Shikibu Diary, Murasaki Shikibu Diary, The Pillow Book ofSei Shona-
gon, and Sarashina Diary,2 established the foundation for classical Japa-

1. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (London: Grafton Books, 1977), 72-73.
2. Edward Seidensticker, trans., The Tale of Genji (New York: Knopf, 1976), or the transla-
tion by Arthur Waley, The Tale of Genji: A Novel in Six Parts by Lady Murasaki (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1935); Edwin A. Cranston, trans., The Izumi Shikibu Diary: A Ro-
mance of the Heian Court (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), or the transla-
tion by Earl Miner in his Japanese Poetic Diaries (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1969); Richard Bowring, trans., Murasaki Shikibu, Her Diary and Poetic Memoirs:
A Translation and Study (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); Ivan Morris, trans.,
The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967); Ivan
Morris, trans., As / Crossed a Bridge of Dreams: Recollections of a Woman in Eleventh
Century Japan [Sarashina nikki] (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1971).

1
 INTRODUCTION

nese prose. That the writing of women played such an important role in
the creation of a national literary tradition is certainly an anomaly in world
literary history. Kagero Diary is one of the first of these foundation texts
by women and therefore deserves special interest as a pioneering work.
Moreover, it is fascinating how relevant this text is to issues of women's
writing in a contemporary global context.
Examined closely, there are many things in the diary's opening
statement to catch the attention of someone attuned to contemporary liter-
ary discussions about the nature of autobiography and the possibility of a
female voice in literature. One of the first things one notices is that the
author sets out to record her own life as a sort of antiromance. She makes
reference to all the old tales (in Japanese, monogatari) that "are just so
much fantasy." The age this author lived in is now known as the age of
monogatari, "tale" or "romance" literature.3 Most of the monogatari extant
from this period—with the great Tale of Genji at the top of the list—
actually date from the generation after Michitsuna's Mother, that is, from
about 1000 to the end of the twelfth century. However, reading back through
later tales, it is evident that some of the tales Michitsuna's Mother likely
had in mind were works in which men and women fell in love and lived
happily ever after, whereas her own story as told in this diary could be
subtitled, "I married the prince and we didn't live happily ever after." In
that sense, she is writing about a "real" life.
It is noteworthy in the context of world literary history that this
author should consider her life worth writing about at all. A woman's
personal life, whether in fiction or writing of the self, does not become a
topic worthy of attention in world literature elsewhere until very recently
indeed. Her urge to record her life does not appear to stem from a percep-
tion that her life was extraordinary or that she played some important role
in society. She describes herself both as "married to a highly placed man"
and as "being really nobody." She was indeed a member of a small aristoc-
racy; the narrowness of its parameters will become apparent as one reads
this diary, if only because almost all the people she mentions are related
to one another. Her husband belonged to the most powerful branch of the
Fujiwara family and had a brilliant political career. She herself, however,
came from the provincial governors' class, which had little social prestige.
(More details about the provincial governors' class will be provided in the
next section.) Moreover, if, as is generally supposed, she started setting
down this account of her life around 971 when her marriage was ap-
proaching its crisis, she would have been acutely aware of the obscurity
awaiting her after the dissolution of her marriage. Her life was undistin-

3. Akiyama Ken, Ochojoryu bungaku nosekai (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1972), 209.

2
 INTRODUCTION

guished as she judged it by the standards of her own world, which makes
her will to record it all the more remarkable.
It has been noted by more than one scholar of the text that the
Kagero Diary's author contributed a realistic mode of writing to Japanese
prose. Edward Seidensticker, who did the first complete English transla-
tion of the text, says of it, "It is the first attempt in Japanese literature . . .
to capture on paper, without evasion or idealization, the elements of a real
social situation."4 However, in struggling to write against romance, she
was nonetheless caught in it. Rachel Brownstein, in her study on the fas-
cination of the heroine for women readers of the English novel, makes an
observation that also casts light on the situation of the author of the Kagero
Diary:
The history of both women and fiction has been influenced by
the fact that the self has been identified, in novels, with the
feminine. The idea of becoming a heroine marries the female
protagonist to the marriage plot, and it marries the woman who
reads to fiction.5

Fictional narrative in the Kagero Diary author's period, extrapolating from

later examples like The Tale o/Genji, was just as concerned with the "mar-
riage plot" or the "romance story" as the English novels of Jane Austen or
the Bronte sisters. In addition to "romantic fiction," there was also a liter-
ary tradition of love poetry that married women to an imagined world of
romance. That world of romance had a powerful pull for the Kagero Diary
author. Despite her apparent intention to write against that tradition, the
episodes she chooses to narrate from her life are often those moments
when her marriage lived up to the romantic ideal. The self the author
constructed in this diary was inextricably mixed with the notion of a ro-
mantic heroine. Thus, this text too can be examined just as fruitfully as the
novels of the grand tradition in English literature to provide insight into
the question of "how the self and self-consciousness are mutually and
problematically involved, and involved in literary forms and language."6
Another noteworthy aspect of the diarist's opening passage is that
she equates writing about her life with writing about her marriage. Is it not
fascinating that one of the earliest self-writings in the world by a woman
should have a relationship at its core? Estelle Jelinek, in her study The
Tradition of Women's Autobiography from Antiquity to the Present, states,

4. Edward Seidensticker, The Gossamer Years: The Diary of a Noblewoman of Heian Japan
[Kagero Nikki] (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1964 [1985 reprint]), 14.
5. Rachel M. Brownstein, Becoming a Heroine: Reading About Women in Novels (London:
Penguin Books, 1984), xvi.
6. Brownstein, Becoming a Heroine, xxi.
 INTRODUCTION

"the subjects that women write about are remarkably similar: family, close
friends, domestic activities."7 The Kagero Diary supports her thesis. Here
we have a record from a thousand years ago of a woman's domestic life as
it is bound up in her relations with others. The principal relationship is
with her husband, but her relationship with her son and the triangular
relationship between the three of them is drawn in some detail as well.
This diary can stand as a document of husband and wife relations. I sus-
pect the reader "will be amazed how much commonality exists between
her marital relationship and contemporary ones, if only in the difficulty of
communication between husband and wife.
The author- mentions in the opening passage how "the events of
the months and years gone by are vague," acknowledging the fallibility of
memory and suggesting that all that is written in the text may not actually
be as it happened. The psychological sophistication of this observation
stands out. The recognition of the mutability of mental states and that
memory distorts and invents are realizations of the modern age in the
West. Another related perception underlying the opening passage is the
awareness of the author's life as a story. She does not claim it for the truth;
she says only that the diary of an ordinary life might be "novel." Note how
she starts the opening passage by talking about herself in the third person
as though she were a character in a tale and gradually shifts over to the
first person perspective. This awareness of the fictiveness of her telling is
borne out throughout the text by her preference in the original for a type
of perfective verb ending associated with storytelling. Again, in Western
literature it is a comparatively recent revelation that, since life as it occurs
is formless in its plethora of experience, one has in some sense fictional-
ized one's life the moment one writes it downr^sa narrative. In this aware-
ness as well, she seems strangely close to a modern Western perspective.
It is almost as though she might agree with Paul Eakin that "autobio-
graphical truth is not a fixed but an evolving content in an intricate pro-
cess of self-discovery and self-creation, and, further, that the self that is
the center of all autobiographical narrative is necessarily a fictive structure."8
If we attend to the style of this opening passage, we see a sen-
tence that is both sinuous and disjunctive, something close to "stream of
consciousness." Jelinek notes that in women's autobiography through the
ages the prevalent style is "episodic and anecdotal, nonchronological and
disjunctive."9 It is intriguing that such characteristics should show up in a
7. Estelle C. Jelinek, The Tradition of Women's Autobiography from Antiquity to the Present
(Boston: Twayne, 1986), xiii.
8. Paul John Eakin, Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of Self-Invention (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1985), 3.
9. Jelinek, The Tradition of Women's Autobiography, xiii.
 INTRODUCTION

woman's text completely outside the Western tradition. I see this text as a
pertinent document for the inquiry that Virginia Woolf initiated in A Room
of One's Own about the possibility and nature of a "woman's sentence."10
I do not raise this issue to take a position on whether there is an "essen-
tial" woman's style in writing. In my view, the question of whether there is
such a thing can produce valuable discoveries without being taken to
closure.
By signaling the aspects of this text that resonate with lively de-
bates going on in modern literary circles about autobiography and the
nature of feminine difference in literary style, I emphasize the relevance
and accessibility of the Kagero Diary for modern Western readers. How-
ever, there are other aspects of this text that distance it. It remains a voice
from a very different time and culture, and we need to imaginatively re-
construct the author's historical and linguistic context in order to hear that
voice. The remaining chapters of the introduction will provide that con-
text, but there is one necessary and overarching piece of information that
a modern English reader needs to respond to the text, namely, that the
text comes out of a discourse of sorrow. We do not often reflect upon the
fact that we are all caught in the discourse of our time and place. We grow
unconsciously into what it is possible to think and say within our culture,
our gender, and from our position in the world. The wrapper of language
we live in shifts with time, since new modes of thought and language are
constantly being invented. Moreover, we are not in a single unitary enve-
lope of discourse, but rather various overlapping discourses. For more
than a century, part of a discourse shared by most modern Western read-
ers entails a positive stance vis-a-vis the world. I would suggest that, par-
ticularly when we read accounts of people's "real" lives, we are uncon-
sciously looking for the success of their struggle, how they took command
of their own minds and lives. Furthermore, we have very little patience for
people corn-plaining. Peoole should not complain, they should do some-
thing about their lives. From a perspective like that, this diary may look
like one long self-indulgent whine.
However, the world did not occur that way to the author and
others of her age. One of the dominant discourses of her age was Bud-
dhism, which starts from the premise, "Life is suffering." To come to an
intimate knowledge of suffering so that one is no longer fooled by the
pleasures of the world is part of the process of enlightenment. That basic
conception of life was modulated through a Japanese literary tradition of
mono no aware, sometimes translated as the "ahness of things" because
aware etymologically is onomatopoeia for a sigh. We are most often moved

10. Woolf, A Room of One's Own, 72-73.

 INTRODUCTION

to sigh by sadness, so aware is clearly used in some contexts to mean

"sadness." The mono no is problematic: it can mean simply "of things," so
another translation for mono no aware is "the sadness of things." How-
ever, mono has embedded in it a sense of the supernatural, the mysterious
power in things, as in the phrase mono no ke, literally, "the spirit of things,"
but meaning "spirit possession." This aspect of the phrase communicates a
sense of awe with respect to the world, encompassing nature and human-
ity. Thus the phrase mono no aware takes its place among a legion of
aesthetic terms in Japanese literature and art that resist precise definition
but convey a wealth of connotation. Aware, at least for the purposes of
appreciating this diary, may be understood as a fine-tuned sensitivity to
the transience of things, an awareness that things are most precious just
when their loss is imminent. This sensitivity was requisite for participating
in another one of the most powerful discourses of the age, poetry. Love is
a principal subject for poetry in the Japanese tradition, and the tone of
expression in love poetry is almost exclusively that of yearning or lamen-
tation—the burning longing to be with the lover, and lamentation if desire
is denied or when the "thrill is gone."
The use here of a blues lyric is deliberate. The possible analogy
with the blues opened up my own appreciation of the entire genre of
Heian poetry, and this diary in particular. For its fans, at least, the blues
produces joy; its particular alchemy is to turn pain into pleasure. Part of
this transformation rests in the power of expression for expression's sake.
Pain expressed is pain released. In terms of an art form, it is the artistry of
the expression that contributes the pleasure. If one imagines removing the
music and the timbre of the singer's voice from a blues song and para-
phrasing its lyrics, one would be left with repetitive whining and grating
complaint. That is what I felt we had so far in translations of the Kagero
Diary. We had the content of her complaining but not its style, not the
artistry of its expression.
There is a further complexity to this. Given that the literary dis-
course of her time was designed for the expression of sorrow, even if she
should want to convey the joy in her marriage, it might have to be chan-
neled through the discourse of sorrow. I am indebted for this revelation to
conversations with two Japanese scholars, Akiyama Ken and Kondo Jun'ichi-
ro. On separate occasions, both scholars expressed the same view to me
that an underlying message in the diary, particularly in book one, was the
author's pride in the splendor of her marriage. This view shifted my per-
ception of the diary a hundred and eighty degrees. There was no room in
the discourse of the age to say: "See how much he loved me. He came to
visit me every night. It was noticeable when he did not visit for even one
 INTRODUCTION

day." Or, "Look what fine poems he wrote for me; see what a hold I had
over him." Or, "We had been married for fourteen years or more and he
still felt moved to come all the way to meet me at Uji when I was returning
from a trip." Judged by the standards of the time, her marriage was an
excellent one. Moreover, one wonders why a text that apparently heaps so
much criticism on the powerful head of the Fujiwara clan would have
been allowed to survive. There is a distinct possibility that far from being
disgruntled by her account of their marriage, her husband may have taken
pride in it. He did not have time to compile his own poetry anthology, so
she did it for him and his prowess in poetry was recorded for posterity.11
Intriguing and revealing as such perceptions are, the litany of sor-
row and the delineation of depression in this text cannot all be under-
stood as a paradoxical affirmation of the success of her marriage. This
diary is also a record of the death of her marriage and her struggle to find
a reason for living once it was no longer possible to exchange poetry with
her husband. She was an artist; to write poetry was an important reason
for living. Although nowhere does the author state it explicitly, she writes
herself to freedom through this record. When one of my Japanese col-
leagues heard that I was going to study this text and that my inspiration
for embarking on the project was related to feminism, she cautioned me
not to characterize the author of the diary as an oppressed woman or the
diary itself as a record of protest against unjust treatment at the hands of
men.12 Her reason for objecting to such an approach was that it was anach-
ronistic. It projected the attitudes and perception of our time and culture
onto a text from a totally different milieu. She went on to say, however,
that she felt the text should be looked upon as a kind of therapy for the
author. I wondered, was not "therapy" a concept from our own time and
culture? Yet I agreed with her. The process of writing the diary seems to
have given the author some distance from her situation. She writes herself
into some sort of freedom, which for her was the possibility of living
without her husband. The Japanese scholar Shinozuka Sumiko has ex-
plored the interpretation of the Kagero Diary as a kind of therapy for the
author.13 In explicating a passage where Michitsuna's Mother regains her
health after having written down her feelings in a letter to be opened
11. I am indebted for this insight to an article by Joshua Mostow, "The Amorous Statesman
and the Poetess: The Politics of Autobiography and the Kagero Nikki," Japan Forum 4.2
(October 1992): 305-15.
12. The Kagero Diary has already been characterized in this manner by someone who
would not perhaps welcome the label of "feminist." In his preface to The Gossamer
Years, Seidensticker says that "the diary is in a sense her protest against the marriage
system of her time, and her exposition of the thesis that men are beasts" (8-9).
13. Shinozuka Sumiko, Kagero nikki no kokoro to hyogen (Tokyo: Benseisha, 1995), 69-71.
 INTRODUCTION

should she die, Shinozuka even suggests that language itself was "the
spring" Michitsuna's Mother used to bring herself back to health.14 Perhaps
it can even be said that, for the Kagero Diary author, language was a
means of creating a self with the power to live.
The issue of the relation between language and the construction
of the self brings the discussion in a full circle back to the common ground
between the Kagero Diary and contemporary literary concerns. There has
been a worldwide explosion in women's writing in this century, particu-
larly in the last fifty years. There has also been a major effort by feminist
scholars to reclaim writing by women in the past which has been aban-
doned or pushed to the margins of the literary heritage. All this is a worthy
enterprise because when one scans the last two thousand years of human
history, women's expression is conspicuous in its absence. It is within this
enterprise that I claim the Kagero Diary author as ancestress for us all in
the writing of the self and commend her to your attention and reading
pleasure.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The author of the Kagero Diary lived in the middle of the Heian period, a
period of relative peace and stability. There were no significant military
threats to the authority of the imperial court from either within or outside
the nation. The court had taken the decision in the early Heian period to
cease official communication with China, thus effectively isolating the coun-
try from the rest of Asia. The aristocratic society of the capital of Heian
(present-day Kyoto) had turned inward and its members were only inter-
ested in what went on in the capital city. Within that society, women's
society also had an insular quality.
Although the Heian .world is a thousand years removed from the
present, there is a surprisingly rich historical record from which to draw
information. To begin with, there is the comprehensive Sonpi bunmyaku,15
which gives genealogies and career records for virtually all male upper
echelon aristocrats of the Heian period as well as some anecdotal material
about prominent figures. Furthermore, several of the diaries in Chinese by
men of the court are extant, and, while rather dry and short on personal
revelations, they are good sources for the chronology, protocol, and names
of participants for court ceremonies and other noteworthy events. By con-
trast, the fictional and autobiographical texts in Japanese, mainly of fe-

14. Ibid., 217.

15. Sonpi bunmyaku, vols. 58—60 in Kuroita Katsumi, ed., Kokushi taikei, 66 vols. (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1924-64). The Sonpi bunmyaku was compiled toward the end of
the fourteenth century on the basis of a large number of earlier documents.

8
 INTRODUCTION

male authorship (the Kagero Diary included), give a detailed picture of

the personal side of life. Finally there are two lengthy histories written in
the mid to late Heian period. One, the Eiga monogatari,16 is by a woman,
perhaps with additions from other women, and the other, the Dkagami,17
is written by a man. Both histories are in the Japanese language and in-
clude fictional elements, and both focus on the history of the Fujiwara
family as it reaches its apogee in the career of Fujiwara Michinaga, who is
incidentally the son by another wife of the husband of the Kagero Diary
author. The two texts are valuable documents for social and political his-
tory. With such a wealth of resources, the difficulty lies in choosing which
material to relate. The following outline of the historical context of the
diary will concentrate on the information that makes the accounts in the
diary more comprehensible and will accordingly focus on social rather
than political history.

Marriage and Familial Relations

Since the story of a marriage is at the core of this diary, let us start with
Heian marriage customs.18 The most salient and foreign feature of mar-
riage at this period is that husband and wife did not normally live to-
gether, particularly in the early part of their marriage. Although the hus-
band would often end up living in the house of the wife who had the most
children once the children were of marriageable age, virtually all mar-
riages began as "visiting" arrangements. The husband would visit the wife's
home where she resided with her mother and extended maternal family.
Moreover, polygyny was common for men, so a man might be involved in
a visiting marriage with two or more households, as well as conducting
casual liaisons on a sporadic basis. Sometimes, from a contemporary West-
ern point of view, it is difficult to distinguish how in the Heian period
formal marriage was much different from a casual liaison.

16. Eiga monogatari. Citations will be to the English translation by William H. McCullough
and Helen Craig McCullough, A Tale of Flowering Fortunes: Annals of Japanese Aristo-
cratic Life in the Heian Period (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980).
17. Dkagami. Citations will generally be to the English translation by Helen Craig McCullough,
Okagami, The Great Mirror: Fujiwara Michinaga (966-1027) and His Times (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1980).
18. There is an excellent article on Heian marriage customs by William H. McCullough,
"Marriage Institutions in the Heian Period," HarvardJournal ofAsiatic Studies 27 (1967):
103-7. The succeeding account draws heavily on that article, but also incorporates
observations from fictional and autobiographical texts of the period. A more recent
article by Peter Nickerson, "The Meaning of Matrilocality: Kinship, Property, and Poli-
tics in the Mid-Heian Period," Monumenta Nipponica 48.4 (1993): 429-67, while relying
on the same basic data as the McCullough article, has a more detailed analysis of the
power relations involved in the Heian marriage institution.
 INTRODUCTION

Indeed, the very marriage ceremony itself appears to mimic secret

affairs. For example, the meeting of the couple was preceded by the ex-
change of poetry in both marriages and affairs. Once the correspondence
had reached a certain level of intimacy, the groom would visit the bride's
house under the cover of night and sleep with her. In most cases, this
would be the first time the couple would have met one another in person.
Both the first and second night, the groom would leave before dawn as
though it were a secret tryst. On the third night—it was his coming three
nights in a row that actually constituted the wedding—he would stay until
morning, at which point the parents would welcome him and he would
eat special cakes with his new bride. One can imagine the humiliation for
a young woman and her family if the groom only visited once or twice
and never returned.
Often the first marriage for a young man would be arranged by his
family to cement political alliances, but he would go courting for his other
marriages. In the case of the Kagero Diary author's marriage, it was a first
marriage for her and a second marriage for him. The author registers an-
noyance that her husband did not come courting properly, which would
have meant cultivating a connection with a female member of her house-
hold so that he could deliver love letters to her secretly (cf. p. 57). This
would have been more like a secret affair and therefore more romantic.
Instead her prospective husband went first to her father and seems to
have pursued his objective in a casual way. Her husband was of a much
higher status than the author's father and likely did not expect the father
or the daughter to resist the proposal. Nonetheless, they performed a three-
or four-month courtship through the medium of poetry. The author must
have known of the existence of her husband's first wife who had already
borne him a son, since much later she remarks that she had corresponded
with the woman before (cf. p. 75), but she does not mention the first wife
at all in the account of the beginning of her own marriage.
Views of marriage customs in the Heian period have been dis-
torted by assuming that society actually followed the Yoro legal code
modeled after Chinese laws and instituted during the eighth century.19 In
that code, there was a clear hierarchy of first wife, second wife, and con-
cubines. In reality, the situation in Heian Japan was much more fluid.
There was a notion of "principal" wife, which was not always determined
by order of marriage. It was the social status and material wealth of the
wife's family that determined whether she would be considered the prin-
cipal wife. If two wives were of roughly the same social status, as was the
case with the Kagero Diary author and her husband's first wife, then the
19. William McCullough, "Marriage Institutions in the Heian Period," 105-6.

10
 INTRODUCTION

wife's position would often come to depend on the number of children

she had. As will be explained in more detail below in the section on Heian
politics, children were political capital, so the more the better and the
more powerful the wife's position.
Children were raised in the mother's home, which made the ties
between the children and their maternal relatives much stronger than with
their paternal relatives. Likewise the relations between siblings of the same
mother were generally closer than those that shared only the same father.
Given that polygyny was the common practice, most people had half sib-
lings of one kind or another.
Aristocratic society within the capital was very small and closed,
so that marriages among near relatives were common. Marital connection
was only forbidden between parents and children, and brothers and sis-
ters. This meant that cousins, uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews could
and did marry. For example, in book three of the Kagero Diary, the author
adopts a daughter born from her husband's casual affair of several years
before (cf. pp. 285-95). This adopted daughter comes to be courted by
her husband's younger brother from a different mother. In contemporary
Western terms, it would be like an uncle courting his niece. However,
given the lack of close contact between families of different mothers, this
younger brother actually seems very distant from his elder brother, never
having seen either his sister-in-law or her adopted daughter, his niece.
Indeed, his courting ends without his actually having seen either woman.
Women were not normally seen by any men other than their fa-
thers, brothers of the same mother, husbands, and sons. Aristocratic women
tried to be seen by as few people as possible. Even when they went out-
side, they generally traveled in curtained carriages. They held audiences
from behind screens. For a woman, allowing oneself to be seen by a man
was tantamount to inviting violation, and the literature of the period abounds
in "peeping torn" scenes. The only aristocratic women exempt from keep-
ing themselves hidden were women who served at court whose duties
exposed them.

Economic Foundations

As mentioned above, women normally lived out their lives in the homes
of their mothers. Residences within the capital were usually inherited along
the female line, and this provided women with an independent economic
base. If Virginia Woolf is right and the prerequisite for a woman becoming
a writer is "money and a room of her own,"20 then aristocratic women of

20. Woolf, A Room of One's Own, 6.

11
 INTRODUCTION

the Heian period had met that prerequisite. It might go a long way toward
explaining why there was such a flowering of women's writing during the
period.
The author of the Kagero Diary shifts residences four times. She
starts out in the house of her mother; after about eleven years of marriage
she moves to a house apparently owned by her husband close to his
official residence, then moves back to her maternal home, and finally to a
house on the outskirts of the city owned by her father. At no time, how-
ever, is she exclusively dependent on her husband's resources, although a
remark she drops here and there seems to indicate she expects him to
contribute to the upkeep of her dwelling (cf. pp. 133-35). There is some
indication in fictional texts of the period, like The Tale of Genji, that the
husband contributed support in terms of building materials and workmen's
labor to the houses of women recognized as wives. It is also evident from
fiction that one of the rarest but most romantic situations was for the
husband to provide a separate house, separate that is from both their
parents, for husband and wife to live in.21 In the early part of book two,
the author's husband, Kaneie, begins construction of a splendid residence.
When he talks about showing it to her, the author, in spite of her better
judgment, begins to hope that he intends it as a house for them both to
dwell in (cf. p. 175).
Besides providing some assistance with maintenance of the wife's
housing, the husband also seems to have been expected to provide mate-
rial assistance for religious observances in the way of offerings and re-
wards for officiating monks. Undoubtedly, however, the husband's major
contribution to the marriage in a practical sense was overseeing the ca-
reers of the children, by arranging good marriages or posts as ladies-in-
waiting at court for the daughters and seeking political advancement for
the sons.
The most important contribution of women to the marriage was
the bearing and raising of the children. The next most important contribu-
tion was the production of clothes for the husband. In several places the
Kagero Diary notes orders for clothing. Participating in government re-
quired elaborate costumes. From the detailed descriptions of costume in
virtually all the literary works of the age, we know how important clothes
were to the people of that society. Moreover, bolts of cloth themselves
were a form of currency, and garments were one of the most common
forms of reward or payment. The reader will note in the diary numerous
occasions where garments are bestowed on people for services.
21. Examples of this from fiction of the period include Genji's establishment of the young
Murasaki in the Nijo residence in The Tale of Genji, and the hero in Ochikubo monogatari
providing a mansion for the Cinderella-like heroine.

12
 INTRODUCTION

It was possible for aristocratic women to work outside the home

by serving at court either by holding official positions such as that of
naishi no kami, principal handmaid, or by being employed privately as
members of the entourages of empresses and imperial consorts. This latter
was the case of writers like Murasaki Shikibu, Izumi Shikibu, and Sei Shona-
gon. Such private ladies-in-waiting served as companions by creating amuse-
ments and making an impression on others through the writing of poetry
and by participation in concerts. It was out of this kind of salon society
that The Tale of Genji was born. There was a considerable amount of
prestige attached to serving at court. Of the famous women writers of this
period, only the author of the Kagero Diary did not serve at court. Thus,
her voice is the only one we have for the secluded married woman.
Michitsuna's Mother did share one characteristic with the other
women writers of the period, and that was class background. She, like all
the others, came from the provincial governor's class. This was the middle
echelon of the aristocracy. Serving as a provincial governor offered many
opportunities for material enrichment since the provinces were where
wealth was actually produced, but since it meant living for periods of time
away from the capital, the center of the universe, it carried a social taint.
The daughters of provincial governors, however, were in a good place
strategically to marry up the social ladder. The marriage of Michitsuna's
Mother may be interpreted as a "marriage up."

The Personal Is Political, Heian-Period Style

Undoubtedly, the aspect of political life that impacted women's lives the
most directly was marriage politics. During the tenth and eleventh centu-
ries, the Fujiwara clan in particular was able to exercise hegemonic con-
trol over the imperial family, and hence the nation, by marrying their
daughters into the imperial line and assuring that all emperors and poten-
tial emperors had Fujiwara mothers. As mentioned above in the section on
familial relations, children were generally raised within the mother's fam-
ily. One exception to this was the emperor's family. The emperor's off-
spring were raised within the palace. However, the emperor's children
were always born in the house of their mothers (birth was considered a
pollution because of its connection with blood and therefore was prohib-
ited from taking place in the palace), and the closest relatives would al-
ways be the mother's relatives. Since the custom was frequently to have
an emperor ascend the throne as a child or adolescent, the regent would
usually be the emperor's maternal grandfather. Thus it was not only through
grosser forms of power that Fujiwara clan chieftains controlled the impe-
rial office, it was also through the family bonds of grandfather and grand-
13
 INTRODUCTION

son. Accordingly the Fujiwara leaders found dependence and weakness

on the part of emperors useful. The Reizei emperor, who reigned briefly
from 967—69, was actually mentally deranged. Within the interpretative
framework of the time, he was considered to be suffering from "spirit
possession." Even though he ascended the throne as an adult, there was
need for a regent. This set a precedent for the future, and Okagami notes
cannily, "It is precisely because of Emperor Reizei that the Fujiwara lords
still flourish."22
Since marriage into the imperial line was the basis of Fujiwara
power, it was important for this clan to have a good supply of daughters.
This is why the author of the Kagero Diary hints at the beginning of book
three that she laments having only one son (cf. p. 285). More children
would have been best, but if she had to have only one child, she would
have been better off with a daughter. Mother of an empress was a presti-
gious position. Of course, without sons to assure the continuity of the
Fujiwara lineage, the clan was in difficulty too. Thus, both sons and daugh-
ters were important for the game of marriage politics.
Women were important to marriage politics as prospective con-
sorts and bearers of the next generation of players. Nonetheless, this kind
of importance is different from actually holding office or making decisions
about such things as promotions and allocations of estates, the "real" ex-
pressions of power. In fact, the question of how much women knew about
or participated from behind the scenes in the realpolitik of the era is an
intriguing one. Sometimes it seems they could play a direct role. Okagami
records that the appointment of Michinaga to minister of the right, the
appointment that paved the way for his total domination of court life for
the next two decades, was finally secured by the tearful entreaties of his
sister Senshi, the emperor's mother. It is described thus:
After an interval long enough to excite painful misgivings,
she [Senshi] opened the door and came out, wearing a trium-
phant smile on her flushed, tear-stained face. "At last! The de-
cree has been issued!" she told him.23

This passage gives a vivid sense of Senshi's participation in political affairs.

Nonetheless, what is also abundantly clear from the literary works
of the period is that the dominant literary discourse, created largely in the
hands of women, had little place for the discussion of the overtly political.
There seems to have been a code of etiquette that required women to
censor themselves about political observation.

22. Helen McCullough, Okagami, 138.

23. Ibid., 199.

14
 INTRODUCTION

The most interesting case with respect to the Kagero Diary is the
account in the text of the most shocking political event of the era, the
arrest and exile of Minamoto Takaakira,24 known to posterity as the Anna
Era Incident, because it happened in 969, the second year of the Anna era.
A little background to the affair is in order.
In 969, Minamoto Takaakira was the minister of the left, nominally
the most important position within the Heian government. As his Minamoto
surname indicates, he was of imperial lineage, being the son of Emperor
Daigo (885—930). The Minamoto surname was given to imperial offspring
who lacked sufficient backing to be placed in the line of succession. None-
theless, his imperial lineage gave him preferment in office, and thus he
had come to occupy this powerful office. He had also married a Fujiwara
woman, San no Kami, third daughter of Morosuke, father to Kaneie, the
Kagero Diary author's husband. Thus, San no Kami was a sister to Kaneie,
albeit by a different mother. This should have assured him friendly rela-
tions with the main branch of the Fujiwara clan, but the room for ascen-
dancy by forming alliances with the imperial family was just too narrow to
avoid ferocious competition even among those closely related.
The occasion for the breakdown was Takaakira's marriage of his
daughter to Prince Tamehira, fourth and favorite son of Emperor Murakami.
Everyone expected Tamehira to be named the next crown prince after the
present crown prince had ascended the throne. Takaakira's marrying his
daughter to Tamehira brought him into direct competition with the main
Fujiwara family, whose goal was always to have the reigning emperor's
principal consort be a Fujiwara woman. When Emperor Murakami died in
967, his second son succeeded to the throne as Emperor Reizei, but a year
later, Tamehira was passed over for designation as crown prince in favor
of the fifth son, who was a mere child of nine years old. As Eiga monogatari
puts it succinctly, Tamehira "lost the throne when he married Takaakira's
daughter."25 Okagami gives a more explicit analysis:
Power would have shifted to Takaakira's family if Prince Tamehira
had become Emperor, and the Genji [that is, the Minamoto] would
have been the ones to prosper, so the Prince's resourceful uncles
[Tamehira's mother, Anshi, was a full sister to Kaneie and his
brothers] solved the problem by making his younger brother the
heir apparent, even though it was contrary to the natural order
of things. 26

24. Seidensticker in The Gossamer Years and McCullough and McCullough in A Tale of
Flowering Fortunes give the reading of Takaaki for this name. I follow Zenshu with this
reading of Takaakira {Zenshu, 108).
25. McCullough and McCullough, A Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 99-
26. Helen McCullough, Okagami, 129-30.

15
 INTRODUCTION

The chagrin of Takaakira about this was apparent to all. As a way

to put his political ambitions completely out of the way, charges that he
was plotting to overthrow the current emperor were leveled against him,
and he was exiled to Kyushu as provisional governor-general of Daizaifu.27
To see one of their own in such a high position be brought so low shocked
all members of the aristocracy.
As mentioned above, this is the only political event to find its way
into the Kagero Diary. What is interesting, however, is that the author's
sympathies are entirely with Takaakira and particularly his wife. She writes
of her sorrow over the news of the event and composes a long poem of
condolence for Takaakira's wife (cf. pp. 179-83), who, it will be remem-
bered, is a half sister to her husband. Nowhere in her relation of the
events concerning Takaakira's fall does she indicate even obliquely that
she is aware her husband is one of the chief engineers of the conspiracy
that brought Takaakira down. Either she is totally ignorant of her husband's
role or it cannot be mentioned.
Most interesting of all, she feels she must defend recording the
incident at all. This is one place where she acknowledges that she has a
conscious idea about what is appropriate for including in the diary. She
writes:
In a diary only for things related to me personally, this is
perhaps something that shouldn't have been included; however,
since the deep feelings of sadness about it were my own and
not anyone else's, I recorded it. (cf. p. 173)

There are many things to tease out from this short passage. One is that the
author is clearly operating from the assumption that her writing and per-
haps by extension all women's writing should be restricted to personal
life. The only excuse for mentioning the Takaakira affair is that it made
her personally sad. It might be tempting to read into this that she is actu-
ally inhibited by an unwritten code of censorship that prevents her from
mentioning her husband's role in the affair or expressing any chagrin over
it. One might point to the fact that the narration of the Takaakira incident
is placed in book two, which is where her own relations with her husband
begin to go seriously awry, and perhaps she is identifying with those her
husband has harmed because she is already feeling alienated from him.
However, I think that would be a forced reading. In the immediate context
of book two, right after bringing up the Takaakira incident, she records a
poetry exchange with her husband that expresses intimacy. Moreover, there
is no place in the diary where she displays any interest at all in her husband's
27. McCullough and McCullough, A Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 100.

16
 INTRODUCTION

official career except to lament that his rise in status actually strains the
relationship because it makes it harder for him to find time to visit. In fact,
the only time she is happy about an appointment of his is when he is
unhappy about it. In book one, her husband, much to his distaste, is given
a post in the Ministry of War, the least prestigious of the Heian govern-
ment ministries, and so he stops going to work. This means he has a lot
more time to spend with her, which makes her happy.
Clearly, so far as her persona in the diary is concerned, she is
totally uninterested in the public career of her husband except in how it
affects his availability to her. Moreover, in places she actually seems to
have an inaccurate perception of what is going on. In book three for
example, after the death of her husband's elder brother, Koremasa,28 she
interprets the situation as fortunate for her husband (cf. p. 319) when in
actual fact, her husband's second oldest brother, Kanemichi, who assumes
great power at this point, is dedicated to destroying her husband's career.
This mistaken perception on her part seems to be proof that indeed she
was ignorant as well as uninterested in her husband's political affairs.
Yet, how is it possible that she could ignore something so vital to
the advancement of her own father and son? It is clear their careers de-
pended exclusively on the career of her husband. There is even a place
where she hints at her own knowledge of that. In book three, she ends a
passage of lament over her husband's recent promotion by saying of her
son that "although he cannot say anything, he seems secretly very pleased."
Is her lack of interest in her husband's political affairs in the end a literary
pose? Since the literary discourse she was helping to shape was derived
essentially from lyric poetry and had at its core the subtle expression of
feeling limited to love and sorrow, calculation about what such and such
a political promotion might mean to her own family members did not
have a place in it. That said, as she constructed and was being constructed
by that discourse, it also became her reality. Perhaps she could not care
about his political career because it did not fit into the discourse with
which she was constructing her life. In this sense, a literary pose ceases to
be a trivial thing.

Women's "Education"

There was no formal education for women in the Heian period, but read-
ing between the lines of the fictional and autobiographical writings of the
era, it is clear how rigorous women's informal education was. The training
28. Again, there seems to be some disagreement over the correct reading for this name. Sei-
densticker in The Gossamer Years and McCullough and McCullough in A Tale of Flowering
Fortunes give Koretada as the reading; I follow Zenshu by giving Koremasa (ZenshQ, 90).

17
 INTRODUCTION

was exclusively in the arts with poetry, calligraphy, and music as a foun-
dation. For example, one Fujiwara patriarch's advice to his daughter was:
First you must study penmanship [calligraphy]. Next you must
learn to play the seven-string zither better than anyone else.
And also you must memorize all the poems in the twenty books
of the Kokin Shu.29

Poetry and calligraphy went together because one of the primary

methods for learning both of them was copying the poems of the canon in
the hands of acknowledged master calligraphers. In The Tale of Genji for
example, one of the things that Genji takes great pains to assemble as part
of his daughter's trousseau is a library of copybooks for calligraphy. "Hav-
ing made the acquaintance of the more notable calligraphers, he commis-
sioned from each a book or scroll for his daughter's library, into which
only the works of the eminent and accomplished were to be admitted."30
In this way, a woman's own hand in calligraphy developed as her under-
standing of the best poems of the past deepened. Since brush calligraphy
was the basis for painting in the era, nearly all Heian aristocrats became
accomplished artists as well. We might note the frequent reference in the
Kagero Diary to the author painting and the mention in the poem collec-
tion of her father bringing back paintings of Michinoku (cf. p. 387).
Of the three principle arts, music is the least mentioned in the
Kagero Diary, but it is there. There is the touching communication be-
tween the author and her aunt after the year's period of mourning for the
author's mother is over and she finds herself playing the koto again (cf.
pp. 121-23):
So the commemoration ceremony was complete, as usual I
had nothing in particular to do. Without really intending to play,
as I was dusting my koto, my fingers strayed to play a few notes
and it struck me that indeed the period of mourning was over.
Sadly, it had passed so quickly, as I was brooding on this, from
my aunt came:
ima ha tote Now it is over,
hiki idzuru koto no yet when I hear these notes
ne wo kikeba plucked from the koto,
uchi kaheshitemo they run me back to the past
naho zo kanashiki and I am even sadder.
At this, even though it was nothing very special, thinking about
it, my tears overflowed:

29. Ivan Morris, The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in AncientJapan (Harmondsworth,
England: Penguin Books, 1979), 221.
30. Seidensticker, The Tale of Genji, 520.
18
 INTRODUCTION

naki hito ha The day and month that

otodzure mo sede I cut the strings of my koto,
koto no "wo wo since the one who had gone
tachishi tsuki hi zo could no longer hear me play,
kaheri ki ni keri that day has come round again.

Letters and Literature

It will be noted that the exchange above between two women in the same
household takes place in writing. It was not uncommon even for people
in the same dwelling to exchange letters with one another. This points out
the special significance of correspondence in this society. For women in
particular, it was the most important means of communication with the
world because they were the stationary ones while the men visited here
and there. The Kagero Diary can be viewed in part as a record of the
author's correspondence with the world and more specifically her hus-
band. The Japanese scholar, Sumiko Shinozuka, has been researching par-
allels between the development of epistolary novels in eighteenth-century
England and women's writing in Heian Japan. She writes:
In fact, truly speaking, not only the Kagero Diary but the
other women's diaries that followed as well can be considered a
kind of long letter to one or several persons with whom the
author was familiar. For instance, the Kagero Diary can be as-
sumed to be written as a letter to the author's adopted daughter.

It was the Kagero Diary that started this tradition in Japa-

nese women's diaries of writing a text as though it were a kind
of letter. Thus, the author of the Kagero Diary could develop a
way to describe her thoughts and feelings in her own natural
Japanese, just like Richardson did in English.31

The critical role that letters played in women's lives and the literature they
developed may have contributed to the identification between women
and the hiragana script used to transcribe vernacular Japanese.

Hiragana Script: The 'Woman's Hand"

The freedom for women to correspond was made possible by the evolu-
tion of a script for writing the vernacular Japanese language. This script

31. Sumiko Shinozuka, "Women, Letters, and Literature," unpublished address at the Insti-
tute of Early Women's Writing, University of Alberta, September 1993- See also her
"Shokan to bungaku: "Richaadoson no shokantai shosetsu to kagero nikki o chushin
ni," in Kyoritsw. Kokusai bunka 1.1 (March 1991): 135-45; and "Kagero nikki to afura
bein no shokantai shosetsu," in Ikeda Tsuyako, ed., Ocho nikki no shinkenkyu (Tokyo:
Kasamashoin, 1995), 379-401.
19
 INTRODUCTION

was hiragana, and the date of its gaining full currency in the world at large
is around 905, the date of the first imperially commissioned and quickly
canonized anthology of poetry, the Kokinshu. Prior to this time, the only
literacy possible was in the Chinese language.32 There are instances of
women composing poems in Chinese in the earlier period.33 Moreover,
there is the famous account in the Murasaki Shikibu Diary (ca. 1010) of
the author listening to her brother's lessons in Chinese and picking them
up so much faster than her brother that her father was moved to say he
wished she had been born a boy.34 While that passage indicates that some
Heian women still did acquire knowledge of Chinese, it was not consid-
ered useful knowledge for a woman, and women were not encouraged to
pursue it. It was the evolution of the hiragana script that gave women the
freedom to write the language they spoke. We know that women were
quick to take advantage of it because the script came to be known as
onnade, "woman's hand." Moreover, a mere three decades after the script
had evolved, the writing of the native language in hiragana had come to
be associated with women so thoroughly that Ki no Tsurayuki, the prin-
ciple compiler and author of the Japanese preface to Kokinshu, felt com-
pelled to take the persona of a woman in order to write a diary in the
native language.35
However, writing in onnade or "woman's hand" was never the
exclusive preserve of women. In fact, the most famous examples of that
kind of calligraphy that have been preserved are all in men's hands. More-
over, it seems that men did write a great number of literary texts in hiragana
in the early part of the tenth century. Even the example given above of Ki
no Tsurayuki writing in a woman's persona because he was writing in
himgana/onnade is also an indication of men doing substantial writing in
that script.

The "Old Tales": Early Monogatari Literature

One area where it is assumed that men were the leaders in developing a
native prose style was in monogatari or tale literature. There is a consen-
sus that men wrote all the early romance literature, that is, prior to the
32. There was a rather cumbersome system of transcription for Japanese known as manyogana
developed in the eighth century, and while it played a critical role in making it possible
to record some early Japanese texts, it was so difficult and complex that it did not
become a generally practiced writing system. Writing in Chinese was the standard mode
of writing.
33. For example, see the poem by Princess Uchiko (807-47) in Donald Keene, Anthology of
Japanese Literature, from the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York:
Grove, 1955), 164.
34. Bowring, Murasaki Shikibu, Her Diary, 139.
35. The "Tosa Diary" in Miner, Japanese Poetic Diaries.

20
 INTRODUCTION

eleventh century, but that the primary readers of the tale literature were
women. An important piece of evidence indicating that the reading of
romance literature was considered a preoccupation of women is from the
eleventh-century Tale of Genji, the greatest tale of them all. In the novel,
the hero Genji comes upon his foster daughter reading tales and chides
her about her enthusiasm for such a trivial diversion. However, he admits
to reading tales himself from time to time and then launches into the
famous "apology for fiction" that places tale literature on a par with his-
tory. He says:
I have been rude and unfair to your romances, haven't I. They
have set down and preserved happenings from the age of the
gods to our own. The Chronicles of Japan and the rest are a
mere fragment of the whole truth. It is your romances that fill in
the details.36

It is clear that by the time of The Tale of Genji, tale literature had been
considered an amusement for women for a long time. The Tale of Genji
author was a woman, but when the author of the Kagero Diary talks about
the odds and ends of the old tales that are just so much fantasy, it is
assumed that the old tales she read would have been written by men. It is
a curious situation in world literary history. We have the production of
literature for women by men, and the question arises why would men
devote so much energy to producing diversions for women? Akiyama Ken,
in response to this question, said that the literature was likely produced
by slightly lower class serving men in aristocratic households as part of
their duties.37 This might help explain why so much of the early tale litera-
ture was anonymous.
We are hampered in our knowledge of what kinds of tales the
author of the Kagero Diary was referring to by the fact that so few of the
early tales have survived. Two extant tales that certainly predate the Kagero
Diary are The Tales oflse 38 and The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter}9 The Tales
oflse is actually a poem tale, that is, a collection of anecdotes that provide
contexts for poems. The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter is a fantasy telling the
story of a magical child who actually turns out to be a creature of the
moon. Another extant tale that is thought to have existed at least in some

36. Seidensticker, The Tale of Genji, 437.

37. From a conversation with Akiyama Ken after his guest lecture at Tokyo Women's Univer-
sity in June 1994.
38. Helen Craig McCullough, trans., The Tales oflse: Lyrical Episodes from Tenth-Century
Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968).
39. Donald Keene, trans., "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter," in Thomas J. Rimer, ed., Modern
Japanese Fiction and Its Traditions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).
21
 INTRODUCTION

version before the time of the Kagero Diary is The Tale ofLady Ochikubo.40
Ochikubo monogatari contains no supernatural elements. It is the classic
Cinderella story of a beautiful and good girl whose mother's death has left
her at the mercy of her stepmother and ugly, selfish stepsisters. A hand-
some aristocrat finds out about her, courts her, and eventually marries her;
they live happily ever after while her husband invents ingenious ways to
wreak vengeance on her step-family. When the author of the Kagero Di-
ary talks about the tales being "so much fantasy," literally soragoto, "empty
talk," we have no way of knowing for certain which kind of fantasy she is
referring to, the supernatural fantasy of something like The Tale of the
Bamboo Cutter, or the idealized romance of the Ochikubo monogatari,
but it seems likely that she had works like the Ochikubo monogatari in
mind. At any rate, it can be asserted that another aspect of women's edu-
cation was also in the prose literature of the tales, which was for the most
part a literature of heroines that gave young women dreams of becoming
heroines in their own domestic tales.

Religion
The religion of the Heian period was a syncretic mix of Buddhism and
Shintoism, as is borne out in how religion appears in the Kagero Diary.
When the author of the Kagero Diary articulates religious thoughts, they
are usually of a Buddhist nature, the most common one being the aware-
ness of the fragility of human existence. Take for example this poem that
was written when she heard that the brother of the monk who had offici-
ated at her mother's funeral had passed away suddenly (cf. p. 119):
omohiki ya Who would have guessed,
kumo no mori wo that he would leave behind
uchisutete the forest of clouds
sora no keburi ni and rise up with the smoke
tatamu mono to ha disappearing into the sky.

Ceremonies held in conjunction with deaths in the family were Buddhist,

since in Japan Buddhism had a virtual monopoly on the management of
death through ritual. However, a lot of the religious activities the author
participates in are Shinto. Her offering of poems at Shinto shrines and
watching processions to the Kamo Shrine are all examples of Shinto activi-
ties. In fact, all the festivals mentioned in the diary are Shinto festivals.
The aspect of religion most foreign to modern Western readers is
the elaborate system of taboos that evolved from what may be called the
40. Wilfred Whitehouse and Eizo Yanagisawa, trans., The Tale of Lady Ochikuho (Tokyo:
Hokuseido Press, 1965).
22
 INTRODUCTION

"science" of the time, Chinese yin-yang cosmology, as it was grafted onto

a native body of beliefs regarding supernatural forces. Chinese cosmology
was based on the movements of heavenly bodies and the movements of
forces that could loosely be called gods. The astrological calendar deter-
mined which days were lucky and which unlucky. The movements of the
forces in accordance with the calendar determined which directions were
safe or dangerous. Perhaps the best way to convey the spirit of these
taboos is to refer to the vestiges of them that remain in present-day Japa-
nese society. For example, a butsumetsu day, the most inauspicious of the
six designations for days, occurs four to five times a month in the Chinese
calendar. Even in contemporary Japan, people customarily avoid that day
for holding celebrations, as evidenced by the fact that wedding halls will
give discounts to anyone willing to hold a wedding on a butsumetsu day.
In the Heian period, not only was belief in this system very strong, but the
elaboration of the system, particularly within aristocratic society, meant
that many aspects of aristocrats' lives—when they could go places, in
which directions they could move—were all impacted by this system. It
became a calendar for one's life. Moreover, in the general absence of
"public" holidays, the periods of ritual seclusion required within the sys-
tem may have functioned as periods of rest for aristocrats. Someone of the
status of Michinaga, for example, spent an average of seventy days a year
in ritual seclusion.41
Not all taboos originated with the yin-yang cosmology; some came
out of Buddhism and Shinto. For instance, Buddhism required a period of
abstinence and seclusion before participating in certain rites. Shinto be-
liefs required abstinence and seclusion as ways of overcoming ritual de-
filement. In Shinto any contact with blood, sickness, or death incurs de-
filement. Hence menstruation required seclusion. The Kagero Diary author's
son must refrain from participation in a Shinto festival because he be-
comes defiled by accidentally seeing a dead dog (cf. p. 343).
Underlying all these various taboos was the belief that breaking
the rules would result in misfortune. Yet a certain amount of negotiation
with the rules was possible. If one visited a sick person, for example, one
could avoid defilement by remaining standing at the threshold to the room.
Likewise, if the rules demanded ritual seclusion and yet it seemed abso-
lutely necessary to go out, as long as one stayed in one's carriage, seclu-
sion had technically not been broken. Moreover, the system could some-
times serve as an excuse to avoid doing something one did not want to
41. Francine Herail, La courdujapon a I'epoque de Heian (Paris: Hachette Livre, 1995), 226.
Herail provides a good general description of the yin-yang cosmology system in Heian
Japan. McCullough and McCullough give a summary of the practice of ritual seclusion in
a supplementary note to A Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 784-85.
23
 INTRODUCTION

do. For example, later on in the Kagero Diary, when relations between
the author and her husband have become strained, it is curious how often
her direction is forbidden to him. The author remarks herself that it seems
to be only her direction that is forbidden (cf. p. 269). The very complexity
of the system lent itself to this kind of use. The yin-yang calendar and
various other taboos affected the ebb and flow of one's daily activities but
remained an exterior aspect of religion.
The religious activity to which the author of the Kagero Diary
devotes the most attention and seriousness of purpose is pilgrimages, and
she divides her efforts almost equally between Shinto and Buddhist sites.
The rite of purification she goes to perform at Karasaki on Lake Biwa is a
Shinto ritual. Her pilgrimages to Shinto sacred sites include the visits to
the Kamo and Fushimi Inari shrines. Her pilgrimages to Buddhist sites are
to Hase Temple and Ishiyama Temple. However, the reader will find it
hard to distinguish her Shinto pilgrimages from her Buddhist ones, since
the purpose of both kinds of pilgrimage seems to be the same—to pray for
the fulfillment of a fervent desire. Moreover, that desire is invariably for
some benefit in this life.
Sometimes the impetus for going on a pilgrimage seems to be
something as lighthearted as sightseeing. In one place, the author is per-
suaded by her attendants, who say, "Let's go on a pilgrimage and view the
maple leaves at the same time" (cf. p. 317). However, other times she
seems driven to make a pilgrimage out of a sense of desperation. Her
pilgrimage to Ishiyama Temple is such a case. As she describes it, she runs
out of the house at dawn on foot (cf. p. 207). For someone unaccustomed
to walking, the journey to Ishiyama on foot would be an act of self-abne-
gation. It appears that all her other pilgrimages were by ox carriage, the
normal mode of transport for aristocrats in the capital area.
Undoubtedly, the most profound encounter with religion on the
part of the Kagero Diary author is her consideration of becoming a nun,
which occurs in the latter part of book two (cf. pp. 233-53). The author
goes on retreat to a Buddhist temple in a confused and tortured state of
mind, and the thought of becoming a nun seems to offer the possibility of
release. The occasions for and the meaning of becoming a nun in Heian
Japan ought to be put in context here.
Buddhism had orders for both monks and nuns. Sometimes super-
fluous male offspring of aristocratic families were made monks as a way
of providing them a sinecure, but that was seldom the reason a woman
became a nun. Many aristocrats, both male and female, often took the
tonsure in old age as a way of signaling withdrawal from activity in this
world and entering preparation for the next. It was a form of "retirement,"
if you will, when no other formal kind of retirement was possible. Further-
24
 INTRODUCTION

more, as a response to misfortune in one's life, such as the death of a

loved one or a serious illness, taking the tonsure was regarded as a sad
but understandable act. However, when a young man or woman without
some tragedy as a catalyst but rather of their own volition became a monk
or nun, it seems to have been upsetting to others. For example, in book
one of the diary, Michitsuna's Mother mentions the sudden taking of the
tonsure by a cousin of her husband, Fujiwara Sukemasa, who, as she says,
"without warning, abandoned his mother and wife and stole away to Mt.
Hiei" (cf. p. 145). People found this "shocking and sad."42 One gets the
sense that such an act struck others as a mark of mental unbalance. In the
Kagero Diary author's case, when she goes on her retreat, not only is she
too young for people to accept her becoming a nun as a form of retire-
ment, but since the future of her son had not yet been settled, it would
have appeared to be an antisocial act, virtually an abandonment of her
duties. Moreover, it is possible that people would have inferred that her
real motive for taking the tonsure was to embarrass and humiliate her
husband rather than genuine religious commitment. Her husband's strong
objection to her going on retreat seems to indicate he interpreted her
actions in that light. In any case, the decision to take the tonsure except in
certain conventional circumstances was fraught with social consequences.
For Michitsuna's Mother, becoming a nun balanced on the edge between
being a release and an act of resistance.

THE AUTHOR AND THE PEOPLE AROUND HER

We know exactly whose daughter, whose wife, and whose mother the
author of the Kagero Diary was, but we do not know her personal name.
She has come down to posterity as Michitsuna's Mother. One reason why
we do not know her personal name is that the personal names of women
were not generally noted in genealogies. The only women whose per-
sonal names were recorded were the consorts, mothers, and grandmoth-
ers of emperors. However, there is another reason why women's names
were lost, and that is because there was, and still is to a certain extent in
Japan, a reserve with respect to the use of personal names. Men's personal
names were for their public record, but those names, so far as we can tell
from literature, were not used in daily life. A person was almost always
referred to by his or her title or role. Not once in the Kagero Diary, for
example, does the author refer to her husband or son by their personal

42. One of Kaneie's younger brothers by a different mother, Takamitsu, also took the ton-
sure suddenly in 961. The disturbance this caused his family is recorded in the Tonomine
shosho monogatari (Lynne Miyake, "Tonomine shosho monogatari: A Translation and
Critical Study," Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1985).

25
 INTRODUCTION

names. She refers to her son as "the young one" until by an act of resis-
tance he expresses his independence from her, and then she calls him by
his official title (cf. p. 237), for to be an adult male in Heian aristocratic
society was always to have a title of some kind. Thus, men's names were
preserved in public records and women's names were for the most part
lost because they did not have a public role.
It is not known exactly when Michitsuna's Mother was born. From
a reference to a prediction about her own death that the author makes in
the latter part of the diary, scholars surmise that she may have been thirty-
seven years old that year because, by the Chinese astrological calendar,
the thirty-third and thirty-seventh years of a woman's life were considered
to be particularly dangerous. Calculating back from that year as her thirty-
seventh, she would have been born about 936.43 This would have made
her between eighteen and nineteen at the time of her marriage, which also
fits, so this view has become the accepted one.

Parents and Siblings

Her father was Fujiwara Tomoyasu. The Fujiwara clan dominated politics
for most of the Heian period, but it was a huge family and Tomoyasu
belonged to one of its less important branches. Since Tomoyasu's father
had an undistinguished career and had taken posts as provincial governor,
the family had descended to provincial governor class, from which it was
virtually impossible to rise again to the higher ranks of the aristocracy.
Who the author's mother was is uncertain. Conjecture can only be
made about the mother's identity from the author's relationship to her two
brothers. The author is known to have had one older brother, Masayoshi
(other possible reading, Masato), and one younger brother, Nagayoshi (or
Nagato). These two sons of Tomoyasu had different mothers. Apparently
Masayoshi's mother was Tonomonokami Harumichi's daughter and Naga-
yoshi's mother was Minamoto Mitomeru's daughter. However, there is no
conclusive evidence as to which brother shared the same mother with her.
In the Kagero Diary itself, the author only makes reference to "my brother"
without further specifics. However, given that the brother she exchanges
poems with at the end of the mourning period for her mother in 964 must
have been Masayoshi (because Nagayoshi would have been too young),
the Zenshu commentators opt for the theory that she shared the same
mother with Masayoshi.44 Whoever the mother may have been, most of
what is known about her is found in the diary itself. She hovers in the
background of the first book as a steadying influence. She is referred to
43. Oka Kazuo, Michitsuna bo, rev. ed. (Tokyo: Yuseido, 1970 [1986 reprint]), 12.
44. Zenshu, 85-86.

26
 INTRODUCTION

literally in the diary as "the old fashioned person." The depth of the author's
relationship with her mother can be gauged by the author's extreme reac-
tion to her mother's death and the frequency with which she recalls her
mother in later years.
If it is accepted that Masayoshi was the brother that shared the
same mother with the author, then it would follow that all the references
to a brother in the diary would be to him. Masayoshi is reported to have
served as governor of Bizen and Iga provinces. He married a woman who
was likely an elder sister of Sei Shonagon, author of The Pillow Book}5
The author's relations with Nagayoshi as a sibling with a different mother
would have been more distant. However, Nagayoshi had a distinguished
reputation as a poet, and it is conjectured that the brother and sister might
have had some literary connection with one another. The most definite
piece of evidence for that kind of contact is the record of the presence of
both Nagayoshi and Michitsuna at a poetry contest sponsored by Retired
Emperor Kazan in 986. Michitsuna presented one of his mother's poems as
an entry in the contest.46 Granted, this hardly qualifies as evidence of a
close relationship; nonetheless, the feeling that a brother and sister who
were both skilled poets must have had some interaction persists, and it
has been suggested that it was Nagayoshi who compiled the anthology of the
author's poetry that is appended to all extant manuscripts of the diary.47
There were sisters in the family as well. In the first part of the
diary, the author mentions a sister living in the same household who is
visited by a husband, and it is assumed this is an elder sister (cf. p. 71).
Other documents record that Fujiwara Tamemasa married a daughter of
Tomoyasu, and so commentators assume his wife was that elder sister.48
This sister leaves the household to live in a dwelling apparently provided
by her husband and then follows that husband to a post in the provinces.
Mention of Tamemasa and a daughter of Tamemasa (presumably the author's
niece) comes up in the poetry collection at the end of the diary, which
would indicate that the author maintained a close connection with her
elder sister and Tamemasa through the years. The relationship through
marriage with Tamemasa also links the author distantly with Murasaki Shi-
kibu. Since the daughter of Tamemasa's younger brother was the mother
of Murasaki Shikibu, the author would have been a great aunt (in-law) of
Murasaki Shikibu. It is unlikely that there was any personal contact be-
tween these two authors, but this family connection may have been a
route by which a manuscript of the Kagero Diary could have come into
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., 86.
47. Ibid., 87.
48. Ibid.

27
 INTRODUCTION

the hands of Murasaki Shikibu. Later in the diary, the author mentions
another sister who is living with her. This is the sister we see with her at
the beginning of book two jesting about starting off the New Year auspi-
ciously (cf. p. 169). This sister also has a gentleman caller, and she stays
with the author for part of her retreat to a temple in the middle part of the
diary. It is assumed this was a younger sister. Finally, much later in the
diary, the author sends a congratulatory poem to her father upon the birth
of another daughter. This is many years after the death of the author's
mother. It seems her father took a very young wife because the author
herself is about thirty-six when this new younger sister is born. As a sister
from a different mother, the relationship would not have been close in the
first place, and the great difference in age would also have precluded
much contact between the two. Nonetheless, it is curious that this sister
was likely the mother of Sugawara Takasue's daughter, the author of the
Sarashina Diary.49 Through family ties of one kind or another, the Kagero
Diary author is a senior relative to three of the most important women
authors in the Heian period.

Husband

So far as the diary is concerned, the most critical relationship in the author's
life was with her husband. Her husband was Fujiwara Kaneie (929-90),
the third son of Fujiwara Morosuke (908-60). Kaneie and the author shared
the same great-great-grandfather in the Fujiwara lineage, but her husband's
family was at that time the ascendant northern branch of the Fujiwara
clan, which monopolized all the high offices at court. From the point of
view of the author's father, this proposal must have seemed like a tantaliz-
ing prospect. He could no longer aspire to high office himself, but if his
daughter were to marry one of the future leaders of the clan, the offspring
of that union would have access to high positions.50 If they were girls they
might become imperial consorts, and if they were boys, they might even
rise to minister of the left or right, regent, or chancellor. However, Kaneie
was the third son, so in order to assume leadership of the Fujiwara clan,
he would have to outlast his elder brothers. In 954 when he made the
proposal, he was twenty-six and still only captain of the Right Guards, not
an extremely distinguished position. Nonetheless, he had potential and
influence. It is certainly more than coincidence that the author's father
receives his first lucrative post as a provincial governor within the first
year of the marriage.

49. Ibid., 89.

50. Ibid.

28
 INTRODUCTION

When Kaneie married the author, he already had one wife, Toki-
hime, whose name we know because her daughters eventually bore em-
perors. At the time of Kaneie's proposal to the author, he only had one
son with Tokihime. Tokihime came from the same provincial governor's
class as the author so they were roughly equal in rank to begin with. Toki-
hime went on, however, to bear Kaneie three sons and two daughters,
thus becoming indisputably his principal wife. Kaneie went on to collect
and discard more wives. In the course of the diary, only a year after his
marriage to the author, he takes up with a woman known as the Machi
Alley woman. Then, in 970 he begins an affair with one of his late uncle's
handmaidens, Omi. We learn later in the diary that he had also had an
affair during the years in between with the daughter of a former high
official, Minamoto Kanetada. It is the child of this union that the author
eventually adopts when the girl is already twelve or thirteen years old.
From historical records, we know that he continued to marry and have
affairs right up until his death. He may be regarded as following in his
father's footsteps in this respect since his father, Morosuke, had nineteen
children by several different wives.
Kaneie did live up to his political potential assuming both the
posts of regent and chancellor toward the end of his life. However, that
was some time after relations between him and the author had ended.
Moreover, the fruits of Kaneie's political success were mainly enjoyed by
his three sons by Tokihime. In fact, his third son, Michinaga, became the
greatest Fujiwara hegemon of them all.
Of course, we only get to see Kaneie through the author's eyes in
the diary. At one point in the early period of their marriage, he responds
to a long poem from his wife with one of his own (cf. pp. 95-99). It is the
most sustained statement from him in the work. He was an able poet and
certainly a lot of the author's attraction for him must have been her skill at
poetry. He also appears as something of a wit. His reaction to the author's
expression of chagrin is often to try and cajole her out of her temper with
jokes. Failing that he ignores her moods apparently in the hopes they will
go away. Either way he had difficulty just listening to her. Nonetheless, he
seems to have been deeply attached to Michitsuna's Mother. Since she had
neither the wealth, social standing, nor significant number of children that
would have made it a difficult relationship to sever, it can only have been
a profound affection that kept him in the marriage for sixteen years.

Other Wives and Affairs Noted in the Diary

Of her husband's other wives, Tokihime is the only one with whom the
author herself had any continuous relationship. When the author first
29
 INTRODUCTION

records sending a poem to Tokihime commiserating over the infidelity of

their mutual husband, she prefaces it with the remark that she had already
exchanged correspondence with the woman before. It appears that the
author was always the one to initiate the communication. Tokihime's re-
sponses seem very guarded. After all, from Tokihime's position, the author
must have been seen as a great threat. The two women were evenly matched
in social status, and we know from contemporary records that the author
had a reputation for being both a great beauty and a skilled poet. Tokihime
likely regarded the author as the bane of her existence. This finds overt
expression in the poetry exchange between the two women at the Kamo
Festival after some ten years of the author's marriage, where in a witty
way, Tokihime accuses the author of cruelty (cf. p. 129). In the end, how-
ever, Tokihime's fertile womb won the competition between the two wives.
With five children, her position became unassailable.
Of the other wives, little else is known about them beyond what
the diary tells us. The Machi Alley woman, who gets her name from her
place of residence, is reported to have been the unrecognized daughter of
an unrecognized son of a prince. This constituted two strikes of "illegiti-
macy" against her, yet she was descended from royalty and still apparently
possessed a residence of her own, even if not in the fashionable part of
town. Why this woman, who suffers in the end such an unfortunate fate,
should occasion such a consuming hatred in the author, when other af-
fairs bothered her so much less, is an interesting question. Two factors are
the author's immaturity and the timing of the affair; it came to light im-
mediately following the birth of the author's child, when she was no doubt
in an emotionally vulnerable state. Shinozuka has suggested that the author's
intense hatred of the Machi Alley woman was a case of "transference" of
the anger she could not express against her husband.51 Of course, the
"reason" for her emotion is ultimately unknowable.
However, the contrast in her response to her husband's affair with
Minamoto Kanetada's daughter is intriguing. That affair would have oc-
curred only about four years after the affair with the Machi Alley woman,
but from the way the author recalls it, it seems as though the liaison did
not upset her at all. It could have been that since the woman was older,
the author did not consider her a threat right from the beginning. What-
ever the circumstances, and while her passionate jealousy against the Machi
Alley woman creates an unforgettable impression, the difference in her
reaction to the two women suggests that it would be one-sided to see the
author only as a hysterically jealous woman.

51. Shinozuka, Kagero nikki no kokoro to byogen, <

30
 INTRODUCTION

Minamoto Kanetada's daughter is an example of an unmarried aris-

tocratic Heian woman. There were apparently quite a large number of
women in court society who were unable to marry.52 Since women were
expected to stay within the parent's home, there was no overwhelming
economic need to marry. To remain single was sometimes preferable to
marrying below one's social status. This may have been the case with Ka-
netada's daughter. She was of high birth but her family's fortunes were
declining. After her father died, she lost her protection and became vul-
nerable to seduction by someone like Kaneie.
The last liaison of Kaneie to make its way into the diary was his
marriage to the woman known as Omi, after her father, Fujiwara Kuniaki,
who was provincial governor of Omi. She was of the same general social
position as Michitsuna's Mother. However, she had been put into service
as a personal attendant to Kaneie's uncle, Saneyori, when Saneyori was
seventy years old. As Shinozuka notes, "She may perhaps be regarded as a
sacrifice to the old man's lust."53 Kaneie began his affair with her after
Saneyori's death, and a couple of years later she bore him a daughter. That
daughter Suishi eventually became principal handmaid for the crown prince
and shared his bed. Eiga monogatari records that "Thanks to this daugh-
ter, the Lady of the Wing Chamber [Omi] who had had something of a
reputation for loose behavior, had now become a personage of impor-
tance. It only went to show, people said, what a child could do for one."54
Eiga monogatari goes on to talk about the career of Omi's second daugh-
ter, who was not by Kaneie, but by his son, Michitaka. One wonders if this
was Eiga monogatari's subtle way of saying that Omi's reputation for loose
behavior was not unwarranted.

Children
As mentioned before, the author had only one son, Michitsuna. There are
only fleeting episodes about him as a child in the diary, undoubtedly
because his actual rearing would have been the responsibility of his nurse.
There is the time when, at about the age of eleven, he gets caught in the
middle of a quarrel between his parents (cf. p. 153). There is also the time
when he frees his hunting hawks, to show his determination to become a
monk if his mother is to become a nun (cf. p. 205). A mere two years later
he is identifying more with his father than his mother (cf. p. 235). Then

52. Fukuto Sanae, Heian cho no haha to ko: kizoku to shomin no hazoku seikatsushi (To-
kyo: Chuo Koronsha, 199D, 37.
53. Shinozuka Sumiko, "Kagero nikki noto: atana no nai tegami," Keisei 73 (December
1989): 47.
54. McCullough and McCullough, A Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 136-37.

31
 INTRODUCTION

there are his love affairs, which occupy a large portion of the last part of
the diary. Michitsuna may not have had as illustrious a career as his half-
brothers by Tokihime, but it was not inconsiderable. He never had to
serve as a provincial governor, and his highest post, that of major counsel-
lor, was a respected position.
The daughter the author adopts in book three remains a shadowy
figure. She was an unrecognized daughter of Kaneie by Minamoto Kane-
tada's daughter. As Kaneie is reported to have told the author, "A girl was
born at that place I used to visit. She says it is mine. It may well be,"
indicating some uncertainty on his part about the girl's parentage (cf. pp.
287-91). She only comes into the diary on the day of her arrival at the
author's house, where she meets her whole new family, including the
father she has never seen. One wonders what the girl of twelve must have
felt in such a strange situation. Afterward we see her in the diary only as a
passive recipient of instruction in poetry and calligraphy, and as a source
of worry for the author when one of Kaneie's younger brothers comes
courting for the daughter's hand too soon. The author in the end tells us
very little about her relationship with the girl, but some commentators
have suggested that the author's reason for writing the diary at all was for
the benefit of this adopted daughter.55 After a promising beginning, Kaneie
does not in the end take the same interest in this daughter as he does in
his daughters by Tokihime or even the daughter by Omi. It is conjectured
that this daughter ended up serving at court as a lady-in-waiting to Kaneie's
second daughter, Senshi, when she became empress.56

Friends

Other people of importance in the author's circle were female friends.

Although she does not name most of them, there is quite a number. She
goes on several excursions and pilgrimages with unnamed female friends.
When she secludes herself during her retreat, she is visited by a woman
who comes to scold her and ends up in tears with her. She carries on a
correspondence with many friends. Her long poem for the wife of Minamoto
Takaakira and subsequent correspondence with her is some of the most
touching writing in the work. However, it is her friendship with Kaneie's
sister, Toshi, or Lady Joganden as she is referred to most often in the
diary, that is one of the highlights in her life. She first has the occasion to
get to know Toshi when they are temporarily sharing one of Kaneie's
houses (cf. p. 147). Friendship with Toshi was as close as the author ever
got to the glamour of the court. Toshi had been married to an imperial
55. Kakimoto Tsutomu, Kagero nikki zenchushaku (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1966), 19.
56. Zenshii, 92.
32
 INTRODUCTION

prince who died young. Then she was involved in an affair with the em-
peror Murakami. Emperor Murakami's principal consort was Toshi's and
Kaneie's elder sister, Anshi. Toshi was in the habit of visiting her elder
sister at court, and it was during one of those visits that the emperor
became enamored of her. Anshi turned a blind eye to a couple of meet-
ings but then asserted her authority and ended the affair. Eiga monogatari,
from which the above account is paraphrased, says in summation, "Toshi
was sweet and fashionable—and probably something of a flirt, for other-
wise such a thing would have been unlikely to happen."57 When Anshi
died, however, Emperor Murakami quickly summoned Toshi to his side.
They did not have long together, because a mere three years later, Murakami
died. It is shortly after Murakami's death that Toshi comes to share the
same house with the author. They form a friendship that lasts throughout
the period recorded by the diary.

Public Reputation of Michitsuna's Mother

We will conclude this section with a few remarks about the author's public
reputation. Given that she was a woman at home without a public per-
sona as such, she is mentioned surprisingly often in the historical record.
In the Sonpi bunmyaku, she is noted as one of the most famous "beauties
of the era."58 Moreover, her skill as a poet and authorship of the Kagero
Diary are noted in Okagami. The entry is ostensibly about Michitsuna but
ends up talking more about his mother:
His mother, an accomplished poet, set down an account of the
things that happened while Kaneie was visiting her, together
with some poems from the same period. She named the work
Gossamer Journal [Kagero Diary], and allowed it to be made
public.59

This nearly contemporary account gives us some idea of her reputation as

a poet and also indicates that the diary was in circulation soon after its
composition. A piece of internal evidence in the diary regarding the rec-
ognition of the author as a poet is the invitation to compose poems for the
congratulatory screen for the fiftieth birthday of her husband's uncle, Moro-
masa (cf. pp. 187-89). Since Moromasa was a powerful politician, only
first rank poets would have been asked to contribute poems for the final
selection. Furthermore, the poetry collection at the end of the volume
contains a number of poems submitted for poetry contests, again evidence

57. McCullough and McCullough, A Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 81.

58. Oka, Michitsuna bo, 12.
59. Helen McCullough, Okagami, 166.

33
 INTRODUCTION

of her activity as a professional poet. Finally, a number of her poems were

included in imperial poetry anthologies for the next two hundred years.60
The epitome of her recognition as a poet came with the inclusion of one
of her poems (cf. p. 71) in the Hyakunin isshu, "One Hundred Poets, One
Poem Each," compiled in the early thirteenth century by the great arbiter
of poetic taste, Fujiwara Teika.61 The next section will look in more detail
at the artistry of both her poetry and prose.

THE ARTISTRY OF THE TEXT

It was the sheer beauty of the text that first inspired me to translate the
Kagero Diary. That beauty is hard to convey in English translation not
only because the language of this poetry is linguistically so different from
English, but also because the whole background of the literary tradition
that gives the language full meaning is missing for English readers. This
section will attempt to convey the literary background and some of the
specificity of the language of the text.

Balance between Poetry and Prose in the Text

In the previous section, a passage from the historical document Okagami

was cited as evidence of the author's reputation as a poet among her
contemporaries. I would like to revisit that citation with a more literal
translation:
As for his mother, since she was extremely skillful as a poet, she
brought together and wrote down the poems and the events of
the period when his lordship [Kaneie] was visiting her, calling it
the Kagero Diary and letting it be spread about in the world.62

This indicates that so far as her contemporaries were concerned, there

was something akin to a causal relationship between her being a poet and
composing this work. It was not only that being a poet meant being skill-
ful at writing; it may also have meant that one of her intentions was to
create a poetry anthology. Poetry was the dominant literary form of the

60. For a good summary in English of the recognition of Michitsuna's Mother as a waka poet
through the inclusion of her poems in public and private anthologies, poetry contests,
and so on, see Edith Sarra, Fictions of Femininity: Literary Inventions of Gender in
Japanese Court Women's Memoirs (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).
61. Ariyoshi Tamotsu, Hyakunin isshu zenyaku-chu (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1983), and Joshua
Mostow, Pictures of the Heart: The One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each Collection, Its
Commentaries and Pictures (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996).
62. Tachibana Kenji, Okagami/Ryojin hisho, in Nihon koten bungaku zenshu 20 (Tokyo:
Shogakkan, 1974), 259-60.

34
 INTRODUCTION

period and there was hardly any writing in Japanese that did not contain
poetry. There was a range of texts that varied with respect to the degree of
importance poetry had in them. These texts varied from, for example, The
Tales oflse,65 where the poetry is primary and the prose essentially pro-
vides context for the poetry, to The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter^ where the
storytelling of the prose is paramount and the poetry secondary. If a scale
were drawn with the above two texts as the opposite poles, the Kagero
Diary would sit right in the middle. Particularly in the first part of the
work, it is more like The Tales oflse, where the main role of the prose is to
provide context for the poetry. However, even by the latter part of book
one, particularly in the author's description of her pilgrimage to Hase, the
prose of the text comes into its own.

The Poetry and Its Literary Context

As mentioned above, Michitsuna's Mother was recognized as a skilled poet.

To be skillful at poetry in this age meant to channel one's inspiration
through the conduit of the poetic tradition already established by the Kokin-
shu poetry anthology. Kokinshu was completed around A.D. 905. It was
the first anthology of Japanese poetry to be sponsored by the emperor,
signaling the recognition of Japanese poetry as a serious enterprise (previ-
ously, imperially sponsored anthologies had been limited to poetry in
Chinese), and it was the first major text of the literary tradition to be
written in the phonetic script, hiragana. The Japanese preface (it had a
Chinese preface as well, to confer the necessary air of seriousness) broke
ground as the first attempt to write discursively in the native language.
This preface made a declaration about the essential nature of Japanese
poetry that was to determine the course of that poetic tradition for the
next six hundred years:
Japanese poetry, with the human heart for a seed, grows
into the countless leaves of words. Since for people in the world,
there is such a lushness of things, in response to seeing things,
hearing things, we are moved to express what we feel in our
hearts. Hearing the warbler in the blossoms or the voice of frogs
living in water, what living thing is not moved to song [poetry].
It is poetry that without using force moves heaven and earth,
causes tender feelings in invisible spirits and demons, softens
the relations between men and women, and consoles the fierce
hearts of warriors.65

63. Helen McCullough, Tales oflse.

64. Donald Keene, "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter."
65. Okumura Tsuneya, Kokin waka shu (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1978), 11.

35
 INTRODUCTION

Thus, the preface's author, Ki no Tsurayuki, stakes out the territory for
Japanese poetry squarely in the domain of the expression of feeling. The
characteristics of the poems compiled in Kokinshu define the conventions
of Japanese poetry from that point forward. What are those conventions?
First, the preferred form for Japanese poetry becomes the thirty-
one syllable tanka, or "short poem," another name for which is simply
waka, "Japanese poem."66 The thirty-one syllables are divided into five
units called ku in the scheme of 5/7/5/7/7, the numbers standing for the
number of syllables. Ku does not mean "line" exactly, although in the
format the poems will be presented here, each ku will be the equivalent
of a line. In Japanese manuscripts of the period, waka are usually written
in one or two lines, and there has been much debate in recent years as to
whether the rendering of waka into five lines in English is a distortion.67
However, even if, orthographically in Japanese, waka are written in one
or two lines, whenever waka are recited aloud, the ku breaks are regis-
tered distinctly in the rhythm. I would suggest that one of the ways one
can give a sense of those rhythm breaks in English translation is with line
breaks, so the translations presented in this volume will follow what has
become conventional practice in English to render waka in five lines.
There is a perhaps a link between the choice of a brief form for
the standard form of poetry, and the focus of poetry upon lyric expres-
sion. It is characteristic of feelings that they do not persist. They shift and
change. To capture feeling is to create a lyric moment. Long poems must
include something other than expression of feeling; the most common
move is to narrative, but the waka being a short form could concentrate
on the lyric moment. Actually Ishikawa Takuboku, a poet of this form in
the twentieth century, said it eloquently:
People say the tanka form is inconvenient because it's so short.
I think its shortness is precisely what makes it convenient. . . .
We are constantly being subjected to so many sensations, com-
ing from both inside and outside ourselves, that we forget them
soon after they occur, or even if we remember them for a little
while, we end up by never once in our whole lifetimes ever
expressing them because there is not enough content to sustain

66. Tanka means literally "short poem" and waka means "Japanese poem." Although they
refer to the same form of poetry, the usage is a little different. Waka is used more often
in the context of classical poetry up to nineteenth century, while tanka is generally
used in the context of modern Japanese poetry since the tanka form is still being
written by some modern poets.
67. The translator Hiroaki Sato is the most vigorous exponent of waka as a "single line"
poem. For a summary of his views on this issue, see the introduction to his translation
of String of Beads: Complete Poems of Princess Shikishi (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1993), 30.

36
 INTRODUCTION

the thought. . . . Although a sensation may last only a second, it

is a second that will never return again. I refuse to let such
moments slip by.68

The choice of a brief form for the norm in poetry had other rami-
fications for the role of poetry in social interaction. A short form lends
itself to being included in letters and facilitates impromptu composition.
In conjunction with having fixed and easily understood conventions, the
brevity of waka helped keep poetry within everyone's reach. It may not
be easy to write a superb waka, but it is not difficult to write one that
merely follows the conventions and fits the form of thirty-one syllables.
Kokinshu also determined that the main topics for Japanese po-
etry would be nature and love. Of the twenty books of Kokinshu, six are
devoted exclusively to poems of the four seasons (thus subjects from na-
ture) and five to love. Moreover, the topics of the other books, such as
grief, parting, and travel, overlap with nature and/or love. As the reader
will note in the Kagero Diary, the language of poems of friendship is
often indistinguishable from that of love poems. Although it was possible
to write a love poem without natural imagery, in actual practice, they
were often intertwined. Thus, nature and love constitute the essential do-
main of Japanese poetry.
The predilection for expressing feeling through conventional im-
agery of the four seasons had an important effect. It linked interior emo-
tion to the exterior world. For example, if one wanted to write a poem to
express a feeling and it was the fifth month, there was a set of natural
imagery to choose from, already determined by tradition: irises, unohana
(a kind of shrub with white blossoms), the cuckoo, summer rains. It was
poetically unthinkable to use a natural image from a season other than the
season one was in, even in a metaphorical way, although some natural
imagery, particularly that of the sea, was not linked to any particular sea-
son and was therefore potentially available for any poem. Conventional
and limiting as such a poetic practice may seem, it meant that when you
wanted to express a feeling inside, you first looked outside (mentally or
actually) for what flora or fauna of the season could project that feeling.
An example of this in the diary is when Michitsuna's Mother and Kaneie
have become physically intimate again after an estrangement. The narra-
tive prose of the section sets the scene thus: "While still lying down [an
oblique reference to their having made love], and gazing at the flowers in
rank, multicolored profusion, we said the following" (cf. pp. 83-85). From

68. As cited in Donald Keene, Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era
(New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1984), 43-44.

37
 INTRODUCTION

the scene before them, they both choose images of flowers, dew, and
autumn for a poetic exchange in which they express complex emotions of
erotic closeness and lingering resentment. In this case, they literally look
outside to find natural images that can mirror their feelings. This practice,
although guided by convention, actually grounds a poem in the here and
now of the moment of composition, collapsing the line between interior
and exterior worlds.
The Kokinshu not only established the topics that would remain
the domain of Japanese waka poetry but it also to a great extent fixed the
vocabulary to be used in poetry.69 It has already been noted in the histori-
cal introduction how a Fujiwara patriarch enjoined his daughter to learn
all of the poems of the Kokinshu by heart.70 This was how the word trove
and "rules" were learned. The rules were not abstracted from the poems
but rather embodied in them. Thus, the Kokinshu was like a code book
for Heian aristocrats. Given this, it will be no surprise to the reader that
poetic allusion during the Heian period was most often to the poems of
the Kokinshu, and in this respect the poems of Michitsuna's Mother are no
exception.71
With the Kokinshu and the poetry it shaped for the next thousand
years, we have a lyric poetry dedicated to the expression of personal
emotion that is confined within very narrow conventions, thus assuring a
communal unity to expression. The waka form embodies a code of com-
munication that paradoxically expresses the individual person while at the
same time affirming a communal mind. Michitsuna's Mother did not resist
her poetic tradition. The artistry of her poetry is the artistry of her poetic
tradition. Using examples from the Kagero Diary, some of the technical
aspects of the Heian poetic tradition will now be explicated. This section
will also give the reader some insight into the problems and process of
translation with regard to poetry in the text.

69. Successive imperially sponsored anthologies of poetry did add somewhat to the range
of topics and approved vocabulary. The Gosenshil, which was completed around 958
and was therefore the only other imperial anthology to be known by the Kagero Diary
author, was noted for its use of use of vocabulary outside of that of the Kokinshu.
However, the Gosenshu always suffered from unfavorable comparison with the Kokinshu
and never exerted the same degree of influence. Donald Keene, Seeds in the Heart:
Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the late Sixteenth Century (New York: Henry
Holt, 1993), 280-81.
70. Morris, The World of the Shining Prince, 221.
71. Michitsuna's Mother does allude to poems of her contemporaries upon occasion. The
next most frequently cited and alluded to poetry collection in the Kagero Diary is the
Kokin rokujo, "Ancient and Modern Poems in Six Notebooks," an "unofficial" anthology
that was not produced under official sponsorship but seemed to evolve as a reference
handbook among poets of the Heian period.

38
 INTRODUCTION

Kakekotoba; Pivot Word/Pun

One of the most salient techniques of Heian poetry is the use of a type of
pun called kakekotoba, "pivot word," because it pivots between two mean-
ings. The English word "pun" seems inadequate to describe the complex
phenomenon of kakekotoba, but I will use it because it is convenient and
short. A rough approximation of how the technique of kakekotoba might
work in English would be this:
He leaves
fall yellow on the path
she dies
the color of sorrow
into her morning gown.

Words with the same sound but different meanings are placed so that their
doubled meaning can function as a juncture between two syntactic struc-
tures. In fact, Edwin Cranston, in his recently published anthology of waka
poetry, has used the translation "juncture" for kakekotoba?2 Here is an
example of kakekotoba usage from the Kagero Diary. The following poem
was addressed to Tokihime, the first wife of the Kagero Diary author's
husband. The year before, Kaneie had taken up with a woman known in
the diary as the Machi Alley woman. Michitsuna's Mother sent this poem
to Tokihime to commiserate with her about Kaneie's absence from both
their beds (cf. p. 75):
soko ni sahe Even from your pond's depths,
karu to ifu naru they say it has been reaped,
makomo gusa the wild rice,
ikanaru sawa ni in what marsh now does it put
ne wo todamuramu down its roots and stay to sleep?

There are three kakekotoba in this poem. Soko in the first line means both
"your place" and "bottom," as of pond. Karu means, "to be separated
from" and "to reap," while ne means "root" and "sleep." The poem was
written in the fifth month, which was when the stalks of makomo, a kind
of wild rice, were harvested for making mats and pillows. The wild rice
provides the unifying imagery for the poem with pond/marsh, reap, and
roots. That the wild rice stalks were associated with the manufacture of
bedding is also particularly appropriate. There is irony in the pun on "reap"
and "to be separated from," since the Machi Alley woman's "harvest" is
their loss. There even seems to be something a little naughty about the
72. Edwin A. Cranston, trans., A Waka Anthology: Volume One: The Gem-Glistening Cup
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), xxiv.

39
 INTRODUCTION

pun available in "root" and "sleep." The imagery and puns together make
this a rich and complex communication.
In the English translation, the puns have become metaphors, so it
takes an effort of imagination to realize that in the original soko ni sake
conveys "simultaneously," "even at your place" and "even at the bottom
[of the pond]." The same is true for the other two kakekotoba; it is like
hearing two tracks of separate yet linked meaning. The density of mean-
ing and imagery it makes possible is astonishing. Only rarely is it possible
to create an analogous effect in English. However, I note the puns that
occur in the poems so that the reader can be aware of their presence.

Makura Kotoba: Pillow Words

Perhaps one of the hardest techniques of Heian poetic diction for a West-
ern audience to appreciate is the makura kotoba or "pillow word." It is
often explained as analogous to the "fixed epithet" which occurs in Greek
epic poetry, but the pillow word is more complex in its operation. The
most intriguing thing about pillow words is that they are not definite in
meaning. This is because the pillow words often come from ancient po-
etry and their etymological origins are obscure. Take the phrase, sasagani
no, "of the sasagani" which is a pillow word for spider. Sasagani is a
name for spider which perhaps started from a metaphor, since the gani
part of sasagani may have come from kani, the word for crab. More im-
portant than the precise meaning of the term, however, is the incantatory
ring it brings to the poem; it has the feeling of antiquity about it and
signals that spider imagery is coming. Many pillow words are place names.
Take for example this poem, composed by one of Kaneie's attendants for
Michitsuna's Mother's serving ladies as part of the New Year's celebrations
(cf. p. 277):
shimotsuke ya Shimotsuke, hey!
woke no futara wo This lid of a tub, we see
adjikinaku unfortunately
kage mo uakabanu is a mirror whereon
kagami to zo miru your reflections do not float.

He is asking for the ladies to let themselves be seen. What does "Shimotsuke,
hey!" have to do with the poem? Shimotsuke is a place-name in the area of
Japan known today as Nikko. There are two other places in the same
district with the names Ooke and Futara. Ooke is homophonous for oke,
"tub," and Futara with futara, "lid," so Shimotsuke became a pillow word
for tubs and lids. It is not linear thinking that gives rise to pillow words
but free association and usage in ancient poetry. For the most part, the

40
 INTRODUCTION

pillow words have not been rendered in the present translation because
they present even more difficulty than the pivot words, but again I have
pointed them out in the notes to at least remind the reader that the trans-
lations are not transparent.

Engo: Verbal Association

Engo, literally "connected language," or as Earl Miner has translated it,
"verbal association,"73 represents another way that an associative mode of
thinking became codified into a poetic technique. It is the constructing of
a poem or part of a poem74 around a cluster of words connected to a
central image or motif. For example, in the poem above that has wild rice
as a core image, "pond," "reap," and "root" are all engo-associated with
wild rice. These three words are all simultaneously used as kakekotoba,
which indicates how interwoven all the poetic techniques described here
can be in usage. One of the places in the diary where the use of engo is
conspicuous because it extends over six poems, is the poetic exchange
between Kaneie and Prince Noriakira in book one (cf. pp. 101-3). The
prince initiates the exchange with a poem in which the pun available on
tsuka, "spool," in the word tsukasa, "court office," launches a play on
textile-related vocabulary: "spool," "thread," "cut/break ties," "wind," "spin,"
natsuhiki (a special kind of summer-spun thread for linen), skeins, and so
on. As in this example, engo often creates a sense of unity within a poem
and between poems. The diary includes two long poems, choka, one by
Michitsuna's Mother (cf. pp. 89-93) and one by Kaneie (cf. pp. 95-97). In
these long poems, the reader will notice that extended runs of associated
vocabulary provide continuity in an otherwise meandering form. I have
not noted the presence of engo specifically in the commentary to the trans-
lation largely because of the difficulty of separating it out from the use of
puns, but wherever there is mention of associative language, the reader
may assume that engo is at play.

Conclusion to the Waka Section

Waka poems are short but dense, not with meaning so much as with
resonance; they constantly call up a shared and minutely appreciated po-
etic tradition. They play with language as though the words were threads
in a borderless tapestry, and since the poems live in exchange, each poem

73. Earl Miner, Hiroko Odagiri, and Robert E. Morrell, The Princeton Companion to Classical
Japanese Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 273.
74. This discussion is limited to poetry, but engo can also be used in prose, particularly in
later Japanese literature.

41
 INTRODUCTION

is always an invitation for a reciprocal creation. Michitsuna's Mother was

not an original poet in her tradition; (it must be remembered that it was a
tradition where originality was not the object of the game), yet she was
adept at speaking her own meaning through the forms of the tradition.
When we look at her prose, however, it is her originality that demands
attention.

Characteristics of Michitsuna's Mother's Prose Style

It is important to stress how new Japanese prose was in Michitsuna's
Mother's age. It was mentioned before that the preface of the Kokinshu
was the first attempt to write discursively in the Japanese language. Prior
to that, and for the most part, even after that, all expository writing was
done in Chinese. Then in 935, the author of the Kokinshu preface, Ki no
Tsurayuki, wrote an account in Japanese of a trip from Shikoku back to
the capital, the Tosa nikki or Tosa Diary.15 As mentioned at the beginning
of the introduction, he used a woman's persona to write the diary, so
much had writing of the vernacular language in phonetic script come to
be associated with women. There were also the monogatari or "tales,"
presumably written by men for a largely female readership. At any rate,
given that the Kagero Diary was composed around 970, the Japanese prose
tradition was only about sixty-five years old. Poetry was older because it
had been written down in the eighth century and preserved since then as
an oral tradition as well.
In that sense, the Kokinshu was the culmination of an already
lengthy tradition. Prose, on the other hand, was very new and was appro-
priated by women who, being at the margins, had the freedom of irrel-
evance. It is hard to see this "irrelevance" now since for the last two
hundred and fifty years the prose works of the Heian women writers have
been declared masterpieces and the works that defined the age. Akiyama
Ken has put this in perspective when he said that although the Heian
period is now known as the age of monogatari, people of the Heian
period would have been very surprised to hear it. To them the tales and
prose works in general were just the diversions of women.76 Perhaps it
was both the newness and marginality of the prose medium that allowed
it to be so malleable in the hands of Michitsuna's Mother.
Not all facets of interest in Michitsuna's Mother's prose are origi-
nal with her; some are aspects of classical Japanese in general. In the next

75. The "Tosa Diary" in Miner, Japanese Poetic Diaries.

76. Akiyama, Ocho joryu bungaku no sekai, 209.

42
 INTRODUCTION

section, I will first deal with general features of classical Japanese prose
and then delineate Michitsuna's Mother's original contribution to the medium.

Avoidance of Pronouns

One feature of classical Japanese prose that causes headaches for modern
readers and translators is the avoidance of pronouns and the general drop-
ping of subjects. About ninety percent of the time that the reader sees an
"I" in this translation of the Kagero Diary, it was not there in the original.
While a pronoun for "I," ware, did exist in classical Japanese, its actual
usage was severely limited. On the other hand, gender-specific third-per-
son pronouns did not even exist in classical Japanese. There was the word,
kare, which in the modern language is used as the equivalent of "he," but
in the Heian period, it meant only "that person"; in other words, it was the
same as "ano hito." The unisex hito or "person" is used more frequently
than hare, but neither of them are used often. Thus, in the numerous
instances in the diary where the translation says of the author's husband
that "he appeared," in the original it is simply mietari, "appeared." The
reader is simply to understand "who" appeared, yet, paradoxically, the
absence of explicit reference to her husband either with a pronoun or by
use of his name seems to reaffirm his omnipresence in her conscious-
ness.77 However, as one might surmise, this very elliptical way of referring
to subjects of actions can result in a troublesome ambiguity. The ellipsis of
subject is general to classical Japanese, but at least in Heian fiction, the
reader is aided in understanding who did or said what to whom by the
fact that the narrating voice assumes a position within the social hierarchy
and accordingly uses honorific forms of address and verb endings. For
example, in The Tale ofGenji, when Genji does something, the action verb
is always given an honorific ending, so it is clear that he is the subject.
Since the narrating voice in the Kagero Diary is essentially the author
talking to herself, there is no use of honorifics except in the quoted speech
of others. This sometimes makes it difficult to know who the subject of a
verb is. For example, in book three of the diary, in the section where Mi-
chitsuna's Mother unites her newly adopted daughter with the daughter's
actual father, the author's husband, Kaneie, there is a line translated in the
present work as, "I couldn't help crying, bringing my sleeve to my eyes
many times. He said, 'Well, I never . . .'" (cf. p. 295), but in the original
there is no subject specified for "couldn't help crying" or for "said," and

77. For a more detailed treatment of this issue, see Sonja Arntzen, "Translating Difference: a
New Translation for the Kagero Diary," Japan Foundation Newsletter (December 1993).

43
 INTRODUCTION

while the context makes it clear that the speaker of "Well, I never . . ."is
Kaneie, commentators are divided down the middle as to whether the
crying should be attributed to Michitsuna's Mother or Kaneie. Ultimately
there is no way to know for sure. I have opted to follow the interpretation
of the Zenshu commentators, because in places where expert opinion has
been divided, unless I felt strongly otherwise, my practice has been to
follow the Zenshu interpretation.
A similar problem comes up with the ungendered hito or "per-
son." In book two, for example, when the author has retreated to a temple
in Narutaki and Kaneie sends a member of his household office to scold
the author into returning (cf. p. 241), there is no way to know whether
that person was male or female, which is important in English where one
must use either "he" or "she." My practice has been to make these ambigu-
ous cases female because face-to-face conversations between men and
women in this age were severely restricted.
There are other times when the author could be saying either "I"
or "we." These are usually places where she describes a situation which
involves her attendants. In an incident in book one, where she receives an
order for sewing from Kaneie and in the end refuses to do it, the present
translation says, " . . . and so it was decided; we sent the bundles back and
as we suspected . . . " (cf. p. 81). This passage could just as easily be trans-
lated as "I sent the bundles back and as I suspected . . . ," but from the
context of the passage, since the attendants have been included in the
decision-making, it seemed reasonable to make the action collective.
Over and above the difficulties occasioned by such ambiguities as
described above, the ellipsis of the first-person subject makes a difference
to the construction of "self" in the diary. The fact that the "I" is understood
in classical Japanese is not the same as having the "I" explicitly and con-
stantly stated. I would suggest that the necessity of having a definite sub-
ject for every grammatically correct utterance in English is part and parcel
of Western culture's traditional belief in a unitary self and separate others
acting independently in a world of objects. Perhaps there is more to the
writing of the first person subject with a capital "I" in English than typo-
logical convention. Is it not consistent with a dominating first-person sub-
ject viewpoint in the language and a conception that all persons are meta-
physically as well as grammatically separate and distinct from one an-
other? In classical Japanese and particularly in the Kagero Diary, the gen-
eral absence of a first-person pronoun creates a much more diffuse sense
of self. It is a self with soft edges that bleeds into the quotations of the
voices of others and the citation of others' letters. And yet, even without
the constant reiteration of "I," it is a text of such intense first-person sub-

44
 INTRODUCTION

jectivity.78 This seems impossible to duplicate in English. I considered us-

ing small case "i" for awhile following the practice of some contemporary
poetry and experimental fiction, but it seemed that such a strategy might
end up drawing even more attention to the "I" than simply complying
with convention. Instead I have opted to convey the sense of a diffuse self
by keeping the interrupting voices of others intact in the text rather than
resorting to paraphrase even where it would help smooth out a passage.
In line with the same intention, I have also kept distinct through the use of
italics the disrupting voice of the author's own consciousness, that is, her
citation of bits of her own speech that she observes in her mind.

Tense less Narrative

Another general feature of classical Japanese prose is what Richard Okada
has referred to as "tenseless narrative":
. . . the tenseless narrative does not mean "present-tense"
narrative. The narrating easily refers to prior moments, but they
are always anchored to the spatiotemporal coordinates of the
particular moment in question. What happened once has rel-
evance not as an always already reified, abstractable past point
in linear time, but as the narrating moment continually repre-
sents it in a deictically determinate now.79

None of the suffixes from classical Japanese that are usually trans-
lated into English as past tenses, such as nu, tsu, and tari, are actually
fixed past tenses. They all overlap with affirmation. Only the suffix ki is
close to being a past tense, since it is used to denote actions in the past
that one knows from direct personal experience. Given a grammatical
description like this, one might assume that it would be the preferred
ending in a text like the Kagero Diary, which is the record of personal
experience. Surprisingly, it hardly appears at all. Aside from the suffixes
mentioned above, the most common perfective suffix is keri, a suffix that
is used most often for narrated information that the speaker has learned

78. I am indebted to Lynn Miyake's "If T were 'She' and 'She' were T: The Narration of the
Kagero Nikki," a conference paper at the 1993 Combined Western and Southwestern
Conferences of the Association for Asian Studies, for insight into how pronoun refer-
ence creates such an intense first-person perspective. See also Watanabe Minoru's "Style
and Point of View in the Kagero Nikki," translated by Richard Bowring, Journal of
Japanese Studies 10:2 (1984): 365-84, and the original article, "Tojishateki hyogen—
Kagero nikki," in Heian bunshoshi (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1981), 90-112.
79. H. Richard Okada, Figures of Resistance: Language, Poetry, and Narrating in the Tale of
Genji and Other Mid-Heian Texts (Durham: Duke Unversity Press, 199D, 179.

45
 INTRODUCTION

by hearsay. It is the use of this ending that gives the feeling of a tale to the
Kagero Diary. Another use of the keri suffix is for the narration of infor-
mation about which the speaker experiences some sense of discovery or
realization in the process of the narration. That is why keri is a common
verb ending in the poetry of the period. Richard Okada quotes two Japa-
nese grammarians who have attempted to explain the curious operation of
keri by describing it in terms of bringing "the past into the present mo-
ment," or by saying that "when keri is used, the past is conceived of in
some manner as existing at the present moment."80 The editors of the Iwa-
nami dictionary of classical Japanese, grappling with the same problem in
description, have generalized the problem in these terms:
There is a big difference in the way modern Europeans and
ancient Japanese people conceived of time. Europeans think of
time as having an objective existence and linear continuity, and
they see it as something that can be divided up, so they have as
a foundation the distinctions between past, present, and future.
However, for the ancient Japanese, time was not an objective
linear continuity. Rather, in an extremely subjective way, the
future was the speaker's vague supposition or conjecture and
the past was the presence of the speaker's memory or the evo-
cation of the speaker's memory.81

It is an intriguing notion to narrate the past in such a way that it is recre-

ated in the present. Just as with the construction of the self, tense in
classical Japanese narrative is not connected to a world of hard and fast
definitions. There is a shifting and conflation of tense just as there was a
conflation of the self and other voices.
A typical passage in the Kagero Diary may begin with a reference
to a season or a date that will place the context of the narration in the
past. The passage will then often move to a "present tense" mode of nar-
ration. Actually, since the sentences are typically long and flowing, tense
is suspended for the space of the sentence and the sentence is only given
a tense marking at the end which will often be one of the three perfective
tenses mentioned above, or keri, which as described above defies summa-
tion as simply a perfective ending.
The reading experience created by this is one of an unfolding into
a "present" of events one knows are in the past.82 There are other passages
where it seems that the narration of the past is more firmly in the past but

80. Ibid., 38.

81. Ono Susumu et al, Iwanami kogojiten (Iwanami Press, 1974), 1439-40.
82. This description of the reading experience is, of course, based on my own experience.
The reading experience of Heian readers is unknowable.

46
 INTRODUCTION

never so firmly as the equivalent in English. This is why the translation

displays a much freer mixing of past and present tenses than is normally
considered proper in English. By this means, I have hoped to convey what
I perceive as a shifting temporal flow in the original.

Original Aspects of the Kagero Diary Prose Style

Up to this point, I have been talking of those features of the Kagero Diary
prose style that it shares with classical Japanese in general. However, there
are some fascinating ways in which the Kagero Diary prose style is origi-
nal. One is its long, undulating sentences. The sentences follow the flow
of the author's mind creating something analogous to a "stream of con-
sciousness" effect. Let us look at the following example from book two
taken from the section where the author has just arrived at the temple that
is the site of her retreat (cf. p. 233):

The mountain path was not anything particular to speak

about—ah—/ can only think of the times in the past when just
the two of us traveled this road together; there was that time when
I was ill, we were here around three or four days; yes, it was
around this time of the year; he didn't even go to serve at court,
together we were hidden from the world; thinking about this and
other things, I go along the long path, tears pouring down. I am
accompanied by only three attendants.
I get down first at the monastery's living quarters; when I
look around, I see some peonies surrounded by a brushwood
fence among some other luxuriantly growing plants whose name
I know not; they are in such a pitiful state, their petals all fallen
and scattered; the old poem, "flowers have only one season,"
comes to mind and repeating it to myself, I become very sad.

This passage has only three sentences, two long ones and one short one
as a sort of segue. The paragraphing in the translation is in accordance
with the Zenshu text, but there would have been no paragraph separa-
tions in the original text. If we focus on the two long sentences, we see
that the first one follows the pattern of association in memory. Riding on
the path to the temple reminds her of the times when she had traveled on
the same path with her husband, which in turn reminds her in detail of the
sweet intimacy of the time they spent together there. She virtually relives
the past in the form of an inner monologue, but it occasions tears because
the past stands in stark contrast to the present where not only is she by
herself but she has run away to perhaps cut off relations with her husband
forever by becoming a nun. Note that the author does not spell out the
causal relationship between the content of her inner monologue and her
47
 INTRODUCTION

tears, but rather appears simply to give us her thoughts and emotional
responses as they occur. The short sentence where she remarks about the
smallness of her escort, signals the return of her attention from past remi-
niscence to the present moment and the wretchedness of her situation.
In the second long sentence, the author surveys the scene before
her, and focuses on the bedraggled peonies which become a mirror for
herself. Her sense of being a flower past its prime is crystallized in her
remembering a fragment of poem no. 1016 from the Kokinshu-.
In the autumn fields
blooming so vigorously,
the Maiden Flowers,
such a struggle to be seen,
flowers too have only one season.

The sentence moves from establishing the context of place to an image to

a fragment of poetry to an expression of feeling, thereby creating the
illusion of capturing thoughts and sensation as they occur. This kind of
sinuous sentence, propelled by mental association in a dance with memory,
is characteristic of Michitsuna's Mother's prose style and makes it very
different not only from Ki no Tsurayuki's style in the Tosa Diary, the only
immediate antecedent for diary writing in Japanese, but also from prose
style in the early monogatari.
The last sentence in the above example can also be used to illus-
trate another original characteristic of the Kagero Diary prose style. This is
the blurring of the distinction between poetry and prose. How does the
author do this? She has the prose carry as much imagistic and subjective
emotional content as poetry normally does. In the sentence about the
peonies above, the juxtaposition of a natural image with a feeling is com-
mon to the operation of many waka. Furthermore, the embedding of a
poetic fragment in the sentence moves the prose even closer to poetry.
Readers of the later Tale of Genji will not be surprised at the blurring of
boundaries between poetry and prose, for it is also a hallmark of the Genji
author's prose, but it originates with the Kagero Diary.
A final characteristic of the Kagero Diary prose style that arrests
the reader's attention as distinctive is something that I designate as a "cin-
ematic" style of description. One visual image succeeding another creates
a montage effect. Take for example, this passage from a description of her
approach to a pilgrimage site (cf. pp. 157-59):

We left from there, and as we go along, even though the

path is nothing to speak of, it still gives one the feeling of being
deep in the mountains and the sound of the water is very affect-

48
 INTRODUCTION

ing. Those famed cedars are living, even now piercing the sky,
all kinds of colors of tree leaves can be seen. From among many
stones, the water gurgles forth. Seeing this scene struck by the
light of the setting sun, tears pour forth endlessly. The path to
here had not been so especially charming. There were as yet no
red autumn leaves; the flowers were all gone; one could only
see withered pampas grass. Yet, here, the feeling is special, when
I look out, rolling up the outer blind, pushing aside the inner
blind, the color of this well-worn robe is quite different. When I
pull the train of lavender gauze around me, the ties cross over
my lap, how well their color complements the burnt umber of
this robe, how enchanting I find it all. The beggars with their
pots and bowls set on the ground before them, how sad they
seem. Feeling so close to the poor and lowly, entering the temple
precincts is less uplifting than I expected.

The description above is visually rich and enlivened by the narrator's shifting
gaze. Imagine the above scene rendered in film. A carriage moves along a
path in a forest close to a stream. A tilt shot follows cedars up to the sky,
then a cut is made to a pan sweeping the foliage. A cut is made to a close-
up of the stream; the sound track magnifies the water gurgling. The cam-
era cuts to a close-up of a woman's face weeping in the slanting rays of
the sun behind the blinds of the carriage, then cuts to silvery pampas
grass and back to a view from the inside of the carriage of hands rolling
up and pushing aside blinds. The woman's hands bring lavender ties around
and crisscross them over her lap; the shot is from the woman's point of
view, and the camera dwells on the colored pattern of lavender over burnt
umber, then cuts to crouched figures of beggars in the indigo twilight
staring up at us because we, the viewers, see them through her eyes. The
point is that her prose could be translated easily into film, because even
though this was millennium before the invention of film, the structure of
her prose description creates an analogous effect.

Translation's Tightrope
This preceding section has attempted to give some impression of the lin-
guistic specificity of the original text. The reader will have noticed that
while the translation has taken shape by trying to render the style of the
original, it remains profoundly different. There is no such thing as a trans-
parent translation. In preparing a translation that one hopes a large audi-
ence will read, one walks a tightrope between allowing one's reading of
the original to shape the translation so radically that the style may appear
alien and difficult, or making the translation conform so closely to stylistic
norms of contemporary English that all difference is effaced. One negoti-

49
 INTRODUCTION

ates this tightrope perpetually and there will likely be many readers from
whose viewpoint this translation will appear to have fallen off the rope in
one direction or the other. Hopefully there will be other readers for whom
the translation strikes the right balance. Balanced in the wind of change, I
relinquish the struggle for the time being and offer the reader one of many
possible versions of the Kagero Diary.

50
The Kagero Diary
Book One
 Summary

Book one covers fourteen years in the author's married life, from the year
954 to the year 968. The author, Michitsuna's Mother, is a woman of the
middle-ranking aristocracy. She is about nineteen when the proposal for
marriage comes from Fujiwara Kaneie, one of her kinsmen from a distant
and more powerful branch of the family. It is assumed the author began
writing the diary around 971, many years after the events recorded in
book one. The first indication that the diary was actually begun later is in
the introductory paragraph, where she states that the events of years past
are vague in her memory.
She starts the diary in the third person, giving it the feel of a
fictional piece of writing. However, within one long sentence she moves
to declare her purpose to write a sort of antiromance, the record of a real
person's life, her own. The reader will see her struggle through book one
as she alternately recaptures the moments in her marriage that accorded
with the romantic ideal and laments the points at which the relationship
fell short.
Running through the narration is her record of correspondence
and the exchange of poetry that was an integral part of communication in
the period. In fact, in many respects, book one is more like an anthology
of poetry than a diary, at least in conventional Western terms. Her style of
narration is elliptical and fragmentary. She is not interested in filling out
the picture so that we get a clear sense of who all the actors are and what
the chronology is. Her focus is rather on heightened moments of sensibil-
ity, which usually involve the composition of poetry.

55
 BOOK ONE

there is one - She begins speaking of herself in the third person, which gives the beginning of her
diary the feel of a monogatari, "tale."

old tales - Romantic tales perhaps like the Tale of Lady Ochikubo, a Cinderella story where a mis-
treated stepdaughter is rescued from her cruel situation by a handsome, high-ranking man.

places where I havejust left it at that are indeed many - This phrase is vague in the original and has
been subject to many varied interpretations ranging from "There are many things I have written that
were best left unwritten" to "There are many descriptions where I've thought this will do." I have left
it vague. A possible interpretation of "at that" is "as vague and fragmented as my memory."

"a tall tree among oak trees" - Conventional metaphorical expression for the position of captain of
the Right Guards, which her husband-to-be, Kaneie, is known to have held at that time. From this,
we also know the year is 954. He is twenty-six; she is about nineteen.
An ordinary person would have sent — Given that women (other than those serving at court) were
hidden away behind ranks of relatives and servants and layers of walls and curtains (even their
layers and layers of clothing seem emblematic of the barriers to intimacy), a Heian man wishing to
initiate a relationship could either approach the woman through her male protectors, fathers, and
brothers, as Kaneie does in this case, or try to reach her secretly through her personal female
attendants and set up direct correspondence. Michitsuna's Mother, it seems, would have preferred
the latter, which would have accorded more with the progress of a love affair in a romance.
myfather— She uses an indirect expression, "the one who is recognized as my parent." She does this
with all terms of family relation, but they are rendered more directly in this translation. Her father is
of the Fujiwara clan too, a distant cousin to Kaneie. Her father's branch of the family had been
relegated to the sidelines of the political world.
such a letter- A letter of proposal. An alternate interpretation of this passage is that she is surprised
to see such bad handwriting because she had heard he had a fine hand, but then the mention of
paper does not quite fit. It seems more likely that she is disappointed by the casualness in choice of
paper and hand, that it does not seem like a serious letter of proposal. Again her expectations in this
regard would have been shaped by romantic tales.

cuckoo bird - From this we know that the season of their first correspondence is early summer.

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 BOOK ONE

Thus the time has passed and there is one in the world who has lived such
a vain existence, catching on to neither this nor that. As for her appear-
ance, she can hardly be compared to others, and her intelligence—to say
she has some is as good as saying she has none at all—so it is only natural
that she has come to such a useless state she thinks again and again; it is
just that in the course of living, lying down, getting up, dawn to dusk,
when she looks at the odds and ends of the old tales—of which there are
so many, they are just so much fantasy—that she thinks perhaps if she
were to make a record of a life like her own, being really nobody, it might
actually be novel, and could even serve to answer, should anyone ask,
what is it like, the life of a woman married to a highly placed man, yet the
events of the months and years gone by are vague; places where I have
just left it at that are indeed many.
Well then, for this ultimately disappointing affair, there was, of
course, the exchange of love letters; from about the time that he became
"a tall tree among oak trees," it seems that he made his intentions known.
An ordinary person would have sent a discreet letter using a serving maid
or someone like that as a go-between to make his feelings known, but this
man goes right to my father, half-joking, half-serious, hinting at the idea,
and even though I told my father that it did not suit me at all, just as if he
did not know, one day he sends a retainer riding on a horse to pound on
our gate. Who was bringing whose messages, we had not a hint, so there
is a big commotion, we were quite perplexed, and accepting the message
brings on another commotion. When I look at it, the paper and so on are
not what you would expect in such a letter; I had heard from of old that in
such a case the hand would be perfect, but the writing in this is so bad that
I feel it couldn't be that sort of letter; it is so very strange. The words were:
oto ni nomi Only to listen
kikeba kanashi na to your sound alone is sad,
hototogisu cuckoo bird,
koto katarahamu to would that I could speak with you,
omofu kokoro ari this is what my heart longs for.

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 BOOK ONE

my old mother - She says "person of the older generation," but "mother" is the generally agreed
upon interpretation.
I have someone write - Revealing her own hand would be the first step to intimacy, so, adopting a
posture of resistance, she delays his seeing her handwriting. Since it is not written in her own hand,
he will even be uncertain as to whether it is her composition or not. Of course, the posture of
resistance is conventionally required.

flutter a voice - Pun on two meanings of the same word furu, one meaning "to brandish, wave in
front of one," and the other, "to be shaky, have a quavering sound."

soundless waterfall- There is an actual waterfall of this name in the Ohara district of Kyoto.

tracks . . . letters in the sand - This poem puns on the word fumi, which means both "footsteps,
tracks of animals or birds" and "writing" in the sense of "letters, books, and writing in general." It is
a pun that occurs often in Heian poetry. There is also a pun here on naki, "not there," which is
embedded in the word nagi-sa, "shore." Orthographically, naki and nagi were not distinguished in
the Heian period.
wave - Metaphor for someone interfering with their correspondence, perhaps another suitor, which
derives from the well-known and often quoted Kokinshu poem, no. 1093:
if ever I should
change my mind and banish you
from my heart then would
great ocean waves rise and cross
Suenomatsu Mountain
(Laurel Rasplica Rodd, Kokinshu: A Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern [Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1984], 372)
It is impossible that the waves could rise and cross the mountain, so the Kokinshu poem
is like the pledge, "my heart will never change toward you." Here the allusion implies that her heart
may no longer be true. The majority of allusions throughout this text are to the Kokinshu, the first
anthology of Japanese poetry compiled by imperial command. It was completed in 905, and by the
time of this diary had become the model text for the composition of Japanese verse, which is why it
is alluded to so often. The poem numbers given make it possible to find the poem in any edition of
the Kokinshu, whether in Japanese or English translation. As above, I will generally use L. R. Rodd's
translations, but where the translations are not noted as Rodd's, they are my own.

serious response -The word "serious," mame, means "with serious intent." In other words, this is a
correspondence leading to marriage.

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 BOOK ONE

and that was all. When we all discuss it, "How about it? Does it require a reply?"
my old mother says, "It does." So feeling obliged, I have someone write:
katarahamu Toward this village
hito naki sato ni where there's no one to speak with,
hototogisu cuckoo bird,
kahi nakarubeki do not flutter a voice that
kowe na furushi so will be quite to no avail.

With that as a beginning, there were missives one after another, but as I
did not reply, there came this:
obotsukana So faint, I strain
oto naki taki noto to hear this soundless waterfall,
midzu nareya you are its water,
yuku he mo shiranu though I know not where it goes,
se wo zo tadzunuru yet I seek the ford to meet.

When I send back, "I will answer soon," he sends this so quickly that I
wonder if he was in his right mind:
hito shirezu No one can know
ima ya ima ya to maybe now? maybe now?
matsu hodo ni the longer I wait
kaheri konu koso without hearing back from you
wabishikarikere the more wretched I become.

When this arrived, my mother said, "How awful, hadn't you better
be a bit more mature about this and send him a reply." So, I had a suitable
person write a suitable reply. Even with that, he was genuinely happy and
corresponded abundantly.
Another time, this was attached to a letter:
hama chidori Of the shore plovers,
ato mo nagisa ni no tracks, at sea's edge I see
fumi minu ha no letters in the sand,
ware wo kosu nami is it that a strong wave has
uchiyaketsuramu washed over me and struck them out?

That time too, using a person who could write a properly serious
response, I deceived him. There was another letter. "While I am glad to
have your seemingly serious response, if this time again there is nothing
from you yourself, how painful it will be," and so on. Written in the mar-
gin of this grave epistle:
idzuretomo No matter whose hand,
wakanu kokoro ha your unknowable heart must

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 BOOK ONE

no cries of deer... — Allusion to Kokinshu no. 214:

here in this mountain
village autumn brings special
misery all through
the night the sound of the
belling deer awakens me (Rodd, Kokinshu, 109)
eyelids meet not and see... - Pun on ahanu me, "not meeting eyes," in other words, eyes that do not
join lids in sleep, and me in the sense of "occasion," "the occasion of not meeting."

to which I reply - This is the first time she has replied directly, presumably in her own hand.

Takasago - Place-name that is a pillow word (fixed associated word) for deer.

Meeting Slope — Border point between Kyoto and the Lake Biwa region. The name Meeting Slope
makes it a popular pillow word for meeting.

Nakoso - Place-name that conveniently means "come not this way."

what kind of morning - With this indirect phrase she indicates that this is the morning after they
have first slept together. It is the content of his poem that answers her rhetorical question. He is no
longer pleading for admittance to her presence; now he is smitten and cannot wait to see her again.
Waiting the while . . . - Contains puns: yufugure-kure, "evening"/"rafts," nagare-nakare, "flow"/
"cry," ohowi, "Oi (river name)"/"many."

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 BOOK ONE

sohetaredo be present therein,

kotabi ha saki ni but this time for the first time,
minu hito nogari I wish for the unseen one.

Even though he said this, I continued to deceive him as before. With

our corresponding in this serious fashion, the days and the months passed.
Autumn has arrived. In another letter he writes, "How painful it is
to me that you seem to regard me with such prudence; I have borne it till
now, but how can we go on like this?"
shika no ne mo Though I am living
kikoenu sato ni where I hear no cries of deer
sumi nagara to waken me,
ayashiku ahanu strangely, my eyelids meet not
me wo miru kana and see only our not meeting.

to which I reply:
takasago no Even from those living
onohe watari ni on the top of Takasago,
sumafu tomo famed for deer,
shika samenu beki I have never heard
me to ha kikanu wo such complaints of wakefulness.

"How truly strange it is."

After awhile, again from him:
afusaka no How is it that this
seki ya nani nari Meeting Slope's barrier
chikakeredo seems so very close,
koe wabinureba yet as I struggle to cross,
nagekite zo furu I just spend my days in sorrow?

In return:
koewaburu I would have you know,
afusaka yori mo more difficult than Meeting Slope
oto ni kiku where you struggle so
nakoso wo kataki is the barrier I have heard of,
seki to shiranamu Nakoso, "Come not this way."

and so on, these serious missives went back and forth until—what kind of
morning was it?
yufugure no Waiting the while
nagarekuru ma wo till evening flows in
matsu hodo ni flowing tears enough
namida ohowi no to fill the Oi River
kaha to koso nare where the logs flow down.

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 BOOK ONE

Brooding on many . . . - Her poem echoes the puns of his poem. The posture of resistance has
yielded to one of uncertainty and reflection.

third morning - From this we know that the marriage has formally begun. As is the normal custom
of the time, it will be a visiting marriage; she will not expect him to move in with her nor will she
expect to move to his residence (see introduction, pp. 9-11).

he visits me there - That he seeks her out to visit even when she is away from home is indicative of
the strength of his affection.

pink - This is the nadeshiko, "wild pink," a type of carnation associated with autumn. Characters
used to write the name phonetically also mean the "caressed child," so the flower name also puns for
"beloved girl" and the like.

as much as two nights in a row — That she finds it remarkable that he stays away for two nights in a
row indicates indirectly the height of his ardor during this early period of marriage.

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 BOOK ONE

My reply:

omofu koto Brooding on many things,

ohowi kaha no dusk falls on Oi River
yufugure wa where the logs flow,
kokoro ni mo arazu without being aware of it
nakare koso sure my tears flow and fall.

Then again, on about the third morning:

shinonome ni White light before dawn

okikeru sora ha rising in the sky . . . we parted,
omohoede not understanding,
ayashiku tsuyu to strangely, I felt as if I died
kiekaheritsuru fading with the morning dew.

My reply:

sadame naku With no permanence,

kiekaheritsuru fading with the morning dew,
tsuyu yori mo then what about me
soradanome sum left to rely in vain
ware wa nani nari on such a fleeting thing?

Things went on like this, then for one reason or another, as it

comes about that I should be away from home for a while, he visits me
there, and the next morning comes this note, "I had thought to spend a
leisurely day with you there, but as it was not convenient. . . . What is this
all about anyhow? To me, sometimes it seems as though you are hiding
yourself away in the mountains." In reply, I send just this:

omohoenu Not thought of,

kaki ho ni oreba the hedge where this pink blooms
nadeshiko no and broken cannot bear
hana ni zo tsuyu wa the dew that stays not,
tamarazarikeru tears fall endlessly.

With such exchanges going on, the ninth month arrived.

Toward the end of the month, I did not see him for as much as
two nights in a row—my response when he sent only a letter:

kihekaeri The dew that faded

tsuyu mo mada hinu away is still here on
sode no uhe ni these sleeves that dry not,
kesa ha shigururu again this morning—the sky
sora mo warinashi too cannot help drizzling.

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 BOOK ONE

before I could complete a reply - In passages like these, one can see her quietly exulting in the power
of her person and poetry to move him. In response to her poem, he not only reciprocates with a
poem of his own but also rushes to her side.

oak forest - It is to be remembered that the euphemistic title for his office at this time is "a tall tree
among oak trees."

he cheated me by showing up himself - It is clear that she regards herself as being shortchanged
when he does not reply with a poem. Shinozuka Sumiko, whose interpretations I have found most
illuminating, has singled this passage out for attention: "not only Kaneie but almost anyone would
assume that showing up in person to meet her directly would be a much more profound expression
of love than taking part in an exchange of poetry. However, it seems Michitsuna's Mother felt a little
differently. . . . I would conjecture that for Michitsuna's Mother, the domain of communication
between hearts that could be reached through the exchange of poetry was more important than
anything" (Shinozuka Sumiko, "Kagero nikki no shudai o megutte," in Joryu nikki bungaku koza,
vol. 2 [Tokyo: Benseisha, 1990], 102-3).

period of abstinence - The activities of Heian aristocrats were directed by a complicated calendar
based on the principles of Chinese yin-yang cosmology. This calendar, which plotted the moves of
unseen forces, could determine which directions it was safe to move in, whether you should stay
away from your residence for a specified period of time, whether you should stay secluded at home,
and so on. Regular periods of abstinence were part of the calendar. During these periods, one
abstained from contact with others, sexual activity, and certain foods. Being in violation of Shinto
taboos, such as coming into contact with death or blood, could also require a period of abstinence.
Underlying the whole system was the belief that staying in harmony with these prohibitions would
assure health and good fortune and, conversely, breaking them would invite disaster (see introduc-
tion, pp. 22-24).

/ turn my sleeves inside out — A folk belief held that sleeping with one's sleeves turned inside out
would cause either one's lover to appear in one's own dream or oneself to appear in one's lover's
dream.

rather trite — This is one of the places where she seems to be assessing something in the past from
the vantage point of her present moment of writing. Looking back she seems to feel that this poem
did not do justice to her emotions.

fire of loving — This phrase comes from the pun on hi, "fire," that is embedded in the word omohi,
"love, longing." Some commentators speculate that it was her use of this conventional trope in this
poem that occasions the above evaluation of the poem as trite (Uemura Etsuko, Kagero nikki
kaishaku taisei, vol. 1 [Tokyo: Meiji Shoin, 1983-95], 111-12). However, most tropes in this age were
conventional, and she uses the same trope in other poems without seeming to be bothered by its
well-worn quality.

myfather, was to leavefor Michinoku Province — This marks the point when her father embarks on
the career path of provincial governor, a position that was lucrative but socially inferior. It is most
likely that this first post was obtained through the influence of his new son-in-law, Kaneie. Charac-
teristically, Michitsuna's Mother is not interested in recording here what this move may have meant
in terms of status or economic rewards, but rather the poignancy of parting from her father.

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 BOOK ONE

Immediately, this reply came back:

omohiyaru As the love longing
kokoro no sora ni of my heart became
narinureba one with the sky,
kesa ha shiguru to no wonder this morning you
miyuru naruramu looked and saw it drizzle.

And before I could complete a reply, he arrived himself.

Then another occasion, after some time had passed and I was not
seeing him as often as before, on a day when the rain was falling, there
was a message, "I'll come in the evening," and I sent back:

kashihagi no Beneath the guardian

mori no shitakusa oak forest, the grass
kure goto ni at every dusk
naho tanome to ya hears "keep trusting me" and
moru wo miru miru sees the rain dripping through the leaves.

For a reply, he cheated me by showing up himself.

And thus, the tenth month arrived. It was a period of abstinence

for me; continually fretting at our forced separation, he wrote:

nagekitsutsu Lamenting, I turn my sleeves

kahesu koromo no inside out to dream of you
tsuyu keki ni but they are damp with dew,
itodo sora sahe and why must the sky
shigure sohuramu add to this an endless drizzle?

In reply, though it was rather trite:

omohiaraba Were the fire of loving

hinamashi mono wo thought there, sleeves would dry,
ikade kaha how is it then,
kahesu koromo no these turned out sleeves,
tare mo nururamu whether yours or mine, are wet?

With things going on in this way, there came a time when the
person I relied on most, my father, was to leave for Michinoku Province.
The season, late autumn, is such a sad time itself, and I still can
not say that I am really used to seeing my husband; every time I see him
now, I just burst into tears, and feel so sad and uneasy, there is nothing to

65
 BOOK ONE

the one who is to go - Her father.

Sue pines - Reference again to Kokinshu no. 1093 (cf. p. 58), where the lover pledges that his love
could never change or else waves could rise and sweep over "Sue pines" mountain. Suwe also
means "end," and Kaneie cleverly embeds the suwe of suwe no matsu into yukusuwe, "the end of
the road ahead," the word borrowed from the father's poem.

Yokawa - One of the three centers of the Tendai Buddhist monastery on Mt. Hiei in northeast Kyoto.
It is recorded that on the fifth day of the twelfth month in this year, Kaneie's father attended a series
of lectures on the Lotus Sutra at Mt. Hiei, and Kaneie may well have accompanied him (Zenshu,
134).

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 BOOK ONE

which I can compare it. My husband expresses sympathy for me and al-
though he keeps saying he will never forget me, as I wonder if his heart
will really be true to his words, I only feel even more sad and anxious.
Now the day has come for them all to leave; the one who is to go
cannot restrain his tears, and I, the one who is to stay, am sadder than I
can say. "We are way behind schedule"—even though urged thus by his
attendants, he cannot leave, rolling up a letter and pushing it into an
inkstone box beside him, once again breaking into tears that sprinkled
down, he left the room. For awhile, I have not the heart to look at what he
has left. Having watched until he went out of sight, pulling myself to-
gether, I approach, and when I look at what sort of thing was there, this
poem is what I see:
kimi wo nomi Only on you
tanomu tabi naru I rely at this time, setting out;
kokoro ni ha in my heart,
yukusuwe tohoku thoughts of the long road ahead—
omohoyuru kana may your life with her be as long.

Thinking that he intended to have this seen by my husband, I feel so sad,

and place it back just as he had left it; not long after that, my husband
comes to visit. As I am lost in my own thoughts and do not meet him with
my eyes, he consoles me by saying, "Come now, this is a perfectly ordi-
nary occurrence in the world. Your persistence in going on like this must
mean you do not trust me." Noticing the letter in the inkstone box, "Ah,
how touching," he says, and sends off after my father this:
ware wo nomi Since you say you
tanomu to iheba rely only on me, at the end
yuku suwe no of the road ahead,
matsu no chigiri mo Sue pines will betoken our vows;
kite koso ha mime return and see us unchanged.

In this way, the days passed. Imagining my father traveling under

strange skies brought sadness, and my husband's heart did not appear to
be something I could rely on that much.
The twelfth month came. From him, who had gone up to Yokawa
on some business, there was this, "I am snowed in. I miss you very much."
I sent back with the messenger:
kohoruramu Frozen, is it?
yokawa no midzu ni Yokawa River—the snow that falls
furu yuki mo there will not melt,
waga goto kiete how unlike my thoughts of love
mono ha omowaji in which I melt away.

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 BOOK ONE

gave birth to a child - T h e phrase in the original is the vague monoshitsu, "[I] did something," but
from the context we know this is the birth of her first and only child, Michitsuna.

letter's tracks - T h e familiar pun on fumi, "letter, writing" and "footsteps, tracks."

three nights in a row— In the circumstances, this could easily mean he has consummated a marriage
with this other woman.

Machi Alley — A small street that ran north and south between Muromachi Street and Nishi no Toin
Street. Some commentators identify it as present-day Shinmachi Street.

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 BOOK ONE

As we exchanged such words, the year, fleetingly and without purpose,

came to an end.
Around the time of the new year, when I had not seen him for two
or three days, I was to be away for awhile, so I left this with the instruc-
tions, "Should that person come, give him this":
shirareneba My feelings of sadness
mi wo uguhisu no unknown, like the warbler trilling forth
furi idetsutsu with all its might,
nakite koso yuke I have gone forth crying
no nimo yama nimo to the fields, to the mountains.

His reply:
uguhisu no The warbler seems
adani yukamu capriciously to have gone forth
yamabe nimo into the hills,
nakukowe kikaba if I but hear its crying voice,
tadzune bakari zo I shall seek it no matter how far.

As we carried on saying such things, something that had never been be-
fore came to be; I passed a miserable spring and summer, and then, around
the end of the eighth month, somehow gave birth to a child. His care for
me at that time was most tender.
Then, around the ninth month, just when he had left one day, for
no particular reason, I opened a box that happened to be there and saw a
letter obviously intended for another woman. Greatly astonished and think-
ing I would at least let him know that I had seen it, I write on the letter:
utagahashi How suspicious,
hoka ni wataseru I see this letter's tracks lead
fumi mireba to another's door,
koko ya todaeni As for here, am I to think
naramu to suramu your visits will be no more?

As I worried, things went much as I feared, and around the end of the
tenth month, there comes a time when I do not see him for three nights in
a row. With an air of unconcern, he excuses himself by saying, "I just
wanted to test your feelings by staying away for a while."
When evening fell, he says, "There is some business at court that
I can't get out of," and leaves; I do not believe him and have a man follow
him who came back saying, "It seems that his Lordship went to a certain
place on Machi Alley and stayed there." So that is how it was; although I
was utterly miserable, I didn't know what to say; it was about two or three

69
 BOOK ONE

so I composed- It is very unusual for her to initiate an exchange. She might write a poem in response
to an inquiry in prose from him, but this is one of the few places where she initiates the communi-

Sorrow, sorrowing . . . - This is one of her most famous poems. It has been included in several
poetry anthologies, most notably in Hyakunin issbu (One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each), the
poetry anthology that became the basis for the poem card game that has to a certain extent kept the
court poetry tradition alive for a large audience up until this day. For a recent translation of Hyakunin
issbu that gives detailed information about the text's tradition of interpretation, see Mostow, Pictures
of the Heart.
In the Japanese poetic tradition, there are hundreds of poems expressing a woman's
chagrin and sorrow at waiting alone through the night in vain for her lover to come, but this is
perhaps the only poem by a woman who intentionally barred access to the lover. The last line of this
poem has a staccato quality to it, almost as though the words overcome great reticence.
It is interesting that the headnotes to this poem in several anthologies and historical
accounts make no mention that Kaneie had just taken up with another woman and change the
context by saying Michitsuna's Mother's poem was a response to the chagrin of her husband when
she took her time opening the door (Helen McCullough, Okagami, 167). This gives the poem a more
conventional context, since it was almost unthinkable that a wife would bar the door to her hus-
band.

to be so late to open- Kaneie picks up the verb akuru, "to dawn," literally, "to open into day," from
Michitsuna's Mother's poem and puns on "to open a door." His poem along with his note seems to
indicate that he is confident she would have opened the door to him if he had only stayed long
enough.

Third Day Festival - The third day of the third month was the momo nosekku, "Peach Festival," a
celebration originally imported from China. It was customary to decorate the house with peach
blossoms and drink wine in which peach blossom petals had been steeped. This festival is still
observed in modern Japan, where it has been designated the Doll Festival and honors girls through
the display of dolls that evoke Heian court culture.

My sister's husband - This is an interpretation based on the vague phrase in the original, ima hito
kata, "that other person." From the context, it is assumed that she is speaking of the husband of an
elder or younger sister about whom we have very little information outside of what is provided in
the diary. There is a record of Fujiwara Tamemasa marrying a daughter of Tomoyasu, Michitsuna's
Mother's father, and from that piece of information, it is conjectured that the author is referring here
to Tamemasa.

the wine drunk - The word sugi, "passed," can also be taken as a pun for suki, "drink wine."

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 BOOK ONE

days afterward, just before dawn, that there was a knocking on my gate.
Thinking that it must be him, I felt wretched, and as I did not have the
gate opened, he went off to that other place. The next morning, I felt I
couldn't just leave things as they were, so I composed:

nagekitsutsu Sorrow, sorrowing

hitori nuru yo no when one sleeps alone the time
akuru ma ha until night opens
ika ni hisashiki into day, how long it is
mono to ka ha shim perhaps you now know it too.

I wrote this with more than usual care and sent it attached to a faded
chrysanthemum. His response, "I was going to wait until dawn to see
what would happen, but just then a messenger from the court came and
called me away. It was just as you say":

geni ya geni Truly, truly so,

fuyu no yo naranu even though the fine wood gate is
maki no to mo not a winter's night,
osoku akuru ha to be so late to open,
wabishikarikeri how miserable it is.

Well, it got very strange; he carried on quite openly as though there was
nothing amiss when one might have expected him to try and hide the
affair a little and make excuses about having to work at court and such.
He became more and more inconsiderate; there was no end to it.

The year changed over and the third month arrived. We had the
whole place decorated with peach blossoms for the Third Day Festival; I
wait; he does not come. My sister's husband, who has hardly wanted to
leave her side, did not come either. Then early on the morning of the
fourth, both men arrived together. Our attendants, who had been living in
a state of expectation since the night before, thinking there should be
more blossoms, went out to gather them here and there. From within the
house, watching them break off branches with such determination, I couldn't
quite enter into the spirit of it all, and so I scribbled:

matsu hodo no While we waited,

kinofu sugi ni shi that day passed, the wine drunk,
hana no e ha the flower branches
kefu oru koto zo that you break and bring in
kahi nakarikeru today will have no effect.

Having written it, I thought to myself, Why not leave well enough alone, it

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 BOOK ONE

"once in three thousand years"— A legendary peach tree in China was said to bring forth fruit only
once in three thousand years. Kaneie turns this into a metaphor for the eternal quality of his love.

[ ] - These square brackets note a place where the manuscript is damaged and a piece of text is
missing.

I seemed to feel strange — Zenshil notes that this locution "seemed to" indicates a sense of distance
between her feelings at the moment of writing and the feelings at the time of events: "She probably
wrote it that way because in the midst of her recollection, she felt that her feelings at that time were
so miserable she can hardly identify with them as her own" (Zenshu, 139).

trees ofsorrow—The word for sorrow, nageki, can also be interpreted as nageki, "abandoned trees.'

part and wither - Pun on karuru, "separate" and "wither."

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 BOOK ONE

would be disagreeable to have it seen, but he noticed my attempt to hide it

and snatched it away, making this reply:

michitose wo I should be seen as

mitsubeki mi ni ha the "once in three thousand years" peach,
toshi goto ni I would have you know
suku ni mo aranu that mine is not aflowerto
hana to shirasemu be steeped in new wine each year.

My sister's husband, hearing this, responded with:

hana ni yori Fearing that

suku tefu koto no yesterday it would seem
yuyushiki ni we had come only
yoso nagara nite to get drunk on the flowers,
kurashite shi nari we stayed elsewhere on purpose.

Nonetheless, now he was visiting the Machi Alley in a totally open

manner. [ ] . . . him at least; I seemed to feel strange and to brood on regrets.
Although I was caught in this inexpressible misery, what was I to do?
I have been watching the comings and goings of my sister's hus-
band; now he is moving her to a more settled place. I who am to be left
behind feel all the more the loss. Realizing that it will be difficult to see
her at all, I am truly sad, and when the carriage comes to fetch her, I send
this out:

nado kakaru Why must it be thus,

nageki ha shigesa while the trees of sorrow
masaritsutsu grow more and more lush,
hito nomi karuru this has become a house where
yado to naruramu people just part and wither away.

The response was made by her husband:

omofu tefu We care about you

waga koto no ha wo we say, do not grieve placing
ada hito no our leaves of words
shigeki nageki ni in your lush tree of sorrow
sohete uramuna for the fickle-hearted lover.

Leaving these words behind, they departed together.

Just as I thought would happen, I have ended up going to bed and

waking up alone. So far as the world at large is concerned, there is noth-
ing unsuitable about us as a couple; it's just that his heart is not as I would

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 BOOK ONE

the place that he has beenfamiliar with for years - A reference to Tokihime, Kaneie'sfirstwife, who
had already borne him a son before he entered into the relationship with Michitsuna's Mother. She
went on to bear him four more children through the years.
Tokihime and Michitsuna's Mother were social equals, coming from the same middle-
ranking aristocratic class of provincial governors. It is clear from how Michitsuna's Mother writes
about Tokihime that much as she seems to have wanted Kaneie to herself, she did not expect that
his relationship with Tokihime would end. In fact, as is the case here, she seems to feel some
sympathy with Tokihime when she knows that they are both being neglected. Judging from Tokihime's
responses, however, the feeling of sympathy was not mutual. After all, Michitsuna's Mother was a
distinct threat to the continuity of her marriage much as the Machi Alley woman was a threat to
Michitsuna's Mother. Since they are from the same social class, she replies politely to inquiries from
Michitsuna's Mother, but one can sense a guarded quality to her responses.
Even from your pond's depths . . . -There are three puns in this poem: soko, meaning both "y°iir"
and "bottom of pond," karu, "to reap" and "to be separated," and finally, ne, "root" and "to sleep."

Yodo marsh - Yodo is a place-name in Kokinshu associated with makomo, "wild rice." Yodono can
also mean "night-time dwelling." Tokihime here demonstrates her poetic erudition and indirectly
makes the point, "This is his real home."

color deeply fades - Reference again to the notion that the dew and frost of autumn bring out a
deeper color in leaves before they wither and die. It looks like a paradox in English because the verb
utsurofu means "to change color," either to a deeper or lighter shade, whereas "fade" means "to
change to a lighter color." Nonetheless, the change betokens imminent demise, and in that sense,
the English "fade" is a better translation. In the sixth month, which is still the season of summer rains,
it is usually the fading of flowers that is invoked in poetry. For her to speak of the lower leaves
changing to a deeper color is to speak ahead of season. But then, the changing/fading of her
husband's love is also "ahead of season."

these gazing eyes, Igrow old- Pun on nagamefuru ma ni, "while the long rains fall" / "while I grow
old gazing."

splendid will their color be - He turns her out of season motif into a positive statement to the effect,
"your beauty/our love will only grow deeper as time passes."

Meeting fall—from favor— Pun on aki, "autumn" and "to grow tired of."

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 BOOK ONE

have it; it is not only me who is being neglected, I hear he has stopped
visiting the place that he has been familiar with for years. As I have ex-
changed correspondence with that lady before, I send this to her on the
third or fourth day of the fifth month:

soko ni sahe Even from your pond's depths,

karu to ifu naru they say it has been reaped,
makomo gusa the wild rice,
ikanaru sawa ni in what marsh now does it put
ne wo todamuramu down its roots and stay to sleep?

Her reply:

makomo gusa The wild rice,

karu to ha yodo no whence it is reaped, is of course,
sawa nare ya this Yodo marsh, its home,
ne wo todomu tefu but I thought the marsh where it
sawa ha soko to ka took root and slept was your place.

The sixth month arrived. From the first part of the month, long rains poured
down. Looking out at the garden, something I wrote for myself:

waga yado no Around my house,

nageki no shitaba trees sorrow, their lower leaves'
iro fukaku color deeply fades,
utsurohi ni keri while the long rains pour into
nagame furu ma ni these gazing eyes, I grow old.

As I pondered these things, the seventh month came.

Around the time when I was thinking to myself, if the marriage is
over and done, perhaps that would he better than just having him come
infrequently, there was a day when he visited. As I said nothing, there was
an uncomfortable feeling in the room; in the course of making conversa-
tion, one of my attendants happened to mention the "lower leaves" poem
that I had written the other day. Upon hearing it, he said this:

ori narade Even out of season

irodzuki ni keru these maple leaves have taken
momidjiba ha a scarlet color,
toki ni ahite zo meeting the time, how much more
iro masari keru splendid will their color be.

At which, I drew the inkstone to me and wrote this:

aki ni afu Meeting fall—from favor
iro koso mashite their color is even more

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 BOOK ONE

he would be floored, then get up and leave - This colloquial translation attempts to capture what
Zenshu describes as "seemingly a proverbial expression of the time." It involves a play on the
meaning of tafururu, "to fall down" and also "to be silenced" {Zenshu, 141).

Smoke from salt fires... - Salt fires are thefiresused to boil the vats of brine to make salt. This poem
pivots on several puns, fusube, "to smolder/to be jealous," kuyuru, "to smoke/to suffer," and the
embedded pun hi, "fire," within omohi, "thoughts."

small arrow - Miniature arrows were often attached to the pillars of the sleeping place as talismans
to ward off evil.

Although I thought... - The subject and object for omohi idzuru, "to think of," are not specified, and
commentators vary in their opinions as to whether she is saying "I thought you no longer thought of
me" or "I thought I no longer thought of you." Zenshu commentators, whose interpretations I am in
general following, have opted for the latter, but I have decided to render both possibilities in the
translation. The poem also contains a pun on the word^tf, "arrow/hey!" The use of such a colloquial
expression as "hey" is unusual in court poetry. Zenshu notes that this poem was included in a later
poetry anthology under the "humorous poems" category (.Zenshu, \A2). Perhaps this use of colloqui-
alism was the reason for such a categorization. It is also interesting that she should use such playful
language in an apparently serious poem.

my house was on his way — As we learn later in the diary, the author's residence was "at the edge of
the training ground for the horses of the Left Imperial Guard," which would have put it on the
eastern edge of the imperial palace compound at approximately present-day Ichij5 Avenue and
Nishi no Toin Street. Kaneie's residence at this time is unknown.
"In the long nights of autumn, when there is no sleep"- Most commentators agree that this line is a
quote from the "White-haired woman of Shang-yang" by the famous T'ang poet, Po Chii-i. The
poem is about the woman of Shang-yang who came to the palace of the T'ang emperor, Hsuan-
tsang, at the age of sixteen, but because of the popularity of his favorite consort, Yang Kuei-fei, never
had a chance to meet her lord and died at the age of sixty without ever seeing him. A couplet from
this poem is included in the popular Wakan roeishu (An Anthology of Japanese and Chinese Verse
for Recitation) (Kawaguchi Hisao, ed. Wakan roeishu. Ryqjin hishd, vol. 73 of Nihon koten bungaku
taikei [Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1967], 106). Although this anthology was compiled after the writing
of this diary, since it was an anthology of the best-known couplets of Chinese poetry, the poem's
inclusion there attests to its wide currency.

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 BOOK ONE

wabishikere tired and worn,

shitaba wo dani mo the lower leaves can only
nageki shimono wo grieve in a forgotten forest.

Thus his behavior continued; not breaking off relations entirely,

he visited from time to time, but our hearts did not melt toward one an-
other and so we drew farther apart. If he came and I was in a bad temper,
he would be floored, then get up and leave abruptly. On one occasion,
someone living nearby who understood the situation said this upon his
leaving:

moshiho yaku Smoke from salt fires

keburi no sora ni going up into the sky,
tachinuru ha is not his going
fusube ya shitsuru up in smoke due to the fires
kuyuru omohi ni of jealous thoughts causing pain?

And so on, our exchange of resentments had got to the point that the
neighbors were even meddling; these days I have not seen him for a
particularly long while.

In ordinary times, I was not like this, but when my heart was thus
distracted, I had a tendency not to notice the objects around me. I thought
to myself, Will it be thus, our relations will end without there being a single
keepsake for me to remember the affair by? About ten days after this, a
letter from him arrived; among other things, he said, "Send back the small
arrow attached to one of the pillars of the bed chamber." So there was a
keepsake, I thought as I untied and took down the arrow. I sent it back
with this:

omohi idzuru Although I thought

toki mo araji to you no longer thought of me
omohedomo nor I of you?
ya to ifu ni koso "Hey, return the arrow,"
odorokarenure you said and I was startled.

Thus, he as good as stopped coming at all, but as my house was

on his way to and from court, at dusk and at dawn, try as I might not to
listen, I could not help hearing him clear his throat as he passed by and I
would be unable to melt away into sleep. "In the long nights of autumn,
when there is no sleep"—yes, it is just like that; seeing, hearing, feeling
these things defies description. And just when I was wishing that some-
how I would not have to be subjected to such sights and sounds, I hear
my attendants in low whispers saying things like, "The one who used to
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 BOOK ONE

the place... that has a lot ofchildren - Once more a reference to Tokihime, Kaneie's first wife. This
manner of referring to her is particularly interesting because at this time in the diary Tokihime did
not yet have a lot of children. She had only the one son, Michitaka. This is a place where it is clear
Michitsuna's Mother is writing a long time after these events with a consciousness of what eventually
happened.

"How shall 1 do it? There is something I would ask.. ."- A quotation from a poem that was antholo-
gized in Yamato monogatari, section 89. The full poem is:
How shall I do it?
There is something I would ask
trout in the fish weirs,
where is he caught, the one who
does not ask after me?
(Katagiri Yoichi ed., Taketori monogatari. Ise monogatari. Yamato monogatari. Heichti monogatari,
vol. 8 of Nihon koten bungaku zenshu [Tokyo: ShSgakkan, 1972], 327)
By quoting the first half of the poem, the author intends us to understand her real mean-
ing, which is the second half of the poem. For another translation, see Mildred M. Tahara, Tales of
Yamato: A Tenth Century Poem Tale (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1980), 50.

another year- The first year of the Tentoku era, that is, 957.

traces and books- The now familiar pun on fumi, "traces, footsteps/writing, letters, books."

only in your bay — The reader may wonder why Kaneie persists in protestations of steadfast love
when his actions contradict it. When I asked this question of Akiyama Ken, he replied, "Within the
conventions of waka poetry, the only mode of expression available to him is the avowal of devoted
love."

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 BOOK ONE

be so fond of her never seems to come now." Hearing such whispered

gossip, I feel so unhappy; the fall of every evening is just wretched.
I understand that his visits to the place that one hears has a lot of
children have definitely stopped as well. How sad, thinking her pain must
be even worse than mine, I send her a letter of consolation. It was around
the time of the ninth month, I wrote profusely and included this:

fuku kaze ni To the blowing wind,

tsukete mo tohamu I attach these words of concern,
sasagani no though the path of the
kayohishi michi ha visiting spider has vanished
sora ni tayu to mo completely into the sky.

Her reply, written with great care:

iro kaharu When one sees that it

kokoro to mireba can change the color of leaves
tsukete tofu and hearts, this wind,
kaze yuyushiku mo even bearing tidings of
omohoyuru kana concern, is somehow terrible.

Yet, seemingly unable to break off relations with me entirely, he

visited from time to time and winter came. Going to bed, rising, I had only
my little one for a companion; without meaning to, I would find myself
reciting the old poem, "How shall I do it? There is something I would ask
trout in the fish weirs . . . "
We crossed into another year and spring came. Around this time,
he forgot to take a book he had been reading and had me send it to him.
On the wrapping paper, I wrote:

fumi okishi This beach, this heart where

ura mo kokoro mo you left your traces and books
aretareba so wild a shore it is,
ato wo todomenu the plover's tracks wash away
chidori narikeri as soon as they are made.

His reply sent back as a sort of excuse:

kokoro am to "Your heart has strayed,"

fumi kahesu to mo so you say returning my book,
hama chidori but as for the tracks
ura ni nomi koso of this shore plover, they are
ato ha todomeme left behind only in your bay.

As his messenger was there, I sent back:

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 BOOK ONE

place that was in such ascendancy - The Machi Alley woman's place.

choosing an auspicious direction - That is, choosing a direction in accordance with the astrological
calendar.

he rode out in a single carriage with her- For him to ride in a single carriage with her is to make a
public display of his intimacy with her.

ritual pollution - Due to the connection of childbirth with blood, birth was considered polluting.
bizarre- She seems to regard it as bizarre that he would communicate with her so casually about the
matter.

sumo tournament - The sport of Sumo wrestling had been part of the court's annual celebratory
activities at least from the eighth century. The tournament was held in the seventh month, which was
closer to the present calendar's August.
two bundles of cloth - One of a wife's chief contributions to the marriage relationship was the
production of clothing for the husband and his household. For someone of Kaneie's rank, participa-
tion in court ceremonies and festivities required a large quantity of fashionable and beautiful cloth-
ing. Later, in book three, we will see her describing with nostalgia some of the garments that she had
made for her husband. Her skill as a designer and seamstress may have been one of the qualities that
attracted Kaneie to the author in the first place.
Cloth was very valuable and therefore recycled, which is why he sends both old and new
cloth. The production of the clothing was a joint activity for the women in the household, as we can
see from their participation in the discussion and eventual decision about the request. The obvious
chagrin of Michitsuna's Mother and her women attendants could be because some of the requested
garments might be women's clothing intended for the Machi Alley woman, or simply because the
request comes at a time of estrangement.
Some of the more outspoken attendants - The phrase in the original here is namagokoro aru hito,
"persons with a raw heart," the basic meaning of nama being "uncooked." Accordingly nama can
be extended to mean "immature," "inexperienced." I have further extended this to "outspoken."
Furthermore, I differ from the Zenshu commentators here in interpreting this remark about the
attendants as part of the narrative prose in this section as opposed to part of quoted speech.

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 BOOK ONE

hama chidori "Look where the plover

ato no tomari wo left its tracks on the shore,"
tadzune tote you say, but, gazing out
yukue mo shiranu over the bay, I can only resent
urami o yasemu not knowing where it went.

and, exchanging such words as these, we came into summer.

At the place that was in such ascendancy these days, it became

time for the birth of a child, and choosing an auspicious direction in which
to remove her for the lying in, he rode out in a single carriage with her,
raising a continuous din that could be heard over the entire capital. It was
such a racket, so painful to my ears, and did he really have to pass right by
my gate? I scarcely felt like myself at all, unable to say anything, and
hearing noisy complaints from the lowliest servants to my closest atten-
dants, who were saying things like, "Such a thing, it tears one apart. And
there are so many other streets he could have taken," I thought that all I
wanted to do was die, yet things do not go as we want. From now on, I
thought wretchedly, if the best is not to be, then it would be better to
break off relations entirely so that I wouldn't have to see him. About three
or four days after this, there is a letter from him. Thinking over and over to
myself as I read it how awfully cold it was, I noticed this, "Someone has
not been feeling well here, so I have not been able to come and visit.
However, just yesterday, a safe delivery was accomplished. I haven't wanted
to trouble you with the ritual pollution." This surpassed all for being bi-
zarre. I merely sent back, "Message received." When I heard that in re-
sponse to my servant's inquiries, the messenger had responded, "The house-
hold was blessed with a boy," I felt as though my chest were blocked.
About three or four days later, he showed up himself as though nothing
were the matter. With a look on my face of what are you doing here, I did
not welcome him in, and finding things very uncomfortable, he left. This
happened often.
The seventh month arrived and around the time of the annual
sumo tournament, two bundles of cloth, one of used and one of new
cloth, are delivered. "Please, sew these," is the message. I am appalled,
what on earth does he mean by this. Just looking at them, I feel my eyes
darken with anger. My mother says, "How regrettable. There must be no
one over there who can do these." Some of the more outspoken atten-
dants gathered around and said, "This is really the limit. Suppose we don't
do it and just see what sort of bad things they'll say about us." And so it
was decided; we sent the bundles back and as we suspected, we heard he
had to divide them up here and there to get them done. He must have

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 BOOK ONE

plumes of words — Plumes of the pampas grass were conventionally likened to putting things forth
clearly; therefore the phrase "put forth plumes" could also mean "to express one's meaning clearly."

east wind — The word for east wind, kochi, also means "here" and can be used to express "come
here."

a good exchange — It is interesting to note that the author's sense of what constitutes a "good
exchange" is not necessarily related to the content of the verses. There is no need to overtly express
conciliation in the poems; it is the engagement in the poetry exchange that is the most important.

While still lying down -There is very little of the explicitly erotic in the diary. However, the inclusion
of this phrase about lying down implies that they are still lying in bed after making love, and it
charges the next section and particularly the poems exchanged with a muted erotic quality.
wild-looking hue— In the classical lexicon the word iro, "color," is full of connotations ranging from
the "world of the senses" and "the beauty of a woman" to "sensual love." Its meaning in this poem
is nonspecific, partaking of all those connotations.
white dew — Again this is a reference to the notion that it is the dew of autumn that brings out the
most brilliant color in the flowers and leaves. With the images of the pampas grass a few poems
before, it is clear that the setting of the diary has shifted to autumn. As with "color" above, the
meaning of dew here is indeterminate but points to a constellation of connotations, which here
include the season of autumn, tears, sorrow, and a hint of eroticism introduced with the notion of
wetness.

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 BOOK ONE

found it very cruel, for more than twenty days, there were no inquiries
from him.
Then, on what occasion I can't quite recall, there was a letter from
him. It said, "I would very much like to come and see you, but it seems
you are feeling very cold toward me. Certainly, if you were to say 'Come,'
in fear and trembling, I would be at your door." I thought not to send a
response to this, but as on all sides there were cries of "That would be too
cruel of you. It would really be too much," I sent back:

ho ni idete Not putting forth plumes

ihaji ya sara ni of words, rather will I charge
ohoyoso no the pampas grass to
nabiku wobana ni sway whither it will,
makasete mo mimu in general, I will watch.

He sent back:

ho ni ideba When the plume comes forth

madzu nabiki namu whither first will it sway,
hana susuki flowering pampas grass?
kochi tefu kaze no With the east wind, which says
fukamu mani mani "come hither," and so it does.

As there was a messenger to take back a response, I wrote:

arashi nomi At a house that is

fukumeru yado ni only buffeted by storms,
hana susuki flowering pampas grass,
ho ni idetari to even if it puts forth plumes
kahi ya nakaramu of words, what good does it do?

and so on, we had a good exchange and he came to visit again.

While still lying down and gazing at the flowers of the front gar-
den blooming in rank, multicolored profusion, we said the following. It
seems we both had feelings of resentment toward each other. When he
breaks the silence with this:

momo kusa ni The wild-looking hue

midarete miyuru of these myriad flowers,
hana no iro ha is it due only
tada shiratsuyu no to the white dew fallen there,
oku ni ya aruramu or have their hearts turned cold?

I reply:

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 BOOK ONE

late rising moon - In the lunar calendar, the dates of the month correlated with the phases of the
moon, so we can infer that this exchange was taking place after the twentieth of the month.

desperate - This word is an interpretation. The original has only sa, "like that." The implication
appears to be that she does not feel so desperate for him to stay that she would stoop to pleading.
It is remarkable how well the author conveys the meaning of what was not said in this conversation.

so he stayed -With these words, she signals her victory in this dance of emotion, poetry, and will.

leaves of words— Pun on koto no ha, "words," which includes the word ha, "leaves."

the tree trunk itself- Pun on mikara, "myself," which includes the word kara, "tree trunk.'

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 BOOK ONE

mi no aki wo Thinking of autumn,

omohi midaruru these rank-growing wild flowers,
hana no uhe no were they to speak,
tsuyu no kokoro ha of the heart of the dew
iheba sara nari upon them, it would be thus.

Saying such things, it was painful between us as always.

As the late rising moon was just about to emerge from behind the
mountain ridge, he makes as though to depart. Then, perhaps seeing the
expression on my face as I think surely, tonight at least he doesn't have to
go, he says, "Well, if you really think I ought to stay . . . ?" But I didn't feel
that desperate, so I say:

ikaga semu What is there to do?

yama no ha ni dani Since your heart is like the moon
todomarade that does not linger
kokoro mo sora ni at the edge of the mountain
idemu tsuki woba but would emerge into the sky.

He replies:

hisakata no You say this heart-moon

sora ni kokoro no emerges into the o'er-spread sky,
idzu to iheba yet will it leave
kage ha soko ni mo its reflection
tomarubeki kana behind in this pond.

and so he stayed.
On another occasion, there was something like a typhoon and he
came calling about two days later. "With a wind like the other day, no
matter what, an ordinary person would have inquired after our well-be-
ing," I say, and he seemed to think there was some truth to this, yet with
nonchalance he replies:

koto no ha ha With leaves of words

chiri mo ya suru to all scattered and pinned to
tome okite the ground—today
kefu ha mi kara mo has not the tree trunk itself
tofu ni ya ha aranu come to inquire after you?

I reply thus:

chirikitemo Even scattered,

tohi zo shite mashi could they not have come this way
koto to ha wo those leaves of words,

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 BOOK ONE

east ivind... here - This poem and the next poem pun on kochi, which means both "east wind" and
"here."

he seemed to acknowledge —Here was another victory.

rainfalls... shake me off- A pun onfuri, "to fall" (of rain), andfuri idzu, "to shake someone off and
leave." It implies the simile, "to shake me off like cold rain."

well, isn't he a willfulperson - With this elliptical sentence, she acknowledges this time when poetry
failed.

"wild oats" - The phrase is "dropped seed" and refers to a child not officially recognized by the
father. "Illegitimate" is too legalistic a term for this fluid society.

unrecognized son — Similar to the "dropped seed," the expression denotes the male offspring of a
prince from a union with a low-ranking attendant.

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 BOOK ONE

kochi ha sabakari the east wind surely blew that hard

fukishi tayori ni to bring their inquiries here.

He rejoins with:

kochi to iheba That east wind blows so

ohozo unarishi wildly, how could one ever
kaze ni ikaga trust it to inquire
tsukete tohamu after the right person,
atara na date ni it might end up somewhere else.

Being in no mind to be beaten on this one, I say further:

chirasaji to Those leaves of words

oshimi okikeru that you say you are loath
koto no ha wo to scatter elsewhere,
kinagara dani zo then, at least, this morning could
kesa ha tohamashi you not have said something first?

At this, he seemed to acknowledge that what I said was reasonable.

At another time, around the tenth month, he says, "There is some
business I simply must attend to" and makes as though to leave. While it is
not quite raining hard enough to be called "winter downpour," it is quite
miserable and still he intends to go out. In some astonishment at this, I
can't help saying:

kotowari no Though I see this is

wori to ha miredo a time you have reason to go,
sa yo fukete yet, the night deepens
kakuya shigure no and the cold rain falls thus
furi ha idzubeki must you shake me off and go?

but even at this—well, isn't he a willful person?

Things going along in this fashion, it seems that after the birth of
her child, that "splendid" personage of Machi Alley lost favor; in the midst
of my feelings of hatred, I had wished to see her live long enough to
suffer just as I had; now not only had that come to pass, but to top it all
off, was not the child that had been the occasion of all that annoying
clatter dead? The lady was the "wild oats" of an unrecognized son of a
prince. Needless to say, she was extremely base. Just for a time, she had
been able to cause a stir among unknowing people; now suddenly it had
come to this—how must she be feeling? When I thought she must be even
a little more miserable than I had been, at that moment, I felt as though I

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 BOOK ONE

Ifelt as though I could breathe again - Literally the expression is "my chest clears." This passage is
one that has occasioned a lot of comment. It shocks because it bares thoughts that we as human
beings may have but tend not to make public. For that reason, the passage is often singled out as an
example of her honesty. For instance, Murai Jun has said, "Here the hatred of the author for the
Machi Alley woman is nakedly expressed. Due to this, there are some readers who criticize the
author, but as for me, I am inclined to feel respect for this author who has written down her true
feelings to this degree with no prevarication as the truth of her heart" (Murai Jun, Kagero nikki
zenhyokai [Tokyo: Yuseido, 1978], 81).
"swept thepillow"for him at his formerplace - This means he is again being welcomed to Tokihime's
place. Pillows were usually made of wood so they were swept clean of dust after not being used for
a while.

"It is because you are so young"- In this elliptical citation of criticism from an acquaintance may be
seen the implied norm of forbearance to which she was expected to conform. Her refusal to con-
form is attributed to her immaturity.

just write it all down - This introduces her long poem. Since the production of long poems was very
rare at this time, it is an unorthodox form of expression for her to choose. The question arises of why
she would choose poetry over prose in this situation. Shinozuka Sumiko suggests that "it can be said
particularly of book one that there is a gap between Michitsuna's Mother as a composer of poetry,
whether waka or long poems, and Michitsuna's Mother as a writer of prose, almost as though she
were a different person. She chose the long poem form precisely because she had that much to say.
There is no doubt she would not have been able write it in the form of a prose letter. . . . We can also
see here the strength of Michitsuna's Mother's ability to write poetry" (Shinozuka, Kagero nikki no
kokoro to hyogen, 80).

color of your leaves of words - Pun on koto no ha, "leaves" and "words."

left beneath a neglected tree sorrowing - Pun on nageki/nagekareki, "tossed out, neglected tree" and
"to sorrow, lament."

Winter. . . regretsfor him - Reference to her father's departure for the north country in late autumn
of the year before last and the grief she felt that first winter that he was gone.

he had left words - Reference to her father and his parting poem for Kaneie.

quick asfrostfalls and melts ~ This simile is implied in the original with an image that is embedded
in the associative vocabulary of shimo, "frost," and okitsu, "fell" (as of frost), as well as "left" (with
respect to his words), and hodo mo naku, "quickly."
 BOOK ONE

could breathe again. Now, I hear they have "swept the pillow" for him at
his former place. However, as for here, since he visits as irregularly as
before, there are times when I think there is no affection left between us.
My little one here has just begun to say a few words. Whenever his father
takes leave of us, he always says, "See you soon," and the little one hear-
ing this goes around imitating him.
Thus again, it is still not a world in which I can feel at ease even
though meddlesome people say things like, "It is because you are so
young"—I just find it too cruel of him when he says things like "Have I
done anything wrong?" with such an air of innocence and unconcern that
I don't know what to do. There are just these millions of thoughts milling
around in my mind; when I get so riled up that I want to tell him every bit
of what is on my mind, I am so upset that I just can't say anything at all.
I think to myself, what if Ijust write it all down and show it to him:

omohe tada Just think on this,

mukashi mo ima mo in times past and now too,
waga kokoro my heart knows no peace,
nodokekarade ya will it be thus forever?
hatenubeki That autumn when first
misomeshi aki ha we met, was not the color
koto no ha no of your leaves of words
usuki iro ni ya so pale even then that when
utsurofu to they faded, I was left
nageki no shita ni beneath a neglected tree
nagekareki sorrowing only.
fuyu ha kumowi ni Winter—in the midst of
wakare yuku regrets for him who
hito o oshimu to left for a place far beyond
hatsu shigure the clouds from which fell
kumori mo ahezu the first cold drizzle drenching me,
furi sohochi so forlorn I felt,
kokoro bosoku ha yet, as I heard he had left
arishikado words for you, those words,
kimi ni ha shimo no "Do not forget her," thus would
wasuru na to it be so, I thought.
ihiokitsu to ka Yet, quick as frost falls and melts,
kikishikaba so suddenly there
sari to mo to omofu was distance between us;
hodo mo naku my father far away,
tomi ni harukeki me adrift, knowing nothing,
watari nite one with the white clouds,
shiragumo bakari as my heart took to empty skies,
arishikaba time passed, heavy mist
kokoro sora nite stretched between us and severed
heshi hodo ni our relations—

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 BOOK ONE

no eggs were laid — An associated image with wild geese and a pun on kahi nasbi, "no eggs" and
"nothing happened."

empty as the cicada's shell - When a cicada larva has emerged from the ground and climbed up a
tree, its exterior dries and cracks open; the flying insect emerges, leaving the shell behind.

how shallow it was- This begins a long string of associative vocabulary related to water and contain-
ing the puns, ura, "heart'V'bay" and ukise, "shoals'V'wretched world."

would it vanish, let it go - A reference to the possibility of her death. She is so miserable she would
just as soon die.

like a bear vine creeping down Azalea Hills - Associated images with Michinoku, the northern
province where her father is posted.

ifI were to go to a world where the tears ofgrief would notfall — Reference to becoming a nun. This
is the first time she explicitly considers this option as a way out of her troubles.

fine Chinese robes - Well-worn robes were a conventional metaphor for one's spouse.

even without warm lining - Pun on ura mo naku, literally "without a lining," but also taken figura-
tively to mean "without ulterior motive or prejudice," which I have rendered here with the adverb
"simply."

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 BOOK ONE

kasumi mo tanabiki yet, I lived in hope

taenikeri that in spring with the line of
mata furusato ni returning geese, you too
karigane no would return to your old home.
kaheru tsura ni ya to Time passed and no
omohitsutsu eggs were laid, nothing happened,
furedo kahi nashi going on like this
kakushitsutsu my life became as empty
waga mi munashiki as the cicada's shell,
semi no ha no as thin as its wings, your love,
ima shimo hito no nor is it only
usukarazu just now that it has become so.
namida no kaha no From the first time
hayaku yori how shallow it was, that is why
kaku asamashiki my heart flows in a river
ura yuwe ni of tears, the bay never fills.
nagaruru koto mo What heavy load of
taenedomo sins from former lives binds me
ikanaru tsumi ka to you? I would leave
omokaramu but I cannot get away,
yuki mo hanarezu thus I float and drag
kakute nomi upon the shoals of this wretched life,
hito no ukise ni this suffering heart,
tadayohite a bit of foam upon water,
tsuraki kokoro ha although I think
midzu no awa no would it vanish, let it go,
kieba kienamu to the only sad thing is
omohedomo not to wait until my father
kanashiki koto ha from that far northland
michinoku no like a bear vine creeping down
tsutsuji no oka no Azalea Hills returns.
kuma tsudzura Tell me how could I not wait
kuru hodo wo dani and cut off the ties
matade ya ha of former lives between parent
sukuse tayubeki and child? Over and
abukuma no over, I think to myself
ahimite dani to I must see him once more.
omohitsutsu What if I were to go to a world
nageku namida no where the tears of grief
koromo de ni would not fall onto my sleeves?
kakaranu yo ni mo . But if I place on
fubeki mi wo the scales spending my life without
nazo ya to omohedo meeting you, I know
afu hakari in a moment, I would be
kake hanarete ha wanting you again.
shika suga ni When I think of how I am simply used
kohishikarubeki to you as someone
karagoromo gets used to fine Chinese robes
uchikite hito no even without warm lining,

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 BOOK ONE

leave this world — Reference again to becoming a nun.

with heaven's drifting clouds - Allusion to Kokinshu no. 784:

as distant as those
drifting clouds in the heavens
has my love become
and yet each day I see him
here before my searching eyes (Rodd, Kokinshu, 274)
This poem is a particularly appropriate allusion here because it was composed by the family of a
woman to criticize her wayward husband, who had ceased visiting in the evening.

our young pine — Her infant son, Michitsuna.

seaweed you don't see me - There is a pun here on miru, a type of seaweed, and miru, "to see."

shells of meeting — The word for shell, kahi, is homophonous with meeting. The two halves of a
bivalve shell meeting is also an image in the background of the pun.

If the white waves roll up — Metaphor for his visiting her.

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 BOOK ONE

ura mo naku then if I think to leave this world,

nareshi kokoro this vulgar world behind,
omohite ha it would be no use, memories
ukiyo wo sareru would pursue me and
kahi mo naku bring tears, such would it be.
omohi ide naki Thinking this way,
ware ya semu thinking that way, always thinking,
to omohi kaku omohi while I brood thus,
omofu ma ni if I consider the dust piled up
yama to tsumoreru on mountains of our
shikitahe no bedclothes, it cannot even match
makura no chiri mo the number of nights
hitori ne no that I have slept alone.
kazu ni shitoraba Something is severed,
tsukinubeshi I feel as though you have gone
nanika taenuru on a trip far away.
tabi naru to Even on that day after
omofu mono kara the typhoon blew
kaze fukite when I finally
hitohi mo mieshi saw you again, you swept
amagumo ha away with heaven's drifting clouds.
kaherishi toki no In consolation,
nagusame ni parting you said, "See you soon."
ima komu to ihishi Thinking these words
koto no ha wo must be true, our young pine
sa mo ya to matsu no waits endlessly
midori go no mimicking your voice,
taezu manebu mo each time I hear it,
kiku goto ni I think ill of you, tears just fall.
hito waroge naru If I compare myself
namida nomi to a sea filled to the brim,
waga mi wo umi to there is no seaweed
tatahedomo you don't see me
miru me mo yosenu nor on Mitsu Bay
mitsu no ura ha are there shells of meeting.
kahi mo araji to No good it does to cry,
shirinagara even knowing this to be so,
inochi araba to "while there is life, rely on me,"
tanomekoshi you said, I remember it well.
koto bakari koso If the white waves roll up
shiranami no on my shore, this is what
tachi mo yorikoba I long to ask them about.
tohamahoshikere

This I wrote and placed on the two-tiered shelf for him to find.

In a few days, he visited as usual, since I did not go out from my

inner chamber to meet him, it was painful for him to stay, so he went

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 BOOK ONE

I received this from him!- Her surprise at receiving a long poem back from him is registered with an
exclamatory particle here. This was quite an effort on his part, and he does express his feelings
openly, which is perhaps why although his poem is critical of her and offers nothing in the way of
apology, it still serves as a basis for reconciliation.

fades with each meeting, not so . . . - With a pun on aki, "autumn" and "to grow tired of," and a play
on the range of meaning that tsune can have, from "usual" to "always," Kaneie can say simulta-
neously, "Love is usually thought to wane with each meeting" and "Meeting each autumn [the
anniversary of our marriage], my love is always true."

"protect this child" - Reference to her father's parting poem.

tree ofsorrow — Perennial pun on nageki, "neglected tree"/"sorrow."

green pine who pines— He picks up her reference to their son as a young pine and then makes the
conventional pun on matsu, "pine"/"to wait." Pines by association call up Tago Bay in the Suruga
district, which in turn evokes the famous view of Mt. Fuji from Tago Bay.

around Mt. Fuji - Mt. Fuji was an active volcano in this era, hence its use as a metaphor for hidden
1
passions and jealousy.

cut the tie - This begins a string of associative language related to thread, including the pun mahikuru,
"to wind on a spool" and "come."

confused and lost. . .falcon - An extended pun elaborates the sense of this passage. Hashitaka no
suzu means "falcon's bells"; hashitaka no suzuro nite means "having nothing to hang on to, un-
settled."

flew to ask after you - Contains pun on tohikuru, "to fly and come" and "ask and come," which
makes a bridge between the falcon image and his relation of a particular visit.

but you lay down alone - Reference to the night she barred the door to him.

the wakeful moon shone with every drop of its light on your fine wooden door - A metaphor for
himself pounding on her door.

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 BOOK ONE

away taking only the letter. Then, I received this from him!

orisomeshi The maple leaves when

toki no momidji no first we met, colored with the season
sadamenaku were inconstant and
utsurofu iro ha faded, just so it is thought
sanomi koso love usually
afu aki goto ni fades with each meeting, not so
tsune narame is this love of mine.
nageki no shita no Since those words, "protect this child,:
kono ha ni ha beneath the tree of
itodo ihioku sorrow were spoken, even
hatsu shimo ni when frost first fell,
fiikaki iro ni ya did not the color of these
nari ni kemu leaves turn deeper still?
omofu omohi no I long, I burn, a fire
tae mo sezu that never ends,
itsu shika matsu no I want to go and see
midorigo wo our little green pine
yukite ha mimu to who pines for me, yet although
suruga naru as often as the
tago no uranami waves of Tago Bay pound in
tachi yoredo on Suruga shore
fuji no yamabe no have I come, around Mt. Fuji
keburi ni ha the smoke smolders
fusuburu koto no from a fire of jealousy
tae mo sezu that never ends,
amagumo to nomi and while it becomes drifting clouds
tanabikeba that trail between us,
taenu waga mi ha I am not one to cut the
shiraito no tie that binds me as
mahikuru hodo wo fast as thread is wound to a spool.
omohaji to "He does not love her
amata no hito no enough to come," so many
we ni sureba say bitterly,
mi ha hashitaka no confused and lost, I am a falcon,
suzuro nite bells on its feet, who,
natsu kuru yado no finding no welcoming perch,
nakereba zo returns to his old nest.
furu su ni kaheru As things went along, there was
mani mani ha that time when I flew
tohikuru koto no to ask after you, but you
arishikaba lay down alone, and
hitori fusuma no although the wakeful moon
toko ni shite shone with every
nezame no tsuki no drop of its light on your
maki no to ni fine wooden door,
hikari nokosazu not even your shadow
morite kuru deigned to peep through.
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 BOOK ONE

Who then would see dawn with the woman of one night?- Reference to a casual liaison. He frames
this as a rhetorical question implying the answer, "Surely not I."

become bound to someone unbound — Another possible interpretation for kakaranu, which I have
translated as "unbound," is "someone who would not occasion your complaining." Either way he is
going so far as to suggest that she consider taking a different husband.

Chinese robes - Once again he takes up a phrase from her poem and alters its context.

just lay them over the bamboo frame — It was the custom of the times to scent robes by laying them
on bamboo frames over censers of incense.

kindled by our memories passing through the censer's lattice eyes - The embedded pun of hi, "fire,"
in omohishi ide, "recall," brings the notions of heat and memories together. The openings in the
censer and the bamboo frame are called me, "eyes," and Kaneie uses it as a pun for his own eyes.

in the vale ofHemi in the country ofKai — An area in present-day Yamanashi Prefecture famous at
that time for the production of fine horses for the court, and thus preparing the introduction of the
string of images and vocabulary associated with horses.

the colt — Their son, Michitsuna.

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 BOOK ONE

kage dani miezu Since that occasion, it is true

arishi yori my heart did begin
utomu kokoro zo to have cold feelings toward you.
tsuki someshi Who then would see dawn
tare ka yodzuma to with the woman of one night?
akashikemu What heavy load of
ikanaru tsumi no sin brings you to this pass, you ask?
omoki zo to I say, none other
ifu ha kore koso than this complaining is your sin.
tsumi narashi Do not wait to see
ima ha abukuma no your father, right now, become bound
ahi mo mide to someone unbound.
kakaranu hito ni Yet, I am not like a tree
kakarekashi or rock, my feelings
nani no ihaki no for you, I cannot suppress.
mi naraneba Layer on layer
omofu kokoro mo cotton grasses grow by the shore
isamenu ni betokening how we
ura no hamayufu ended up distant from each other.
ikukasane Even if these layers
hedate hatetsuru of Chinese robes are drenched
kara goromo in a river of tears,
namida no kaha ni just lay them over the bamboo frame,
sohotsu to mo then the fragrant heat
omohishi ideba kindled by our memories
takimono no passing through the censer's
kono me bakari wa lattice eyes would dry at least
kawakinamu these eyes of mine.
kahi naki koto ha It is to no avail—
kahi no kuni in the vale of Hemi
hemi no mimaki ni in the country of Kai,
aruru uma wo there is a mare
ikadeka hito ha grown so wild to her groom
kaketomemu to one wonders
omofu mono kara how could she ever be caught?
tarachine no Then, what about the colt
oya to shiruramu who will know only his dam,
katakahi no growing up one-sided,
koma ya kohitsutsu yet, longing for his sire
inaka semu to will he not cry?
omofu bakari zo To the very degree I think on this,
ahare narubeki I grow desolately sad.

and so on.
As the messenger was still there, I send this:

natsuku beki Let loose by the groom

hito mo hanateba who should care for her, the mare

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 BOOK ONE

Michinoku — This is an area in northern Japan also famous for horses, and since it is where her father
is, it is appropriate as a reference to herself.

Right away comes back - The quickness of his reply gives a sense of the excitement of their ex-
change.

Colt of Obuchi - Obuchi in present-day Aomori Prefecture was associated in poetry with wild,
uncontrollable horses.

unbridled colt -The word koma, "colt," is also a pun for "to come."

At Shirakawa Border- There were border checkpoints between the provinces in Heian Japan. One
would pass through the Shirakawa Border if one were bringing a horse down to the capital from
Michinoku Province in the north.

difficult going — This phrase contains the same pun as above, koma, "colt'V'come."

tryst on the seventh night -The seventh day of the seventh month was famous in Chinese legend as
the night when the heavenly herdsboy and the weavermaid (thought to be the stars of Altair and
Vega) were allowed to meet. They were separated for the rest of the year because they loved one
another so much they neglected their work if they were together.

that place that I had thought so alarming - The Machi Alley woman's place.

trying every stratagem under heaven — Presumably these were efforts to draw Kaneie back to her.
The author feels relieved because she knows the attempt will be in vain.
 BOOK ONE

michinoku no of Michinoku
muma ya kagiri ni runs to the horizon's limit,
naramu to suramu this must be the end, she thinks.

What must he have thought of it? Right away comes back:

ware ga na wo Just because my name

wobuchi no koma no is the Colt of Obuchi
areba koso when I behave wildly,
natsuku ni tsukanu did you think if you went to
mi to mo shirareme tame me, I could not be caught?

And I reply:

koma uge ni To the unbridled colt

nari masari tsutsu less and less inclined
natsukenu wo to come this way,
ko naha taezu zo is attached this little rope,
tanomi ki ni keru unbreakable it entreats you.

He replies:

Shirakaha no At Shirakawa
seki no sekeba ya Border, I've been stopped it seems,
koma ukute difficult going,
amata no hi wo ba for many days I have been
hiki wataritsuru leading this north country colt.

There is a note with it, "I'll cross the border day after tomorrow."
It was the fifth day of the seventh month. And as it was around the time of
a long abstinence for him, I send back a reply like this:

ama no gaha If you have a mind

nanuka wo chigiru to tryst on the seventh night,
kokoro araba am I to think that
hoshi ahi bakari no from now on we shall only meet
kage wo miyo to ya like the stars of heaven's river?

He seemed to think there was some justice in what I said and began to
treat me with a bit more consideration, and the months go by.

As for that place that I had thought so alarming, I was relieved to

hear that she was now frantically trying every stratagem under heaven.
While I was spending the time worrying myself to pieces, thinking, I have
never known what to do about this relationship right from the start, as

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 BOOK ONE

he was promoted to the fourth rank - This was a significant promotion for Kaneie, who was thirty-
four years old at the time. When she married him, he wasfifthrank and captain of the Right Guards.
In 956, he was promoted to the post of lesser counselor, still within the fifth rank. The position of
lesser counselor was not one with great responsibilities but as part of the government office directly
serving the emperor, it did allow access to the inner court and an opportunity to be in the presence
of the emperor. With his promotion to the fourth rank, he was obliged to retire from his post as
counselor. The promotion to the fourth rank was of major importance in the court hierarchy because
it involved a significant increase in entitlements of income-producing land, servants, cloth, and other
goods. It was a feature of the Heian court system that remuneration was based primarily on rank
rather than office (McCullough and McCullough, A Tale ofFlowering Fortunes, 802, 829). Yet service
in office was important for placing oneself in a position to be promoted in rank.
assistant to some stuffy sort of ministry - This is the War Ministry. The low esteem in which this
ministry was held in the Heian period can be seen in the author's dismissive tone here and by
Kaneie's own lack of interest in the post. Moreover, as his assigned post of assistant could be done
by someone in thefifthrank, it is no wonder he found it distasteful. Thus, although the promotion
in rank was welcome, his actual posting condemned him for the time being to political obscurity.
Ironically, this low point in her husband's political career is actually one of the happiest periods in
the marriage from her perspective.
the prince, who was in charge ofthe ministry - This is Prince Noriakira, who would have been about
thirty-nine at the time. He was noted as a man of elegant tastes, being skilled in the composition of
Chinese poetry and the playing of the koto. He was not, however, in the first circles of power as is
indicated by his posting in the unpopular War Ministry. McCullough notes that the ministry "had little
to do aside from choosing and rehearsing contestants for the Court's archery matches" (McCullough
and McCullough, A Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 810). Nonetheless, Noriakira had the aura of royal
prestige about him, which can be felt in the respectful tone the author reserves for him in the diary.
This was one of the high points in the author's married life, when she is able to participate in her
husband's playful and courtly correspondence with royalty.
Probably one of the reasons Kaneie wanted to have Michitsuna's Mother for a wife was
her skill at poetry composition. He may actually have expected her not only to help him with the
composition of poems for occasions like this interaction with the prince, but also to be the collector
for his poems, creating just such a record as the following.

Like scattered threads — With this image, the prince introduces the textile motif that they spin out
with elaborate wordplays on vocabulary associated with cloth, spinning, and weaving through the
series of six poems. The following translations of the poems are quite free in an attempt to convey
the playfulness in the exchange. The puns in this and the following poem are tsukasa, "office,"
containing tsuka, "spool," and kuru, "to come'V'wind on a spool."

summer-spun thread —Natsuhiki, "summer spun," is a pillow word for thread. This poem is founded
on an allusion to a verse of a popular song, which puns on me, the word for wife and a weight
measure for cloth: "Of white summer-spun thread, I have seven measures, let me weave them into
robes and wear them as wives." The other pun in the verse is on furu, "to pass" (of time)/"to string
the warp threads on a loom." I left this pun out of the translation.

As numerous as seven - Kaneie takes up the allusion to the popular song introduced in the previous
poem by bringing in the number seven. He doesn't mean literally that he has seven wives.

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 BOOK ONE

unbearable as it is, it must be the result of my own deplorable sins in a

previous existence, and such, it so happened that having served as a lesser
counselor for some years, he was promoted to the fourth rank and accord-
ingly retired from his present position at court. In the next round of pro-
motions, since he was given a position he did not particularly like as
assistant to some stuffy sort of ministry, the world of affairs came to seem
distasteful to him, and as there was nothing else for him to do but to visit
here and there, he would come to stay leisurely for two or three days at a
time with me.
One day, there comes this missive from His Highness, the prince,
who was in charge of the ministry toward which my husband did not feel
attracted:

midare i no Like scattered threads

tsukasa hitotsu ni wound onto a single spool,
narite shimo we ended up in the
kuru koto no nado same office, yet it seems that
tae ni taruramu you would like to break those ties.

His respectful reply:

tayu to ieba When you say "break ties,"

ito zo kanashiki How sad it makes me feel!
kimi ni yori There is nothing to do
onaji tsukasa ni but be wound together on
kuru kahi mo naku the same spool of office.

A response comes back right away:

natsuhiki no Traveling around

ito kotowari ya to gather summer-spun thread
futa me mi me for two skeins, three skeins,
yori ariku ma ni I understand perfectly
hodo no furu ka mo how the time passes away.

His respectful reply:

nana bakari As numerous as

ari mo koso sure seven are the skeins I have
natsu hiki no of summer-spun thread.
itoma ya ha naki How could I say I had no
hito me futa me ni time were there only one or two?

Again, from the prince:

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 BOOK ONE

With time's passage . . . — The textile motif in this poem is maintained with a pun on i, "thread,"
embedded in itodo, "how could," and a pun on futomo, a form of the verb furu, "to pass," and "to
string on the loom," but in this case they are there to keep the associative language play going rather
than to strongly convey metaphorical meaning. I have suggested the presence of the textile motif
with the word "unravel," which is not explicitly in the poem.

in avoidance of a forty-five day period of abstinence - If the movements of unseen powers deter-
mined that one would have to remain secluded in one's own residence, one could avoid it by
moving somewhere else temporarily. Her father is presumably away attending to his duties as
provincial governor.

Extending into the sixth month - Thefifthmonth was the season for the monsoon rains. This year
the rains seem to have continued longer than usual.

this message that was quite mad - Presumably she considers it mad because it makes fun of their
very real and practical problems.

one stares out at the long rain - This sense is actually conveyed in the pun on nagame, "to stare,
gaze out" and "long rain."

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 BOOK ONE

kimi to ware With so many threads

naho shira ito no entangling you, as for you and me,
ika ni shite in the end, perhaps we
uki fushi nakute had best cut our ties while we
taemu to zo omofu still can with no hard feelings.

"Two or three women would really be too few but as I have probably
already overstepped the bounds of propriety, I shall stop here."

His respectful reply:

yo wo futomo With time's passage,

chigiri okiteshi vows between men and women
naka yori ha may unravel,
itodo yuyushiki but could we ever see such
koto mo miyuramu an awful thing between us?

Around that time, somewhat after the twentieth of the fifth month,
in avoidance of a forty-five day period of abstinence, I moved into my
absent father's residence, which was only separated by a hedge from the
residence of the prince. Extending into the sixth month, the rain poured
down ferociously and we were all cooped up on account of it. Since the
house is quite run down, we had a big commotion dealing with rain leak-
ing in. Noticing this, the prince deigned to send over this message that
was quite mad:

tsuredzure no With nothing to do,

nagame no uchi ni one stares out at the long rain,
soso kuramu yet over at your place,
koto no sudji koso there seems to be such a flurry
okashikarikere of activity, how very charming.

His respectful reply:

idzuko ni mo Since everywhere

nagame no sosoku a flurry of activity pours on
koro nareba us with the long rains,
yo ni furu hito ha there must be no one in the world
nodokekaraji wo who can take it easy.

Again, he deigned to correspond, "So you can't take it easy?"

ame no shita An unsettled time indeed,

sawagu koro shimo for all under these rainy skies,
ohomidzu ni in the midst of this flood,

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 BOOK ONE

muddy path of love - pun on kohidji, "muddy" and "path of love.'

You who with the night... — This translation follows the interpretation of Murai Jun in taking the yo
in thefirstline as "night" rather than "world" (Murai, Kagero nikki zenhyokai, vol. 1,102). However,
I do not agree with Murai in assuming that the reply poems throughout this section are actually by
Michitsuna's Mother spoken in her own voice. From that perspective, in this poem, Michitsuna's
Mother would be empathizing with the prince's lovers on the basis of her own experience. While
this is an interesting interpretation, it seems to me that this exchange is still ostensibly between
Kaneie and the prince.

As we looked at this together- There are only a few places in the diary where she notes explicitly that
they did something together. They mark places of exceptional intimacy and harmony (see Shinozuka,
Kagero nikki no kokoro to hyogen, 94).
he said something like, "How outrageous of him" — It is difficult to know what Kaneie means by this
remark. Perhaps he is remarking on the crazy turn the poetic exchange has taken. Having started
with joking about the problems with a leaky roof, the prince's bantering has lead to an exchange
where male and female speaking positions have become blurred. The prince's last poem is particu-
larly ambiguous. It may be taken as a reproach of Kaneie for not visiting, which would mean that the
prince is assuming a feminine persona. Yet, the first line speaks of Kaneie as the one "damp with
tears," which in association with the previous poem would put Kaneie in the feminine position of
waiting for the prince.

his usual place - Presumably his first wife, Tokihime's place.

pinks - The author spoke of herself as a pink in an earlier poem (cf. p. 63). Here a different name,
tokonatsu, which can also mean "eternal," is used for the same flower. However, given that it is the
sameflowerwith the meaning of "maiden," the reference still has connotations of woman. A pun on
woru, "to pick, break off and "be in a place," along with the tokonatsu pun makes it possible to
derive two paraphrases of the poem's meaning: "Do you not know that the pinks soothe thoughts of
love and that I have picked them from your hedge," and "Do you not know how being at your
hedge soothes my thoughts of eternal love." This poem could easily be interpreted as being
flirtatious.

/ show this to him — Since the prince's poem and note could easily be interpreted as an amorous
advance, it is interesting that she does not hide it from her husband. Moreover, although the corre-
spondence that follows is characterized by ambiguity and indirection, it is nonetheless evident that
the prince is not upset to think that Kaneie might have seen the poem, nor is Kaneie disturbed to
have seen it. In a conversation about this passage, Akiyama Ken remarked that Kaneie was likely
flattered to have the prince show an interest in his wife. Her stock goes up, as it were, since she is
desired by a member of the royal family. Of course, this good humor might have evaporated had the
flirtation exceeded the realm of play.

The water is high . . . - There are two puns in this poem: thefirstone is ura mo nagisa, "the bay too,
the beach," and the embedded ura mo naki, usually meaning "no ulterior motive" and here inter-
preted by the Zenshu commentators to mean "nothing between the hearts" (Zenshu, 160). The
second one is the frequently occurring pun on fumi, "footprints'7'letters." Variations on these same
puns recur in the following poems.

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 BOOK ONE

tare mo kohidji ni who has not been drenched

nurezarame ya ha on the muddy path of love.

His respectful reply:

yo to tomo ni You who with the night

katsu miru hito no visit one after another
kohidji wo mo on love's muddy path,
hosu yo araji to I imagine there is never
omohi koso are a time when your lovers' tears dry.

And again from the prince:

shikamo winu It is not like that,

kimi zo nururamu you are the one damp with tears,
tsune ni sumu for me who lives in
tokoro ni ha mada the same place, always,
kohidji dani nashi there are no muddy paths of love.

As we looked at this together, he said something like, "How outrageous of

him."
On a day when my husband had taken advantage of a break in the
rain to visit his usual place, there comes a missive from the prince. My
attendant said, "Although I sent word, T h e master is away,' the messenger
said, 'Deliver it anyway.'" When I looked at what had been brought:

tokonatsu ni Picked from your hedge, these

kohishiki koto ya pinks, tokens of eternal love
nagusamu to soothe my love's longing,
kimi ga kaki ho ni do you not know how happy
woru to shirazu ya I am simply to be near you?

"However, since this can come to nothing, I must bid you farewell."
A couple of days later when my husband appears, I show this to
him, telling him, "This is what happened," and so on, he says, "With this
much time passed, it is not suitable to send a reply poem," so we just send
a note, "Recently, we have not had the honor of your communication."
The prince deigned to send this in response:

mizu masari The water is high,

ura mo nagisa no no beach welcomes the plover's tracks,
koro nareba your felicity leaves
chidori no ato wo no room for my approach, I
fumi ha madofu ka wonder, did my letter go astray?

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in "man's hand" —This is one of the most difficult passages to decipher in the diary. The three
participants are playing a cat-and-mouse game with each other. The fact that Kaneie and the author
ignore the prince's poem about the pinks has puzzled him. He is trying to find out whether Kaneie
saw the poem or not. When he says, "Is it true I shall hear from you yourself?" in the context of the
communication between the two men alone, he may mean that he expects a personal visit from
Kaneie. In the context of the communication involving the three of them, he may be looking for a
direct response from the author. After all, his sending the poem about the pinks may simply have
been to acquire a poem of hers in her own hand just for the fun of it.
This brings us to the matter of "hands," which further complicates this passage. Why does
the author specifically mention that the prince wrote in "woman's hand" and their response was in
"man's hand"? "Woman's hand" was the name for the cursive style of writing Japanese that was
preferred by women (see the introduction, pp. 19-20). It was not written exclusively by women,
however, since it was a mark of courtliness for a man to be able to write itfluently."Man's hand"
refers to a stiffer writing style in which the graphs are closer to the square forms of Chinese charac-
ters (see illustrations on pp. 108-9).
The prince's choice to write in woman's hand could be construed as a display of his
elegance, or as an indication that his correspondence is meant for the author as well as Kaneie. Or,
if his previous letter had been written in woman's hand, he may be simply being consistent so as not
to arouse suspicion. Whatever the prince's motives in the choice of hands, Kaneie's response in
man's hand has the effect of bringing the communication solidly back into the "man's world" again.

purification ceremonies - She refers to the Shinto purification ceremonies, which were normally
performed at the edge of a river or a lake in the sixth month. She will describe in detail one of these
purification ceremonies in book two.
Tanabata Festival- The festival celebrating the legend of the herdsboy and weavermaid stars on the
seventh day of the seventh month.
departed spirit's bad influence - In this period, disease was thought to be primarily caused by the
malign influence of spirits of the dead. Therefore Buddhist rites to pacify those spirits were the usual
prescription.
mountain temple I have visited before - From later evidence in the diary, it is assumed she is
speaking of Hannya Temple at Narutaki, located in the northwestern hills of Kyoto.
Obon Ceremony - The festival to celebrate the souls of departed ancestors who it was thought
returned from the world of the dead at this time of the year. One therefore had the opportunity to
fete them with offerings of food and other gifts before sending them back.
watching this together— From this phrase alone we know that Kaneie came to visit her at the temple.
Again a feeling of warmth and intimacy suffuses the scene. She makes nostalgic reference to this
occasion again in book two when in very different circumstances she returns to this temple (p. 233).

The year changed over— It is 963. She has been married for nine years.

admitted to serve in the inner chambers - Although his actual post does not seem to have changed
at this time, Kaneie was once more granted the privilege of access to the inner chambers of the
imperial court.

Kamo Purification Rites - These were Shinto rites of purification performed on the bank of the
Kamo River in the fourth month by the high priestess of the Kamo Shrine. It entailed a grand
procession that people liked to watch as a parade.

his villa next door - From this remark, it seems that the author is once again staying at her father's
residence.

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 BOOK ONE

"This is what I have been thinking. Your complaint of no news is mis-

placed. Is it true that I shall hear from you yourself?" This was written in
"woman's hand." Though it seemed graceless to reply in "man's hand":

ura gakure If hidden on the

miru koto kataki beach, those tracks are hard to see,
ato naraba it seems we must wait
shihohi wo matamu until the tide dries even though
karaki waza kana a bitter thing it will be.

Again from the prince:

ura mo naku In those tracks there was

fumi yaru ato wo nothing to keep us apart,
watatsuumi no on the open sea,
shiho no him ma mo what need is there to wait for
nani ni ka ha semu the tide to dry to see the shore.

"Or so I think; I hope there has been no misunderstanding."

Things going on in this way, the time for the purification ceremo-
nies passed and the next day was the day of the Tanabata Festival. It was
the fortieth day of a forty-five day period of abstinence for me. These
days, I have not been feeling well and have been troubled by a cough;
wondering if it might be the result of some departed spirit's bad influence,
I think to try a Buddhist rite, and as my place is so cramped and the
weather so awfully hot, I go up to a mountain temple I have visited be-
fore. Since it is the fifteenth or sixteenth of the seventh month, it is time to
celebrate the Obon Ceremony. Looking out I see a procession of servants
hurrying to bring offerings, carrying them in the oddest of ways, some on
their shoulders, some balanced on their heads, watching this together, we
find it so engaging and laugh. Then since I was feeling quite back to
normal and the abstinence period had past, I went back to the capital.
Autumn and winter sped by with my barely noticing them.
The year changed over, there was nothing particularly different.
The times when his heart was unusually affectionate were times when all
seemed peaceful. From the first of this month, he was once again admitted
to serve in the inner chambers of the court.
It was the day of the Kamo Purification Rites in the fourth month,
when the prince from before graces us with this letter, "If you are going to
view the event, I would like to ride in your carriage." In the margin, he
had also written a little poem that began "This year for me . . . [missing
text]." The prince had not lately been at his villa next door. We thought he

107
Example of calligraphy in "woman's hand" by the contemporary Japanese calligrapher
Shiko Kataoka (see pp. 106-7).
 J
I I'

i' V

Example of calligraphy in "man's hand" by the contemporary Japanese calligrapher

Shiko Kataoka (see pp. 106-7).
 BOOK ONE

We thought he was off visiting a place near Machi no Koji, and inquiring about this - The details are
not given for their movements, but Zenshu commentators assume that Kaneie and Michitsuna's
Mother go off in a carriage together to pick up the prince {Zenshu, 162-63). There seems to be some
uncertainty about his location, but they appear to have guessed right that he is visiting someone
(presumably a wife or lover) in the Machi no Koji area.
Requesting an inkstone- Kaneie requests an inkstone from the Machi no Koji house in order to send
in a note. This detail informs us that Kaneie and the author are in a carriage and not back at her
house when this note is written. The author's presence is assumed because she would not report on
this if she had not seen it. It is most likely that she also helps with the composition of the poem.

Thus, it came about that we went out together - The original contains the phrase morotomo ni,
"together," which the author uses very sparingly to indicate times when she felt a particular sense of
intimacy with Kaneie. In this case, she is not only together with Kaneie but also with the prince. This
experience would have been a very unusual one for her.

the bank of the Kamo River- It seems that both her father's residence and the prince's fronted the
Kamo River.

brief purification rite - Pouring water from the river over one's hands while praying to have one's
sins and defilements washed away was a purification rite. It might have been a customary thing to
do when one walked by the river.

wish for it. . . digging efforts- Pun on horu, "to wish, desire"/"dig."

However, when I think of what I have written up to this point, I really wonder how it is - This is a
difficult passage. For a history of commentators views on it, see Uemura, Taisei, vol. 2, 93-94. The
original is very elliptical: saredo, sakizaki mo ikaga to obohetaru kashi could be rendered literally as,
"However, the preceding, how [is it]? I am wondering." The question is, to what does "the preceding"
refer: her account of the immediately preceding poem, or is it everything she has written up to that
point? I prefer the latter. I also think that the author is actually pausing here to ponder how her diary
will appear to her readers.

Spring passed by - This is a new year, 964.

"cries at sunset"- Pun on the name of the type of cicada, higurashi, and "sunset."

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 BOOK ONE

was off visiting a place near Machi no Koji, and inquiring about this we
were told, "Yes, he is here." Requesting an inkstone, he wrote this:

kimi ga kono Just as a late spring

machi no minami ni quickly visits you in the
tomi ni osoki south of this city,
haru ni ha ima zo I have come as fast as I could
tadzune ma wire ru to attend you and here I am.

Thus, it came about that we went out together.

That season passed. At another time, when the prince was in resi-
dence next door, we passed by his garden. Last year we had noticed some
luxuriantly growing pampas grass that had lovely flowers and looked very
graceful. My husband had requested, "If you are going to divide the roots
sometime, please be so kind as to give me a little." Now, time had passed
and we were with a companion going along the bank of the Kamo River;
we just pointed out to our guest, "That is the prince's place," and my
husband sent a servant in to pay his respects. He told him, "Just give this
message to his servants, 1 should like to visit but now is not such a good
time as I have someone with me. I thought I might inquire about the
pampas grass that I spoke of some time ago.'" We went on our way. Since
we just performed a brief purification rite, we were back before long. One
of the servants called out, "Pampas from the prince," and there it was,
carefully dug up and placed in a long box with a slip of green paper
attached to it. When we looked at it, this was what was written:

ho ni ideba When it flowers,

michi yuku hito mo it beckons people off the road,
maneku beki my garden's pampas grass,
yado no susuki wo thus your special wish for it,
horu ga wari nasa and my special digging efforts.

It was so charming but since I have forgotten what sort of poem we sent
back, I will have to leave it at this. However, when I think of what I have
written up to this point, I really wonder how it is.

Spring passed by, and around summer, I felt that he was getting a
lot of night duty. He would come early in the morning and stay the day
but it seemed strange to me that he should always leave at night; just as I
was thinking this, I heard for the first time that year the voice of the
higurashi, "cries at sunset," cicada. It startled and moved me so:

ayashiku mo How strange it is

yoru no yuku he wo where does it go at night
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 BOOK ONE

it is unlucky - It was apparently a superstition that talking while sitting in moonlight was unlucky.

lam the only one who really knows - In other words he is assuring her of his faithfulness. Just as the
moon invariably takes a course to the west, he will stay true.

the place he really considered his home - Again, it is likely she means Tokihime's place.

lam still without a lot of children - They have been married now for ten years, and she has only the
one son, Michitsuna.

at a mountain temple - When the family realized the mother's illness was serious, they had taken
her to a mountain temple, probably the temple at Narutaki, in the hopes that the rituals and holy
atmosphere might effect a cure. It is there that she died, and the author fell ill as a consequence.

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 BOOK ONE

shiranu kana this I cannot know,

kefu higurashi no yet I heard the voice of
kowe ha kikedomo "cries at sunset" here today.

When I said this, he seemed to find it difficult to leave. Thus, uneventful

days passed and his heart seemed not to flag in faithfulness.
One full moon night, even though it is unlucky, we talked to each
other lying in the moonlight, as I spoke of all the things that had made me
sad over the years, it brought back memories of the past, thus sunk in my
thoughts, I could not help saying:

kumori yo no Where the moon goes

tsuki to waga mi no on a cloudy night or where
yuku suwe no this self of mine
obotsukanasa ha will end up, which I wonder
idzure masareri is the most uncertain?

He replied in a playful manner:

oshihakaru As for the moon,

tsuki ha nishi he zo we can presume it goes west,
yuku saki ha where will things end up?
ware nomi koso ha Surely I am the only
shirubekarikere one who really knows.

Thus, although he seemed to be someone I could depend on, as the place

he really considered his home was different from mine, it is just not a
world I would have wished for. Despite my having consorted with this
most fortunate man for months and years, I am still without a lot of chil-
dren, and thus, my position is uncertain and these worries are the only
things of which I have a surplus.
Things being as they were, nonetheless, while at least I had my
mother, it was one thing—but then, she succumbed to a lengthy illness,
and finally around the beginning of autumn, passed away. My feelings of
utter helplessness and loss were much greater than usual for people at
such a time. Of all the family members, I was the one who lost myself in
thoughts of, / don't want to stay behind, let me die now too, such that—
what a thing it was—my arms and legs became stiff and unmovable and it
seemed as though I couldn't breathe. Things being as they were, having
met with this fate at a mountain temple, since the person to whom I had
so many things to say was down in the city, I called our young one to my
side and with difficulty managed to say, "I will likely die here. What I
would like you to convey to your father is this, 'As for myself, do not go to
any trouble when I die, but for my deceased mother, over and beyond
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Myfather — Apparently at this time, her father was serving as governor of Kawachi Province, which
was a province close to the capital.

about to ignore the prohibitions - If he were to come into the room and kneel at her side or touch
her, he would take on her defilement, that is, the defilement of contact with death, and have to enter
into a period of ritual seclusion himself. This would mean he would not be able to perform his duties
at court. This could be avoided by remaining at the door in a standing position.

"thefoot of the mountain" - Allusion to a poem from Shu'i wakashu:

As the river mist
has risen and enfolded
its foot, it is now
in the sky that the autumn
mountain is visible.
(Komachiya Teruhiko, Shut wakashu, vol. 7 of Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei [Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 1990], 58.)

intoning the Buddha's name — This refers to the chanting of the name of Amida Buddha, who is
thought to dwell in the Western Paradise.

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 BOOK ONE

what others do for her, please hold special services.'" Then, just saying,
"What is to be done?" I could no longer speak. After the long days and
months of my mother's suffering, people of the household had somehow
accepted that it was over and nothing further could be done; now with
this illness of mine, everyone was caught up again in worry; there were so
many people bewildered saying, "What are we to do?" "How has it come
to this?" and having already cried would begin to cry again. Even though
I was unable to speak, I was still conscious and could see. My father, the
person most concerned about my welfare, came, and said, "You still have
one parent. How could you have come to this?" He urged me to swallow
some broth, and drinking things such as this, my body began to mend.
However, still brooding on things, I felt as though I was not really alive. I
remembered how on some of those days when my mother was suffering
so and was unable to talk, the only thing she would say, thinking about
the uncertainty of my life, which I lamented night and day, was "Alas,
what is to become of you?" This she would say often under her breath;
remembering this brought me to a state of barely feeling alive.
He heard about my mother's death and came to visit. I was hardly
conscious, aware and not aware of things around me. He was met by one
of my serving maids, and when she told him of my condition, "She really
is in such a bad way," he burst into tears and seemed about to ignore the
prohibitions concerning defilement to come to my side, but was dissuaded.
"Really, your lordship, you must not," so he stayed standing. His whole
bearing and attitude were such that it seemed he really cared deeply for
me.
Thus, all the various tasks connected with the funeral service were
attended to; many people took great pains and so it was accomplished.
Presently, we were together at this melancholy mountain temple with noth-
ing in particular to do. At night, I would lie awake, grieving until dawn;
when I looked at the mountain's countenance, I saw that just as in the old
poem, "the foot of the mountain" was truly enfolded in mist. I thought, In
the capital, who do I really have to go home to? No, better just stay here and
die, yet even thinking this, I was pained for my little one who would have
me live.
In this way, the tenth of the month passed. I listened to the monks
telling stories when they took a rest from intoning the Buddha's name.
They said, "There is a place where you can actually see a person who has
passed away. It seems that the form of the person disappears when you
get close. But from a distance you can see it." "Where is this country?" I
asked. "It is called 'Comfort to the Ears Island.'" Hearing them speak about
it one after another, how much I wanted to know where it was. Feeling
sad, I could not help saying:
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 BOOK ONE

my elder brother - This is the first mention of her elder brother, Masayoshi, who shares the same
mother with the author and is therefore on close terms with her throughout her life (cf. p. 26). From
periodic references throughout the rest of the diary, it appears he was often living at the same
residence as the author.
The closest members of the family, particularly the children by the same mother, would
have been all in seclusion together at the mountain temple for the week following the mother's
death.

"where insects pipe lonely calls"- Allusion to poem number 853 from the "Poems of Grief section of
Kokinshil:
that single clump of
waving plume grass planted by
my lord long ago
is now an overgrown field
where insects pipe lonely calls (Rodd, Kokinshil, 294)

high enough office to serve in the inner court - None of her male or female relatives serve at court,
so no special provisions need to be made for their accommodation during the ritual confinement.

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 BOOK ONE

ari to dani If only she exists,

yoso nite mo mimu even from afar, I would see her,
na ni shi ohaba tell me more about
ware ni kikaseyb this place, "Comfort to my Ears,"
mimiraku no shima if true to its name it be.

And as I spoke, my elder brother hearing this broke into tears, saying:

idzu koto ka Where is it? Just hearing

oto ni nomi the sound of "Comfort to my Ears
kiku mimiraku no Island," I would seek
shimagakure ni shi to find the one who has
hito wo tadzunemu hidden herself away there.

With things going along like this, although each day he came to ask
after me, paying his respects while standing, just at that time, I had no heart
for anything, and it was also irritating that he could not stay on account of
defilement. I was in a dazed condition; we did carry on a correspondence
that was somehow difficult, but I guess because I was not in a state of mind
to remember things, I have forgotten all that we said.
I was in no hurry to go home but it was not something to leave up to
one's feelings. This day when we are all to leave has come. When we were
coming here, my mother lay across my lap, and worrying only about how to
make her more comfortable, I was bathed in sweat, yet, even so, there was
hope in my heart and I still felt there was something I could do. This time, no
matter how comfortable I was and able to ride with such an awful lot of space
in the carriage, the trip home was miserably sad. Even getting home, getting
down from the carriage and looking around, without being fully aware of it,
I was all the more sad. Here where we used to come out on the veranda and
sit together were the plants we had cared for; from the time when she be-
came ill, they had just been abandoned, yet here they were growing in a great
tangle blooming profusely. Performing a Buddhist rite in mother's memory,
everyone was lost in their own thoughts. I alone remained just gazing at the
scene around me in a vacant way, and intoned the old poem, "plume grass
. . . where insects pipe lonely calls," and feeling like this:

te furenedo Even with no care,

hana ha sakari ni the flowers are blooming in
nari ni keri splendid profusion,
todome okikeru it must be thanks to the dew
tsuyu ni kakarite left behind to nourish them.

Since no one in the family was of high enough office to serve in

the inner court, we could pass our period of ritual confinement in the
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The ceremony for theforty-ninth day - In Buddhist belief it is thought that the soul of a dead person
remains for forty-nine days after death. At the end of forty-nine days, the soul is then reborn
according to its accumulated karma. Services were held every seven days after death, but the service
on the forty-ninth day was the largest and in a sense the funeral proper.

my husband took care . . . — It appears that Kaneie takes care of the arrangements for the funeral,
and, as we learn later in the diary, he continues to take responsibility for the mother's memorial
services for many years. This was one of the ways he supported her economically.

intentions for the ceremony — People would commission works of Buddhist art as an expression of
their prayers for the future of the deceased. The intention is to have the departed person be reborn
as a Buddha.

nominal ordination - When an illness appeared grave, it was common to administer a nominal
ordination in the hopes that it might save the person's life.

"Cloud Forest" hermitage - Unrin'in, a temple of the Tendai school of Buddhism located in the
Murasakino district of northern Kyoto.

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same place, each making a chamber for themselves with curtains. In the
midst of all this, I alone could not get my mind onto other things; at night,
from the time when I heard them start to invoke the Buddha's name, I
would just cry continuously until dawn. The ceremony for the forty-ninth
day was held with everyone present at the house. Since my husband took
care of most of the arrangements, a lot of people attended. As an expres-
sion of my own intentions for the ceremony, I had an image of the Bud-
dha painted. After that day was over, everyone went their separate ways.
I was left feeling even more bereft; there was no help for it, but he, having
some compassion for my helplessness, visited much more often than before.
Then, when in an absentminded sort of way, I set about putting in
order the things that had been scattered about when we left for the temple,
just looking at the things that she had used everyday from dawn to dusk,
or the letters that she had written, nearly stopped my heart. At the time
when she was weakening, on the day when she received the Buddhist
precepts for nominal ordination, she had died just like that with the rever-
end priest's stole laid over her. Now I found that stole among the other
things. Thinking that I should really return it, I got up very early in the
morning to write a note. The moment I set down on the paper, "This, your
venerable stole," my eyes clouded over with tears; I carried on, "Thanks to
this":

hachisuba no Wrapped with this she

tama to naruramu became a jewel on the lotus leaf,
musubu ni mo this morning, wrapping it
sode nuru masaru tears dampened my sleeves once more,
kesa no tsuyu kana dew on this holy vestment.

and with this poem I sent it back.

A little later, I heard that the elder brother of the owner of the
stole, who was also a monk and whom we had had offer prayers and
services, suddenly died. What must the brother be feeling? I felt very sorry
for him, and at the same time it seemed that all the people I depended on
were disappearing. Thinking thoughts like that I felt quite disturbed, and
often made inquiries after the younger monk and sent offerings. Due to
certain circumstances, he was serving at the "Cloud Forest" hermitage. When
the Forty-Ninth Day Ceremony for his brother was complete, I wrote this:

omohiki ya Who would have guessed,

kumo no mori wo that he would leave behind
uchisutete the forest of clouds
sora no keburi ni and rise up with the smoke
tatamu mono to ha disappearing into the sky.

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"whether in the mountains or in thefields" - Allusion to poem number 947 from the "Miscellaneous"
section of Kokinshu:
where shall I go to
renounce this sorrowful world
whether in the mountains
or in the fields my heart surely
will be distracted and stray (Rodd, Kokinshu, 321)

one brother and an aunt -Her brother, Masayoshi. The aunt is unidentifiable, but she is most likely
one of her mother's sisters.

The year changed - It is 965.

removing our mourning clothes - It is now the end of their official year of mourning. They remove
the clothes and purify them by immersing them in the river.

dusting my koto - The koto is a horizontal zither. She would have been prohibited from playing it
during the year of mourning.

from my aunt came - The original is just anatayori, "from over there," but it is assumed to be the
author's aunt. The aunt would have been staying in a separate room and would have sent this in
writing.

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and sent it along; mind you, my own feelings of misery and loss were like
those in the old poem, "whether in the mountains or in the fields."
Feeling empty and alone, I passed through autumn and winter. In
the same place are living with me one brother and an aunt. Although I
think of my aunt as a parent, still there are times when I weep until dawn
longing for the past. The year changed, spring and summer passed by,
and soon it was time to commemorate the first anniversary of mother's
death; for this time only we held the service at the same mountain temple
as before. Remembering so many things from the year before deepened
the sadness I was already feeling. From the moment the monk leading the
service began to speak, "Clearly, it is not that you have come here seeking
the autumn mountain scenery; you are here to have made clear to you the
heart of the scriptures to which your eyes have been closed. . . . " Hearing
just that much, I became unaware of everything around me and I barely
noticed all the things that came afterward. Once everything that should
have been done was done, we returned. Quickly removing our mourning
clothes, we performed a purification ceremony with our grey clothes and
even our fans. As we were doing that, this poem came to me:

fudji goromo Setting my mourning weeds

nagasu namida no out in the flow of
kaha midzu ha the river, my tears flow
kishi ni mo masaru even more than when I wore them,
mono ni zo arikeru the water overflows the bank.

I cried wretchedly, but just left it at that without saying anything to anyone.
So the commemoration ceremony was complete, and as usual I
had nothing in particular to do. Without really intending to play, as I was
dusting my koto, my fingers strayed to play a few notes and it struck me
that indeed the period of mourning was over. Sadly, it had passed so
quickly. As I was brooding on this, from my aunt came:

ima ha tote Now it is over,

hiki idzuru koto no yet when I hear these notes
ne wo kikeba plucked from the koto,
uchi kaheshitemo they run me back to the past
naho zo kanashiki and I am even sadder.

At this, even though it was nothing very special, thinking about it, my
tears overflowed:

naki hito ha The day and month that

otodzure mo sede I cut the strings of my koto

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my sister- This would appear to be the same older sister that moved out with her husband, Tamemasa.

movefar away - She is likely accompanying Tamemasa on a tour of duty in the provinces.

inauspicious behavior - To cry too much at parting was thought to bring on misfortune.

mountain barrier—She is thinking of the Osaka Barrier, the border checkpoint between the capital
and Otsu.

a new year arrived - The year 966.

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 BOOK ONE

koto no wo wo since the one who had gone

tachishi tsuki hi zo could no longer hear me play,
kaheri ki ni keri that day has come round again.

Meanwhile, among all my family, my sister was one on whom I

particularly relied, but this summer, it had come about that she would
have to move far away. Now that the official period of mourning was
complete, she is getting ready to leave. Thinking about this I feel so be-
reft, I am quite dazed. Now, finally, it is the day of departure and I go to
see her. I take as parting gifts just one outfit of clothes and some trifles
placed in a lidded box. Her household is in a terrible commotion with all
the fuss. Both she who is going and I are unable to look one another in
the eye; we just stand in front of each other unable to stop our tears.
Everyone says things like, "What are you crying for?" "Get a grip on your-
selves." "How very inauspicious behavior for a departure." Then just as I
was thinking how terrible it would be to see her get in the carriage to
leave, someone came from my own household to relay a message from
him. "Hurry back. I have just got here," and the carriage was brought up
for me. My sister, who was wearing a double, dyed overrobe, and I, who
was only wearing a thin overrobe of red ochre, parted by taking off and
exchanging these robes. It was just past the tenth day of the ninth month.
When I came back to my house, I cried wretchedly until he said, "Why on
earth do you behave so? You'll bring bad luck."
Then, at night, I was thinking to myself, They must have got as far
as the mountain barrier either yesterday or today. The moon was so af-
fecting, I was gazing at it, and my aunt was still awake playing the koto.
She said this:

hiki tomuru The gates creak open

mono to ha nashi ni at Osaka Barrier,
afusaka no no one stops them nor
seki no kuchi me no will my playing draw them back,
ne ni zo sohotsuru in these sounds, I am drenched.

She was indeed one who felt the same as I. I answered:

omohiyaru Imagining I hear

afusaka yama no the sound of the creaking gate
seki no ne ha at Mount Osaka,
kiku ni mo sode zo just hearing that, my sleeves begin
kuchi me tsukinuru to molder with the dampness.

While I spent my time imagining their journey, a new year arrived.

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it is not convenient — He does not seem to regard her place as appropriate for holding the various
rituals for his cure. Or, he may not want to cause her the inconvenience. One can understand that he
would like to be back in his own residence where he can be attended by those servants who have
looked after him since he was a child.

not likely you will remain single - It is difficult to know what is in the background of this remark.
Does he mean, "With your beauty and talents, another man will surely marry you," or "You will not
be able to survive without the support of another man"? It could be a bit of both.

how on earth could you ever come to me- This remark indicates how unusual it was for a woman to
visit the residence of a man. There seems to have been a feeling of impropriety about it.

elder brother— Again we assume she is referring to Masayoshi.

someone who took that amiss -Most likely Tokihime.

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Around the third month, one day when he had just come here, he
took ill, and I was bewildered by this suffering, about which it seemed
nothing could be done; it seemed very serious. He said, "Much as I would
like to stay here, as it is not convenient for the various things to be done,
I had better go back to my own residence. Please do not take offense at
this. This comes so suddenly, I feel as though I may not have long to live;
it can't be helped. Ah, if I die, how very sad it is that I have done nothing
that would have you remember me." Seeing him cry, I lose control and
begin to cry miserably too, at which he says, "Don't cry. It makes me
suffer more. The worst thing about all this is to have to part from you in
such an unexpected way. What will you do? It is not likely you will remain
single. Yet, if it comes to that, don't marry again until the period of mourn-
ing for me is over. Even if I don't die, this may be the end of us. Even if I
manage to stay alive, I will likely not be strong enough to visit you and
even were there a time when I might be stronger, how on earth could you
ever come to me . . . oh, if I die thus, this will be the last time we see each
other," and so on, lying there, he speaks so miserably and weeps. Calling
together the various attendants, he says to them, "You can see how fond I
am of her. To think that if I die this way, I will never see her again makes
me feel wretched." When he said this, everyone broke into tears. As for
myself, I was even more overwhelmed, unable to say anything, I just wept
and wept. At that moment, he began to feel worse; his carriage was brought
up for him to depart, he was raised up and brought toward it leaning on
others. He looked directly at me, and kept looking fixedly; how miserable
he appeared. And as for me who was to stay behind, there were no words
to express it. My elder brother said, "Why are you inviting bad luck in this
way. Surely, it is not as you think. Quickly let us be on our way, your
lordship," and they drove off, my brother holding him in his arms. I can-
not begin to say all that I thought and felt. I sent letters two and more
times a day. There might have been someone who took that amiss, but it
couldn't be helped. As for a reply, he had one of the older female atten-
dants from over there write for him, "It is unbearable not to be able to
respond to you myself,' was all his lordship was able to say." I heard that
his condition was even worse than before and I could see no way of going
to see him myself as he had suggested, so as I fretted and wondered what
on earth I could do; ten or more days passed.
Then, with all the performing of special services, it seems that he
has become a little better and begins as might be expected to respond
himself. "How strange it all has been, I lay ill for so many days with no
improvement, never having experienced such distress before, it was a
great anxiety," and so on, taking advantage of when no one was looking,
he wrote at length, "I am quite conscious now and while I know there is
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I feared whatpeople might think -People might think that she was lowering herself to be summoned
like a servant woman or that she was using the pretext of his illness to try to usurp Tokihime's place.
Nonetheless, despite her concerns, her visit to his place is clearly one of the most romantic episodes
in her marriage.

broken myfast— During an illness, one refrained from eating meat or fish of any kind.

dawn is breaking - She wants to leave in the dark. This description ironically parallels a secret visit
by a male lover. The male lover usually leaves before dawn.

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no way you could come openly to me in the day, come at night; so many
days have passed since we have been able to meet." I feared what people
might think and felt very uneasy. He replied immediately to my objections
by simply repeating the same thing. Thinking there was nothing but to do
it, no sooner had I said, "Send for a carriage," then we were drawing up to
a side wing some distance from the main part of his residence, where a
room had been very nicely prepared, and by the edge of the veranda, he
was waiting lying down. As the lights are extinguished just when I step
down from the carriage, it is very dark and I don't know the way in, "How
silly, I'm right here," he says, taking me by the hand and leading me in.
"What took you so long?" So saying he begins to relate in bits and pieces
what had happened in the last few days, and after a little while, he says,
"Bring a light; it's so dark," and to me, "There is really nothing for you to
be anxious about, you know," and so a faint light was placed behind a
screen. "I have not yet broken my fast and eaten fish, but tonight, once
you got here, I thought we would eat some together. Bring in the meal,"
he ordered and trays were brought in. Once we had eaten a little, monks
arrived. The night was getting late and monks were preparing to chant a
service for his health; however, when he said, "Please be excused now.
Today, I have been feeling a bit better," a reverend monk responded with,
"I see it is as your lordship says," and withdrew.
Then, just as dawn is breaking, I say, "Please, call the servants to
prepare my departure," but he responds, "What, it's still so dark, wait a
little yet." And so we remain until it is quite light. Then he calls his men
servants to raise the wooden shutters and we gaze out at the garden. "See,
how do you like the way the flowers and shrubs are planted?" He draws
me out to look. "Look at what time it has gotten to be, how embarrassing,"
I say urging him to let me depart. "What, you can't leave now, some rice
gruel is just on its way." And thus, with one thing and another, broad
daylight arrived. Finally, he said, "Well now, shall I accompany you back
home? I doubt you will ever venture such a thing again?" to which I re-
sponded, "Even just for my coming here, what are people going to think?
If it were thought that I had come to drag you off back with me, how
awful it would be." "If that is the case, there is nothing else to do. I shall
have my men draw up a carriage." When the carriage was drawn up, with
faltering steps, he walked right up to where I was to get in; I gazed at him,
moved by the sight, and just as I said, "When might my lord be up and
around," tears welled forth. "Since it is so distressing to be apart, I would
hope to be able to visit as soon as tomorrow or the day after." What a
wrenching scene it was. When the carriage was drawn a little way off to
where the oxen were hitched up, I kept looking at him. I saw that he had
returned to the place where we had been together and was looking in this
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strange indeed- A pun on ura, "shoreV'heart" brings the sea imagery into this poem. The imagery
evokes her rolling ride in the carriage back home as well as providing the hyperbole of "drenched
in sea waves" to express her grief at parting.

Kamo Festival - A festival of the fourth month that involved a grand procession from the Lower
Kamo Shrine to the Upper Kamo Shrine. People watched lined up in carriages on either side of the
route. This festival is still held every April in Kyoto (see illustrations on pp. 366-69).
the onefrom that place - Tokihime.

heartvine - The heartvine or hollyhock plant is the symbol of the Kamo Festival, and its leaves and
flowers are used to decorate the shrine buildings and the costumes of the people in the procession.
The name of the heartvine in Japanese, aoi, or in the old spelling, afuhi, is a pun meaning also
"meeting day" and was often used in poems composed around this festival (see illustration, p. 131).
Though I heard... - This is the first half of a thirty-one syllable waka. By sending her half a poem,
the author is challenging Tokihime to complete it. It is a very clever opening. With two puns, one on
afuhi, "heartvine'V'meeting day" and the other on tachibana, a type of orange, with tachi, "to stay,"
embedded in it, it yields two simultaneously perceived meanings: "Though I hear this is a heartvine,
there is this orange from somewhere else" and "Though I heard this is a day for meeting, you stay
over there." Moreover, it is terribly fitting that she present the poem with gifts of the flowers and fruit
that provide the wordplays for the poem.
After quite some time - This phrase hints of derision. With impromptu poetry, the mark of skill is to
be quick in responding. That it takes Tokihime (with likely the help of her serving women as well)
a long time to reply is an indication of some trouble on their part to frame an appropriate ending to
the poem. Judging from the absence of any of Tokihime's poems in later poetry anthologies, it seems
likely that poetry was not one of Tokihime's strong points.
yellowflesh'ssharp tartness - Tokihime does, however, come up with an appropriate response. Her
capping lines hinge on a pun on kimi, "yellow flesh'V'you." On one level, her lines may mean,
"Today, I see the tartness of the citron's yellow flesh" or on another, "Today, I see your cruelty."
There is a biting quality to her capping lines. Uemura Etsuko, editor of the Taisei compendium,
speculates that this battle of poetry from carriages watching the Kamo Festival might have given
Murasaki Shikibu the idea for the famous fight of the carriages scene in the Aoi chapter of The Tale
ofGenji (Uemura, Taisei, vol. 2, 306).
he said - The speaker of this utterance is not identified explicitly. There has been debate among
commentators as to whether it is Kaneie or some member of her household who makes this remark
(Uemura, Taisei, vol. 2, 303). I follow Zenshu and Uemura Etsuko in assuming that it is Kaneie. It is
the wit of the remark that seems to have Kaneie's stamp on it.

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direction watching despondently as the carriage was drawn away. I too

couldn't help looking back until I couldn't see him any more.
Then, while it was still daylight, a letter arrived from him. He
wrote many things and this:

kagiri ka to Even more than when

omohitsutsu koshi I came away from you thinking
hodo yori mo this may be the end,
nakanaka naru ha to part with so many things
wabishi karikere unfinished was wretched.

My reply, "Having seen that you were still far from well, now I am still
distracted and anxious. 'So many things unfinished,' truly, it is so . . ."

ware mo sa zo For me too, no peace

nodokeki toko no or ease in our berth of one
ura narade night's short passage
kaheru namidji ha drenched by waves, the sea road
ayashikarikere homeward was strange indeed.

Then, even though he still seemed to be somewhat ill, with an

effort of will, he came to visit after only two or three days. But gradually
as he returned to his former state of health, he also resumed his former
pattern of visiting.

Around this time, the fourth month, I was going to watch the
Kamo Festival and the one from that place was going out to see it too.
Seeing that such was the case, I parked my carriage across from hers.
Since there was not much to do while waiting, I draped some heartvine
over a branch of tachibana oranges and sent this over to her:

afuhi to ka Though I heard we would

kikedomo yoso ni be bound together with heartvine,
tachibana no over there you stay, this citron's . . .

After quite some time, this arrived:

kimi ga tsurasa wo yellow flesh's sharp tartness

kefu koso ha mire today truly I see in you.

One of my company remarked, "You are someone she must have hated
for years, why does she only say 'today'?" Returning home, when I told
him about what happened, he said, "Well, at least, she didn't say.

129
Pampas grass, susuki. "When the plume comes forth/ whither first will it sway,/ flowering pampas grass?" (p. 83).
See also pp. 82, 111, and elsewhere.
Heartvine, afuhi/aoi, often rendered in English as "hollyhock," the plant decoration for the Kamo Festival.
Afubi is a homophone for "meeting day." "Though I heard we would/ be bound together with heartvine . . . "
(p. 129). See also pp. 128, 304-5, 386-87.
 BOOK ONE

Gosechi Festival - This festival was part of the fifth day of the fifth month celebrations at court. It
usually involved the emperor sponsoring a horse race and an archery from horseback contest. Due
to bereavements in the royal family, there had not been a Gosechi Festival for two years; that is why
the author specifically mentions that one was to be held "this year" and why it was so special.

... roots, for the Fifth Month Festival- It was the custom for the Fifth Month Festival to pick iris roots
and festoon one's house with them as a charm for warding off disease. The longer the roots the
better, and contests were held to compare length of roots.

prince's boxes - Their friend from before, Prince Noriakira.

between Fourth and Fifth Avenues - This is the first time she gives us the location of her father's
residence. From the previous mention when she moved there temporarily to avoid a period of
abstinence, we know that it was also close to the Kamo River. By oxcart, it would have been more
than an hour's distance from the author's residence.
my house - Presumably the author's house, located outside the eastern edge of the palace com-
pound, is one she inherited from her mother. It is clear in the following passage that she expects her
husband to contribute to the upkeep of the house. This seems to have been one of the normal
expectations of a husband, at least judging from evidence in The Tale ofGenji. One of the indications
of Genji taking on responsibility for a woman is his sending parties of workmen to do repairs on her
house.
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kuhi tsubushi tsubeki yellow flesh that I would like

kokochi koso sure to tear to pieces and eat up . . .

did she?" and so we thought it was most amusing.

This year, a Gosechi Festival was going to be held and everyone

was all excited. I wanted to see it in the worst way but there were no
places left. Having heard him chance to say, "Well, if you really want to
see it . . .," when he said, "Let's play a game of backgammon?" I said,
"Right! Let's play for seats at the Gosechi Festival," and the dice fell in my
favor. I was so happy and set about making arrangements for attending
the festival. Later that night, when things were quiet, I drew an inkstone to
me and as though I was practicing calligraphy, I wrote:

ayame gusa Having counted the

ohi ni shi kazu wo good throws of the dice, now counting
kazohetsutsu the iris in the pond,
hiku ya satsuki no plucking their roots, for the Fifth
sechi ni mataruru Month Festival, I wait.

showing it to him, he broke out laughing, and said:

kakure nu ni Who knows how many

ofuru kazu wo ba irises may be growing in
tare ka shiru the hidden marsh,
ayame shirazu mo yet, not even knowing that,
mataru naru kana you wait counting on going.

Yet, as he had meant all along to have me see the festival, he had arranged
for me to share two bays of special box seats adjoining the prince's boxes,
so I was able to see the festival in splendid style.

In this way, our marriage had continued for ten plus one or two
more years, looking like a match others would not find disagreeable. Yet,
actually I had spent all this time, dawn until dusk, ceaselessly lamenting
that it was not a marriage like others. This is understandable for someone
in a position like mine—on the nights when he neglects to visit, I feel
forlorn about having so few people in the household. And these days, as
for the only man I can really rely on, my father, he has just been marching
around the provinces for the last ten years and more. Even on the rare
occasions when he is in the capital, since he lives between Fourth and
Fifth Avenues and I live alongside the stables for the Guardsmen of the
Left, we are so far apart. Thus, my house, with no one to take it in hand,
falls into a worse and worse state of disrepair. And that my husband can
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called our young one to him — Michitsuna is twelve years old at this time. This scene where an
estranged husband takes his rage out on his wife by causing pain to the child of the union needs
little cultural translation.

pilgrimage - This is the first pilgrimage she describes in the diary. As the passage indicates, the first
impulse to go on a pilgrimage might come from a desire to enjoy seasonal scenery. The ninth month
is closer to October in the modern calendar, and October is still a preferred month for sightseeing in
the Kyoto area. Nonetheless, as well as the potential pleasure in the trip, the desire for receiving
assistance from higher powers was an important motive. Here, with the choice of a Shinto shrine,
she is putting her hopes in the native gods.
to a certain place — From her reference to Inari Mountain in the second of the three poems, we know
this is the Fushimi-Inari Shrine to the south of Kyoto. The fact that there is a lower, middle, and
upper shrine also helps identify the site. This shrine complex is still a thriving religious center (see
illustrations on pp. 138-39).
made an offering ofthem - Presenting poems for offerings to the Shinto gods was an ancient custom
based on a reverence for the magical power of words in general and more particularly poetry. She
does not present poems when she goes on pilgrimages to Buddhist temples. These poems do not
convey the specific content of her distress or wishes, but it is likely she is going to pray for happiness
in her marriage, a good future for her son, and the birth of more children (Uemura, Taisei, vol. 2,
365-66).
Ifthis be the entrance... - This playful poem turns on the pivot word, kami no keshiki, which means
both the face of the god and the scenery of the upper shrine. In effect, the author is saying, "If the
gods here have miraculous powers, then show me the upper shrine without my having to walk all
the way there." Today the walk from the lower to the upper shrine is about an hour, and presuming
that the positioning of the shrines was approximately the same in the Heian period, that would have
been quite a walk for a woman hot used to exercise.

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come and go from this house without noticing a thing makes me feel
especially forlorn; when I think that it must indicate a lack of deep regard
for me, a thousand weeds of worry grow rank in my mind. He says he is
overrun with busy affairs, well, he must be more overrun than my run-
down house is overrun with mugwort. With my brooding on such things
as these, the eighth month arrived.
One day when we were passing a quiet time together, we began
to argue over a trifle and ended up, both he and I, saying nasty things to
one another; he had a fit of anger and left. He walked out onto the ve-
randa and called our young one to him, and among other things said, "I
will no longer be coming here." As soon as he had left, my son came into
the room convulsed with sobbing. "Now, now, what's the matter?" I said,
but he didn't answer. Of course, I could imagine how it was for him, but
as it seemed foolish to have everybody else hear about it, I stopped ques-
tioning him and did what I could to calm him down. Thus, as many as five
or six days passed without a word from him. He had never done anything
like this before, it seemed crazy, and here I was thinking that it was a kind
of joke, but as our relationship was such a fragile thing, it could actually
end just like this, I thought. Brooding despondently, I happened to notice
the basin of water he had used for dressing his hair the day he had left;
there it was, just as it had been. There was dust on it. Has it come to this?
Startled I wrote:

taenuru ka Is this the end?

kage dani araba I would ask your reflection
tofu beki wo if it were there, but
katami no midzu ha on the water left behind as a
mikusawi ni keri memento, a film has formed.

On the very day I was brooding on such things as these, he appeared. It

was difficult between us as usual. At times like this, I felt just as though
my chest was being crushed, my heart could not feel at ease, I was wretched.

The ninth month arrived; the world seemed beautiful; I thought to

myself, how about going on a pilgrimage, and telling the gods all the wor-
ries of this useless, insubstantial self. So making up my mind, I went very
inconspicuously to a certain place. I wrote the following poems and, tying
them into a bunch, made an offering of them. First, I went to the lower
shrine:

ichishiruki If this be the entrance

yamaguchi naraba to the mountain miraculous,
koko nagara while I rest here
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 BOOK ONE

trusting the cedars- It was a custom to take home branches or seedlings of the cedars at this shrine.
If the branches stayed green a long time or the seedlings grew, it was considered a good omen for
one's prayers.

Upward and upward . . . - There are two puns in the poem: kamigami, "upward"/"the gods," and
saka, "slope"/"flourishing fortune."

another shrine — Again, a reference in the poems and the mention of the lower and upper shrines
indicate the identity of the shrine. This time she went to the Kamo Shrine in the northern part of
Kyoto. This would have been relatively close to her house. The upper and lower Kamo Shrines are
separated by about three kilometers. Both are located on the Kamo River.
The upper reaches dammed? . . . - The Kamo Shrines, upper and lower, are located respectively on
the upper and lower reaches of the river, hence her reference to the river. The Cleansing Stream,
mitarashi, is the name of a small tributary of the Kamo River that ran through the shrine complex
and was a place for doing ablutions before going to worship.

On sakaki leaves—The sakaki is a broad-leaved evergreen regarded as sacred to the Shinto gods. Its
branches are used in various rituals. There are always one or two sakaki trees within a shrine
complex, and it seems it was the custom then as now to tie pieces of paper with one's prayers to the
branch of the sakaki tree (see illustration on p. 140).

Kamo Shrine - T h e name of the shrine is not as explicit in the original as it is here in the translation.
It is embedded into the phrase itsu shikamo, "I wonder when."

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 BOOK ONE

kami no keshiki wo I would have you show me your face,

mise yo to zo omofu the aspect of the upper reaches.

At the middle shrine:

inari yama Inari Mountain,

ohoku no toshi zo for many years have I come
koe ni keru climbing your slopes,
inoru shirushi no trusting the cedars to show
sugi wo tanomite the sign of a prayer's worth, yet

At the top:

kamigami to Upward and upward,

nobori kudari ha climbing, descending, for the gods,
wabure domo although I am worn out,
mada saka yukanu there are still slopes I climb not
kokochi koso sure nor do my fortunes flourish.

Toward the end of the same month, I made a pilgrimage in the

same manner to another shrine. I made two prayer offerings of poems. At
the lower shrine, this:

kami ya seku The upper reaches dammed?

shimo ni ya mikudzu Or at the lower reaches does
tsumoruramu rubbish plug the flow?
omofu kokoro no The Cleansing Stream runs not
yukanu mitarashi as I thought nor does my life.

Another:
sakaki ba no On sakaki leaves
toki ha kaki ha ni ever green, ever . . . unchanging
yufu shide ya prayer tags are bound,
katakuru shinaru at me alone, with hard eyes
me na mise so kami do not look, oh, ye gods.

Another at the upper shrine:

itsu shikamo When, I wonder, when,

itsu shikamo to zo here at the Kamo Shrine where
machi wataru I go on waiting,
mori no koma yori might I see the sacred light
hikari mimu ma wo shining down between the trees?

Another:
137
Pathway at Fushimi Inari Shrine. Michitsuna's Mother made a pilgrimage here in the
autumn of 966. "If this be the entrance/ to the mountain miraculous . . ." (p. 135).
See also pp. 134, 136-37.
U p p e r m o s t shrine at Fushimi Inari. "Upward a n d u p w a r d , / climbing, descending, for the g o d s . . . " (p. 137). See also
p . 136.
Prayer tags tied on sakaki leaves, a custom still observed at Shinto shrines. "On sakaki
leaves/ ever green, ever . . . unchanging/ prayer tags are bound . . ." (p. 137). See also
p. 136.
Tree in a Shinto shrine precinct. "When, I wonder when,/ . . ./ might I see the sacred
light/ shining down between the trees?" (p. 137).
 BOOK ONE

White hempen cords - Another decoration of Shinto shrines is white ropes.

on an occasion when the gods were not listening - This is an interesting remark that has prompted
different interpretations. Zenshu commentators, for example, surmise that upon looking at all the
poems she has composed for these pilgrimages, she realizes that they express only her frustration at
not having her prayers answered and therefore are not fitting offerings for the gods {Zenshu, 186).
It is also possible that this remark is another place where she is speaking from the perspective of
hindsight. The gods could not have been listening on that occasion because her prayers were not
answered.
first of the new year - The year is 967.

"pile them up in tens"- She is referring to a poem from section 50 of Tales oflse that is based on the
idea that piling up eggs is a nearly impossible thing to do. The poem is composed by a man who is
irritated by the reproaches of a lady:
How can I love someone
Who would care nothing for me
Even were I able
To pile up hen's eggs
Ten high and ten wide.
(Helen McCullough, Tales oflse, 103. See also Watanabe Minoru, Ise monogatari [Tokyo: Shinchosha,
1976], 64.)
the junior consort of the Ninth Avenue Palace — Fushi, Kaneie's younger sister, likely of a different
mother, who was actually made junior consort to Emperor Reizei in 968, about a year after the
occasion that is recorded here. This is another indication that book one was written later than the
events it describes. The Ninth Avenue Palace was the residence of Kaneie's father, Morosuke. Thus
Fushi was the junior consort sponsored by the Ninth Avenue Palace.
unohana - Botanical name, deutzia, a dense shrub that puts forth a mass of white blossoms around
the fourth month.
"that it can he done"- Based on the allusion to the Tales oflse poem above, there is also the teasing
message, "So I can love you even if you do not love me." This is what prompts the junior consort's
protestations of love.

However countless . . . — There are two puns in this poem: kahi, "egg'V'effect," and kahesu, "to
repeat"/"hatch."

the fifth prince - Emperor Murakami's fifth son, Morihira, who is a child of eight at this time. He
eventually ascended the throne as Emperor Enyu (r. 969-84).
emperor- Emperor Murakami (r. 946-67). He died on the twenty-fifth of the fifth month.
east prince - The crown prince, Emperor Murakami's second son, who was eighteen years old and
ascended the throne at this time as Emperor Reizei, for what turned out to be a short two-year reign
from 967-69. His short reign was due to his mental instability. Nonetheless, his infirmity was actually
useful to the main Fujiwara family, because even though the emperor was in his majority, there was
need for a regent. This established the precedent for having a Fujiwara regent even while the
reigning emperor was an adult (see introduction, p. 14). The exchange of poems above about the
eggs was with the woman who became Emperor Reizei's junior consort in 968, the following year.
assistant master of the crown prince's household — Although the diary has not been recording it,
Kaneie has been moving steadily upward in position since his posting with the Ministry of Military
Affairs. He had just risen to the position with the crown prince's household at the beginning of the
year.

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yufudasuki White hempen cords

musubo horetsutsu bound up like me in knots,
nageku koto if this lamenting
taenaba kami no were to be cut off, I would
shirushi to omohamu see it as a sign from the gods.

Saying such things, on an occasion when the gods were not listening, I
muttered away.
Autumn ended, winter came, the end of the year and first of the
new year kept everyone busy regardless of their station in life; I passed
the time sleeping alone.

Around the end of the third month, upon seeing some goose eggs,
I wondered, Now, how one might "pile them up in tens'? So as a pastime
for my fingers, I took some long threads of raw silk yarn and knotted
them, tying the eggs in one after another. When it was done and I sus-
pended it, the eggs were so very nicely piled on top of each other. Rather
than just put them away like that, I sent them to the junior consort of the
Ninth Avenue Palace. I attached it to a branch of unohana. I didn't send
any special message with it, but simply put in the margin of an ordinary
letter, "These ten goose eggs piled up show that it can be done." Her
reply:

kazu shirazu When we compare

omofu kokoro ni the countless loving thoughts
kurabureba I have for you,
towo kasanuru mo even a pile of ten
mono to ya ha miru can we say it looks like much?

As to this, my reply:

omofu hodo However countless

shirade ha kahi ya your thoughts, they have no effect
arazaramu unless over and
kahesu gahesu mo over they are hatched into
kazu wo koso mime forms whose number I can see.

After that, I heard that she sent the string of eggs to the fifth prince.

The fifth month arrived. Hardly was it bruited about that around
the tenth, the emperor had begun receiving medicine, when just after the
twentieth, he passed away. The east prince was to succeed him immedi-
ately. As for my husband, who had been serving as the assistant master of
the crown prince's household, since it was now rumored that he would
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 BOOK ONE

head chamberlain - Since he had already been serving the crown prince, now that the crown prince
had become emperor, it was natural that Kaneie should assume a position of responsibility within
his court. There were two head chamberlains in the Imperial Secretariat, and Kaneie has become
one of them. It was a powerful and influential post.

Misasagi- A hilly area in the northwestern corner of Kyoto that was preferred for imperial burials.

Lady Joganden - Toshi, another younger sister of Kaneie, who was originally married to Prince
Shigeakira. He died in 954. Ten years later in 964, she was brought into the court of Emperor
Murakami, who had just lost Anshi, an elder sister to Toshi and younger sister to Kaneie. There had
been an affair between Toshi and Emperor Murakami some years before; thus her summons after
Anshi had died seems to indicate the emperor's lingering affection for her (see introduction, pp. 32-
33). They were together for only three years before his death.

This world'sfrailty . . . — There is a pun on the embedded mi, "see," in Misasagi, the mountain name.

I shan't be long . . . - In the reply poem, Lady Joganden turns a different pun out of Misasagi. She
makes the first syllable mi part of ukimi, "sorrowful self."

assistant commander of the Guards — Fujiwara Sukemasa, a cousin of Kaneie's.

no reason for suffering - Underlying this remark is the assumption that someone living a "normal"
life would only choose to become a monk due to some personal tragedy.

a friend - She was the sister of Tamemasa, the husband of the author's elder sister. It is likely that
they became friends through mutual connection with the elder sister.

. . . clouds had cloistered you —The word ama, "nun," is embedded in the compound amagumo,
"rain and clouds."

In a hand just the same as before - The consensus of opinion regarding the meaning of this remark
is that given the changes in her friend's life, particularly her transformation into a nun, the author
expected to see some change in her friend's handwriting but finds it touchingly the same as before
(Uemura, Taisei, vol. 2, 415).

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 BOOK ONE

become head chamberlain, in the midst of the public sadness, all that was
heard over here were congratulations for the promotion. As I responded to
some of the well-wishers myself, I felt somewhat like a person of importance,
yet at the same time, in my heart, my personal feelings of dissatisfaction with
the marriage were still the same. Nonetheless, it did seem as though things
had been turned upside down and gotten quite lively around here.
When I heard that the place of burial was going to be Misasagi, I
felt sad imagining how it must be for those whom he had favored. After a
few days had passed, I sent a message asking after the well being of the
Lady Joganden and along with it:

yo no naka wo This world's frailty,

hakanaki mono to such have you seen in the scene
misasagi no of his interment,
umoruru yama ni by that Misasagi mountain,
nagekuramu ya zo how you must have been lamenting.

Her reply, how sad it seemed:

okureji to "I shan't be long, my lord"
uki misasagi ni at heart, this sorrowful self
omohi iru dwells on Misasagi
kokoro ha shide no and is it not already with you
yama ni ya aruramu on the mountain crossing to death?

At the completion of the service to mark the forty-ninth day after

the emperor's passing, it was the seventh month. The assistant commander
of the Guards, who had been in the service of the former emperor, with-
out warning abandoned his mother and wife, stole away to Mt. Hiei and
became a monk even though he was still young and seemed to have no
reason for suffering. Just as people were making a great fuss about it,
saying how shocking and sad it was, I heard that his wife too had become
a nun. Since she was a friend with whom I had corresponded for some
time before, I inquired after her, expressing my surprise and sadness:

okuyama no Sorrowful was I

omohi yari dani just imagining the deep
kanashiki ni mountains when I heard
mata amagumo no their clouds had cloistered you too.
kakaru nani nari How could this have come about?

In a hand just the same as before, she replied:

yama fukaku Although I thought to

irinishi hito mo follow him who had entered
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 BOOK ONE

middle captain . . . third rank - Kaneie was promoted to middle captain in the tenth month of this
same year, 967. However, he was not promoted to the third rank until the following year. Retrospec-
tively for the author, however, it all seemed to happen very fast.

a suitable place - This marks the first time that the author has lived in a residence provided by
Kaneie.

Ladyjoganden - Kaneie's sister with whom the author had exchanged the poems of consolation
over Emperor Murakami's death. Having been married to a prince and a favorite of an emperor, she
was someone who had lived most of her life at court. Her moving into the same residence provides
the author with an opportunity to get close to someone who has been out in the world. Through the
following passages, one feels the author's enormous curiosity about her housemate. Although they
are living in the same house, they will not necessarily see one another often because the apartments
are quite separate. Thefirstinteraction she records is typically an exchange of correspondence and
gifts.
New Year's Eve - The new year is 968.
next door— Possibly she is referring to Kaneie's principal residence, which is nearby and would be
busy with New Year's well-wishers given his importance at court.
"in the morning what will be awaited"— Quotation from a poem in the Kokin rokujo poetry anthology:
Like a rough-hewn jewel,
the New Year has just arrived,
in the morning
what will be awaited is
the warbler's first song. (Zenshu, 190)
The warbler's first song stands for Kaneie'sfirstvisit.

with a wen on one leg- Kata kohi, "wen on one leg," also means "one-sided love.'

yoke —The word for "yoke," afuko, can also mean "opportunity to meet."

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 BOOK ONE

tadzunuredo deep into the mountain,

naho amagumo no cloistered thus, by rain and clouds,
yoso ni koso nare all the more am I kept apart.

How very sad it was.

In the world, such as it was, happy events one after another befell
my husband; one moment he was promoted to middle captain, the next,
to the third rank. He said, "Living in places apart, so many things get in
the way of visiting you that it's most inconvenient; I've found a suitable
place for you near here," and so he moved me to a place where he could
come secretly even without a carriage; people must have thought that
things were going just as I wanted them. It was around the middle of the
eleventh month.
Around the end of the twelfth month, Lady Joganden came to stay
in the western apartment of this dwelling. On New Year's Eve, I thought I
would try the custom of "chasing away misfortune," so while it was still
light, I set my attendants to shouting and banging things, and while I was
thus amused, the new day and new year dawned. Early in the day, over at
my guest's apartment, as there were no gentlemen callers, it was quite
quiet. It was quiet for me too, and when I listened to the commotion next
door, it brought to mind the old poem, "in the morning what will be
awaited," and just as I was smiling to myself about this, one of my atten-
dants brought out something she had made to keep her fingers busy. It
was a collection of New Year's treats strung together so they could be
presented as a gift, and making a shoulder yoke out of wood, she had laid
this on a wooden doll, which had a knot just like a wen on one leg. I draw
it toward me, stick a strip of colored paper to its leg, write this, and
present it to her ladyship:

kata kohi ya Pity the poor woodsman

kurushikaruramu with a wen on one leg as painful
yamagatsu no as one-sided love,
afuko nashi to ha Yet it isn't as though he hasn't
mienu mono kara a yoke nor we time to meet.

In response, she ties up bundles of shreds of dried seaweed called

sea pine and sends the doll back with these bundles attached to the ends
of its yoke. Onto the skinnier leg, she had stuck a wen fashioned out of
wood so now that leg was bigger than the original one. When I look
closely, I see this:

yamagatsu no Finally the time comes

afu ko machi idete for the poor woodsman to meet
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 BOOK ONE

compare wens and swollen love - Even in this playful exchange, it is evident that the language of
poetic discourse for expressing friendship between women is not different at all from the language
for romantic love between men and women.

"anyone else but me"- Allusion to a poem from section 37 of Tales oflse:
For anyone else but me,
do not loosen your undersash,
even though your love
may be like the morning-glory
that waits not for evening.
In the original context for this poem it is addressed by a man to a woman he suspects is licentious
(Watanabe, Ise monogatari, 51).
There are a number of possible interpretations for what Kaneie means by citing a piece of
this poem as a joke. He may not have been referring to the author at all but simply teasing his sister
by suggesting she has a lover who would not like her to see anyone but him. He could be poking
fun at the author's jealous tendencies by saying "I would like to see you but your housemate wants
me to see only her." The other possibility is that he is implying that the author has a lover who would
find the visits of Kaneie annoying. Though this would seem to be the most far-fetched, it appears
from the author's reply poem that she takes it that way.

Pine Mountain — The author alludes to the famous poem from Kokinshu about the impossibility of
infidelity that has already been cited twice before. The import of that poem is, "That I should be
unfaithful to you is as impossible as a wave engulfing Pine Mountain."

Pine Island - Lady Joganden deftly turns the pine motif into one not associated with infidelity and
makes the meaning of the poem complimentary to both her brother and his wife.

east prince - This is the same young prince, Morihira, who had been the final recipient of "the pile
often eggs." As the prince's foster mother, Lady Joganden will once again be in the center of things
at court. The very next year, this lad will ascend the throne as a child emperor, and Lady Joganden's
position will be of even more importance. She eventually is given the title naishi no kami, principal
handmaid, which despite the menial sound of the English translation was actually a position of
considerable power and prestige. For a description of the evolution of the Naishi no Tsukasa,
"Handmaid's Office," and the principal duties of its members, see McCullough and McCullough, A
Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 820-21.
one night, I went to her apartments - As far as we are informed by the diary, this is the first and last
time the ladies meet face to face.
"You would think he could do without a nanny" - There is something charming about these two
women sharing a joke that characterizes this powerful man as a small, petulant child.

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 BOOK ONE

kurabureba his beloved, when we

kohi masari keru compare wens and swollen love,
kata mo arikeri this side is surely the largest.

As the sun rose higher, it seemed that they were partaking of their
New Year's feast just as we were too, and the fifteenth of the month was
celebrated in the same way as usual.
The third month arrived. A letter from my husband obviously in-
tended for my guest, her ladyship, was mistakenly delivered to me. Look-
ing at it, I could see he couldn't help referring to me; among other things,
this was written, "I've been thinking of coming to visit you recently, how-
ever, there is someone who might take it amiss. Don't see 'anyone else but
me,' as the old poem goes." Since they had been on such friendly terms
over the years, I surmised this was why he could write such a letter; yet, I
couldn't just leave it like this, so I added in very small handwriting:

matsu yama no Although this is a

sashi koete shimo world where Pine Mountain could
araji yo wo never be engulfed,
ware ni yosohete yet he would compare me
sawagu nami kana to a noisy, busy wave.

and thus, telling a messenger, "Please take this to her ladyship," I returned
it. When she had seen it, she immediately sent back this:

matsushima no Since he is a wave

kaze ni shitagafu that follows the wind of love
nami nareba toward Pine Island,
yoru kata ni koso even from where the letter went
tachi masari kere his heart's pull can be seen.

Since her ladyship was to serve as foster mother to the east prince,
she would soon be leaving for court. "What a shame to have to part like
this," she said and often repeated an invitation to visit, "even if just for a
little bit." So one night, I went to her apartments. No sooner had I got
there when we heard his voice in the other wing. "Dear, dear," her lady-
ship said, but as I paid no attention to her urging, she followed this with,
"It sounds as though it is his bedtime; no doubt he'll get cranky. Better be
quick." "You would think he could do without a nanny by this time," said
I, still dragging my feet, but as servants came from my quarters to hurry
me along, there was no peace for us so I returned. The evening of the
next day, she returned to court.
Then, in the fifth month, when her ladyship was excused from
court duty on the occasion of the formal removal of mourning clothes on
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cut off— The verb tayuru that the author used in her poem can have connotations of a life "cut
short."

Seeing the other side . . . - There are two puns in this poem: kaha, "other side"/"river," and yukanu,
"not going," extending to yukanu kokoro, "a blocked heart."

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the first anniversary of the former emperor's passing, there was talk that
she would come and stay here as before; however, she complained, "I
have been having bad dreams," so she ended up staying over there. There-
after, as she kept having these ominous dreams, she apparently said, "If
only there were some way to be delivered from this." Then one night in
the seventh month, when the moon was very bright, she sent me this:

mishi yume wo These long autumn nights

chigahe wabinuru as I struggle to alter
aki no yo zo the dream that I see,
negataki mono to now, I have understood
omohi shirinuru how hard they make it to sleep.

I replied:

samo koso ha It is as you say,

chigafuru yume ha to transform one's dreams is
katakarame difficult indeed,
ahade hodo furu as painful as I feel it
mi sahe uki kana to live on never meeting you.

She replied immediately:

afu to mishi In a dream, I saw you

yume ni nakanaka half in, half out of that dream
kurasarete I am now living
nagori kohishiku so fond of the memory,
samenu narikeri I waken not to consciousness.

And I to her again:

koto tayuru This reality where

utsutsu ya nani zo we are cut off each from each,
nakanaka ni why must it be so?
yume ha kayohidji The dream road of which you speak
ari to ifu mono wo is neither here nor there.

And again from her, "What is this you say, 'cut off each from each,' how
very inauspicious to speak thus":

kaha to mite Seeing the other side,

yukanu kokoro wo not able to cross this river
nagamureba as I brood and feel blocked,
itodo yuyushiku is it meet for us to speak
ihi ya ha tsubeki thus in such an ill-omened way?

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passed the whole night - They would be exchanging these poems by messenger so the process
would take a considerable time. It was a way for the author to provide company at a distance for
Lady Joganden on a sleepless night.

fervent desire - Likely a reference to her desire for another child, particularly a daughter.
Hase - Hase Temple located about a three day's journey away up the Hase River valley in Nara
Prefecture, a popular place of pilgrimage particularly for women in the Heian period. It is still a
thriving religious center.
Purification Ceremony - Before the Enthronement Rites a lustration was performed by the new
emperor on the banks of the Kamo River.
Enthronement Rites - Held in 968 for the accession of Emperor Reizei.
my daughter- Choshi (b. 957), Kaneie's eldest daughter by Tokihime, eleven years old at the time
of this event.
acting consort - The role played by the emperor's consort in the ceremony was taken by an acting
consort when either the emperor was too young to have an actual consort or, as in this case, his
consort was indisposed. (Reizei's consort, Kaishi, was pregnant.) Serving as acting consort implied
one was next in line to become a consort.
pro forma start— Since the day she actually wanted to leave the city was inauspicious, she made a
start for form's sake a day earlier, presumably a good day to begin a trip on.
Hosho Temple - No longer extant, it was located in the southeast corner of Kyoto.
Uji - On the banks of the Uji River, where many nobles had villas.

people riding in the back - The text specifies neither number nor gender here. Some commentators
suggest this refers to Michitsuna; others say it refers to lady attendants.
I see thefishing weirs - Fishing weirs were a common subject for poetry and painting, but this would
have been her first opportunity to see them with her own eyes.

loaded on a boat — The carriage would have been transported by boat across the Uji River and then
unloaded on the other side.
Nieno Pond - Location no longer known.
Izumi River — Old name for Otsu River.
Having come secretly on my own like this, connecting with everything — In this and other phases
throughout her description of the Hase trip, one notices how being outside her normal environment
has sharpened her perception and sparked a sense of wonder. Her description of her trip marks a
turning point in her ability to write an extended prose narrative.

Hashi Temple-A temple located on the north bank of the Otsu River just where there was a bridge
across the river.

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My reply:

wataraneba Not crossing over,

wochikata hito ni we become persons apart
nareru mi wo on opposite banks,
kokoro bakari ha only in our hearts will the
fuchise ya ha waku depths and shallows be clear.

and so we passed the whole night.

Well then, I have had a fervent desire for so many years; I decide
that no matter what I must make a pilgrimage to Hase. I wanted to go in
the eighth month, but as I cannot always arrange things as I would like,
here it is the ninth month and I have made up my mind to go. Even
though he says, "Next month is the Purification Ceremony in preparation
for the Enthronement Rites and my daughter will be going out from here
to serve as acting consort. How about waiting until that is over? Then we
could go together," as that is not really my affair, I just decide to leave
secretly. However, the day I fixed upon is inauspicious so we make a pro
forma start a day earlier, staying the night around the neighborhood of
Hosho Temple. Starting from there at dawn, we arrive at Uji village around
noon.
Gazing out, I see the surface of the water sparkling in between the
trees and find it so moving. Since I want to attract as little attention as
possible, I have left with very few attendants, and although this is prob-
ably lax of me, I cannot help thinking if it were someone other than me,
what a big fuss and commotion they would be making.
The carriage is pulled around and the outer curtains drawn up;
just the people riding in the back are let down. In the direction of the
river, when I roll up the blind and look out, I see the fishing weirs stretched
across. As I have never seen lots of boats plying to and fro like that, it is
all so moving and fascinating. When I look behind, there are my servants
tired from the journey, eating some rather poor-looking limes and pears
with their hands; that too seems touching. After eating lunch, the carriage
is loaded on a boat, and as we go along smoothly from place to place;
they say "Here's Nieno Pond" and "Here, Izumi River," where there are so
many birds flocking together; the scene soaks into my heart; it is moving
and enchanting. Having come secretly on my own like this, connecting
with everything, I feel tears welling up. We cross Izumi River too.
We stopped for the night at a place called Hashi Temple. It was
evening when I got down from the carriage and rested; the first thing to
come out of what must have been the temple kitchen was a dish of sliced

153
Uji River. Michituna's Mother stayed overnight at Uji both going and returning from her two pilgrimages to
Hase Temple (see pp. 153, 159, 161, 261, and 263).
Ox-drawn carriage. In most of her pilgrimages, Michitsuna's Mother traveled in this type of conveyance (see pp.
153, 161, 197, 199, and elsewhere).
 BOOK ONE

Kamo Tale — Apparently a reference to a fictional work no longer extant.

Tsubaichi - The staging area for pilgrimages to Hase Temple, located in the present-day Kanaya
district of Sakurai City. All pilgrims would usually stay overnight here before making the final
journey up to the temple.

Having heard all this - She has been very coy with her message, refusing to specify any date of
return. However, aware that the messenger will report the disgruntlement of her attendants as well,
she assumes that Kaneie will understand that she will not be away any longer than the three days as
originally planned.

famed cedars — An allusion to poem number 1009 in Kokinshu:

Hase River,
by the ancient river bed,
there are two cedar trees.
I long to meet you again
and be like two cedar trees.

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 BOOK ONE

radish with lime dressing. Traveling like that, all the things I encountered
were so curious and wonderful, that I still remember them.
The next morning we cross the river and go on our way; I notice
some houses surrounded by brushwood fences and think to myself, / won-
der which one might he the house mentioned in the Kamo Tale; how mov-
ing it is.
That day too we stayed at some kind of temple, the next day at a
place called Tsubaichi, a market town. The next morning, when the threads
of frost are still white on the ground, there are many people both coming
and going, their legs wrapped in cloth leggings, all in various states rais-
ing a lively commotion. The shutters are open at the place where we are
staying and while I am waiting for wash water to be warmed, I look out
and see all these people crossing paths; I think to myself that they must all
have their own concerns and worries that would bring them on a pilgrim-
age like this.
A little while later, a fellow arrives holding a letter aloft. He stands
there and says something like "A letter from his lordship." I look at it. It
said:
I've been worrying yesterday and today. Why did you run off
like that? You went with so few attendants; are you all right? I
seem to remember you said you would go on retreat for three
days. Let me know what day you are coming back. At least I
could come and meet you.

In reply, I wrote:
It seems that we have arrived smoothly to this place, Tsubaichi.
However, taking this opportunity, I am thinking of going from
here even deeper into the mountains, so I cannot tell you ex-
actly the date of our return.

Meanwhile my attendants, discussing among themselves, say such things

as "Being on retreat for even three days is bad enough . . . " Having heard
all this the messenger returned.
We left from there, and as we go along, even though the path is
nothing to speak of, it still gives one the feeling of being deep in the
mountains, and the sound of the water is very affecting. Those famed
cedars are living, even now piercing the sky; all kinds of colors of tree
leaves can be seen. From among many stones, the water gurgles forth.
Seeing this scene struck by the light of the setting sun, tears pour forth
endlessly. The path to here had not been so especially charming. There
were as yet no red autumn leaves; the flowers were all gone; one could

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 BOOK ONE

train - The mo, a train attached at the back with the ties falling in front, worn on formal occasions.
Her donning the train indicates that she is getting ready to enter the temple precincts.

hosted here and there - Kaneie has likely informed acquaintances along the route.

Miyake in the Kuze district of Yamashiro- Site oFthe imperial court rice fields, present-day Kuzegun.

Your heart only... - Two puns in this poem tie together the author's feelings with the image of the
fish weirs at Uji. One is kokoro u, "heart's suffering" (Jkokoro, "heart," is embedded in the phrase
hitogokoro, "your heart"), which pivots into udji no ajiro, "fish weirs of Uji." The other is hiwo,
which is taken as both "trout" and hi wo, "days" (plus object marker). Though it is not translated
literally here, the phrase "tamasaka niyoru hiwo" can mean the "days you visit by chance."

158
 BOOK ONE

only see withered pampas grass. Yet, here, the feeling is special, when I
look out, rolling up the outer blind, pushing aside the inner blind, the
color of this well-worn robe is quite different. When I pull the train of
lavender gauze around me, the ties cross over my lap; how well their
color complements the burnt umber of this robe, how enchanting I find it
all. The beggars with their pots and bowls set on the ground before them,
how sad they seem. Feeling so close to the poor and lowly, entering the
temple precincts is less uplifting than I expected.
In the temple hall, unable to sleep, having nothing else to do, I
listen intently to the noises outside and hear a blind person, who does not
seem all that poorly off, pouring forth in a loud voice all his troubles
without any thought that others might hear; moved by this, my tears just
pour down.
The following day, even though I think I would like to stay a little
longer, just when it gets light, I am bustled into departing. Even though I
intended our return to be unobtrusive, being hosted here and there, we
go along in quite a social whirl. We should have reached the capital by the
third day, but as we were caught by nightfall, we stayed at a place called
Miyake in the Kuze district of Yamashiro. Although it was a frightening
place, since it was dark, there was no choice but to wait until dawn. When
it was scarcely light and we had just set out, a black clad figure with a
quiver on his back comes riding up at a gallop. At some distance, he
dismounts and kneels down respectfully. I could see it was one of his
guardsmen. "What is it?" they ask on all sides; whereupon he says, "Yes-
terday, around dusk, my lord arrived at the Uji estate, 'Go and see if they
are on their way back yet,' he ordered, so here I am." Hearing this, my
servants in front urge the oxen forward with cries of "Get along now."
When we get close to the Uji River, a mist drifts in and we can no
longer see where we have come from; it makes one uneasy. The cart is
unhitched from the oxen; with a lot of effort and activity the servants
manage to get things arranged; a number of voices cry out, "Stop my
lady's carriage on the bank." Beneath the mist, I can see the fish weirs as
before, it is indescribably beautiful. I suppose he himself is probably on
the other bank. So I write this and have it sent across:
hitogokoro Your heart only
udji no ajiro ni inquires of the trout happening
tamasaka ni into Uji weirs,
yoru hiwo dani mo my heart suffers your visits
tadzunekeru kana to be so happenstance and rare.

When the boat came back once more to this side, it carried his answer:

159
 BOOK ONE

Suffering in my heart... — Kaneie picks up the puns of the previous poem. He adds a further
nuance by using the word uchi, "within," which can be understood three ways: with kokoro it means
both "within my heart" and "heart's suffering," on its own it also represents the place name Uji.

his son, a captain of the Guards - This is Kaneie's son by Tokihime, Michitaka. It is curious that the
author seems to recognize him by sight. In book two, when Michitaka comes to visit her at a
mountain hermitage, he apologizes for not having been to see her for a long time (p. 251). Perhaps
he sometimes accompanied his father to visit the author. It would have been a way that Kaneie
could have encouraged a relationship between Michitaka and Michitsuna.

Azechi grand counselor — Kaneie's uncle, Fujiwara Morouji.

"Once theflower blooms . . . " - General reference to her flowering fortune due to her husband's rise
in importance and perhaps the career awaiting her son.

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 BOOK ONE

kaheru hi wo Suffering in my heart

kokoro no uchi ni I have been counting the days
kazohetsutsu till you return, like
tare ni yorite ka counting trout, for whom else
ajiro wo mo tofu would I ask at the Uji weirs?

While I am reading this, the carriage is loaded onto the boat and we cross
in a lively tumult. Some attendants of not particularly distinguished yet
quite respectable background stand mixed in with the attendants of some
lord's office in between the shafts of the back of the cart. A few rays of
sunlight can be seen; here and there the mist is clearing away. On the
other bank, his son, a captain of the Guards, and some others are lined up
looking this way. In among them, he stands dressed for travel in a hunting
costume. They bring the boat in at a place where the bank is very high so
there is nothing else to do but lift the cart up on their shoulders. Placing
the shafts on the veranda of the villa, they bring it to rest.
Preparations have been made for the breaking of our fast, and
when we sit down to eat, someone tells us that the Azechi grand counse-
lor, who owns a villa on the other side of the river, "is in residence to view
the fish weirs." We were just saying, "He has probably heard we are here
and we should likely go and pay our respects," when someone comes
bearing a beautiful branch of scarlet maple leaves to which are attached a
pheasant and some trout. There is an invitation as well, "Having heard
that you were here, I thought we might share a meal together, even though
it is a day when I have nothing special to offer." His reply is, "Having just
been informed of your lordship's presence, we shall hasten to attend upon
you ..." and so on; he takes off an inner robe and lays it on the messenger's
shoulder for a return gift. It seems the messenger crossed back again just
like that.
Then, it seems that more food, carp, and bass were brought over.
The merriest of our lot gather together and, getting drunk, even say things
like "What a splendid sight, the sun shining on your moon wheels." They
begin to decorate the carriage by sticking branches of flowers and maple
leaves into the back of the carriage; the attendants of his household say,
"Once the flower blooms, soon will come the day of the fruit." The people
in back exchange jests with them as they all make ready to cross to the
other side. Then, saying "They are sure to give us enough to make us
drunk" and choosing as attendants those who like to drink, he crosses
over. My carriage is pointed in the direction of the river; resting the shafts
on a stand, two boats tow it across on a barge. Well, by the time the
festivities were over, everyone got thoroughly drunk and set off on the
road home singing. With shouts of "Let's hitch up the oxen, come on hitch

161
 BOOK ONE

close to the Purification Ceremony - Thus it is evident that he came to meet her at Uji even though
he was still in the midst of making arrangements for the Purification Ceremony. On the one hand, it
makes his gesture all the more chivalrous. On the other hand, perhaps he also wanted to assure her
cooperation in the final preparation of costumes.
"do such and such " —These would be tasks undoubtedly to do with manufacture of costumes for the
event.
time-consuming - Presumably for her husband. >
birds singing anew - Embedded allusion to poem number 28 in Kokinshu:
With the singing of
a myriad birds in spring
everything is
brought to life anew except
for me who alone grows old.
am I, is the world, here or not - In the original, the phrase is simply, aru ka naki ka, "exist or not
exist," with no specified subject for the verb. My interpretation is that this ambiguity encourages a
reading where the subject Fs existence and the existence of the objective world are both brought
into question. See also below for the use of this same phrase in conjunction with the term kagero in
poetry of the time.
mayfly or. . . - The word in the original, kagero, means both "mayfly," a symbol for a fleeting,
ephemeral life, and "the shimmering of heat waves," a symbol for insubstantiality. Thus as a pun it
signifies indeterminacy both on the temporal plane and in the material world. The title for the diary
is taken from this passage.
Two poems from anthologies contemporary to the author indicate that kagero in the
sense of the shimmerings of heat waves was linked with the phrase, aru ka naki ka, "does [it] exist
or not," "is [it] here or not." The first one is from the Kokin rokujo and specifically connects kagero
with suffering in human relations:
Relations in the world
and all the things I have suffered about
exist in a world
that is here and not here
like a kagero.
yo no naka to/omohishi mono wo/kagerofu no/aru ka naki ka no/
yo ni arikere
(Kawaguchi Hisao, Tosa nikki. Kagerofu nikki. Izumi Shikibu nikki. Sarashina nikki, vol. 20 of
Nihon koten bungaku taikei [Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1965], 171.)
The second one is from the Gosenshu:
I say neither that
it is sad or it is miserable,
since this is a world
that will vanish like a kagero
one hardly knows is here or not.
ahare tomo/ushi tomo ihaji/kagerofu no/ aru ka naki ka ni/
kenuru yo nareba
(Hasegawa Masaharu et al., Tosa nikki. Kagero nikki. Murasaki Shikibu nikki. Sarashina nikki, vol.
24 of Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei [Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 19891, 94. See also Katagiri Yoichi,
Gosen wakashli, vol. 6 of Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei [Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1990], 358.)

162
 BOOK ONE

them up" ringing in my ears, I came back to the capital in some discom-
fort, feeling poorly and dead tired.
The day after we returned was very close to the Purification Cer-
emony. "Now, I would like you to do such and such," came his requests.
"Yes, and how should it be done?" said I, getting caught up in the bustle.
The day of the event, the ceremonial carriages followed one upon an-
other. The women and male attendants followed along too; everything
was so bright and colorful, I almost felt as though I was a part of the
parade myself, all so very stylish. The next month came the Enthronement
Rites, and the inspection of everything to make sure it was perfect was
most time-consuming. I too was busy with preparing to attend the cer-
emony, and then it was the end of the month, which was the end of the
year, and so we all got very busy all over again.
Thus, the years and months have piled up. As I lament that this
has not been the life I wanted, even voices of well-wishers mingled with
the birds singing anew bring no happiness; all the more I sense how
fleeting everything is; the feeling arises—am I, is the world, here or not—
this could be called the diary of a mayfly or the shimmering heat on a
summer's day.

163
Book Two
 Summary

Book two covers only three years, from 969 to 971. After a rather hopeful
start, the tone of the narration becomes more and more distraught as the
author's dissatisfaction with her marriage increases. Kaneie takes up with
another woman again, and while this is a catalyst for the author's anguish,
she struggles more with her own state of mind than with him. She takes
two pilgrimages that help briefly by removing her from her immediate
situation, but her mind has begun to run in obsessive patterns from which
there seems to be no relief. She finally withdraws to a mountain temple,
against her husband's express wishes, to consider becoming a nun. Dur-
ing her retreat, however, through conversations and exchanging poems
with people other than her husband, she achieves some distance from her
situation. Even though her period of resistance ends in what might be
termed a rout by her husband and son, she comes down the mountain a
different person.
Most scholars of the text agree that she probably started the diary
project sometime during the three years covered by book two. Many sug-
gest 971, the year of the crisis in her marriage. The evidence for that is the
degree of the narrator's closeness to the events she relates. There is not
the pulling back and contemplating events from the perspective of hind-
sight that we see in book one. Nonetheless, a dual perspective of a differ-
ent sort emerges in book two. In the midst of her experiences, the author
begins to achieve some objectivity about her situation. While in the first
part of book two, the author is often crying out her pain within a mental
prison, by the end, she is able to step outside the bars of the cage and
observe herself as she suffers. There is a higher proportion of prose than
poetry in book two. Gaining mastery of prose language itself may have
been a way she reestablished some sense of control over her life.

167
 Book Two

New Year's morning — This is New Year's day of the second year of Anna, which occurred in terms
of the Western calendar on January 21, 969.
avoiding inauspicious speaking-The term is kotoimi, literally, "word taboo," and seems to refer to
the custom of avoiding speaking about inauspicious subjects at the beginning of a new year.

my sister- Commentators assume this is a younger sister. The original text here has only the author's
customary harakara to oboshiki bito, "the person thought to be a sibling."
"Sew beaven and earth into a bag . . ."- Opening of a well-known poem for invoking good luck at
the beginning of the New Year. The whole poem is, "Sew heaven and earth into a bag, put good luck
in and nothing more you shall want."
"Thirty days and . . . " - This can be understood as a playful alternate ending for the sister's poem.

my young one - Michitsuna, who is entering his fourteenth year.

such afigure - Around this time, Kaneie had begun to surpass his elder brother Kanemichi in terms
of court rank and power.

twofifth months - The court followed a lunar calendar with twenty-eight days in each month. From
time to time it was necessary to insert intercalary months in order to have the lunar year match the
seasons of the solar year. In the second year of Anna, there was to be twofifthmonths.
/ think we've really done it with this New Year's well-wishing - The general consensus among com-
mentators about the meaning of this passage is that the author is saying that the exchange of New
Year's greetings this year between her and her husband has been somehow exceptional (Uemura,
Taisei, vol. 3, 18-19). However, her expression is ambiguous with respect to her feelings. Is she
happy about the exceptional nature of it or does it seem uncomfortably excessive to her?
the servants over there— Presumably the servants of Tokihime, Kaneie's first wife chronologically and
by this time a clear winner in the competition of producing children. As indicated at the end of book
one, her eldest daughter, Choshi, was already being groomed to become an imperial consort. Yet
Michitsuna's Mother's pull on Kaneie was still strong enough to have him drop the affairs of his
daughter and come all the way to Uji to meet the author on the way back from her pilgrimage. It is
likely that the tensions of the competition between the two women were felt among the servants of
the two households and could result in altercations.

living so close- As recorded in book one, two years ago, Kaneie had moved the author to a house
within walking distance of his residence.

168
 BOOK TWO

Thus while days passed empty and fleetingly, the year came to an end and
New Year's morning has come. Oddly enough, for years our household
has not observed the custom of avoiding inauspicious speaking at the
beginning of the year, so wondering to myself if that was why things had
turned out as they had, getting up and crawling out of bed, I say, "Hey,
everyone, come here—for this year at least let's avoid speaking inauspi-
ciously, and we'll see if it has any effect in the world." Hearing this, my
sister, still in bed, says, "I've got something to say," and chanted the old
poem, "Sew heaven and earth into a bag . . . ," and so it gets more and
more amusing. "Well, as for me," I say, "Thirty days and thirty nights of
every month, let him be by my side." At this, one of my attendants breaks
out laughing, "Surely you'll get your wish. Why don't you write that down
exactly as you just said it, and send it to his lordship." In response to this,
my sister gets up and says, "What a good idea. It would bring the best luck
in the world," and she laughs and laughs. So, I write it down and had my
young one present it. These days, he is such a figure in the world that his
house was teeming with New Year's well-wishers; apparently he was just
about to leave for court when my message arrived, and although he was
in a rush to get away, there was this response. I suppose he is referring to
the fact that there will be two fifth months this year:
toshi goto ni Since every year
amareba kofuru your love overflows the bounds,
kimi ga tame is it for your sake
urufuzuki wo ba this year they had to put in
oku ni ya aruramu an extra month?

Well, I think we've really done it with this New Year's well-wishing.

The next day, there occurred an incident between the servants

over here and the servants over there that occasioned a lot of unpleasant-
ness. He, for his part, rather sympathized with me. It all seemed very
regretful, and I couldn't help thinking that it was due to my living so close;
as I was brooding over the disagreeableness of it, he came up with a plan
169
 Book Two

now in the midst of feelings ofthe ephemerality of it all, I might have thought myselflucky then - This
is an elliptical and difficult passage in the original. I follow Zenshu and Uemura (Taisei, vol. 3, 46) in
interpreting the phrase, "in the midst of feelings of ephemerality," as an interjection expressing the
feelings she has at the moment of writing. As she remembers how fortunate she actually was then,
she muses that she might have and perhaps should have been more content, yet she was not. ,
One speaks of being "clad in brocade" . . . return to my "old village" - There are two proverbial
expressions drawn from the Chinese histories that bring together "brocade" and "returning to one's
old home." One is "After becoming rich and successful, not to return to your old home town is like
wearing brocade at night." In other words, if one's old friends and relatives do not get to admire
one's success, it is hardly worth having it at all. The other one is "to return to one's old village clad
in brocade," which expresses the satisfaction of returning to one's home village as a success (Uemura,
Taisei, vol. 3, 43^4). The author may be referring to either or both of those expressions here.
However, her allusion to these expressions seems to pull in two ways. In one sense, it amplifies her
feeling in retrospect that the days she is writing of here were her "brocade days." In another sense,
the expressions evoke the desire she had in those days simply to "return home," which is assumed
to be her mother's old residence just outside the eastern edge of the palace compound.
third day of the third month - The peach blossom festival (see book one, pp. 70-73).
the people here - Her serving women. This is the first time where contact between her serving
women and his attendants has been mentioned, but it must have been something that had been
occurring all along. One can imagine how much her ladies must have depended on this contact for
enlivening social interaction. Here we get a glimpse of how the expectations of others also rode on
the ups and downs of marital relations between Kaneie and Michitsuna's Mother.
Queen Mother of the West- In Chinese mythology, the Queen Mother of the West, possessor of the
elixir of immortality, was thought to reside in the Kunlun Mountains to the far west. Seiwau no sono
means "the Western Queen's garden," but sono watari can also mean "around your place," so with
a pivot word, the magical garden of the west and Kaneie's residence are made equivalent, a flatter-
ing bit of wit.

open freely from young buds. . . without a care -There is a pun on mayu mo . . . hirakuru. Mayu
means "eyebrow." Since the buds of willow leaves are long, "willow eyebrows" was a conventional
metaphor for willow buds. Mayu ga hiraku, literally, "to open one's eyebrows," was an idiomatic
expression meaning "to feel relieved, without a care."

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 BOOK TWO

to move me to another residence. Once I was installed in that place a little

distant, since he came to visit every other day in splendid state, now in the
midst of feelings of the ephemerality of it all, I might have thought myself
lucky then. One speaks of being "clad in brocade"; it wasn't that, but I
think I wanted to return to my "old village."
On the third day of the third month, having prepared for the fes-
tivity, it was disappointing to have no guests, so the people here wrote
this message and sent it over to his attendants. In jest, it said:
momo no hana Peach blossom steeped
sukimonodomo wo wine we have and go to seek
seiwau ga elegant tipplers
sono watari made as far as the Queen Mother
tadzune ni zo yaru of the West's garden or yours.

He came quickly with quite an entourage. The feast was put out, and
drinking and carrying on, he stayed the whole day.
Around the tenth of that month, his retainers divided themselves
into two teams, the "fore" and "after," to have an archery contest with the
small bow. With both teams, taking turns to practice, it was very lively
around here. One day when the whole of the "after" team was gathered
here to practice, they begged the lady attendants to come up with a prize;
they couldn't think of anything particularly appropriate right on the spot,
so as a rather forced joke, this was written on a piece of blue paper
attached to a willow branch:
yama kaze no When the mountain wind
mahe yori fukeba blows from ahead,
kono haru no surely the threads
yanagi no ito ha of this spring willow will wind
shiri he ni zo yoru themselves around those coming after.

In reply, so many verses were spoken, I couldn't possibly remember them

all and would have you imagine them. But one of them went like this:
kazu kazu ni Since we draw our bows
kimi katayorite with each of you pulling for us,
hiku nareba just as willow threads
yanagi no mayu mo open freely from young buds,
ima zo hirakuru now we go forth without a care.

Just as we were deciding to hold the match at the end of the month, an
incident broke out in which several people were banished for who knows
what terrible crime, and the whole world was convulsed by the upset, so
our plans ended up in disarray.
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 Book Two

the minister of the left residing in the West Palace is banished- This incident is known as the Anna
Disturbance (since it happened in the second year of the Anna era). The minister of left, Minamoto
Takaakira, was banished on the charge that he was plotting a rebellion to place his own son-in-law,
Prince Tamehira, on the throne. When Emperor Reizei ascended the throne, the designation of
crown prince passed over Tamehira and went to the fifth prince, Morihira, even though he was only
a child. If Prince Tamehira had eventually ascended the throne, he would have been the first
emperor in a long time without a Fujiwara consort. That would have meant the possible production
of heirs to the throne outside the Fujiwara maternal lineage, which ultimately could have led to an
eclipse of Fujiwara power. The Fujiwara northern branch scions, Kaneie and his older brothers, had
already exerted pressure to have Tamehira passed over in the succession line, but apparently they
felt they could not rest as long as Tamehira still had a powerful father-in-law at court. It is assumed
that despite their rivalry with each other, Kaneie and his brothers cooperated to have charges of
treason trumped up against Minamoto Takaakira.
As we shall see, this incident touched Michitsuna's Mother deeply. She gives no indication
that she knows or suspects that her own husband has been one of the engineers of Takaakira's
downfall. Indeed, she never acknowledges that Minamoto Takaakira posed a threat to the political
future of her husband and his family. She only expresses her profound sympathy for Minamoto
Takaakira, his wife and children. Whether her silence on the political ramifications of this situation
concerning her husband is due to ignorance or discretion remains a puzzle (cf. pp. 15-16).
Atago . . . Kiyomizu — Atago is in the western part of Kyoto; Kiyomizu is in the eastern part.
diary only for things related to me personally . . . — This is one of the rare places where the author
explicitly states an authorial intention. She views the diary as properly a record only of personal
things and therefore appears to have to defend this insertion of worldly and political affairs. The
defense for the inclusion is that it occasioned strong emotion in her.

this year's fifth months- It will be remembered that this year had two fifth months.
period of abstinence — Since a few weeks later Kaneie embarks on a pilgrimage to Mitake, commen-
tators speculate that this abstinence and fast may have been in preparation for that.

fall one after another — There is a pun on fure, "to fall" (of rain) and "to pass" (of time).

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 BOOK TWO

Around the twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth of the month, the minister

of the left residing in the West Palace is banished. The whole capital is in
an uproar; trying to see how things are, people rush to the West Palace.
When the minister himself understands how serious the situation is, he
does not show himself to anyone and steals away. In the uproar—some
say he is in Atago, some say in Kiyomizu—he is finally found out and
when he hears that he is indeed to be banished, his terrible grief is be-
yond expression. There is no one among those who know and are con-
cerned with the affair, not to mention even someone like myself not con-
nected with it at all, who does not dampen their sleeves for him. His
various sons too are separated and scattered, whither they know not, to
live under the sky of a strange country, some taking the tonsure, all meet-
ing with unspeakable misery. The minister too becomes a monk, but, nev-
ertheless, he is forced to accept the duties of a post in Kyushu and is
exiled there. For that period of time, this affair was all one heard about.
In a diary only for things related to me personally, this is perhaps
something that shouldn't have been included; however, since the deep
feelings of sadness about it were my own and not anyone else's, I have
recorded it.
In the first of this year's fifth months, a little after the twentieth,
there was a period of abstinence, and my husband, who was to begin a
long fast, retreated to a mountain temple. It must have been while I was
brooding, lost in thought watching the rain fall heavily, that I received a
letter from him in which he said something like, "This seems to be a place
where I am strangely depressed," to which I replied:
toshi mo are Such a time as this,
kaku samidare no when the water of the fifth month
midzu masari rains overflows and
wochikata hito no the days you must be far away
hi wo mo koso fure also fall one after another.

and sent it away. In response he wrote:

kiyomidzu no If the rain keeps
mashite hodo furu falling until pure water
mono naraba overflows the brim,
onaji numa ni mo better had I to come down
ori mo tachinamu and soak in the same marsh with you.

And as we thus exchanged messages, the intercalary fifth month arrived.

Around the end of that month, I came down with some kind of
illness—hard to say what it was. Although I suffered greatly with it, I
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 Book Two

burning of poppy seeds - A Shingon ritual to burn away evil karmic influences.

new residence — There is uncertainty as to just what residence this is. Three years later Kaneie is
spoken of for the first time as "the captain of the right of the Higashi Sanjo residence," so it is
speculated that it is this residence that is under construction now.
standing at the entrance - It was believed that by remaining standing at the entrance of the room
one did not contract the pollution of being in contact with someone who was ill.
"not regretting to die yet sad"- This is acknowledged to be an allusion to a poem by the well-known
mid-Heian poet, Ki no Tsurayuki, which has two alternate endings. One version is:
Not regretting
to die, yet sad have
I become,
not knowing the way
to turn my back on the world.
The second version ends:
not knowing whither
my lover's heart will go. (Zenshu, 208)
We cannot know which version the author had in mind, yet both fit her state of mind well here.

one stalk oflotus pod -Given that this is the end of the intercalaryfifthmonth, approximately the first
week of July, it is very early tofinda lotus gone to seed, and it is likely as an unseasonable rarity that
Kaneie has brought it for a gift.

"I want to show it to you soon"— With this quotation, one senses her hope that he intends to share the
residence with her.

The flower blossoms . . . - From the reference to "floating leaf," we know the flower is the lotus,
whose unseasonably early seed pod she has before her. There is a pun on mi, "fruit" and "self/
"body."

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 BOOK TWO

could only think so be it. I just bore it, not wanting to appear as though I
were clinging to life; nonetheless, the people around me could not just
leave things as they were, and they performed such rituals as the burning
of poppy seeds, all to no effect and so time passed. Since I was in ritual
abstinence, he was not visiting as usual, but on his way back and forth
from overseeing the construction of a new residence, he would stop by
and standing at the entrance inquire, "How is she?" One evening when I
was feeling weaker and lost in thoughts of "not regretting to die yet sad,"
he stopped on the way back from the usual place and sent in with a
servant one stalk of lotus pod. Apparently he said something like, "Since it
is getting dark, I will not come in. Please show this to her; it is from my
place." In reply, I just had the servant say, "I feel more dead than alive,"
and lying back yielded to melancholy thoughts . . . ah, truly, that splendid
place he is building—but who knows if I will live, and as I never know
what is really in his heart, even though he says, "I want to show it to you
soon, " things will turn out as they will, yet, when I thought it may all come
to naught, I became sad. I wrote:
hana ni saki The flower blossoms
mi ni nari kaharu and changes into this fruit,
yo wo sutete casting off this world,
ukiba no tsuyu to I shall vanish with the
ware zo kenu beshi dew drop on a floating leaf.

My thoughts gone as far as this, the days passed with my condition the
same, so I felt quite forlorn.
Suppose I don't get better was all I could think of, and while I had
not a dewdrop's worth of attachment to my own life, it was just that con-
tinually thinking about what would happen to this only child left behind,
I could not hold back the tears. Since my appearance must have shown
how strangely different my feelings were from my usual self, he had dis-
tinguished monks come and do their best, but nothing seemed to do any
good. I thought, continuing like this, I must surely die, and if it were to
come suddenly, and it would end up that I had not been able to express
what was on my mind, how much I would regret it; at least while I am
alive, I had better speak my thoughts just as they are, so leaning against an
armrest, this is what I wrote:
You have always bade me live long and I have always thought
to see you through to the end, but it seems that I may have
reached the limit, and since I have been feeling strangely un-
easy, I write this. As I have always said, I have never thought
that I would be long in this world, nor have I a speck of regret
for leaving it, except for our young one; for him I have concern.
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 Book Two

Since I am one so deep in sin - From here on through the poem, she is speaking out of the general
belief that people who have not attained enlightenment are somehow kept back in this world by
their attachments and remain in spirit form observing the world they have left behind. Moreover it
was believed that the spirits of the deceased, particularly those who have died with bitter feelings,
can bring misfortune to those who have wronged them. In essence here, she is gently threatening
her husband that if he neglects or mistreats her son, she will know and may punish him from
beyond the grave.

Mountain paths . . . - One metaphor for dying was crossing the mountain of death.

Asforyour exams - There is some controversy over what the author is referring to here because the
word she uses is only tohi, "question," but I follow the majority opinion that she means the questions
of study for his upcoming exam. Michitsuna is fifteen and will therefore be preparing to write
academy exams. Although in the mid-Heian period, rank and office were decided primarily by birth
and family connections, the ritual taking of Chinese-style civil service exams was maintained. It is
touching to hear this mother of a thousand years ago exhorting her son to study.
period of abstinencefor mourning - This may mean the general forty-nine day period of mourning
after a death, or the three month period of mourning specified for husbands.

governor general's wife - This is Minamoto Takaakira's wife. The post he had been forced to accept
in Kyushu was honorary governor general of Daizaifu, hence the term of address here. It would be
good at this point to be reminded how close the relationships were between the families struggling
for power at the center. Takaakira's wife was actually a younger sister of Kaneie, albeit by a different
mother. Despite the fact that they shared the same father, the fault lines of family politics placed
Kaneie and his sister on opposite sides, which makes Michitsuna's Mother's sense of identification
with the sister all the more remarkable.
the West Palace was burned - It is recorded the West Palace burned on the first day of the fourth
month. It was most likely not an accident. Takaakira's palace was the only major aristocratic resi-
dence on the west side of the capital. Its burning hastened the decline of that quarter of the city
(Herail, La cour dujapon a Vepoque de Heian, 98).

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 BOOK TWO

Even when you frown at him in jest, it seems to make him so

miserable; I beg you, as long as his offense is not great, please
don't show him your displeasure. Since I am one so deep in sin:
kaze dani mo Would that the wind
omohanu kata ni send me to the realm of no-thought,
yosezaraba but if it does not,
kono yo no koto ha even from the world beyond
kano yo ni mo mimu I shall see what happens here.

Even when I am gone, if someone treats my child unkindly, I

shall feel the pain of it. Over the years, I have always worried
that your regard for us might end, yet seeing that your heart has
not changed, I entreat you, please take good care of our son.
Having always thought that eventually I would have to leave
him in your charge, now that such has actually come to pass,
please see him through. And might I hope too that you will not
forget some of the things that we alone shared, some of the
times when I was moved to say, "How lovely." Unfortunately,
due to these circumstances, I have not been able to say these
things to you face to face as would have been better:

tsuyu shigeki Mountain paths are heavy

michi to ka itodo with dew, the path up death's
shide no yama mountain, how much more so—
katsu gatsu nururu What shall I do with these sleeves
sode ika ni semu already damp growing damper?

This was what I wrote and in the margin added, "After I am gone, please
tell him that his mother said, 'As for your exams, study hard so you will
not make the slightest mistake.'" Then sealing the letter, I wrote on top,
"To be looked at after the period of abstinence for mourning." Crawling
over to a Chinese box beside me, I placed the letter inside. Those looking
on might have thought it a strange thing to do, but I did it because if my
illness were to go on for a long time and I hadn't at least put that much
down on paper, how very pained at heart I would be.

Like this, my condition was the same for a while; I did not go to
any great lengths with services and purifications, just kept at it bit by bit
until toward the end of the sixth month I began to feel a little better and
aware of things around me. It was then that I heard that the governor
general's wife had become a nun and I felt so sad for her. It seems that
three days after her husband was banished, the West Palace was burned to
the ground and so she had moved to a residence of her own, the Momozono
villa, and there was living wretchedly, brooding on the past. Hearing about
this, I grieved too, and since there seemed no way to clear my mind, I

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 Book Two

50 many as to be excessive — There is a hint of apology in this expression. She is once again going to
write in the unconventional form of a long poem.

Mt. Atago - One of the places where Takaakira is rumored to have hidden, but also here a pun on
ata, "retribution from a former life."

mountain cuckoo - In summer, the cuckoo replaces the warbler as the seasonal bird. The cuckoo is
used here as a comparison to Takaakira's wife, following Takaakira's lamentations with her own.

brooding thoughts thefifth month's long rains - Pun on nagame, "to gaze out, brood" and "long rains."

timefalls with the rain — Pun on furu, "to pass" (of time)/"to fall" (of rain).

one fifth month followed yet another and overlapping robes - Pun on kasanetaritsuru, form of
kasaneru, "to follow one after another" and "to overlap." The image of robes sticking together and
molding is associated with the rainy season when moisture permeates everything.

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 BOOK TWO

gathered together all the burdensome thoughts that I had lain with, so
many as to be excessive, and wrote them out even though it was pitiful to
see:
ahare ima ha Ah, how sad, that now
kaku ifu kai mo saying these things will make no
nakeredomo difference, yet I
omoihshi koto ha would remember how it felt
haru no suwe at the end of spring,
hana namu chiru to the tumult as flowers fell
sawagishi wo for you forever,
ahare ahare to so sad, so very sad, we said,
kikishi ma ni upon hearing that
nishi no miyama no deep in the western mountains,
uguhisu ha your warbler trilled forth
kagiri no kowe wo a final note and hid himself
furitatete on Mt. Atago.
kimi ga mukashi no Yet some fate from former lives
atago yama pursued him into
sashite irinu to the wilds, for although we heard
kikishikado that he had hidden,
hito goto shigeku then the clamor of rumors
arishikaba grew rank like weeds
michi naki koto to choking the paths he would travel.
nageki wabi Poor man he lamented,
tani gakurenaru and just as mountain water
yama midzu no in deep valleys
tsuhi ni nagaru to finally flows to the sea,
sawagu ma ni he must go, midst
yo wo udzuki ni mo all this tumult, the fourth month
narishikaba came with misery.
yama hototogisu The mountain cuckoo in place
tachikahari of the warbler took
kimi o shinobu no to the skies, longing for her lord,
kowe tahezu crying without end,
idzure no sato ka in which village then did she
nakazarishi ever stop crying?
mashite nagame no Still deeper into brooding thoughts
samidare ha the fifth month's long rains
ukiyo no naka ni plunged us all, ah, among those
furu kagiri here in this sad world
tare ga tamoto ka where time falls with the rain,
tada naramu who had sleeves untouched?
taezu zo urufu Ceaselessly drenched as one
satsuki sahe fifth month followed yet
kasanetaritsuru another and overlapping
koromode ha robes stuck together
uhe shita wakazu under- and overrobes, hard to
kutashiteki part as they molded.
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 Book Two

the beloved children — Takaakira's sons who have been banished as well.

one little egg - One young child was left with the mother.

what will become of it should it never hatch - Pun on kahi, "egg" and "result."

ninefold realm - Ninefold is an epithet for the imperial court.

nine provinces - Literally the meaning of Kyushu.

forest of lamentation - Pun on nageki, "abandoned tree" and "lament."

sister of the sea — Pun on ama, "fisher" and "nun."

the bay and your heart-Y\m on ura, "bay" and "heart."

deep seaweed of sorrow - Pun on nagame, "brood sadly," and name for a type of seaweed.

migrating geese . . .justfor a while -Pun on kari, "wild geese" and "temporary."

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 BOOK TWO

mashite kohidji ni Still sadder, the muddy paths

oritateru down which they must tread,
amata no tago ha the beloved children each
ono ga yoyo reaping his own fate,
ika bakari ka ha and how much will they be
sohochikemu soaked in tears,
yotsu ni wakaruru parted in four directions
mura tori no like a flock of birds
ono ga chiridjiri scattered each from the other
subanarete distant from the nest;
wazuka ni tomaru as for the one little egg
su mori ni mo that stays in the nest,
nanika ha kahi no what will become of it should
arubeki to it never hatch?
kudakete mono wo To think on these things must tear
omofuramu your heart to pieces,
iheba sara nari to speak it anew makes it worse.
kokono he no Accustomed as he was
uchi wo nomi koso only to the ninefold realm
narashikeme of the inner court,
onaji kazu to ya while the number is the same,
kokono kuni he must be brooding
shima futatsu woba over those nine provinces
nagamuramu and two islands,
katsu ha yume ka to and for you, saying to yourself,
ihinagara Is this a dream?
afubeki go naku Can it be, will I never
narinu to ya meet him again?
kimi mo nageki wo Meanwhile you log a forest
koritsumite of lamentation,
shiho yaku ama yo becoming a sister of the sea,
narinuramu boiling brine for salt,
fune wo nagashite setting your skiff adrift
ika bakari how desolate
ura sabishikaru must be the bay and your heart,
yo no naka wo in this world reaping
nagamekaruramu the deep seaweed of sorrow
yuki kaheru plying to and fro.
kari no wakare ni If like the migrating geese,
araba koso your parting was just
kimi ga yodoko mo for a while, your sleeping mat
arazarame would not be so hard.
chiri nomi oku ha The dust just piles up in vain,
munashikute your pillow afloat
makura no yuku he mo on tears, whither it goes
shiraji kashi you surely know not,
ima ha namida mo now even your tears exhausted
minatsuki no in this sixth month,
ko kage ni waburu in tree shadows, suffering

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 Book Two

cicada splits its shell - In the midsummer or early autumn the cicada emerges from seven years'
existence as a grub in the earth and crawls to a tree branch to let its shell dry and split, from whence
it emerges as a flying insect.

Under theforest ofOaraki... - Allusion to a poem in Gosenshu, miscellaneous, book two:

I have no one
to rely on, no way to tell,
since I am just
the fruit of grass under
the forest of Oaraki. (Katagiri, Gosen wakashu, 356)

Michitsuna's Mother recycles the central pun from this poem, kusa nomi, "just grass," or kusa no mi,
"fruitV'self of grass." The author brings this long poem to closure with a reference to her own
unhappiness and insecurity, which gives her the basis for sympathizing with the governor general's
wife.
Gosenshu was the next imperially sponsored poetry anthology after Kokinshu and was
completed between 953 and 958 (Keene, Seeds in the Heart, 277). Thus in this case, the author is
making an allusion to nearly contemporary poetry.

'thatplace'. .. perverse and tasteless - The author uses the phrase "that place" when thinking of the
reaction from the point of view of Takaakira's wife. Combined with her fears that this action might
appear "perverse and tasteless," it encourages the interpretation that the author is aware that her
husband has had a part in the downfall of Takaakira, and therefore she fears that Takaakira's wife
would find expressions of sympathy from someone close to Kaneie distasteful. For examples of that
line of interpretation, see Uemura, Taisei, vol. 3, 204-5. However, Zenshu commentators prefer to
explain her hesitation here in terms of social etiquette. They posit that it was not the custom at this
time for women to exchange long poems with one another. Assuming that she had not had prior
correspondence with Takaakira's wife, to begin correspondence with what amounts to an extrava-
gant and old fashioned mode of expression would give her pause (Zenshu, 215).
official document paper — In other words, to make it look as though it were from a man.
Tonomine . . . lay monk — Fujiwara Takamitsu, an older brother by the same mother whose with-
drawal from the world to a hermitage on Tonomine in 961 was rather similar to that of Kaneie's
cousin, Sukemasa, which was described in book one (see p. 145). The Tonomine Shosho monogatari,
"The Tale of Captain Tonomine," presumably written by a serving woman to Takamitsu's wife,
records the events of his withdrawal from society and the reactions of his friends and family. It is
written mainly in an epistolary style and is thought by some to precede the Kagero Diary.
pilgrimage toMitake- Mitake is the same as Kinbusen, a mountain in Yoshino in Nara Prefecture that
was a site of pilgrimage for esoteric Buddhism. Only men were allowed to make the pilgrimage
there, and it required a three month period of abstinence in preparation. This may have been the
pilgrimage for which Kaneie started a period of abstinence right after the Anna incident. The deci-
sion of the actual day of departure is sudden.

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 BOOK TWO

utsusemi mo the cicada splits

mune sakete koso its shell, just so your breast
nagekurame is rent lamenting.
mashite ya aki no Even more so when the first
kaze fukeba winds of autumn blow,
sagami no wogi no the rushes in the brushwood fence
naka naka ni heedlessly
so yo to kotahemu will whisper "it's so" in response.
origoto ni So each time you hear
itodo me sahe ya it, your eyes will not close,
ahazaraba if you meet not by day,
yume ni mo kimi ga at night in dreams neither
kimi wo mide will you meet your lord,
nagaki yo sugara all the long autumn night through,
naku mushi no one with the throbbing
onaji kowe ni ya incessant voices of the insects
taezaramu to your melancholy thoughts,
omofu kokoro ha so many you will feel
ohoaraki no it can be borne no more.
mori no shita naru Under the forest of Oaraki,
kusa nomi mo this fruit of grass
onajiku nuru to is dampened in the same way—
shirurame ya tsuyu do you know this dew at all?

Then at the end, I added:

yado mireba Seeing your dwelling

yomogi no kado mo with mugwort now blocking the
sashinagara gate, so desolate,
arubeki mono to how could anyone have dreamed
omohikemu ya zo that it would have come to this?

Having written it, I laid it aside, and it was noticed by my attendants,

"How sad and moving a thing it is. What if you were to show it to her
ladyship?" Such ideas being put forth, I said, "But truly for them to know
that it came from 'that place' might make them think it perverse and taste-
less." So I had someone copy it out on official document paper, fold it
formally, and attach it to a carved stick. If they were to ask, "Where is this
from?" I instructed the messenger, "Say, Trom Tonomine,'" which was to
have him say it was from her brother by the same mother, the reverend lay
monk. As soon as the household had received the letter, the messenger
returned. Whatever they thought of it over there, I do not know.
Things going on in this way, I began to feel like a normal person
again, then, a little after the twentieth, he suddenly decides to leave for a
pilgrimage to Mitake, and as he is to take our young son along with him,
we have quite a time getting everything ready for their departure. Not only
that, but on the evening of that same day, I was to move back to my
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 Book Two

back to my original residence- This is presumably the house she inherited from her mother that was
on the eastern edge of the palace compound. In 966, she mentions the run-down state of that place
(book one, pp. 132-33). In 967 she records the move to a place assumed to be of Kaneie's choice
and proprietorship where "he could come secretly even without a carriage" (book one, p. 147).
Then after the servant's altercation, she is moved to another residence not so far away, but mentions
that she would like to go back to her "old village" (book two, p. 171). Perhaps her own residence
had been under repair during these last two years, and now she was able to move back to it.
our son who still needs to be looked after - Michitsuna is in his fourteenth year.

governor general's wife - Takaakira's wife again.

That person — Some commentators think this may even have been Tokihime, but there is no way to
know for sure.

so in the same hand — That is, having the person from before write.

sister of the sea - Referring not only to her present state as a nun but also echoing the poem the
author had sent her.

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 BOOK TWO

original residence now that renovations were complete. Since he had left
behind some of the retainers he might have been expected to take with
him, I actually did move. From then on, as he had gone so far to take
along our son who still needs to be looked after, I was preoccupied with
thoughts of, How are they? How is it going? On the first of the seventh
month, at dawn, my son came and announced, "Father has just now re-
turned." As this place is quite a distance from his residence, I thought he
would find it difficult to visit for a while, but then, around noon, looking
very weary and travel worn, surprisingly enough, there he was.
Now, around that time, I learned from others that somehow or
another, her ladyship, the governor general's wife, had discovered where
the letter had come from, and she had dispatched a messenger to deliver
her reply to the place where I had been living in the sixth month, but the
messenger made a mistake and took it to someone else. That person had
taken it in and apparently not even thinking it strange had sent a reply,
but then I heard that her ladyship, upon reading the reply, knew that her
letter had been delivered to the wrong place. Yet if she sent the same
useless poem again, and that were to become known, what a twisted
situation it would be and how she would be thought lacking in taste, so
she was confused. As I listened to this with interest, I thought things couldn't
be left like this, so in the same hand:
yama biko no Although I have heard
kotahe ari to there was a response from
kikinagara the mountain echo,
ato naki sora wo troubled, I have searched the
tadzune wabinuru traceless skies to no avail.

I wrote this on pale turquoise paper, folding it as a formal letter and

attaching it to a very leafy branch. However, as again the messenger just
disappeared after delivering the letter, whether we had ended up in the
same situation as before or she was acting out of a sense of reserve, at any
rate, there was no response. This exchange had gotten quite strange, I
thought. Then, after quite some time, having sought out an intermediary
who could deliver it with certainty, she wrote thus:
fuku kaze ni To the blowing wind,
tsukete mono omofu were attached her melancholy thoughts,
ama no taku did they not reach you,
shiho no keburi ha smoke from the brine fires kindled
tadzune idezu ya by the sister of the sea?

It was in a youthful hand, on light gray paper, and came attached to a

branch of cypress. I respectfully replied:
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 Book Two

a branch of pine whose needles had changed color- By this point, the reader may have begun to
wonder, what is the significance of pale turquoise paper attached to a leafy branch, light gray paper
coming with a sprig of cypress, nut brown paper attached to a pine? It is clearly important to the
author that these details be noted, and it is likely a Heian audience would have understood the
subtleties involved in these choices, but the precise nature of that aesthetic code is lost to us.
Longevity Celebration - Held when someone reachedfiftyyears old. This celebration for the minister
of the left is recorded as having been held on the twenty-first day of the seventh month. Since this
section begins, "the eighth month arrived," either the author's memory is vague or the stir of prepar-
ing gifts for the occasion extended for a couple of weeks around the event.
minister ofthe left ofthe Koichijo residence -Fujiwara Moromasa, younger brother to Kaneie's father.
He replaced Minamoto Takaakira as minister of the left and is generally thought to have been the
mastermind behind the plot to expel Takaakira.
chiefofthe Left Guards — There is some controversy over who this was at the time; Zenshu commen-
tators opt for the dominant opinion that it was Fujiwara Yoritada, a nephew of Moromasa, cousin to
Kaneie (Zenshu, 217).
congratulatory screen — A customary gift on such an occasion was a free-standing screen with
illustrations of beautiful and auspicious scenes to which were added poems. It was a mark of respect
to be asked to contribute poems for such screens. A number of distinguished poets would be asked
to present a complete set of poems for the illustrations, from which thefinalset would be selected.
presses me to contribute some poems - This is a place in the diary where we can gauge the level of
respect her poetry commanded. These poems are also comparatively rare examples of her public,
"professional" poetry.
screen with pictures — The conventional practice was for the poet to write the poems in the persona
of a figure pictured in the scene (see Joshua Mostow, "Self and Landscape in Kagero Nikki," Review
offapanese Culture and Society [December 19931: 15).

a thousand birds — The word for plovers in Japanese, chidori, has the word chi, "one thousand,"
embedded in it. By association, this evokes the notion of long life and generations of progeny.

Awatayama — A mountainous district to the east of Kyoto.

leading the horse in - In big houses, the stables were actually part of the house.

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 BOOK TWO

aruru ura ni From the rough wild shore,

shiho no keburi ha the smoke from the brine fires
tachi keredo rose up . . . but
konata ni kahesu alas there was no wind
kaze zo nakarishi to carry it hither.

I wrote this on nut brown paper and attached it to a branch of pine whose
needles had changed color.
The eighth month arrived. Around that time, a great fuss is being
made over the Longevity Celebration of the minister of the left of the
Koichijo residence. We hear that the chief of the Left Guards is going to
prepare a congratulatory screen. Using an intermediary difficult to refuse,
he presses me to contribute some poems. It is to be a screen with pictures
of various places painted on it. The request rather leaves me cold; I send
it back many times, but, as he insists, there is no choice, so in the eve-
nings and when gazing at the moon, I think up one or two poems.

For the illustration of a congratulatory banquet being held at someone's house:

ohozora wo How many times have

meguru tsuki hi no the sun and the moon made their
iku kaheri rounds of the vast sky;
kefu yuku suwe ni down the road, how many more
ahamu to suramu days like today will we meet?

For a scene in which a traveler halts his horse on a beach and listens to
the voices of the plovers:

hito kowe ni In a single voice,

yagate chidori to all of a sudden one hears
kikitsureba a thousand birds,
yo yo wo tsukusamu generation upon generation
kazu mo shirarezu lives innumerable.

A scene of someone leading a colt through Awatayama, stopping at a

house in the neighborhood and leading the horse in:

amata toshi For so many years,

koyuru yamabe ni I have lived by these mountains,
ihewi shite crossing them time and
tsunahiku koma mo time again, even the most
omonare ni keri stubborn colt is used to me.

In a pond in front of someone's house, the full moon of the eighth month
is reflected; as some women gaze at it, a person playing a flute passes by
on the big avenue outside the garden wall:
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bamboo flute, approaches - Pun on kochiku, "bamboo flute" and "to come this way." The idea
behind this poem is that the sound of theflutedrawing nearer makes the listeners feel as though the
moon is also drawing near.

In the shadow of the pines . . .flock of cranes — Both cranes and pines were symbols of longevity.
They were often painted together.

A scene offish weirs - Earlier in the section about the author's trip to Uji, I commented that she was
delighted to see the fish weirs because they were familiar to her from illustrations. Here is a specific
instance of the illustration offishweirs.

trout. . . the days - The same pun on hiwo, "trout'V'day," that the author and Kaneie used in their
poems exchanged at Uji (see pp. 158-61).

thriving with clams. .. my life isfulfilled -Pun on ikeru kahi, "living clams," and ikeru kahi aru, "it
is worthwhile to live."

from among them they hadpicked-This translation is one interpretation for the verb in the original,
tomaru, which means literally "to stop." It could mean the selection "stopped with" these two
poems, that is, no others were chosen, or the selection "stopped at" these two poems, that is, all the
others were accepted but these were turned down. I follow Zenshu commentators in the opinion
that the former sense is more likely {Zenshu, 220).

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kumowi yori From beyond the clouds,

kochiku no kowe wo the voice of a bamboo flute,
kiku nahe ni approaches—listening,
sashikumu bakari it seems the moon's reflection
miyuru tsuki kage is right here in our cupped hands.

In a pine grove on the shore in front of a rustic house, a flock of cranes is

playing. "Two poems for this one" are the instructions:
nami kake no Standing on the sweep
miyari ni tateru of beach where waves roll in,
ko matsu bara the little pines grove;
kokoro wo yosuru it would appear hearts of cranes
koto zo arurashi are drawn to it in good will.
matsu no kage In the shadow
masago no naka to of the pines, on the fine white sand
tadzunuru ha seeking something,
nani no akanu zo but what more could anyone
tadzu no muratori possibly want?—flock of cranes.

A scene of fish weirs:

ajirogi ni The trout are drawn to
kokoro o yosete the fish weirs and I am drawn
hiwo fureba to the scene, thus
amata no yo koso the days passed and so many nights
tabine shite kere have I slept a traveler's sleep.

A scene of fishing boats along with fisherman's fires on the beach:

isaribi mo The fisherman's fires
ama no kobune mo and little fisher's boats too
nodokekare are peaceful; I have come
ikeru kahi aru to this beach thriving with clams
ura ni kinikeri feeling my life is fulfilled.

A woman's carriage on the way home from viewing maple leaves comes
to another house with many maple leaves:
yorodzu yo wo Even people who live for
nobe no atari ni a myriad generations
sumu hito ha on this wide plain
meguru meguru ya as the seasons go round and round,
aki wo matsuramu they must still look forward to autumn.

Thus, I was forced to compose so many uninteresting poems; when I

heard that from among them they had picked the "fisherman's fires" and
"flock of cranes," I somehow felt let down.
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quite harried for no particular reason - So she says, but Zenshu commentators point out that the
latter part of this year contained a number of events with which members of her extended family
were involved, including the abdication of Emperor Reizei and assumption of the throne by Em-
peror Enyu, promotion to the third rank for Kaneie, permission to serve in the palace granted to her
son, Michitsuna, her sister-in-law Lady Jdganden's promotion to principal handmaid, and the death
of Fujiwara Moromasa, for whom the congratulatory screen had been made (Zenshu, 220).

Placing the piled up snow . . . - While this poem is saying something as simple as, "I'm so miserable
I could die," her mode of expression is unusual. The expected treatment of this image for this
sentiment would be, "Just as the snow soon melts away, I too will likely melt away [die] from this
misery." This poem is the inverse of that, "the snow will melt soon, but I will not." It makes the poem
more cold and stark.

last day of the year- The new year is the first year of the Tenroku era, 970.

that splendid residence - The residence that has been under construction at Higashi Sanjo.

dress rehearsal- The dress rehearsal provides the author and her household with the opportunity to
see the performance they will not be able to attend. For this reason, they treat it more like an actual
performance than a rehearsal.

O no Yoshimochi - The O family was famous in the fields of music and dance. Yoshimochi is noted
in another contemporary chronicle as particularly skillful.

take off robesfor him - The custom of the time when one wanted to reward someone was to take off
one of one's own garments and give it to the person. Multiple layers of clothing were the style of the
period. Clothes and cloth in general were virtually a form of currency.

the "Butterfly"piece — In this piece, apparently the dancer had a headdress festooned with yellow
yamabuki blossoms and held a branch of yamabuki in his right hand (Uemura, Taisei, vol. 3, 337).

How well this fit - The saffron-colored singlet complements the yellow flowers of the costume.

So it is held with great to do over at his residence—Again, rather than a mere rehearsal, this is a private
performance for a select number of those who matter at court.

might think it strange — In his excitement, he dispenses with all formalities.

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Doing such things as these, autumn ended and winter arrived. In

the midst of feeling quite harried for no particular reason, there was a day
in the eleventh month when the snow piled up very deeply and for what-
ever cause, I couldn't help feeling depressed in both body and heart,
feeling sad over his coldness. Gloomily gazing out, I wrote how I felt:
furu yuki ni Placing the piled up
tsumoru toshi wo ba snow alongside the
yosohetsutsu years piled up—
kiemu go mo naki that this self has no fixed time
mi wo zo uramuru to melt away, I grieve.

While I was thinking such thoughts as these, the last day of the
year and then the middle of spring arrived. As for him, it is rumored how
he is in a rush to move, tomorrow, no tonight, into that splendid residence
on which he has lavished such care; as for me, just as I thought, I am to
remain where I am and I suppose that's best. Such being the case, I have
been consoling myself with thoughts of you've learned from bitter experi-
ence, and so on, when I get caught up in the preparations for the archery
contest to be held around the tenth of the third month at the palace. My
young one has been chosen to participate as a member of the "after" team.
Since it has been declared that the winning team will present a dance,
these days everything else is forgotten in the rush to attend to this. Every
day, the house resounds with the sound of music for the dance practice.
Going off for archery practice, he comes back with prizes won for his
skill. Looking on, I feel terribly pleased.
The tenth day arrived. Today, they hold a sort of dress rehearsal
here. The dance master, O no Yoshimochi, receives a lot of presents from
the lady attendants. All the other participants to a man take off robes for
him. Announcing, "His lordship is observing abstinence," nonetheless all
his retainers come. In the evening, just as the rehearsal is coming to an
end, Yoshimochi comes out and dances the "Butterfly" piece; afterward
someone removes a saffron singlet and bestows it on him. How well this
fit the occasion. Then again on the twelfth day, they say, "We have to
gather the whole of the 'after' team together for dance and archery prac-
tice, but it is inconvenient to hold it here because there is no archery
practice ground." So it is held with great to do over at his residence. I hear
that "practically all the high-ranking courtiers are attending; it seems the
dance master Yoshimochi will be buried in congratulatory robes." For my
part, as I wonder and worry, how is it going? how is it going? the night
grows late and my son returns with a great many people in train. Then, in
a little bit, he himself arrives and not caring whether people might think it
strange, comes right into my room, "This one danced so charmingly, it will
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I wondered ifall the effort... would come to naught- It is to be remembered that only the winning
team will have the honor of performing a dance for the emperor.

captain of the Right Guards-This was perhaps Minamoto Tadakiyo, a grandson of Emperor Daigo.

my nephew — Likely the son of the author's elder sister and her husband Tamemasa.

the emperor bestowed a robe on him - This, of course, is a great honor and was considered notewor-
thy enough to be recorded in the Nihongi ryaku, a historical chronicle {Zenshu, 223).

Out of concern for you. Since it's night, I could come - He means he could come secretly. The
fragmentary nature of his speech here conveys his agitation and preoccupation.

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be the talk of the court. It was so touching, everyone was in tears. I'm still
observing abstinence tomorrow and the next day, how very trying. But I
will come while it is still early on the fifteenth and attend to all the de-
tails." Having said these things, he left, but I didn't feel my usual chagrin;
I felt so happy; there was no limit to my joy.
The day arrives; he comes early; a lot of people gather to attend to
the dance costumes; there is great excitement, seeing people off, praying
for the success of my son's bow. Sometime before, my husband had said,
"The 'after' team is bound to lose. They picked some rather odd archers."
When I heard such things, I wondered if all the effort he had put into the
dance would come to naught and as I worried about what was going to
happen, the day turned to night. Since the moon was very bright, I did not
even have the outer shutters lowered; as I fervently prayed, first one, then
another attendant runs in to tell the tale of the event. "He has taken this
many shots." "It seems our young lord's opponent is the captain of the
Right Guards." "He shot with all his might and defeated his opponent."
Moved by each report, yes, yes, such joy and happiness, there is nothing
like it. Then another messenger comes in with the news, "While the 'after'
team was expected to lose, with our young lord's arrows hitting the mark,
the match ended in a tie." Since it was a tie, the 'before' team led the
dancing with a piece entitled "King Ryo." The dancer was my nephew
who is about the same age as my son. When they had all been learning
their dances, he had come here to watch and my son had gone there, so
they had both taken an interest in each other's dancing. Then, my son
danced next and as a result of the general appreciation for his perfor-
mance, it seems the emperor bestowed a robe on him. Directly, they re-
turned from the palace with the young "King Ryo" also riding on behind.
He proceeded to tell me what had gone on, how proud his son had made
him, how all the high-ranking courtiers had been so enchanted they had
cried, and so on, repeating the story over and over in tears himself as he
told it. He called for the archery master and, when he came, loaded him
up with all kinds of gifts. Forgetting that I had ever been sad, I experi-
enced a happiness beyond comparison. For about two or three days after-
ward, friends and acquaintances, even some priests, came one after an-
other to congratulate us on the young lord's success. Listening to their
words, I felt so strangely happy.

Thus the fourth month arrived. From about the tenth of that month
to the tenth of the fifth month, complaining that, "I've been feeling rather
unwell," he stayed away for much longer than usual. Then about seven or
eight days later, he did come, but saying, "It took all I had to come. Out of
concern for you. Since it's night, I could come. I'm still far from well. I am
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sounds of the carriages - Not sleeping, listening to the sound of the carriages passing will be a
recurring scene in the rest of book two. The reason the noises of the carriages captures her attention
is because any one could be her husband's carriage on his way to her door. We learn later in the
book that the author's residence is on her husband's way to court.

waiting, pining, on pines too - Pun on matsu, "to wait" and "pine tree."

"The grand minister of Ono Palace has passed away"- Fujiwara Saneyori, Kaneie's elder paternal uncle
who held the key position of regent. Emperor Enyu was a still a child. Saneyori's death then would have
important career repercussions for all the Fujiwara power brokers, including Kaneie— thus the tumult.

utterly upsetting . . . "Sorry . . ." - Once again Kaneie is making requests for sewing work without
having been in communication for a while. She refuses the work with a thinly veiled excuse.

warbler sing out ofseason - The uguisu or warbler is a bird associated with early spring from the first
month to the third month. It would be odd to hear it sing in the middle of summer.

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not even reporting for duty at court. If someone were to see me walking
about like this, how embarrassing it would be," and so on, he left. Yet,
after I heard that he had recovered, I felt that the time of waiting for him
to visit went on too long. It felt strange, and while I spent my nights
thinking to myself, I'll just see if he comes tonight, it ended up that a long
time had passed without him sending even a note. Although I found this
most unusual and unsettling, I pretended not to be concerned, yet, at
night, the sounds of the carriages rumbling outside would set my heart
pounding. Sometimes, I would fall asleep and wake to find I had spent
another night alone and feel all the more uneasy. My young son made
inquiries every time he went to visit, but there was nothing in particular to
report. There was not so much as a note asking "How are you?" Rather
than going on like this, I kept thinking about sending him a note asking,
"What on earth is happening? Don't you find this strange?" And thus I
spent my days and nights, when one day raising up the shutters and look-
ing outside, I saw that it had been raining that night and the trees were
laden with dew. Looking at this scene, this is just what I felt:
yo no uchi ha Through the whole night,
matsu ni mo tsuyu ha of waiting, pining, on pines too
kakarikeri the dew has fallen, yet,
akureba kiyuru when the sun rises, the dew vanishes
mono wo koso omohe and one suffers all the more.

Time passed in this way, and then at the end of the month, there
was a great commotion in the world over the news, "The grand minister of
Ono Palace has passed away." After such a long time, I received this note
from him, "As the world is in an uproar, I will be in abstinence and won't
be able to attend upon you for awhile. By the way, I will be in mourning
dress; have these garments prepared as quickly as possible." Finding this
utterly upsetting, I responded, "Sorry, but it seems all the serving women
who could do this have returned home for the moment." This seemed to
offend him, for he sent not a word back. With things in this state, the sixth
month arrived. When I counted back, it was more than thirty days since I
had received a visit from him at night, and more than forty days since he
had visited during the day. To say this strange state of affairs was sudden
would be an understatement. Even though our relationship had never gone
quite as I would have liked, it had never come to this kind of crisis before;
even my attendants looking on thought it very strange and unprecedented.
I felt barely conscious of what went on around me, lost in melancholy
thoughts. Feeling very ashamed before others' eyes, one time when I was
lying down trying to stifle tears, I heard a warbler sing out of season and
this is what I felt:
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rites of purification - The sixth month was traditionally a time for performing Shinto rites of purifi-
cation, which had to be done on the bank of a river or on a beach. The object of the purification was
to rid oneself of evil influences and thus bring good fortune into one's life. For the author, although
she does not state it explicitly, her hopes must have been on turning her marriage around for the
better.
Karasaki- On the west shore of Lake Biwa, close to present-day Otsu city. This was a favorite place
for performing purification rites.
Another woman similar to myself- There is no way of identifying who this woman might be. It is
interesting, however, that she had women friends whom she could invite along on such occasions.
Later in book three we see the author accepting invitations of this kind from others. When she says
"similar to myself," it is hard to know how far to extend the sense of similarity. Does she mean just
the same age and place in life, or does she mean it is a woman who is also having marital difficulties?
Kamo River— The river that flows along the eastern edge of Kyoto.
just seeing this landscape, so different from the capital — The landscape of the capital was conven-
tionally thought to be moving because it had been so enriched by descriptions in poetry and other
forms of literature. The mountain paths would not have been made accessible to one's perceptions
in that way.
checkpoint — There were border checkpoints between the various regions of Heian Japan. This
checkpoint was at the middle point of the road between Kyoto and Otsu.
it is enchanting - One wonders why freight carts would be so captivating, but an answer is to be
found in the fact that lumbering activities were a pictorial subject for screens. Similar to her experi-
ence of thefishweirs at Uji, her excitement at seeing them is partly the astonishment of seeing with
her own eyes something she has imagined from pictures (Mostow, "Self and Landscape," 11).
useless to try and explain such feelings - Indeed it is. Her state of mind here seems very complex.
The release of being out of the city, and perhaps even more being out of the circular ruminations on
her marriage, bring on a flood of feeling that cannot be specified as sadness or happiness.

Otsu - The village on Lake Biwa.

box lunches- The custom of eating lunches in wooden boxes with divided compartments goes back
to the Heian period. They do not seem to have brought the boxes with them but had them delivered.
Ox carriages travel very slowly. Riders on horseback could cover the distance much faster, so
presumably the box lunches would be sent out from home at a later time in the day with riders. We
note a few lines below that a party is sent back with news of the progress of the expedition.

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uguhisu mo Warbler, do you too

go mo naki mono ya suffer from sadness that
omofuramu has no fixed term,
minatsuki hatenu that you still cry well out
ne wo zo nakunaru of season in the sixth month.

While things continued in this fashion, around the twenty-fourth

of the month, feeling at a loss for what to do, strangely unable to settle
down, I think, there must be a cool place somewhere where I might relieve
the tension of my mind and at the same time perform rites of purification
at a water's edge, and so I decide to make a pilgrimage to Karasaki. Leav-
ing well before dawn, the moon is still very bright. Another woman similar
to myself accompanies me, so together with one attendant, we are just
three in the carriage, with only seven or eight men of the household riding
on horses, such is our entourage. Around the area of the Kamo River,
dawn breaks faintly. Past there, the road becomes a mountain path: just
seeing this landscape, so different from the capital, perhaps because of
my state of mind recently, I feel everything with such poignancy. Just
when we reach the checkpoint and stop the carriage for a while to feed
the oxen—freight carts drawn one after another bringing strange fresh
wood down come forth from the dim light of the forest—what shall I say,
I feel as though my state of mind has been turned around, it is enchanting.
Going along thus on the mountain road, I feel touched again and again.
When I strain to see and scan the boundless lake ahead, I notice what I
take to be two or three birds; then on second thought I realize they must
be fishing boats. At this, I was simply unable to stop the tears from pour-
ing down. I think it is useless to try and explain such feelings, and it
seemed all the more so for my companion who was also moved to tears.
Feeling quite embarrassed, we were unable to look one another in the eye.
Our destination still a long way off, we are driven by some very
miserable looking houses in the village of Otsu. That too gives me a very
odd feeling, and when we pass through there, we come out onto the wide
sweep of the beach. Looking back the way we had come, the view of the
houses gathered along the lake shore with all their boats lined up on the
beach in front is very beautiful. There are also boats rowing to and fro.
Going along bit by bit, it finally ends up being noon. "Let's give the horses
a rest for a while," someone says, and so at a place called Shimizu, under
the shade of a single tall sandalwood tree that we had seen from far off,
the carriage was unhitched and the horses led to the shore to cool off in
the water. Someone says, "Let's wait until the box lunches are brought
here. It seems Karasaki is still a long way." My young one has a very tired-
looking face, so bringing out the provisions bag, I give him something to

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although I felt something was missing-This passage has required emendation by editors to make sense.
Commentaries vary in their emendations, but this translation again follows the Zenshil edition.

the netfor the ceremony - The precise nature and procedure of the purification ritual is no longer
known, but poems related to the ceremony mention the throwing out of a net, and illustrations of
Karasaki on screens also show the casting of a net. Judging from this passage, some kind of augury
is made on the contents of the net.

shells that one could say "shell" bode ivell- This is an attempt to catch some of the playful, punning
quality of her remarks, which in the original are a puzzling mix of puns and allusion.

The people in the back - When the author started out, she mentions only one attendant in the back,
but now there seem to be more, or perhaps it is people riding on the outside of the carriage. At any
rate, it makes a funny scene.

letting ourselves be seen - In Heian etiquette, a high-ranked lady never let herself be seen, but the
special ritual nature of the occasion seems to bring a relaxing of the rules.

"Oh little waves of Karasaki in Shiga" - Song of Shinto worship.

"cries at sunset" cicada - The same cicada that she writes a poem about in book one (p. 111).

Running Well - Hashirii, just on the Lake Biwa side of the checkpoint, was famous for having a
fresh, cool spring where travelers slaked their thirst.

made half a poem — As a game, the companion makes up half the poem for the author to supply the
last two lines.

Running Well... - The interest in this joint poem lies in a thicket of puns. In the companion's first
three lines, the place name Hashirii, or Running Well, is punned upon. Then the author's capping
lines contain two puns, one, kage, "reflection," which can also mean "fawn-colored horse," and
yodomu, "rest," which can also mean "hesitate" or, of horses, "go slowly." It becomes a joking
rebuke, "Why be envious, do you really expect the horses to go slow?" and it also weaves in an
image of the fresh, flowing water.

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eat. Just at that point, the box lunches arrive and are distributed to every-
body. A party is also dispatched to let them know at home, "We have
arrived at Shimizu."
Well, then the carriage was hitched up; we set out again and reached
Karasaki. There, the carriage is turned around, and as we head out toward
the purification site, we see that the wind is rising and waves are getting
high. The boats going to and fro are putting up their sails. There are some
men gathered on the shore, our retainers say to them, "Sing us a song,"
and so they go along singing in voices it would be difficult to describe.
The time came to perform the purification rites, and although I felt some-
thing was missing, we arrived at the site. The carriage was set right beside
the water's edge on a very narrow spit of land at the lower end of the
purification site. The net for the ceremony was dropped, the waves came
in one after another, and when they hauled the net in, some shells that
one could say "shell" bode well were caught in it. The people in the back
strain forward so much to see that they nearly fall into the water, and
letting ourselves be seen, we are offered the sight of strange and rare
things from the shore; it is a merry bustle of activity. Some young men line
up off to the side at a little distance, and sing the famous sacred song that
begins, "Oh little waves of Karasaki in Shiga." How lovely it sounded.
Even though the wind is blowing strongly, as there is no tree shade, it is
very hot. I start to think it would be good to return to Shimizu without
delay. Around midafternoon, when we had completed our rites, we start back.
Such an experience does not fade quickly, and I was deeply moved
gazing at the passing scenery as we went along. When we reached the
entrance to the mountains, it was almost evening; the "cries at sunset"
cicada were in splendid full song. Listening to them, this is what I felt:
naki kaheru Crying at the return,
koe zo kihohite these voices sound as though they strive
kikoyu naru one against the other . . .
machi ya shitsuramu have you been waiting for me,
seki no higurashi sundown cicada at the border?

This I said to myself without telling others.

We had sent a few riders to speed ahead to a place called Running
Well. When we reached there, the ones who had gone ahead looked so
rested, cool, and cheerful as they came up to help unhitch the carnage
that my friend made half a poem:
urayamashi How enviable,
koma no ashi toku the quick legs of the ponies
hashiri wi no Running Well,

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having curtains drawn around us — So that they would not be seen.

preparing the watery rice with one's own hands - This was apparently dried cooked rice that was
mixed with water for traveler's fare. The novelty of preparing food with her own hands brings a
pleasure akin to the experience of camping out.

Awatayama - A mountainous area on the road to Otsu. The place-name has already come up in the
descriptions of the screen illustrations (pp. 186-87).

Of this painful world... — This poem puns on the word, mitsu, which means "I have seen" as well
as being the name for the beach area of Otsu on Lake Biwa, and hence another way of referring to
Karasaki. The word namida, "tears," also has the word nami, "waves," embedded in it, and nagori
can mean "remains" or "water left behind by waves or the tide."

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to which I added:
shimidzu ni kage ha can reflections rest on flowing
yodomu mono kaha water, or horses check their pace?

The carriage was brought close to the flowing water, and having curtains
drawn around us in the back, we all got down. Soaking hands and feet in
the cool water, I feel as though all my troubled thoughts cleared away. We
sit on rocks, trays being laid on top of the water conduit. We eat; the joy
of preparing the watery rice with one's own hands made the thought of
leaving painful, but voices urge, "The sun has already set." I think, no one
could possibly be sad in a place like this, but as the sun had set, we had to
leave.
When we had gone along for a bit, at a place called Awatayama,
there were people from the capital waiting for us with torches. I hear,
"Earlier today, his lordship paid us a visit." How very strange, I felt that he
had actually waited for a time when he knew I would be out. "And after
that?" everyone wanted to know more. As for me, I arrived home just
feeling upset. Getting out of the carriage, I felt unbearably miserable when
the people who had stayed behind came up saying, "He paid us a visit.
When he asked after you, we told him the situation and so on. 'Well, I
wonder what she had on her mind. I seem to have come at a bad time.'
That's what he said." Listening to this, I feel as though I am in a bad
dream.
The next day, I was very tired. The day after that, my young one
was leaving to visit his father's residence. I wondered if I should just come
out and ask him about his strange behavior, but felt too depressed for that,
yet, when I remembered my feelings at that beach, I was unable to keep it
to myself:
ukiyo wo ba Of this painful world,
kabakari mitsu no I have seen this much at Mitsu
hamabe ni te Beach, remains of waves,
namida ni nagori I wondered of tears, could there
ariya to zo mishi be any more left to shed?

Having written this, I told my son, "Just deliver this, and before he has a
chance to see it, return home." He came back shortly saying, "I did as you
asked." I wondered how he would react when he saw it, and secretly I
guess I hoped for some kind of response. However, he revealed nothing,
and so the month came to a close.
A little while ago when I had a lot of time on my hands and was
having the garden attended to, I had the gardeners gather together a few

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 Book Two

your spouse, the lightning- The word for lightning in Japanese is inadzuma, "rice plant spouse."
This name seems to come from the folk belief that the ears of rice swell due to the influence of the
lightning from the summer storms that accompany their ripening.

LadyJoganden - Kaneie's younger sister Toshi, who has already appeared several times in the diary.
She shared the same house with the author for a short time in book one. The fifth prince that she
became guardian to at the end of book one has now ascended the throne as Emperor Enyu. Lady
Joganden became principal handmaid in the fall of the previous year.

the year before last - Lady Joganden actually became principal handmaid just the previous year. This
discrepancy may be due either to fuzzy memory on the author's part, or it may be a clue as to when
she actually started to write the diary. Many commentators suggest 971 as the year she began to
write. If the author were speaking in terms of the time of actual writing, then it would be "the year
before last" from that perspective.

her relations with her brother were contrary - Although the last time Lady Joganden was mentioned
in the diary, she was on good terms with Kaneie, it seems that relations between them had become
strained. It is speculated that the source of the estrangement was the fierce competition between
Kaneie and his older brother, Kanemichi. Kaneie had begun to outstrip his elder brother in rank
from about the year before, which must have chagrined Kanemichi. Kanemichi's son Akimitsu was
married to Lady Joganden's daughter, which would likely cause her to favor Kanemichi.

end of her web's thread - Referring to the possible end of her marriage to Kaneie.

but you are not a spider... - The sense seems to be, "If you were a spider, one could understand
that threads break, but surely your marriage has come through many years on something more
substantial than that, so how can it be that it is broken?" There is a pun on the word /, "thread,"
embedded in ika, "how."

I have sent letters but you have not responded - Shinozuka speculates that the reason she may not
have recorded his sending these letters and has not responded to them is because he never sent an
answering poem to her "Mitsu Beach" poem. It was a poetic response to that she was waiting for,
and therefore the other inquiries did not count (Shinozuka, Kagero nikki no kokoro to hyogen, 272).

the sort of thing it appeared to be- She uses the verb form arumeri here. The meri ending indicates
supposition based on sight. It seems slightly odd here that she should speak in terms of supposition
about something she quotes, but it subtly indicates her sense of estrangement from his communica-
tion.

period of mourning - The period of mourning for his uncle, Saneyori. It is also revealed shortly in
the diary that Kaneie makes use of the period of mourning to start an affair with one of his uncle's
mistresses.

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 BOOK TWO

of the numerous rice sprouts and plant them under the eaves outside my
room. Charmingly their ears had begun to swell, but even though I was
careful to have them well supplied with water, the leaves began to change
color and droop, seeing this I felt very sad:
inadzuma no In the roofs shadow
hikari dani konu where even the light of
yagakure ha your spouse, the lightning
nokiba no nae mo does not come, you too seem to languish
mono omofu rashi rice sprouts under the eaves.

That was how it appeared to me.

Lady Joganden had become principal handmaid the year before

last. Strangely, she had not inquired how things were going over here, but
that might have been due to the fact that her relations with her brother
were contrary to what one might expect, and so she might have come to
feel distant from me, too. Thinking she might not know how things had
gone awry here, as part of a letter to her, I sent this:
sasagani no The spider has reached
ima ha to kagiru the end of her web's thread
sudji nite mo yet throwing these lines
kakute ha shibashi to you, for awhile at least,
taeji no zo omofu she would like to keep in touch.

Her reply to me was full of tender feeling:

taeki to mo It has been broken—
kiku zo kanashiki just to hear that makes me sad;
toshi tsuki wo through years and months
ika ni kakikoshi how was your web spun, but you
kumo naranaku ni are not a spider, how can this be?

When I saw this, realizing that she must already have heard some gossip,
I felt even worse, and while I was passing my days in brooding, a letter
arrived from him. "I have sent letters but you have not responded; since
you have seemed out of sorts, it seemed best to stay away. However, I am
thinking of coming today" was the sort of thing it appeared to be. As this
and that attendant urged me to respond, I did, and evening fell by the
time I had written it. Before one would have thought my answer could
have reached him, he appeared. Since my attendants said such things as,
"He may have had his reasons for staying away. Please look as though
you're not upset." I did my best to change my feelings. "It's because I've
been in a period of mourning that I have been absent; I have no intention
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 Book T w o

As there are some things I simply must attend to . . . - He leaves the sentence unfinished, but it is his
excuse for not coming that day.

it is natural for me to hope he might have a change of heart - There are two different lines of
interpretation for this statement. One line (notably Uemura and Zenshu commentators) takes the
subject of the hoping or expectation here as Kaneie, thus giving "It is likely he expected me to have
a change of heart." The other line of interpretation (notably Kakimoto and Shinozuka) makes the
author the subject. I am specifically following Shinozuka here with this translation (Shinozuka,
Kagero nikki no kokoro to hyogen, 274).

If only he would grow up - Michitsuna is about fifteen years old at the time.

tfyou became a monk, how could you possibly manage without your hawks- As a monk, he would
not be able to indulge in lifetaking activities like hunting with hawks.

untied them all, and let them go - This act either expresses Michitsuna's complete devotion to his
mother at this point, or it expresses the pain he feels at this suggestion by injuring himself to show
her how such an idea distresses him. Either way, this scene shows the strong emotional bond
between this mother and her only son.

Obon —A Buddhist observance of the seventh month. At this time, it was believed that the spirits of
the deceased came back to their former homes, and it was required to make offerings and hold
special services to assure their peace of mind for another year.

my husband's household office - To provide the offerings and arrange for services for her deceased
mother was one of her husband's material contributions to their marriage.

Maigre Feast - Vegetarian feast prepared for the monks performing services.

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 BOOK TWO

of ceasing my visits entirely. Really, I find your sulking strange." Since he

said these things so blithely and unfeelingly, I felt repulsed.
The next morning, he says, "As there are things I simply must
attend to . . . ; I'll come soon either tomorrow or the day after." I do not
think it is really true, yet it is natural for me to hope he might have a
change of heart—the thought occurs to me—what if this were to be the last
time I would ever see him—then, little by little, the number of days he does
not come increases. So it is coming to pass as I thought; I become even
sadder than ever.
I continued to sink deeper into a depression; all I could think
about was if only I could die as my heart desired, but when I think about
my only child, I get very sad. If only he would grow up and I could leave
him in the care of some dependable wife, then I could die in peace, but
failing that, how bereft he would be; thinking about that, it seems very
difficult to die. When I said to him one day, "How would it be, if I were to
take the tonsure and try separating myself from the suffering of this world,"
even though he is still not capable of deeply understanding things, he
began to sob piteously. "If you were to do that, I would surely become a
monk myself. How could I involve myself in the affairs of the world after
that?" And as he broke out sobbing again, I too could no longer hold back
my tears, but in the midst of our misery, I tried to make a joke out of it.
"Well then, if you became a monk, how could you possibly manage with-
out your hawks," at which he got up quietly, ran to his tethered hawks,
untied them all, and let them go. Even the attendants looking on couldn't
help crying, and I was sad the whole day long. This is just how I felt:
arasoheba Quarrel between us
omohi ni waburu miserable, I would become
ama gumo ni a nun, yet how sad,
madzu soru taka no first to see his hawks soaring
kanashikarikeru to the sky, he to shave his head.

At the end of the day, a letter appeared from my husband. As I thought

that it was full of nothing but boldfaced lies, I sent back, "I'm not feeling
very well at the moment."

As it is a day or two after the tenth of the seventh month, every-

one is busy with preparations for the celebration of Obon. Up until now,
the offerings for my mother's spirit have been done at my husband's house-
hold office; since we had grown apart, I wondered if he might not do it
this year—ah—it would be something that would sadden my mother's
spirit as well. I waited awhile to see what would happen, thinking to
myself, I may have to arrange for the Maigre Feast myself. I spent my days
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 Book Two

Not regretting to die but sad. . . .' - An allusion to Tsurayuki's poem with the two alternate endings
that was on her mind when she was ill at the beginning of book two (pp. 174-75). Zenshu commen-
tators suggest the ending she intended to have remembered here was, "not knowing whither my
lover's heart will go" {Zenshu, 236).

Dmi - This woman is assumed to be the daughter of Fujiwara Kuniaki, at one time in his career
governor of Omi, hence her name. She is then yet another member of the provincial governor's
class, like Michitsuna's Mother and Kaneie's other wife, Tokihime. She was put into service with
Kaneie's uncle, Saneyori, when Saneyori was seventy. After Saneyori died, it seems Kaneie did begin
an affair with her. A couple of years later she bore Kaneie a daughter, Suishi, who eventually was
made consort to Emperor Sanjo. From humble beginnings then, Omi was able through this liaison
with Kaneie to rise to a high position as mother of an emperor's consort.

one of the late emperor's daughters - Some sixteen years later, historical chronicles record a brief
marriage between Kaneie and Emperor Murakami's third daughter, Princess Hoshi. She was then at
the advanced age of thirty-nine. It is conceivable casual relations between them might have begun
at this time, but it remains uncertain.

Ishiyama Temple - On the shore of Lake Biwa in the opposite direction from Karasaki. This temple
too was a popular site of pilgrimage for women in the Heian period.

my oivn sister - Presumably the same sister who was with her at the beginning of book two.
I run out ofthe house — Something of her distress can be read in the verb, "run out." This also would
seem to indicate that she left for this pilgrimage on foot. Going on foot was considered more
meritorious for a pilgrimage. Furthermore, she seems to decide on the spur of the moment, and
arranging for a carriage would take time and could not be done secretly as is her wish. Her mention
several times later on of her physical discomfort also seems to indicate she was on foot.
catch up with me - There is no word for "me" or "us" in the original text. In this period, women of
her status were hardly ever alone completely, so it is hard to imagine her without a companion. It
seems likely she slipped out with only her closest female attendants, and then a number of the other-
household servants, probably male, were dispatched to catch up with her once she was missed.
/ am not even afraid — This is an indication of the degree of her agitation.
Awatayama — The road is the same one she took to Karasaki at least as far as Lake Biwa, so the same
place-names appear.
Yamashina — Another place along the road to Otsu.

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 BOOK TWO

with tears trickling down, but as usual, he took care of the provisions and
sent them along with a letter. I wrote this and sent it back with the mes-
senger. "You have not forgotten the person who passed away . . . 'Not
regretting to die but sad. . . .'"
The more I think about this situation the stranger it seems. I have
not heard that he has shifted his affections to a new woman, but suddenly
just as I was thinking about this, I hear from someone who knows of my
affairs, "There are the serving ladies of his late uncle, the minister of the
Ono Palace; he has likely become infatuated with one of them. There is
one woman, Omi, who has apparently been acting strangely, and it seems
she is a rather licentious woman. He wouldn't want her to know that he
visits here, so he has probably cut off relations here in preparation for
winning her." Another person listening to this, says, "For heaven's sake,
he didn't have to do that. If she is really as easy a woman as one hears,
why should he have to go to all the trouble of scheming like that?" So
went the conversation. Someone else suggested "If it is not Omi, then it is
one of the late emperor's daughters." And so on, it might be this one, it
might be that one; it is just so very strange. I am urged by my attendants,
"It is as though all you can do is stare helplessly at the setting sun. Why
not go off on a pilgrimage somewhere?" It's true, these days, I can think of
nothing else: in the morning, I talk about it; at night, I grieve about it. Yes,
if that is the way it is, even though this is the season of terrible heat, isn't
it true, I can't just stay as I am; I make up my mind to go to Ishiyama
Temple around the tenth of the month.
As I intend to go secretly, I don't even let my own sister know,
and, gathering my courage, I run out of the house just at the time I thought
it might be growing light. But around the area of the Kamo River—how
they found out about it, I don't know—some people from the household
catch up with me. Even though it is quite bright by the light of the remain-
ing moon at dawn, we meet not another soul. On the riverbank, I am told
and can see that there are corpses lying around, but I am not even afraid.
When we have gone as far as Awatayama, I am in such discomfort, we
stop to rest for a bit. I don't understand what is happening to me; tears just
pour down. When I think someone might be coming, I compose my tear-
ful face as though nothing has happened, and we just keep going at a run.
At Yamashina, it becomes completely light; I feel very exposed
and hardly know myself. Since my attendants, having placed themselves
ahead and behind, are walking along with a hangdog air, the people we
meet coming toward us or walking alongside us think us suspicious and
noisily whisper to one another; how wretched it makes me feel.
Finally, we get as far as Running Well, where it is suggested we
have our box lunches. They set up a curtain; we have just started eating,
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 Book Two

that status — That is, provincial governor class.

It occasions heartrending feelings - Likely she finds this so affecting because it reminds her of her
own father and what it must be like for him.

Uchiide Beach - No longer a known place-name in the area; it is clearly on the shore of Lake Biwa
close to Otsu. From here they embark in a boat to complete the journey. c

when I looked out - Her description from this point on has such immediacy and precision in detail.
It is as though her distress has actually made her perceptions of her surroundings more sensitive
than usual.

as the moon of the twentieth night - Since the court followed the lunar calendar, the days of the
month were in sync with the phases of the moon. On the twentieth, the moon rises late but is still
quite bright. Her mention of the time of the month here raises some problem in chronology. She has
just said earlier that she decided to go to Ishiyama Temple around the tenth, but here it is the
twentieth and there is no accounting for the ten days in between. Nonetheless, she could easily have
made the decision to leave around the tenth, but it may actually have taken her ten days to get up
her courage to leave.

ordinary voices ofdeer- The crying of deer as it is described in poetry is a long, drawn out sound as
she mentions hearing in the next part of this sentence. Whatever she heard first was not like that.

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 BOOK TWO

when some outriders come up making an alarming amount of noise. What

are we to do? Who might this be? If any of their attendants were to recog-
nize any of my attendants, how awful it would be. Just as I was thinking
that, a large number of mounted guardsmen with a caravan of two or
three carriages came up, making a big commotion. Someone says, "It's the
carriage of the governor of Wakasa." They pass by without stopping and I
feel relieved. How poignant, I think to myself, just like someone of that
status to drive along with great pride and abandon, while, back in the
capital, morning to dusk, he has been bowing and scraping, fust so, he
would drive along with a great commotion the moment he is out of the city
limits. It occasions heartrending feelings. Some straggling lower-ranking
servants from that procession, such as those assigned to leading the oxen
and some others, come close to my curtain and begin to noisily wash
themselves. I find their behavior so rude, it is outrageous. Finally, when
one of my attendants says, "Hey, stand back from there," the servants
respond with, "Don't you know, everybody coming and going stops here.
Who are you to scold us?" Watching this exchange, how could I ever
describe my feelings.
After that procession had passed by, we set off ourselves and passed
the checkpoint. I arrived at Uchiide Beach in a half-dead state. The people
who had gone on ahead had fashioned out of some reeds a kind of roof
for a boat. Barely conscious, I crawled into the boat, and now we set out
rowing to cover a vast distance. As for my state of mind, I felt so awfully
sad, so anguished, so wretched, it was unmatched by anything I had ever
experienced before.
Around early evening, we arrived at the temple. As a bed had
been prepared in our lodgings, I went to lie down. Not knowing what to
do, feeling such anguish, I cry as I lay there tossing and turning. Night fell;
I washed with some warm water and went up to the temple hall. Even
though I try to speak of my condition to the Buddha, I am so choked with
tears that I cannot get the words out. Night deepened further; when I
looked out from the hall, I could see that the hall was up high and there
was a ravine below. There were trees growing thickly on one side of the
ravine; it was very dark with trees but as the moon of the twentieth night
grew bright with the deepening of the night, here and there, where the
moonlight filtered between the trees, I could see the path by which I had
come all the way. When I looked down, at the bottom of the ravine, I
could see a pond shining like a mirror. When I leaned against the balus-
trade and looked very closely, on one of the slopes in the grass, there
were some dimly white creatures rustling about making strange cries. "What
is that?" I asked and was told, "That is the deer talking." Just when I was
wondering why their crying did not seem like the ordinary voices of deer,
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 Book Two

my innards - In the original, it is literally that she feels her liver is being crushed.

lookedjust like a picture - Again a reference to the kinds of scenes depicted on screens.

to spare himfrom the eyes of others, I had left behind the onefor whom I care more than any other-
She thinks of Michitsuna. Perhaps there are mares and foals in the scene before her, and that is why
she thinks of her son. Or the horses may recall for her the colt imagery that she and her husband
used to speak of Michitsuna in their exchange of long poems so many years ago, when Michitsuna
was a small child. Since she had left in such a distraught state and without many attendants, it would
have been embarrassing for Michitsuna to have been dragged along.
that bond — The original word, hodashi, meant a hobble for a horse, which fits with the imagery of
horses, but the word came to mean more generally the bonds that keep us in this world.
Sukuna Valley - The lower reaches of the Seta River, which is not far from Ishiyama Temple. The
legend of the valley swallowing up people does not seem to have been recorded elsewhere.

shibuki — Obviously some kind of edible green, but it is not known to what vegetable it corresponds
today.

yuzu - A small sour orange with very little juice but a divine aroma. It is still a distinctive feature of
cooking in the Kyoto area.
spoke all there was to say - It seems necessary to verbalize one's troubles to the Buddha before one
can expect help.
choshi - A long-handled metal ladle used for pouring sake in a ceremonial way.

big court slipper - Ceremonial shoes that had turned up toes (see illustration on p. 213).

A monk who lighted the votive lights for me - This monk was probably assigned to assist the devo-
tions of the pilgrim. It seems that in the process he has become good friends with her attendants.

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 BOOK TWO

from a ravine a little distance away came the sound of very young voices
crying faintly in a drawn out sort of way. Were I to describe my feeling
listening to them, to say I was spellbound goes too far. I was absorbed in
the service, yet still in a kind of daze, when, from the other side of the hill
across from this building, my ears were struck by the indescribably cruel
voices of farmers chasing some beasts out of the fields. All these impres-
sions coming together, I felt often as though my innards were being crushed;
in the end, I was left feeling blank. The evening service over, I went back
down. As I was feeling very weak, I remained in my room.
When I looked out at it becoming dawn, there was a lovely gentle
breeze from the east; with the mist rising, the other side of the river looked
just like a picture. I could see far away on the other river bank some
pastured horses foraging for food. It was so very moving. Since, in order
to spare him from the eyes of others, I had left behind the one for whom
I care more than any other, I thought, now having gotten away from it all,
I would like to devise a way to die here, but then the first thing that came to
mind was that bond and feeling the love; I was sad. I cried every tear
there was to cry. One of the men among my attendants says, "It is quite
close to here. Let's go have a look at Sukuna Valley." Someone else says,
"They say the entrance to that valley draws you in and you never get out.
It's a dangerous place." Hearing things like this, I thought, without even
intending it, if only I could be drawn in and swallowed up.
As one thing after another had exhausted me, I had not been able
to eat anything. Someone said, "You know there is some shibuki growing
in the pond out back." "Collect some and bring it in," I said, and so it was
brought. It was arranged in a dish with slices of yuzu for garnish; I found
it delightful.
Then evening fell. In the great hall, I spoke all there was to say;
my tears cleared away. Just as the dawn is about to break, I doze off and
see the head monk of this temple put water in a choshi and bring it to
pour on my right knee. That is what I saw. I woke up with a start, this
must have been something the Buddha has shown me, so I think, and all
the more I feel awed and sad.
When someone said, "It is dawn," I came quickly down from the
hall. Though it was still very dark, the surface of the lake spread out
whitely—yes, yes, I say to myself, we have to go. When I looked down I
saw that the boat our party of about twenty people was going to board
appeared about the size of a big court slipper; somehow, there was a
strange poignancy to it. A monk who lighted the votive lights for me was
standing on the bank to see us off; with each dip of the oars bearing us
away, he looked more forlorn. He seemed to have thought it sad to stay
behind at this place where he had gotten to know us, at least that is how
211
Ox-drawn carriage (close up). Note the bamboo blinds that allowed riders in the car-
nage to see out but not be seen. See pp. 215 and 371, where the author describes seeing
her husband, Kaneie, in a carriage with another woman.
Court slippers. Michitsuna's Mother describes the boat they took from Ishiyama Temple as looking like a "bigs
court slipper" (p. 211). See also p. 210.
 Book Two

Ikaga Point. . . Yamabuki Point — Place-names famous in poetry but now of uncertain location.

The voice sounded so poignant to me - It is touching because the people have come to meet them.

carriage that had come to meet us- For the return, it appears that arrangements have been made for
an ox carriage (see illustration on p. 212).

Grand Sumo Tournament -The tradition of holding sumo wrestling matches at court was already a
long one. The most important tournament of the year was usually held toward the end of the
seventh month.

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 BOOK TWO

he looked to me. One of my men called out, "We'll come for sure next
year in the seventh month." "Let it be so," he replied; as we drew farther
away, he became like a shadow; that too was sad.
Looking up at the sky, the moon was very slender and its reflec-
tion was mirrored on the surface of the lake. A breeze sprang up and
busied the surface of the lake; with a whispering sound the ripples stirred.
Hearing one of my young men sing out the song with the line, "Your voice
is weak, and your face so pale," the tears fell drop by drop. Gazing out
over Ikaga Point and then Yamabuki Point, we rowed in among the reeds.
Around the time when things still weren't clearly visible, in the distance
there was the sound of oars of a boat coming this way with people singing
in a rather forlorn way. Since the boat was going in the opposite direction
we ask, "Where are you going?" and they reply, "To Ishiyama, to meet
your party." The voice sounded so poignant to me. As it turned out they
had been told to come and meet us, but due to their leaving late, we had
already left and thus it seemed we were crossing paths. So, we stop and
some of our party transfer to their boat, and all go along singing as they
like. Just as we approach Seta Bridge, it grows vaguely light. Plovers are
soaring high in the sky, crossing paths in their flight. Sights that moved me
in a melancholy way like this were without number. At last, we reached
the shore, and the carriage that had come to meet us was there. We ar-
rived back in the capital around midmorning. My attendants gathered
around. "We thought you had gone to the ends of the earth. What a stir
and commotion it has been!" When they said such things, I replied, "Re-
ally! You can talk all you want but do you really think I am in a position to
actually do something like that?"
The time for the Grand Sumo Tournament at court arrived. As my
young one wanted to attend, I had a costume made for him and sent him
along. He was to go first to his father's and then ride with him in his
carriage; at nightfall, I expected him to come back here with the boy, so
when I was informed that he had gone elsewhere, I was more taken aback
than ever. The next day, just as the day before, the lad went to court
again. My husband paid no attention to him, and at nightfall he left early
saying, "I have this and that to attend to at the office, someone see the lad
home," and so our son came home alone again. How must he feel? If
things were normal between us, the boy and he would return here to-
gether; in his young heart, the boy must brood about this. When I see him
enter the house looking so crestfallen, I feel awful not being able to do
anything about it, but what will have any effect? I feel as though I am
being torn to pieces.
In this manner, the eighth month arrived. On the evening of the
second, he suddenly appeared. I find this strange. "Tomorrow is a day of
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 Book Two

then pushing away this attendant, pulling that one . . . - This is unusual behavior for Kaneie; o n e
wonders if he might not have come drunk.

major captain - More precisely, he has been appointed major captain of the Right Palace Guards.

retired emperor - Emperor Reizei, who just abdicated last year.

Enthronement Rites - The Great Harvest Festival that was celebrated the autumn after a new em-
peror has been designated. It constituted the official enthronement.
official ceremony of manhood - This was the recognition of the attainment of adulthood and in-
volved the bestowing of the tall black hat worn at court.
Minamotogrand counselor- It is assumed this was Minamoto Kaneakira, elder brother to Takaakira.
forbidden direction - Apparently the author's house was in a forbidden direction for Kaneie that
day, but since it is already late, he risked staying put.

Great Purification Ceremony-h preparatory ceremony for the Enthronement Rites. This ceremony
was apparently held on the twenty-sixth day of the tenth month.
and some of my household - Likely her sister and a suitable number of attendants.

50 close to the Phoenix Carriage - The carriage of the emperor. As a major captain of the Inner Palace
Guards, Kaneie is entitled to attend the emperor's carriage closely.

it is quite unsettling - Perhaps it is unsettling because she must worry about whether her son is
meeting his father's expectations or not.

change our lad's clothes - Michitsuna has been awarded court rank, the lower fifth rank, which is
starting at the low end of the highest echelon. He is now entitled to wear thefifthrank color, which
is vermillion.

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 BOOK TWO

ritual seclusion, lock the doors tight!" he shouts all over the house. I am
startled and feel anger boil up, then pushing away this attendant, pulling
that one toward him, whispering in their ears, "We just have to put up
with her, don't we," then imitating me in a simpering way, he upsets my
attendants. I was quite struck dumb, and, sitting across from him, I must
have ended up looking drained and completely beaten. The next day, all
day long, he just keeps repeating, "It's not that my heart has changed; it is
you who keep seeing everything I do in a bad light." There was no use
saying anything.
On the fifth of that month, on the occasion of the autumn promo-
tions, it seems he was promoted to major captain—how lofty he was be-
coming, how very felicitous an event. Strangely enough, however, after
his promotion we do see a little more of him. He says, "I'm thinking of
requesting official court rank for our son from the retired emperor for the
upcoming Enthronement Rites. We had better hold the official ceremony
of manhood. I'm thinking of the nineteenth," and thus he decides. Every-
thing was done according to custom. The Minamoto grand counselor be-
stowed the court headdress. When the ceremony was over, although this
was a forbidden direction for him, on the excuse that it was late at night,
he stayed. Nonetheless, in my heart, I couldn't help feeling that our rela-
tionship might be coming to an end.
The ninth and tenth months seem to pass in much the same way.
In the world at court, there is a stir about the Great Purification Ceremony
leading up to the Enthronement Rites. Myself and some of my household
are provided viewing seats for the ceremony, and so we go to have a look.
There he was, so close to the Phoenix Carriage; while I couldn't forget our
painful relations, I feel quite dazzled by his appearance; the people around
me say things like, "My . . . how superior he has become." "How splendid
he is!" Hearing this, I feel more helpless than ever.
The eleventh month arrived, and although one might have ex-
pected him to be very busy with preparation for the Enthronement Rites, I
had the feeling that we were seeing him a little more often. Since our son
has officially become a man, he comes to train him in the manners of the
court even if the boy isn't very interested yet, and when he comes to
attend to this, it is quite unsettling. On the day the Enthronement Rites
ended, he came quite late at night, saying, "Although I really should have
stayed right to the end, as it was getting late, I made a fake excuse about
having a pain in my chest and came back here. I wonder what people will
say? Tomorrow, let's change our lad's clothes and he and I shall go out
together." Saying such things, it felt a little like the old days between us.
The next morning, he said, "It seems as though the attendants who should
be accompanying me haven't all made it here. I will have to go back to my
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 Book Two

there is a man who visits the south apartment - This is the apartment presumably of her sister.

in a place awayfrom my bed -Her mention that she avoided her own bed is a telling detail in this
description of her anguish.

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 BOOK TWO

residence to get everything arranged properly. Get the lad into his cos-
tume and have him come along," and so they departed. As my son went
along with him so happily, I was moved with deep joy. Since then, there
has been the usual excuses about abstinences.
Hearing that on the twenty-second as well my son is to attend
upon his father, I think it might be an occasion for him to visit here; as I
wonder, will it be so, the night grows painfully late. But the one I have
been worrying about appears all alone; I am stunned and feel torn apart.
"Father has just now returned home," he says, and as the night grows later
still, I wonder, if his feelings were as they had been in the old days, would
something like this have happened-, at this thought, I am wretched. For a
while after that, there is not a word from him.
The first day of the last month of the year arrived. During the day
on the seventh, he peeked in. As I was embarrassed to have him see me,
I pulled a curtain of state between us. Seeing that I seemed out of sorts, he
said, "My, the day has grown late. Since I have a summons to be at court.
. . . " and left directly. The seventeenth arrived without his having visited
again.
Today, from about noon on, the rain pattered down, sadly falling
on and on. So much for thoughts of, / wonder if he'll come. . . . When I
think of the old days, it must not have been love, but just his basic lustful
nature that brought him to me, not letting wind or rain stop him; now
when I think about it, since there was never a time when I felt really se-
cure, my expectations have been exaggerated—ah—to think he wouldn't
let wind or rain get in his way, that's no longer something I can expect,
and so I spend the day gazing out, sunk in brooding thoughts.
With the sound of the rain pattering on, it became time to light the
lamps. These days, there is a man who visits the south apartment. When I
hear his footsteps, I think, so, he has come. How touching and charming
of him to have come on such a night, and right alongside that feeling comes
boiling up a swirl of emotion; when I speak out, one of my attendants
who has known me for years, faces me and says, "It is sad, in the old days,
even rain and wind worse than this would not have kept him away." The
moment she says this, I feel hot tears rolling down:
omohi seku I stifle these thoughts
mune no homura ha but the flames in my breast
tsurenakute do not appear,
namida wo wakasu they just go ahead
mono ni zarikeru and boil up these tears.

repeating this over and over to myself, I stayed up all night in a place
away from my bed.
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 Book Two

we crossed into anotheryear — The second year of Tenroku, 971, seventeenth year of her marriage.

there had never been a time when he had failed to appear on New Year's Day - Yet the author has
earlier described other years when he did not come on New Year's Day. This statement is perhaps
more an instance of psychological truth than literal truth; that is, she wants him to come so badly that
she builds a rationale based on the past to justify her expectations.

to pick up some sewing - The last time we heard about sewing work, she had turned a request away
in chagrin. However, from this passage it is clear that her household had been taking in orders over
the intervening period.

the Omi woman - The daughter of Fujiwara Kuniaki, who was mentioned earlier in book two (p.
207).

New Year's banquet — It was the custom for the grand ministers to host banquets for the imperial
princes and other high-ranking officials at the beginning of the new year. The minister of the left
held his banquet on the fourth and the minister of the right held his on the fifth. Koremasa, one of
Kaneie's elder brothers, had just been appointed minister of the right that year, so this would be his
first occasion to host such an important banquet, which is perhaps why there was such a commotion
about it within the Fujiwara family. Koremasa's residence was on First Avenue, very close indeed to
the author's residence.

In fear and trembling . . . — This phrase drips with mockery.

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 BOOK TWO

That month, with his only coming as many as three times, we

crossed into another year. As the observances of the season were no dif-
ferent than usual, I do not record them.
Now thinking back over the years, no matter what was going on,
there had never been a time when he had failed to appear on New Year's
Day. Thinking it must happen, I prepared myself for a visit. Around
midafternoon, there was the noise of his outrunners clearing the way. Just
as my attendants were bustling about getting ready, unexpectedly, the
procession passed us by. Making the best of it, I thought he must simply
have some urgent business to attend to before coming, yet, with no sign
of him, night fell. The next morning, in a letter sent with a servant dis-
patched to pick up some sewing, there was this, "I did pass by your house
yesterday but then it grew late, so . . ." Although I hardly felt like replying
to that, someone said, "It's New Year's, don't start the new year by getting
angry." So I wrote only a slightly sullen reply. In the course of speaking
about my uneasy feelings to my attendants, I heard that he was exchang-
ing letters with the Dmi woman whom we had suspected before. So that
must be what was afoot, and that it was being bruited about as a rumor
was a source of chagrin. The second and the third day passed. On the
fourth, in the late afternoon, again there was the noise of his procession
approaching, even louder than the other day. "His lordship is arriving, his
lordship is arriving," the call was passed continuously around the house. I
could not help thinking, if the same thing occurs as the other day, it will be
unbearable; nevertheless, my own heart began to pound in anticipation.
As he drew nearer, my servants pushed open the middle gate and stood
waiting kneeling respectfully, but it was all to no avail; the procession
drew by us. I would have you imagine how much worse I felt today than
even the time before.
Then, on another day, there is a commotion about the New Year's
banquet. As it is being held so close to here, I think to myself without
anyone knowing, even though things are the way they are, I'll just see if he
shows up tonight. The sound of every carriage rumbling by crushes my
breast. At a good hour, not too late, one can hear the sound of everyone
returning. So many carriages are driven directly by my gate; every time I
hear a carriage pass by, my heart feels a jolt. When finally I listen to what
must be the last one, I feel numb to everything. Early the next morning,
since he seemed unable to let things be, a letter arrives from him. I do not
reply.
Then again about two days later, this arrived from him, "I know
I've been neglecting you lately, but it really has been a very busy time for
me. How would it be if I were to come over tonight. In fear and trembling,
I await this opportunity to attend upon you." I had word sent, "Since she
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 Book Two

like a rock or a tree - Kaneie used this simile in the long poem he addressed to her many years ago
(p. 97). She seems to use the phrase to imply that she rejected his advances.

"everything is brought to life anew except for me"- Allusion to poem 28 of Kokinshu, which she cites
at the end of book one:

With the singing of

a myriad birds in spring
everything is
brought to life anew except
for me who alone grows old. (

he had visited for three nights in a row the place we had heard about —This refers to the lady known
as Omi. Visits for three nights in a row constitute a marriage.

why not even let that happen — Veiled reference to becoming a nun.

sister's impending delivery — From this mention we learn that not only does the younger sister have
a visiting husband, but she is about to bear a child from the union.

Kure bamboo - A kind of bamboo associated with longevity. Shinozuka reminds us that it was last
spring around this time that Michitsuna was experiencing his triumphs as an archer and dancer.
Being reminded of that happier time by this note from a friend must have served by contrast to make
her feel even sadder (Shinozuka, Kagero nikki kokoro to hydgen, 358).

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 BOOK TWO

is not feeling well at the moment, she is unable to reply," and just when I
had given up all hope of seeing him, he appeared looking as though
nothing were wrong at all. I was quite dumbfounded; he teased me so
openly, I found it most annoying. When I told him what had been on my
mind for these many months, his attitude was one of "What's wrong with
you?" and making no reply at all, he pretended to fall asleep. He was
listening while asleep; then he feigned awakening with a start, and laugh-
ingly said, "Well, shall we go to bed early?" Even though it got to the point
where he seemed to feel abashed, I spent the whole night like a rock or a
tree, and early in the morning he left without saying a thing.
After that, he made an effort to act as though everything were
normal, sending over work to do with a note like this, "I know you have
your reasons for being out of sorts. I would like this work done in this
way. . . ."I found it provoking and said so, turning the work away; thus
our communication ceased all together until past the twentieth of the month.
Amid the spring scenery, which inspired the old poem, "everything is
brought to life anew except for me," as I listened to the voice of the
warbler, there was not a time when tears did not well up. The tenth day of
the second month arrived. Rumors that he had visited for three nights in a
row the place we had heard about were as numerous as blades of grass.
As the equinox approached, time weighed heavily on my hands. Thinking
that rather than just continuing as I was, it would be better to perform a
fast and go to a monastery, I started the preparations. When I had the
mattress and the mats of the bed chamber cleaned and changed, seeing
the dust raised in the cleaning, I thought to myself wretchedly, / never
dreamed it would come to this:
uchiharafu Shaking out bedding,
chiri nomi tsumoru where the dust has just been
samushiro mo piling up, I think
nageku kazu ni ha even the dust motes are no more
shikaji to zo omofu numerous than my sorrows.

The moment I made up my mind to start a fast as soon as possible and

retreat to a mountain temple, the thought arises, yes, why not even let that
happen, how easy it would be for people to lose touch with me, and I could
turn my back on the world, couldn't I. But my attendants say things like,
"For fasting, autumn would be so much better." Not only that but I really
cannot avoid having some concern for my sister's impending delivery, so
I shall wait until the next month.
Anyway, just when I had completely lost interest in everything in
this world, a friend from whom in the spring of last year I had begged a
clump of Kure bamboo, sent word, "I have the bamboo for you." I sent
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 Book Two

I won't be long in this world - This could refer to either her leaving the secular world to become a
nun or her wishing to die.

Saint Gyogi - A legendary monk of the eighth century.

toward the realm of no more thoughts - Since the wind blew from the east, the bamboo stalks are
leaning toward the west, which makes her think of Amida Buddha's Western Paradise, the Pure
Land. Thus, while she is sad to see the bamboo blown over, she takes comfort from the direction of
their falling.

"the mountains of no thoughts" - The phrase, omohanu yama, "mountains of no thoughts," means
the same as "mountains of no suffering." It is an allusion to the following poem from the GosenshU:
There are other seasons—
when the full bloom of the cherry
is too painful,
would that I could go into
the mountains of no thoughts. (Katagiri, Gosen wakashu, 24)

observing a directional taboo — From time to time in the yin-yang cosmology upon which the Heian
calendar was based certain directions would become forbidden and one would have to spend a
period of time at another residence.
residence of my father- In book one she mentions a residence of her father in the area of Fourth
Avenue, and it may be this residence.
the longfast I intended to go on — This would be in preparation for going on the retreat to a temple
that she had spoken of at the beginning of the year.
"Not even seeing the moon . . . strange" - Allusion to a poem from the collection of the early Heian
poet, Ono no Komachi:
So strangely,
my heart is difficult
to console,
not seeing even the moon
over Abandoned Crone mountain. (Zenshu, 255)

Since the word for moon can also mean month, the allusion can be seen as a complaint about not
having seen him for months.

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 BOOK TWO

back, "I'm sorry, but I rather think I won't be long in this world, so how
could I indulge in such a frivolous activity." To which she replied, "You
take too shortsighted a view of things. Did not Saint Gyogi plant fruit trees
by the side of the road for the sake of generations to come?" And she sent
the bamboo all the same. Thinking, let sympathetic people come later and
say, "Ah, this is where she once lived" with tears pouring down, I had
them planted. Two days afterward, it rained heavily, and a wind blew
fiercely from the east. One or two stalks leaned over; wanting very much
to right them, as I long for a break in the rain, I composed:
nabiku kana Leaning over—
omohanu kata ni toward the realm of no more thoughts,
kuretake no the Kure bamboo
ukiyo no suwe ha points to this painful world's end,
kaku koso arikere thus it shall be for us all.

Today, the twenty-fourth, the rain pattering down gently is very

moving. In the evening, there is an ever so rare letter from him. Among
other things, it says, "Not feeling brave enough to face your frightening
countenance, the days have passed." I leave it unanswered.
The twenty-fifth, the rain still hasn't let up; time heavy on my
hands, I feel sensitive to things, as in the mood of the old poem, "the
mountains of no thoughts." Thinking about these things, tears are the only
thing of which there is no end:
furu ame no Falling along with
ashi to mo otsuru the patter of falling rain
namida kana are these tears—
komaka ni mono wo as they splinter finely
omohi kudakeba these restless painful thoughts.

Now, it was the end of the third month. Time weighs heavily on
my hands, and thinking to take the opportunity of observing a directional
taboo to spend some time elsewhere, I move to the residence of my fa-
ther, who is away on duty in the provinces. As the birth about which I was
worried had taken place smoothly, I was just thinking again about the
long fast I intended to go on, attending to a lot of things in preparation for
it, when this arrived from him. "It may be supposed you consider my
crimes even heavier than before. Nonetheless, if you could forgive me, I
would like to come tonight. How about it?" My attendants seeing this
letter, raised such a din, "You are just going to end up estranging him
completely, and that would be a bad thing to do. At least this one time,
please send a reply. You simply must do it." So I sent just this, "Not even
seeing the moon . . . strange." Though I never expected it to happen, he
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 Book Two

missing text - Although this translation does not show it, the next sentence begins with a dangling
relational, indicating that there is a missing portion of a sentence. A piece of sentence or a longer
section seems to have been omitted due to a copyist's error.

/ called my son from the other house - That is, her own residence.

I have been told to have you accompany me — There is no indication who has given this instruction.
It does not seem likely that it was Kaneie because, as we shall see shortly, he opposes her plans for
a retreat. She may have received this instruction from a yin-yang diviner, or perhaps this is the advice
of her household members.

at that time there was hardly a woman without a rosary... - This remark gives u s a glimpse into the
relationship between women and religious practice in the Heian period. One can imagine how,
given the uncertainty of marriage for women, they might turn to religion for solace. In her younger
days, it seems that the author had considered women's infatuation with religion itself to have been
a cause of their estrangement from their husbands, but now she finds herself in the same situation.

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came over promptly. With total disregard for the time of day, he showed
up at my father's place when it was already late at night. There was the
usual whirl of many emotions for me, but added to that, this was such a
cramped place, milling with people, that I felt I could barely breathe, and
pressing my hands to my chest, I stayed awake until dawn. Early in the
morning, saying, "There is this and that affair, I must attend to," he rushed
away. Though I knew better, I found myself wondering, Will he come
today? Will he come today? and so the fourth month arrived without an-
other word from him.

[A portion of the text appears to be missing here]

This place is so close to his residence, there are even some atten-
dants who, unable to relax, say things like, "His lordship's carriage is
readied at the gate. Doesn't it look as though he's coming here?" It is most
painful. More than ever before, I feel as though my heart is being torn to
pieces. Even the people urging me to make replies to inquiries oppress
and distress me.

On the first day of the fourth month, I called my son from the
other house, "I am to start a long fast. I have been told to have you
accompany me." Saying this, I began. From the first, I had not intended to
have my devotions be an elaborate thing; I just burned some incense in an
earthenware container, placed it on top of an armrest, and, leaning over it,
intoned prayers to the Buddha. The sense of my prayers was just this: /
have become a person of no happiness. Thinking how miserable it was that
over the years my heart has never known any peace and now it has come to
this awful turn in our marriage, please let me quickly perfect my practice
and achieve enlightenment. Performing my devotions in this manner, the
tears trickled down. Ah, I remember one time when I heard that at that
time there was hardly a woman without a rosary dangling from her wrist
and a sutra in her hand, I had said, "What a miserable sight they must be;
that sort of woman is bound to lose her husband"; now where had it gone,
that desire to criticize. From dawn to dusk, with unsettled heart, not let-
ting up for a minute, even though I had no sense of getting anywhere, I
poured myself into the practice. Ah, but the thought came again and again—
how strange I must look to people who had heard me condemn other women
in the same situation, "And when she had such a fragile marriage herself,
how could she say such things." There was not a time when that thought
came to mind that the tears did not well up. Before the eyes of others, I
felt so ashamed to present such a miserable appearance; I passed each
day from dawn till dusk constantly repressing tears.
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 Book Two

hair cut short andparted at the forehead-That is in the style of a nun. Heian women wore their hair
very long, and even when they took the tonsure, they did not normally shave their heads completely
but left their hair in a short bob.

/ record them here so that - It is always intriguing when the author lets us in on her reasons for
recording specific events in her life. For one thing, it clearly indicates that she intended her diary to
be read by others. The image of the snake inside her eating her liver is powerful, yet most readers
would likely agree that we are in no better situation to judge the meaning of her dreams than she

put up the iris decorations — As has come up earlier in the diary, it was the custom on the Tango
Festival, held on the fifth day of thefifthmonth, to festoon the eaves of a house with iris roots and
leaves to ward off disease and misfortune in the hot summer months ahead.

/ no longer distinguish things, don't know what to do with irises - Pun on ayame, "the pattern,
principles of things" and "iris."

in between my devotions — From this we know that she has continued her religious practice back at
home.

/ was obstructed by what you people said - Her attendants had dissuaded her earlier that year from
going on retreat at a mountain temple.

just 'slip this under the gate'— During a period of ritual seclusion, one was not supposed to have
direct communication with others even by letter.

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 BOOK TWO

On about the twentieth day of my practice, in a dream, I see my-

self with my hair cut short and parted at the forehead. I know not whether
it bodes well or ill. About seven or eight days later, I dream that there is a
snake moving around inside me eating my liver, and to cure this I have to
splash water on my face. I have no idea whether this dream too bodes
well or ill, but I record them here so that people who might see how I
ended up may judge whether these dreams were sent from the Buddha or
not.
The fifth month arrived. From the people who had stayed behind
at my residence came this, "Even though you are not here, it would seem
to invite misfortune not to put up the iris decorations. How would you
have us proceed." Indeed, thinking to myself, what further misfortune is
there to invite?
yo no naka ni Am I still someone
aru waga mi ka ha in this world? Having reached
wabinureba such a wretched state,
sara ni ayame mo I no longer distinguish things,
shirarezarikeri don't know what to do with irises.

was what I would like to send, but since there is no one who would
understand, I pass the time keeping my heart to myself.
In this way, when the period of directional taboo is over, I move
back to my usual residence, where time lays even heavier on my hands.
As it is the rainy season, the plants grow into a tangle; in between my
devotions, I have the clumps dug up and divided.
There was one day when that constantly upsetting person passed
by my gate making the usual ostentatious fuss in clearing the way. I was in
the midst of my devotions when my servants raised a great tumult with
"His lordship arrives, his lordship arrives." Thinking to myself, as usual,
he will probably not stop; still my heart went thump thump within my
breast. When he indeed passed on by, my attendants all looked one an-
other in the face. I myself was unable to say anything for three or four
hours. One of my attendants said, "How strange. What can his lordship be
thinking of?" and even broke into tears. I managed to pull myself together
a little, "It is awfully humiliating, but is it not because I was obstructed by
what you people said that we are still residing in this place and thus
subjected to this sort of affront?" This was all I said, but words could not
express the searing pain I felt in my chest.
On the first of the sixth month, a messenger delivers a letter from
him, saying, "Although his lordship is observing a period of ritual seclusion,
he would like to just 'slip this under the gate/" Thinking this both strange
and unexpected, when I looked, this was what it was: "Your period of
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until when will you be there?- Kaneie seems to think that she is still at her father's residence. Either
he is feigning ignorance of her whereabouts as an excuse for not visiting or he really did not know,
in which case his ostentatious parade past her gate a few days before had not been intended to
wound. Nonetheless, his messenger seems to have known to which residence to take the message.

monastery in the Western Hills - We find out later that this is Hannya Temple in the Narutaki district
of northwest Kyoto.

no placefor this nor haven for my heart - Pun on okamu kata, "place where one could put some-
thing" and "place where one could confer one's heart."

'since I am still the same me' - Line from a poem in the Fujiwara Tadafumi Collection. It is actually
a poem sent by a woman to Fujiwara Tadafumi. The woman has gone on a retreat to Ishiyama
Temple and is reproaching him for not visiting:
Wherever I go,
since I will be the same me,
even if I dwell
in mountains shrouded in clouds,
you will never visit me.
Fujiwara Tadafumi would still have been alive at the time of these events recounted by the author.
Therefore, this is another example of her alluding to contemporary poetry (Uemura, Taisei, vol. 5,
176-77).

This season is not really a convenient one - By the solar calendar, this is already July, the hottest time
of the year.

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 BOOK TWO

directional taboo must be over by now; until when will you be there? That
residence is a rather inconvenient place so I have not visited. As for my
planned pilgrimage, I met with a defilement and canceled it." Thinking it
highly unlikely that he had not heard by now that I was back here, I am
more depressed than ever, but controlling myself, I write a reply, "How
rare a thing to hear from you, I hardly recognized who it was from at first.
We have been back here for quite some time now, but indeed, how could
you have known? Anyway, there have been so many times, when in your
manner of passing, one could never have guessed this was a place you
used to visit. But, no doubt this is all due to my having tarried in the world
till now. I shall say no more."
Then, brooding every time I recalled these things, I felt uncom-
fortable. Thinking it very likely that I would be subjected to the same
humiliation as before, I decided that I simply must get away for awhile.
There was that monastery in the Western Hills where I usually went; it is
to there I would repair. Telling myself it would be best to do it before his
present period of ritual confinement was over, I left on the fourth day of
the sixth month.
Since this was the very day I suspected that his period of ritual
confinement would be lifted, my mind was all in a flutter. Packing up
things for the departure, under the quilt, they found some medicine wrapped
up in folded paper that he used to take every morning; it had been here
all the time we were away. Finding it the attendants cried out, "What
might this be?" Taking it just as it was, I wrote in the folds of the paper:
samushiro no Having given up
shita matsu koto mo waiting under the quilts
taenureba with any sense of hope,
okamu kata dani sad now there is no place for
naki zo kanashiki this nor haven for my heart.

Then in the accompanying letter, I said, "As it says in the poem, 'since I
am still the same me,' yet thinking there must be some realm where I
would not be subjected to your passing by my gate, today I seek that
place. I am sure this too will strike you as a strange tale that you did not
ask to hear." I sent this with my young son who was going, as he said, "to
inform father that I shall be on retreat for a while." After telling him, "If he
asks after me, say, 'She left immediately after writing this and I am to
follow right afterward,' then come back," I had him bear the message.
Being struck by the sight of my letter, he must have felt the agita-
tion of my heart; his reply was this, "I know you have a lot of reasons for
being upset, but you might at least let me know where you are planning
to go. This season is not really a convenient one for devotions; just this
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 Book Two

How alarming . . . - This is thefirsttime in a long time that Kaneie has answered with a poem. She
has succeeded in getting his attention. He picks up the bedding image in her poem and launches
into sea imagery by pivoting on the pun toko, "bed," which is also a place-name toko no ura, "Toko
Bay."
One might wonder why he finds her departure for a retreat so upsetting. He has been
occupied elsewhere, ignoring her and chagrined by her ill temper; why does he not just let her go
and even become a nun if that's what she wants? As we shall see in the succeeding pages, he seems
genuinely alarmed by her departure and actually goes to some lengths to get her back. It is hard to
know whether he does this because of an abiding affection that persists despite his chagrin, or her
leaving him is too great a wound to his pride and reputation. Perhaps, as so often with human
beings, it is a bit of both.

the two of us traveled this road together- She and Kaneie had come to this temple in the summer of
962 (book one, p. 107).

"flowers have only one season" - From Kokinshu no. 1016:

In the autumn fields

blooming so vigorously,
the Maiden Flowers,
such a struggle to be seen,
flowers have only one season.

When my period arrives - Menstruation was considered a defilement, so she would not be able to
stay at the temple. Having left so impetuously and seemingly distraught, she appears oddly self-
possessed as she considers this note. Her servant's agitation seems to inspire calm in her.

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 BOOK TWO

one time, I would like you to listen to me— do not go! I will be over right
away as there is something I want to discuss with you:
asamashiya How alarming!
nodoka ni tanomu This bed on which I relied
toko no ura wo so serenely
ura kaheshikeru has been overturned by waves,
nami no kokoro yo your heart storms Connubial Bay.

Most distressing!"
When I saw this, I departed with even greater haste.

The mountain path was not anything particular to speak about—

ah—/ can only think of the times in the past when just the two of us trav-
eled this road together; there was that time when I was ill, we were here
around three or four days; yes, it was around this time of the year; he
didn't even go to serve at court, together we were hidden from the world]
thinking about this and other things, I go along the long path, tears pour-
ing down. I am accompanied by only three attendants.
I get down first at the monastery's living quarters; when I look
around, I see some peonies surrounded by a brushwood fence among
some other luxuriantly growing plants whose name I know not; they are
in such a pitiful state, their petals all fallen and scattered; the old poem,
"flowers have only one season," comes to mind, and repeating it to my-
self, I become very sad.
Just as I was about to bathe in preparation for going up to the
main hall, a messenger from home came running up all flustered. It was a
letter from those who had stayed behind. It said:
Just now someone bearing a letter from his lordship arrived.
Conveying his master's words, he said, "It seems my lady is plan-
ning to leave for somewhere. As a first measure, you are to go
and stop the departure. His lordship will come here shortly him-
self." When he had finished, we told him the situation here,
"Her ladyship has already left. Her attendants are just now fol-
lowing after her." He said, "What can she be thinking of? His
lordship seemed so worried, what am I to tell him?" As we de-
scribed the situation in recent months, how you had been per-
forming a fast and so on we broke into tears, and he said, "Any-
way, the first thing I must do is inform his lordship directly."
Thus, no doubt you will be hearing from his lordship. Please
prepare yourself.

Seeing what was written there, I thought to myself, Oh dear, they have
foolishly exaggerated everything, how annoying. When my period arrives
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 Book Two

standing in his carriage - It turns out that he is still in ritual seclusion. As long as he stays in his
carriage, he will not be breaking the ritual taboo.

a block ofstone stairs- One cho, or about 130 meters.

they only say things that might weaken my spirit- It seems her attendants are siding with Kaneie and
Michitsuna.

And I'm not coming back here again!—Michitsuna's opposition to the retreat and his sympathy with
his father become clear. He has changed considerably from the year before, when he let his hawks
go as a sign he would accompany his mother into monastic orders.

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 BOOK TWO

tomorrow or the day after, I am going to have to leave the monastery

anyway; reflecting on this, I bathed quickly and went up to the hall.
Since it is hot, I push open the doors for awhile; looking out I
could see that the hall stands in quite a high place. The monastery is in a
kind of pocket with hills surrounding it; the thickness of the trees is fasci-
nating, but as this is still the time of no moon, just now, it is very dark.
Since the first service of the night was to begin, monks were gathering in
a hurry; with the doors pushed open, I began to chant when, as in the
style of mountain temples, a conch shell was blown four times to an-
nounce the hour.
From the direction of the main gate came the sound of loud voices,
"His lordship arrives, his lordship arrives." Quickly letting down the blinds
that had been raised, I looked out and saw between the trees the lights of
two or three torches. When my young son rushed out to attend to things,
he found his father standing in his carriage, "I have come to fetch your
mother. As I am still in ritual seclusion due to a defilement until today, I
cannot get down. A carriage will have to be brought up somewhere around
here." When my son related this to me, I was shaken. I sent back to begin
with, "What can you be thinking of to behave so strangely? I have only
come here thinking to stay one night. For you to come here when you are
still in ritual seclusion, really, there can be no reason for it. The night is
growing late. Please return home quickly." But after that, many exchanges
went back and forth. As my son had to climb up and down about a block
of stone stairs every time, he got tired and it was very painful for him.
Everyone feels sorry for him, "How sad for him" and such; they only say
things that might weaken my spirit. My son tells me, "Father is very angry.
He says, This is all your fault. You haven't said anything to her to make
her change her mind.'" And then he cries tears on top of tears. Nonethe-
less, I ended it with, "What do you think, that I would go now?" "All right,
all right, as I am still under ritual seclusion, it is not as though I can stay
here. It can't be helped. Hitch up the carriage." When I heard that I felt so
relieved. My son, who had been running back and forth, said, "I will see
father home. I'll ride on the back of his carriage. And I'm not coming back
here again!" Breaking into tears once more, he left. He being the one I
counted on, I felt this was an awful thing for him to say but I said nothing,
and it seemed as though everyone had departed. But then he came back,
sobbing as he told me, "Although I told father I wanted to see him home,
he said, 'You will come when I call you' and left." I felt how painful this
was for him but tried to console him by saying such things as, "How silly.
This is not something that will lead to your father abandoning you." By
that time, it was about two hours past midnight. The road back to the

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 Book Two

fewer attendants than he usually has - In his haste, he probably was not able to put together a
proper guard. The streets late at night in Kyoto had their dangers, and her servants express their
worry for his safety with this comment.

young lord - This is the first time the author refers to her son by his official court title. Last year, at
the age of fifteen, in tandem with his "coming of age" ceremony, he had been promoted to the fifth
rank, for which the general title was taifu. Thefifthrank was a major dividing line among the Heian
aristocracy. This rank brought entitlements of income-producing fields, servants, cloth, and other
goods (McCullough and McCullough, A Tale ofFlowering Fortunes, 829). All the better positions in
government were open to those of the fifth rank and above. To be able to start one's career at the
fifth rank, as Michitsuna does, gives him an advantage in thefiercecompetition for high positions at
court. However, the fifth rank was not itself a office with duties; the rank simply qualified him to be
chosen for a office when a suitable one became available.
From this point forward, except for one isolated instance, the author will always refer to
Michitsuna by his title. This shift in naming subtly reflects her recognition of him as an adult. His
resistance to her the other night and his identification with his father seem to have brought about this
change in her perception.
"So strange and unexpected... I shall return very soon"-In contrast to her dogged resistance of the
night before, this note is remarkably conciliatory. She even states an intention to return soon. It is as
though she has begun to think that his coming to get her was out of affection and that perhaps there
is a way for them to become close again. Yet, this reaction from him was won by her withdrawal
from contact. Withholding is her only weapon in this struggle of wills. So although this note seems
to indicate she is not opposed to going back home, it will be very difficult for her to actually do so.

Sitting with the blinds rolled up - It must be a strange feeling for her to be so exposed in an
unfamiliar place.
"hito ku, hito ku"- Recalls a humorous poem from Kokinshu, no. 1011:
I came here only
to gaze on the plum blossoms
but still the wood thrush
laments hitoku hitoku
a man has come man has come (Rodd, Kokinshu, 348)
Uguisu may be translated either as the bush warbler or wood thrush.

as everyone in the city was talking about how I had become a nun - The gossip of the people in the
city becomes a barrier to returning home.

my aunt — Presumably this is the same aunt that shared her sorrow over the death of her mother.

fireflies seem to glow with a startling brilliance - This phrase calls up a poem anthologized in the
Kokin rokujo-.
The night deepens,
the love I have waited for,
now he comes and
is itfirefliesthat glow
so much they startle us? (Zenshu, 266)
As Uemura remarks, if she intends to allude to this poem, it is very ironic (Taisei, vol. 5, 289).

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 BOOK TWO

capital was very long. Various people sympathized with him, "Since he left
the capital in such a hurry, he had many fewer attendants than he usually
has when he travels around the city." With people saying such things, it
grew light.
Since there was business to be attended to in the capital, a servant
was dispatched. The young lord said, "I am still worried about father's
return last night. I am going to pay a call at his residence to inquire after
him," and since he was going there anyway, I sent this letter with him. "So
strange and unexpected was your arrival, and then noticing how late it
was getting, all I could do was pray for the Buddha to see you safely
home. Anyway, I hope you understand I was confused as to what you
were really feeling, and I was so terribly embarrassed myself that I found
it very difficult to return just at that moment," and so on, explaining in
detail, and adding in the margin, "As I came up to this monastery, I thought
all the way along, this was a path you had seen in the old days, too, and
overwhelming feelings of nostalgia came over me; it seems I shall return
very soon." This I sent attached to a branch of pine that had some moss
stuck to it.
When I saw the dawn, there was something like mist or a cloud
hanging over the scene; I passed the time sunk in melancholy. Around
noon, the one who had gone out returned. He said, "As for your letter,
father was not in so I left it with his attendants." Even had that not been
the case, I thought it unlikely that there would be a reply.
So now, all day I spend in the usual devotions; at night, I pray
before the main Buddha. As there are only mountains around this monas-
tery, even during the day, one need not worry about being seen by other
people. Sitting with the blinds rolled up, I hear a late season warbler on a
withered tree crying and crying, "bito ku, hito ku," "people come, people
come." It cries so urgently, I feel I should drop the blinds, so little am I in
a sound state of mind.
Before long, as my period did arrive, I thought to leave the mon-
astery, but as everyone in the city was talking about how I had become a
nun, I thought I would feel very awkward going home, so I just removed
to some lodgings apart from here.
From the city, my aunt came for a visit. I told her, "This is a strange
place to live. I can't seem to settle down," and so on. Five or six days
passed and the peak of the sixth month arrived.
Tree shadows in the moonlight are very moving. When I look into
the darkness in the shadow of the hills, the fireflies seem to glow with a
startling brilliance. Back at home in the old days when I was not so weighed
down with sorrow, I used to get annoyed when I couldn't hear the "voice

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"voice one will not hear twice"- Another phrase for which there is a poetic antecedent, this time a
poem by Lady Ise in the Gosenshu anthology:
You will not hear it twice
the voice of the cuckoo bird
the night deepens,
I lie awake lest I
miss its precious song. (Katagiri, Gosen wakashu, 55.)

waterrails - A kind of bird that makes a sound like knocking on a door.

thinking of him - Her son, Michitsuna.

pine needle diet - This is a hyperbole for a strict vegetarian diet.

shrine to the gods . . . priests intoning thesutras- Religion of the Heian period is known for being
eclectic. In this case, it seems that Buddhist sutras were being chanted at a Shinto shrine.

My young one- Here is the last time she reverts to calling the young lord, her "young one," and it is
notable that it occurs at a time when she is feeling the weight of responsibility for him.

not being in the world at all — That is, if she were to die.

such a move would probably be criticized - The impulse for and circumstances of becoming a nun
greatly affected people's view of the act. When, as in the author's case, it could be interpreted as an
antisocial act, not only an abandonment of her responsibilities as a parent but also a slap in the face
to her husband, it would receive society's condemnation (see the introduction, pp. 24—25).

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 BOOK TWO

one will not hear twice." Here the cuckoo birds sing all over the place to
their hearts' content. And the waterrails tap out their song; one would
think they were right at the door. This is a dwelling where melancholy
thoughts are all the more intense.
Since no one has forced me to do this, even if people do not come
to visit and offer assistance, I would not dream of thinking ill of them and
feel calm; yet, I brood on the fact that my decision to come to such a
dwelling as this must be the result of past karma, and, along with that,
what makes me really sad is thinking of him who has for many days been
accompanying me on this fast. Even though he looks poorly, as there is no
one else I can rely on, I am now refusing to let him poke his head out and
having him exist on the same pine needle diet I have chosen for myself.
Every time I watch him eating this food with difficulty, tears pour down all
the more.
Living this way, my heart is calm, yet it is painful to be so easily
moved to tears. The voices signaling the end of the day, the cries of the
evening cicadas, the little bells in small monasteries around here calling
"me too, me too" as though competing with each other, and, as there is a
shrine to the gods on the hill in front of here, the voices of the priests
intoning the sutras—listening to all this, I cannot help sinking deep into
my thoughts. Since it is my period, I have nothing to do day and night, so
I sit on the veranda, just gazing out and brooding. My young one says,
"Get inside, get inside." And from his expression it looks to me as though
he does not want me to dwell on my sorrows so much. "Why do you say
that?" I ask him. "It's just bad, that's all. Besides, I want to sleep." "The
only thing I want to do is disappear, but my concern for you obstructs me
and thus I live on; what am I to do? I would become a nun as everyone is
talking about. At least if I were to do that, it would be better than not
being in the world at all. It would not be that worrisome to you; you
would be able to visit me often enough; I would ask you to still care for
your poor mother. Living like this seems right; that is how I feel about it
for myself; it is just that, having only this poor food to offer you, it is
terrible to watch you growing so painfully thin. If I were to become a nun,
I am sure your father in the capital would still look after you. Yet making
such a move would probably be criticized, I think of doing this, doing that
. . . " When I say this, he says nothing in reply but just sobs aloud.
Then, as I was once more ritually clean in about five days, I went
again up to the main hall. My aunt who had been visiting for a few days
returned that day. As I stood lost in thought watching her carriage draw
away, the more it went into the shadow of the trees, the more bereft I felt.
While I was standing and staring, seeing her off, I became dizzy and felt

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a priest who was in seclusion here - By the way she refers to him, it does not seem to be one of the
resident monks but rather a visitor.

I had quitefreely paintedpictures ofscenes like this- There are several places in the diary where she
mentions painting pictures. Painting, along with calligraphy, was one of the many arts cultivated as
a part of daily life by Heian aristocrats. It is particularly interesting, however, that she had chosen as
a subject for illustration a woman withdrawn for solitary devotions to a mountain temple. At this
point it should be mentioned that this passage is rather obscure in meaning and seems to have a
number of places where the text is corrupt. The present translation is based on Shinozuka's gloss.
Shinozuka notes that this passage reveals the author's predilection in her youth for romantic tales
(Kagero nikki kokoro to hyogen, 409). Here we see the author wrestling with her attachment to the
myth of romance. The picture is seductive: the heroine falls ill, in a lovely mountain setting, and
services are said for her; to the chanting of the monk's voices, in a cloud of incense, she passes away
just as her wayward lover reaches her side to tell her his life is meaningless without her. In real life
it is not so romantic.
my sisterfrom home -The sister who is living in the same house with her. Her aunt has just left. It
seems as though the family is doing its best to keep in touch with her, perhaps to forestall her taking
the step of becoming a nun.
Since no one had forced me to come here - This is the second time she asserts that her action of
coming to the temple is by her own choice (see p. 239)- In some sense, she seems to take respon-
sibility for her action.

this person is probably from this place - That is, from her husband's place. It is as though she has
been expecting this.

The messenger speaks herpiece — Due to the absence of third person pronouns in classical Japanese,
the gender of this messenger is not made clear, and commentators have discussed at length whether
this messenger was a man or a woman. The final consensus is that it must be a woman, if only
because relations between men and women were so circumscribed by protocol, it would be difficult
for a man to speak so freely to her.

with you like this - That is, she has neither signaled the end to the relationship by actually becoming
a nun nor in any other way made her real intentions known.

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 BOOK TWO

awful. As the sick feeling was particularly bad, I called a priest who was in
seclusion here and had him perform rituals on my behalf.
In the evening, as I listened with such intensity to the intonement
of the services, I thought about how, long ago, I would not have dreamed
of something like this happening to me; I felt so forlorn and sad, yet I had
quite freely painted pictures of scenes like this and, moved by an excess
of feeling, had spoken of such things. Now realizing that my own situation
was not one jot different from those weird visions I had had in the past, I
felt as though something must have been informing me of what lay ahead
by having me speak those things. Just when I was lying there thinking
these thoughts, my sister from home, along with someone else, came to
call. She crept close to me and first of all said, "Back home, I tried to
imagine how you must be feeling here, but now actually having come up
into the mountains, I feel it is so much more terrible than I had thought.
What kind of place is this for you to live?" and she breaks into tears. Since
no one had forced me to come here, I try my best to repress my tears, but
I break down. Crying and laughing, we talked of a myriad things the
whole night through. The next day, she says, "My companion has some
urgent business to attend to, so I must return today, but I will come again
sometime later. But really, how much longer can you go on like this?"
Saying these things and saying them in such a forlorn way, she slips away.
Since I was feeling all right, I go out as usual to see her off, and as
I am just standing there reflecting on things, a great din is raised with cries
of, "Someone comes. Someone comes." And someone does arrive. Just as
I think, this person is probably from this place, the scene grows very lively
and feels just like back home in the capital; there are so many handsome
servants, so many different costumes assembled and two carriages! Horses
and riders are scattered all over the place; what a bustle of activity. Box
lunches and the like are plentiful. Offerings for sutra readings, gifts of
singlets and cloth are being distributed here and there to the rather im-
poverished-looking monks. The messenger speaks her piece, "This has all
been arranged at the request of his lordship and thus I have come in his
place. He had this to say, 'Although I went once myself, in the end, she
would not come back. Even if I went again, surely it would be the same.
Thinking it might be even worse if I went myself, I decided not to go. You
go and pay my respects for me. What on earth do the monks think they
are doing teaching her religion?' Really, what sort of person would carry
on as you are. If, as everyone is saying, this is the end of your relation-
ship, then I suppose there is really nothing further to say. But with you
like this, without your husband saying anything, if you come down and go
home, you will appear foolish. On the other hand, suppose he comes for
you again sometime soon. Then if you still will not come back, you will
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 Book Two

The people in the west of the capital - Who these people might be is unknown.

made me more aware of my misery - There has been a definite shift in mood in this passage. She
goes from almost delight in the busy scene so reminiscent of life in the city to desolation after the
tongue-lashing of the messenger.

Myfather- Apparently her father was serving as the governor of Tanba at this time.

by having the servant say such things - Perhaps she is hinting that he may come again to take her
back.

strictfasting is observed-These were days in the temple when there was no eating at all after noon.

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 BOOK TWO

end up even more of a laughing stock." Thus she spoke with an air of self-
importance, and just then, a message arrived, "The people in the west of
the capital heard that you were here and said, Tlease, present these things
to her.'" There was everything under the sun. My first thought was that for
someone whose intention was to bury herself in the deep mountains, these
things were somewhat inappropriate, so this actually made me more aware
of my misery.
As evening was drawing on, she said, "We must be off. It is not
that we can come every day to ask after you. What a worry. This is just
awful. Come now, don't you have some idea of when you are going to
come back?" To which I replied, "At this very moment, I simply cannot
consider returning. If sometime soon it seems that I should return, then I
will. After all, it is not as though I have a lot to do here." Having said that,
I thought to myself, whichever way I leave here now, I will look foolish;
knowing that to be so, he has probably sent this person to say these things
fully expecting me not to come back; at any rate, there is nothing particu-
lar for me to do at home, "I might as well stay here like this for a while,"
was what I said. "So," she said, "you intend to stay here with no date fixed
for return. More than anything else, I feel sorry for our young lord, who
you have continuing this meaningless fast," then she breaks into tears
again and again. When she goes to her carriage, some of my attendants go
out to see her off, whereupon she says to them, "You are all being held
responsible for this state of affairs by his lordship. Please, make her listen
and have her come back quickly." Thus scattering such remarks around
she goes back. This time, what was left behind was a desolation so differ-
ent from before that everyone was on the verge of tears.
Thus, although one and then another tried to persuade me this
way and that, my heart was somehow unmoved. My father, whose word
about right or wrong I could not go against, was not in the capital, so I
told him how things were in a letter, to which he replied, "Well, it seems
all right. You could just stay there quietly for a bit longer and carry on
your devotions." Seeing this I was greatly relieved.
I thought my husband might have been trying to cajole me by
having the servant say such things, but since he had got so angry and
come to see this place and returned, why had he not written to me? If
something terrible were to happen to me, would he care, I wondered, and
with such thoughts, I felt like withdrawing even deeper into the mountains.
Today is the fifteenth of the month when strict fasting is observed.
Strongly urging my son, "Go and eat some fish," I sent him into the city
this morning. As I brooded and watched, the sky grew dark, the sound of
the wind in the pines rose, thunder cracked and rumbled. It's going to rain
again, I thought, how sad and unfortunate it will be if rain should catch
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 Book Two

/ was touched - It seems that it was his concern about not worrying her that brought him back
quickly.

Much sadder it is . . . - This poem contains a pillow word that has not been translated. The word is
Shikishima, which is a place-name in the Yamato area. It is used as a pillow word for "old" because
Yamato is the old capital area.

'50 too . . . the humble' - An allusion to poem no. 888 in the first book of miscellaneous poems in
Kokinshil:
as the bobbin flies
when they weave the blue striped cloth
so too do we all
both the humble and the proud
have a summit in our lives (Rodd, Kokinshu, 304)
With the evoking of this poem, the former maid speaks of her present humble state and enjoins her
former mistress and her attendants to accept their fate philosophically in the spirit of that poem.

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 BOOK TWO

him on the road and the thunder get worse, but—I wonder if it was be-
cause I prayed to the Buddha?—the sky cleared, and before long, he re-
turned. "How was it?" I asked; he replied, "I thought it might really pour
down, so at the first clap of thunder, I hurried back." Hearing him say this,
I was touched. And this time, taking advantage of my son's visit, he had
sent a letter. It said, "I returned so taken aback from my last visit, and I
suspect that even if I came again and again, it would just be the same, You
seem thoroughly disgusted with the world. If, by any chance, there will
come a day when you will want to leave the mountains, do let me know.
I will come to escort you. Since you seem to be in an alarming state of
mind, I do not think it will be soon."
There were also letters from other people. One said, "Do you
intend just to stay on there like that? As the days pass, I worry terribly
about you," and so on. Various people sent notes of inquiry. The next day,
to the one who had written, "Do you intend just to stay on there?" I reply,
"I wasn't thinking of staying like this forever, but while I was lost in mel-
ancholy meditation, time passed fleetingly and days have piled up":
kakete dani Not even in my dreams,
omohi ya ha seshi did I expect to enter
yama fukaku deep into these mountains
iriahi no kane ni and accompany the voices of
ne wo sohemu to ha vesper bells with cries of my own.

The next day, that person responded, "I am at a loss at what to

write. That poem about the vesper bells broke my heart":
ifu yori mo Much sadder it is
kiku zo kanashiki to hear it than to say it,
shikishima no as this friend grows old
yo ni furu sato no awaiting you in your hometown,
hito ya nani nari. what is there for me to do?

And while I was sunk in melancholy thoughts at the touching sadness of

this, there came a letter for one of my attendants from a former maid who,
among the many attendants, had usually served night duty. She wrote, "I
always appreciated what a fine household we had. I want to let you know
how sad I am that such an unexpected fate should have befallen our
mistress since I left her service. I wonder how you all are. As it is said in
the old poem, 'so too . . . the humble,' there is no way to convey all that
I would say to you":
mi o sutete Leaving the world behind,
uki o mo shiranu even a traveler who has

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 Book Two

'bobbin' - By calling her this, they let her know that they have caught the allusion in her letter.

I shall be scolded again - Michitsuna is in a difficult position in the middle of their quarrel.

our son seems loath to approach you again - She blatantly uses her son for an excuse to cover her
own procrastination and to reproach her husband indirectly for ill humor.

what you wrote in the margin of your letter — Since the author has not mentioned what was written
in the margin of his letter, this section is inscrutable.

Imperial Tombs - The area to the west of Ninnaji in the hills.

someone who would be considered a distant relative — Again we have no way of knowing who this
might be. At any rate, the threat of her becoming a nun seems to have mobilized the whole extended
family.

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 BOOK TWO

tabi dani mo not known suffering

yamadji ni fukaku will sink deeper into sorrow,
omohi koso ire the deeper into the mountains he goes.

When they brought this out and read it to me, it touched me terribly. It
was such a time that even the least little thing like this had a strong effect.
I said, "Please give her a quick reply." I heard that they sent this: "And one
would think that the 'bobbin' would not have known about this. Upon
hearing your letter, even our mistress was so moved, she could not hold
back the tears. For us seeing this, you must simply imagine our feelings":
omohi idzuru When we recall
toki zo kanashiki former times, we are so sad,
okuyama no under the trees,
ko no shita tsuyu no in the deep mountains the dew
itodo shigeki ni lies all the more heavily.

The young lord said, "How about your answer to father's letter a
day ago. If there's no answer, I shall be scolded again; I'll take it myself."
"All right," I said and wrote a reply, "I intended to reply promptly to your
letter, but for whatever reason, our son seems loath to approach you again.
As for when I shall return, since I haven't really decided yet, there is no
way I can tell you," and so on I wrote. Then for some reason or other, I
added, "As for what you wrote in the margin of your letter, when I think of
it, it makes me feel so bad, so I will speak no further of it. Yours." When
I had sent him to deliver it, just like the other day, rain fell heavily, thun-
der crashed, and my chest contracted with worry. Around dark, when it
had quieted down a little, he finally returned. How wretched I felt when
he said, "It was really quite frightening around the area of the Imperial
Tombs." I looked at his return letter, "You seem to be more weak spirited
than the other night. I am wondering if you have fatigued yourself with
your devotions. I feel sorry for you."
The day after that, someone who would be considered a distant
relative came to visit. She brought a lot of prepared food with her. First,
she says, "Why have you done this? What do you intend to do? If you don't
have a really good reason, then this is a disagreeable thing to have done."
To which I reply by telling her in bits and pieces just how I had been
feeling and what had happened to me. She ends up saying that she quite
understood and breaks into tears herself. Around twilight, with the evening
cicada chattering away, saying the sad things one would say on such an
occasion, she departs just as the vesper bells are over. Since she is a
person of deep feeling, I imagined how truly sad she must have felt as she
left. Then what should arrive from her the next day but a load of things
that one needs for a long stay away from home. I was deeply moved and
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Things in the world- Yo no naka, "things in the world," can have the meaning of "marriage" in Heian
vocabulary.

Narutaki — It is only from this comment on her relative's poem that the location of her retreat is
known. There is a pun on hoka ni naru, "to have gone otherwise," and narutaki, the place-name.

the water that will never return - Water of aflowingstream never returns to its source, yet it runs
clear.

principal handmaiden - Lady Joganden, Kaneie's sister Toshi.

Western Mountains. .. Big Village to the East — Western Mountains is ratherfigurativeway of giving
her address, to which Toshi responds in kind by calling the capital, the "Big Village to the East." The
exchange of wit between them adds a lightness to the narration at this point, and the author recog-
nizes that it seems a little out of place.

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 BOOK TWO

at a loss for words to express it. She wrote many things, and among them
this: "I barely noticed anything on the road home. I imagined you as you
made your way through the tall trees of the mountain path; how very
touching:

yo no naka no If all things were right

yo no naka naraba with you and yours in the world,
natsugusa no I would not have come
shigeki yamabe mo visiting you on that mountainside
tadzunezaramashi grown rank with summer grass.

Having to leave you behind, thinking of you on the way home, I could
barely see for tears and nearly lost my way. My dear one, you seem driven
to distraction with the deep sorrow you bear:

yo no naka wa Things in the world

omohi no hoka ni have not gone as one would think,
narutaki no and gone you have to
fukaki yamadji wo Narutaki, who taught you
tare shirase kemu the road through the deep mountains?"

She wrote down every little thing just as though she were talking to me in
person. She mentions Narutaki because that is the name of the river that
flows in front of here. In my reply as well, I told her all that was in my
heart. "I have been thinking a lot about what you asked when you visited
here, why am I doing this?

mono wo omohi When you came to gauge

fukasa kurabe ni the depth of my sorrowful thoughts,
kite mireba you did surely see
natsu no shigeri mo the rank growth of summer's green
mono naranaku ni was nothing in comparison.

While I still have no idea when I shall return, and while I am troubled
when I think about what you said:

mi hitotsu no All by myself

kaku narutaki wo thus having come to visit
tadzunureba this Narutaki,
sara ni kaheranu I see the water that will
midzu mo sumikeri never return runs clear too.

Thus, I feel I have a good example to follow."

Then again, in reply to a letter from the principal handmaiden, I
wrote and wrote about my worries. Having written on the envelope, "From
the Western Mountains," I wondered what she might think about it. On

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ascetic practitioner who was about to make a pilgrimage from Mitake to Kumano . . . - These were
monks known also as yamabushi, "mountain monks," who practiced austerities to acquire spiritual
powers. The pilgrimage along the mountain crest trail between Mitake and Kumano was one of their
tests of endurance. It was and still is a rough trail requiring mountaineering skills to cross it safely.
These mountain monks were a wild and free lot. It seems extraordinary that one of these monks
would be moved to write a poem of sympathy to a melancholy aristocratic lady in retreat. If it has
not been evident before, it certainly is apparent now that, ironically, her retreat to the mountains has
actually resulted in her coming into contact with a wider range of people than she ever would in the
capital.

Even in these hills . . . — The mountain monk's poem is full of double entendre. Toyama in the first
line is a term referring to the mountains close to the capital, but can also mean the "far mountains"
into which the monk departs. Fukaki kokoro, "deep heart," can mean her heart deep in sorrow or his
heart deep in understanding. By "those who know and those who do not know," he is referring to
those who know the details of the situation and those, presumably like himself, who do not.

the captain of the Guards - Michitaka, her husband's eldest son.

the captain hasfeelings toward her that are not ordinary - The plot thickens. Presumably this is the
younger sister who just had a child, but now it seems as though Michitaka is a potential suitor for her
as well.

"Do you remember meeting me so long ago?" - This was four years ago when Kaneie came to meet
her on her way back from the pilgrimage to Hase Temple. He had brought Michitaka along as part
of the guard.

you will not end up like this - That is, abandoned in a mountain temple.

the wrong impression - Zenshu commentators speculate that the author's meeting Michitaka has
produced a complex emotional state, including wonder at the splendid vigor and youth of Michitaka,
an awareness of her own aging, and the unfulfilled expectations regarding her relations with her
husband (Zenshu, 281). However she interprets Michitaka's response to her emotion, it is evident
that she does not feel that he understood her.

I would be happy to escort you right away - The real purpose for his visit is revealed.

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her return letter, she wrote, "From the Big Village to the East." While I
found it most delightful of her, I wondered what possessed us to joke thus.
Engaged with these things, the days passed and I sank even deeper
into my own thoughts. An ascetic practitioner who was about to make a
pilgrimage from Mitake to Kumano, crossing over the mountain crest trail,
dropped this off:
toyama dani Even in these hills,
kakarikeru wo to it feels thus, those who know and
shira kumo no those who do not know
fukaki kokoro ha feel for your heart deep as the mountains
shiru mo shiranu mo capped with white clouds where I go.

Thinking over such things as this, the time passed when one day
around noon, in the direction of the main gate, there was the whinnying
of horses and the sound of a lot of people. Looking out between the trees,
here and there, I saw a number of servants, and they seemed to be coming
this way. Just as I was thinking, it looks like the captain of the Guards, my
young lord was called out and came back with this message, "Apologizing
several times over for not having inquired of you before now, the captain
has come to pay a visit." Reminded of the capital by watching him take his
ease in the shade of the trees, I found it a charming scene. Around this
time, my sister had come up again as she had said she would, and as it
seems the captain has feelings toward her that are not ordinary, he was
standing there painfully trying to look his best. I replied, "How happy I
am to see you. Please come right up. I shall pray for all your sins to be
cleansed." When this message was sent, he walked out of the shade, ap-
proached the balustrade, first washed his hands, and then came in.
In the course of talking about many different things, when I asked,
"Do you remember meeting me so long ago?" he said, "Why, I remember
it very well indeed, even though recently we have not had occasion to see
each other." This brought so many things to mind, my speaking was con-
strained, and feeling my voice faltering, I stopped a moment to pull myself
together; he was very moved as well and immediately stopped speaking.
Then he said, "Your voice sounded as though you were about to cry, and
I understand why, but I didn't want to make you feel even sadder. Cer-
tainly you will not end up like this." I thought he must have gotten the
wrong impression to speak like that. He went on, "Father told me, If you
are going to go up there, try and get her to listen to you.'" Whereupon, I
said, "Why does he go on like that? Even without his saying that sort of
thing, I am going to return soon anyway." He said, "If that's how it is and
if it is all the same to you, why not return today? I would be happy to
escort you right away. Right from the start I have felt how awful it has
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a most regrettable thingfor our young master - So much depends on the relationship between her
and her husband, most notably her son's career, and though her father does not say it, his own.

"bobbing like afloat on a fisherman's line"- She calls up a poem before the storm with this allusion
to poem no. 509 in Kokinshu:

Bobbing like a float

on a fisherman's line in
the sea of Ise,
this heart of mine cannot
settle on one thing alone.

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 BOOK TWO

been to see our young lord, when he has made his ever so rare visits into
the capital, have to hurry back to this mountain temple as soon as the sun
inclined a little." Thus he went on, but as I made no response, he waited
a little while and then departed. Thus I agonize over leaving the moun-
tain; deep in my heart I feel that since all the people who might be ex-
pected to call have been exhausted, now no one else will visit me.
As time passes in this way, there are letters from this and that
person in the capital. I read them, they say, "Today, I hear his lordship is
about to come for you. If you don't come down this time, everybody will
think you frightful. And it would certainly be unlikely that he would come
again. Then, if you were to come back later, how people would laugh." As
they were all saying the same thing, it seemed very strange to me; what
was I to do? Thinking that this time he will not take no for an answer, my
mind was in an uproar when the one I rely on most, my father, having just
come back to the capital from a tour of duty, came right away to see me.
Telling me what was going on, he said, "I thought it would be all right for
you to stay here for a while and continue your devotions, but it has been
a most regrettable thing for our young master here. Return as quickly as
possible to the capital. If today is as good a day as any, we could go back
together. Today or tomorrow, I will escort you." To be spoken to thus in
no uncertain terms, my strength left me as I agonized inwardly. He said,
"Well then, tomorrow it is," and left.
Just "bobbing like a float on a fisherman's line," my thoughts were
all awry; there was a commotion, someone arrived. It must be him, I thought,
and felt suddenly lost and confused. This time with no reserve at all he
marched directly in. Just as he entered, I drew a rather poor screen in
front of me; while it hid a bit of me, it was really quite useless. Seeing me
there, with a pile of incense alight, a rosary hanging from my hands, and
a sutra laid out, he said, "How frightening. I had no idea it was like this. I
feel that I can hardly approach you. I have come thinking that you might
be ready to leave here, but now, it seems as though it would almost be a
sin to move you. How about it, young lord: What do you think about just
staying on like this?"
He replied, looking down, "I hate the idea but what's to be done
about it?" "How sad," he exclaimed, "If that is how it is, one way or an-
other, it is for you to decide. If she will leave, then let's have the carriage
drawn up." Before he had finished saying this, my son leaped up and just
began to gather all the things scattered around, wrapping them up, stuff-
ing into bags the things that needed packing and stowing it all away in the
carriage. Then he took down the curtains and folded up other things,
roughly packing it all away. I sat there dazed, barely aware of who I was.
While all this was happening, he looked on, exchanging glances with my
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My sister, who had been with me- She has mentioned that her sister was there a few days earlier, but
this is the first we are informed that she was at the scene of the forced removal.

since it was dark . . . — It would not be proper for the sister to be seen by Kaneie, but since it is dark,
propriety is preserved.

"Wouldyou listen to that. . ." - This is the first time she actually records the contents of Kaneie's
jokes. He really is amusing here, and one senses his joke has a kernel of truth; the garden is one of
her great attachments and the servants are held accountable for it.

I do not let even the merest hint of a smile show - It is almost as though the author is observing herself
from the outside. Somehow through the experience of going on retreat to Narutaki, she has gained
some distance from her mental suffering.

"What direction isforbidden to me right now?"- Looking for an escape from a difficult situation and
perhaps even sensing that his wife needs a little time to herself, Kaneie consults the cosmological
calendar and finds a convenient excuse.

/ had never heard anything so absurd - He has never taken her away to a separate residence to
observe directional taboos. Moreover, it is the middle of the night and she has just returned from
something of an ordeal and a long carriage ride. At any rate, his suggestion here seems more for
form's sake than to be taken seriously.

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 BOOK TWO

son, seeming very much amused. "Well, since things are done, it seems
that you should come away now. Let the Buddha know your intentions. I
believe that is the usual custom." Thus he turned the scene into a noisy
farce. I was incapable of saying a word; though tears welled up, I held
myself together. It seemed to take forever to bring the carriage up. Since
he had arrived in the late afternoon, it was now almost time to light the
lamps. As I sat there impassively, not moving, he finally said to my son,
"All right, all right, I'm going. I leave it up to you." And when he had gone
out, my son, on the verge of tears himself, said, "Come on now," and took
me by the hand. I left feeling as though it was useless to say anything
further; it was as though it was happening to somebody else.
As the carriage pulled out through the main gate, he got in. All the
way back, he found all sorts of things to laugh at, whereas I sat wondering
if this was a dream, unable to say anything at all. My sister, who had been
with me, was riding in the same carriage with us—since it was dark, she
thought it would be all right—she responded to his jokes from time to
time. Since it was a long way, it was late at night when we arrived. Back in
the capital, since someone had informed the household of his going to
fetch me that day, they had had the good sense to clean the house and
open the gate. Still not feeling quite myself, I got down from the carriage.
As I was not feeling well, I placed a screen of state between us
and lay down in a place apart, at which point one of my household ser-
vants pops out and comes next to me. "I was going to gather the seeds
from the maiden pinks, but they withered up; even the roots are gone.
And that black bamboo, one clump fell over, but I had it put to right . . . "
and so on. As I feel that this is not really the time for her to be talking
about this sort of thing, I make no response, but he, who I had thought
might be sleeping, had been listening very carefully to all this, and he
calls over to my sister who was just on the other side of the partition.
"Would you listen to that. It's quite something. There she is turning her
back on the world, leaving her household behind, seeking enlightenment,
but just now when you hear her servant talking to her, you'd think the
maiden flowers were her own daughters, and the black bamboo's back on
its feet, my, my, what worldly concerns." Hearing this, my sister bursts out
laughing. I too think it is terribly funny, but I do not let even the merest
hint of a smile show.
Thus it went, and it was already half way through the night when
he said, "What direction is forbidden for me right now?" and counting the
days, unfortunately, my direction just happened to be forbidden. "Well,
what shall we do? What a bother. I suppose we could go together to some
place near here." When he said this, I made no reply. This was hard to
take; I had never heard anything so absurd, I thought as I lay there. Seeing
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Please consider breaking your fast - He appears to be concerned that she may be stubbornly
continuing her devotions.

six days of'his periodof'abstinence -From his statement on the night that he brought her home from
the mountain, it would appear that six days of abstinence normally follow an incident of directional
taboo.

just like when a groom didn 't show up on the third night- It will be remembered that Heian marriage
custom required the groom to show up for three nights in a row in order to make the marriage
official. If the groom did not show up for the third night, the marriage was void and the bride and
her family lost face.

my mind taken awayfrom my troubles a little - Before Narutaki, similar events to this had left her in
despair only wanting to die, but now even the chance visit of a friend is diverting.

principal handmaiden — Kaneie's younger sister, Toshi or Lady Joganden, who has already appeared
many times in the diary.

'grow ranker' — Allusion to poem no. 560 in Kokinshu:

My love, it is like
the grass growing hidden
in the deep mountains,
which grows ranker and ranker
yet there is no one who knows.

there is one who 'will not be stopped' — Allusion to a poem from the Shigeyuki Collection-.
Tsukuba Mountain,
Hayama Mountain, Shige Mountain
many as they be
my will to fulfill my
intention will not be stopped. (Zenshu, 289)
Word association links this poem more closely with the poem alluded to immediately above than is
apparent in the English translations. In the Shigeyuki poem, the name Shige Mountain and the word
for "many," shigekeredo, echo the key word in the previous poem, shigesama, "plentiful, luxuriant,"
extended to mean "rank, overgrown" when said of plant life.
Toshi's manner of expression here, "there is one who will not be stopped," is indirect
perhaps because she is making an allusion. With the allusion is the attribution of strong intention to
Michitsuna's Mother. This intention would be to have her marriage be a close relationship.
256
 BOOK TWO

that it seemed I was not about to move, he said, "Even though it is trouble-
some, I'm afraid I will have to observe the custom. I think it would be
better if I come when this direction is open for me. Of course, there will
be the usual six-day period of abstinence." Looking pained as he said
these things, he departed.
The next morning, a letter arrived. "I felt bad leaving so late at
night. How are you? Please consider breaking your fast as soon as you
can. Our young lord is looking so poorly." Well, he could write something
like that even though his feelings were actually distant; thus I was plagued
with doubts as the six days of his period of abstinence ended and the third
day of the seventh month arrived.
Around noon, some attendants came from his place saying, "His
lordship will be coming today. He told us to attend upon him here." My
attendants flew into activity, clattering about, cleaning and arranging even
rooms that for the last while had been let go. Looking on from the side, I
spent the day in painful uneasiness. When the day came to an end, even
his attendants who had come here began to say things like, "The carriage
was all decked out and ready to go, why has it not arrived by now?" and
little by little, the night grew late. Some people said, "This really is strange;
we should send someone to go have a look." Someone was dispatched; he
returned with this report. "It seems that now his lordship's carriage has
been put away and his guard disbanded." So it had happened again as I
feared; I felt so ashamed and sorrowful that thoughts were beyond ex-
pression. If I had stayed on the mountain, I would not have been sub-
jected to this kind of crushing experience; it was just as I had foreseen, so
I thought. This and that person in my household finding it so strange and
terrible made a fuss talking it over. It was just like when a groom didn't
show up on the third night. Just when I was driving myself to distraction
thinking that if only I could ask why he hadn't come, I would be relieved,
a guest arrived. While I felt in no mood for receiving guests, as we spoke of
one thing and another, I found my mind taken away from my troubles a little.

Then, the next day, the young lord said, "I think I will just go and
ask what happened yesterday," and so he paid a call. His report was, "It
seems that he was ill last night. Father said, 'Suddenly, a great pain came
on me so I wasn't able to come.'" Hearing that, I thought, so there had
been no need to get so upset. Since it was an illness, if he had merely sent
word, I would not have thought anything of it, and just as I was feeling
irritated about that, a letter arrived from the principal handmaiden. It seems
that she thought I was still in the mountains; she said some very touching
things. "What is it I hear, that you are still making your dwelling where
thoughts and foliage 'grow ranker.' Even so, I hear there is one who 'will
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 Book Two

Man and Wife River... - Imosegaba, "Man and Wife River," is the name given to the stretch of the
Yoshino River where it passes between Man and Wife Mountains. Actually the Yoshino River has
three different names. In its upper reaches it is known as the Yoshino River; then as mentioned
above it briefly becomes the Man and Wife River; and finally it becomes the Ki River at its lower
reaches. This information is important for understanding the author's reply poem. The word naka,
"middle," also means "relations," particularly those between husband and wife.
'when despair came again'' — Allusion to a poem in the Mitsune Collection:
Despairing of the world,
a person enters the mountains,
while in the mountains,
when despair comes again,
now where will she go? (Zenshu, 289)
just 'up in the sky'- Allusion to a poem from the Tales oflse, section 21:
Like a cloud just
up in the sky, vanishing
without a trace,
such is this ephemeral
self of mine. (Watanabe, Ise monogatari, 41)
Well, all right, so it goes . . . - The colloquial phrase beginning this poem, yoshiya, "well, all right,"
is often found in poems involving the Yoshino River because of the similarity of sound. She is
referring here to the change in name that the Yoshino River undergoes as it runs to the sea. Her
relations with her husband have changed to the point where the term "marriage" is no longer
appropriate. Moreover, there is one further allusion, this time to poem no. 828 in Kokinshu:
Time and water flowing,
Man and Wife Mountains
are riven,
well, all right, so it goes
with relations in this world.
If the reader is thinking at this point that this correspondence between Toshi and the author is even
more recondite that usual, the reader is right. They make three allusions each to former poetry. The
interweaving of sentiment and allusion in this communication is extraordinary. While the focus—
concern for the author's marital situation—is the same as it has been for most of book two, there is
an element of playfulness with respect to the author's treatment of it that is new.
It made no difference - What this phrase means depends on what her intention was. If she changed
residences so that she could practice her devotions without disturbance, then it made no difference
because she is disturbed. If she moved so that her devotions would not be a source of irritation to
her husband, then it made no difference because, as we shall see, he gets very irritated.
he bursts in — That is, her husband, Kaneie. From his behavior, it appears that he is annoyed that she
is taking to religion again. She must not have informed him of her plan to do the Hase pilgrimage
with her father.
He spent the rest of the day here in pleasant leisure - A lot has been left out here; the description
moves from Kaneie's wild actions to her casual notation of a pleasant visit. This leaves the reader to
fill the scene in with imagination. We can speculate about what brought about the radical shift in his
attitude. He was clearly alarmed that she might not have given up the idea of becoming a nun.
However, when he arrived at her father's, he learns that she will be going on the pilgrimage with her
father. Moreover, the Hase pilgrimage is so conventional a religious observance that it may not have
seemed dangerous. Then, what about her? Why does she not take offense at his outrageous behav-
ior? For one thing, she may have taken his outburst as a genuine expression of affection for her. For
another, it must have given her some satisfaction to see her husband lose his sangfroid for once in
a long while. He found himself in the position of getting upset over nothing; something she knew
well from experience. Finally, he did stay the night, something that was always appreciated.

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not be stopped,' yet you speak only of growing apart, so I worry about
what is to become of you":
imose gaha Man and Wife River,
mukashi nagara no if it ran as in the old days
naka naraba down its middle course,
hito no yukiki no one would see the reflection
kage ha mitemashi of him going to and fro.

For a reply, I sent this, "I intended to dwell in the mountains until
I could see the autumn scenery, but 'when despair came again,' I hesi-
tated, and now it seems I am just 'up in the sky.' I thought there was no
one who knew the rankness of my thoughts. How did you hear? It is truly
as you seem to have guessed":
yoshi ya mi no Well, all right, so it goes,
asemu nageki ha my sorrow for love gone shallow;
imosegaha just as the water
naka yuku midzu no that runs between Man and Wife
na mo kawarikeri Mountains has changed its name.

Then that day, the fourth of the seventh month, was a free day for
him; I heard the next day he was again observing abstinence. The day
after that, my direction was forbidden; the next day, doggedly despite the
disappointments of the past, I wondered if he would come; night drew on
and I was graced with a visit. He spoke a lot about the circumstances of
the night he hadn't come, making excuses, "At least tonight I thought I
must spend it with you and rushed over here. The rest of my household,
who are observing a directional taboo, had already gone off, and I was left
on my own." Thus he spoke with no sense of fault on his part, quite
unconcerned. There was no point in my saying anything. When dawn
broke, he said, "I'm worried about my people who went off to a place I
am not familiar with," and rushed off.
It was about seven or eight days after that. At my father, the pro-
vincial governor's place, there was a plan to make a pilgrimage to Hase
Temple, and it was suggested that I go along, so I moved to my father's for
preparatory rituals. It made no difference that I had changed dwellings.
Around midday, there is a sudden commotion. Even my father is alarmed
and shouts, "What's going on, who has opened that door over there?"
Suddenly he bursts in, takes the incense burner and other usual imple-
ments for the day's observances and scatters them about, takes my rosary
and throws it up on a high shelf, and otherwise behaves in a wild manner;
it was astounding. He spent the rest of the day here in pleasant leisure and
went back the next day.
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With so many people going along- Her father would have quite an entourage.

the late grand counselor oj'Azechi- Her husband's uncle Morouji, who was kindly, hosted her and
Kaneie on her return from Hase three years ago.

cormorantfishing boats—A form of fishing where live cormorants with rings around their necks are
used tofishfor ayu, "sweetfish." Flares on the bow of the boats draw the ayu to the surface close to
the boat; the cormorant on leashes are sent out to scoop them up. The ring around their necks
prevents them from swallowing thefish,which are then taken out of their mouths by the fishermen.
This form of fishing is still practiced as a sightseeing attraction in several places around Japan.

boats with their load of sorrow - The u of ubune can mean both "cormorant" and "sorrow."

Nieno Pond and the Izumi River - She mentioned these places on her first trip to Hase (book one,
p. 153).

Yotate Forest - Its location is no longer known.

Kasuga Shrine— The principal shrine in the old capital of Nara. The god of the shrine was a titular
deity of the Fujiwara clan.

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 BOOK TWO

Well then, about seven or eight days later, we depart for Hase. We
leave the house around midmorning. With so many people going along, it
seems very ostentatious. Around midafternoon, we reached the Uji villa
that had belonged to the late grand counselor of Azechi. Everyone bustled
about, but I could barely enter into that feeling. As I looked around I felt
some pangs; here was this place on which he had lavished so much care
and affection; this very month they had performed the observances for the
first anniversary of his passing, yet, even in such a short time, how the
place had come to look untended. The people taking care of the place
had prepared to receive us. The furnishings, everything one could see,
had been chosen by the grand counselor. The rush blinds, woven bamboo
screens, the curtain screens made with burnt umber dyed cloth hanging
over frames of black persimmon wood—they were all so tasteful and ap-
propriate, it was very moving. I was tired, and the wind was blowing so
strongly it had even given me a headache, so a wind shelter was erected
for me. Looking out from there, when it grew dark, I saw cormorant fish-
ing boats with their flares all alight come out and fill the river. It was an
endlessly fascinating sight. As it took my mind off my headache, I rolled
up the blinds and looked out—ah—it was at this very spot when I had
made the pilgrimage to Hase on my own, after which, on the return, he
had met me and we had gone back and forth to the villa. It was here that
the Azechi counselor had come down and given us presents. How very sad
and moving, in what world had such things been? Thinking about this
over and over again, I couldn't sleep and brooded on it well past the
middle of the night, watching the cormorant boats going back and forth
up and down the river:
uhe shita to Burning up and down
kogaruru koto wo the river, what is it?
tadzunureba Besides these flames
mune no hoka ni ha in my breast, it is cormorant
ubune narikeri boats with their load of sorrow.

that was how I felt. When I looked again, toward dawn, they had changed their
activity and were making fishing fires. This too was incomparably moving.
When it grew light, we departed immediately. When I saw that
Nieno Pond and the Izumi River had not changed at all from the first time
I had seen them, I could not help feeling touched.
There were many things I felt at the various sights, but we were
moving along in such a bustle that my mind was quite distracted. We
stopped the carriages at Yotate Forest and had our box lunches. Everyone
seemed to enjoy eating. There was a suggestion to stop at Kasuga Shrine,
so we stayed the night at some miserable temple lodgings.
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 Book Two

"Three Umbrellas' Mountain" - Mt. Mikasa of Nara, which means "three umbrellas." The author
makes a pun on the name.

Asuka Temple - This is assumed to be present-day Ganko Temple in Nara, which was famous for
having a fresh, bubbling spring.

"One would love to stay"' — A refrain from a Saibara folk song about the Asuka Spring.

Tsubaichi - The market town at which the final preparations for going up to the temple were made.

/ think it must be - She is listening from inside the ox carriage.

the forest that is to be passed without making a sound - This, it is believed, was a superstition
concerning the forest around the Hase Yamagushi Shrine, which was across the river valley from
Hase Temple.

but since the women said - It is interesting that it is the women who opt for the most exciting way of
going home.

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 BOOK TWO

Just as we left there, it began to rain and blow terribly. Though we

went holding up "Three Umbrellas' Mountain," a great many people were
drenched. Finally we arrived at the Kasuga Shrine, presented offerings
and then set out toward Hase. We stopped at Asuka Temple to light votive
candles; however, I didn't get out of the carriage but just had it pulled into
the garden and the shafts placed on trestles. Looking around, I could see
that it was a charming place with trees all around. The garden had a
refreshing air; one wanted so much to drink the water from its pure spring
that I could easily appreciate the refrain in the old folk song, "One would
love to stay." But as the rain was falling even more heavily, there was
nothing to do but move on.
At long last, we arrived at Tsubaichi, and just as we had com-
pleted the usual preparations and were about to start for the temple, night
fell. The rain and the wind had still not let up, so even though we lit
torches, they were blown out. Since it was terribly dark, it felt like travel-
ing a road in a dream, so unsettling; I was quite lost in fears of what might
happen. At long last we reach the Lustration Hall; I cannot tell if it is still
raining or not, however the voice of the river water is so loud that, listen-
ing to it, I think it must be. As we go up to the main hall, I feel unwell.
Even though I have so many pressing desires, I am feeling so sick that I
cannot remember things clearly. I say nothing. Although they said that it
was dawn, the rain poured down the same as before. Learning from the
bitter experience of last night, we delayed our departure until noon.
In front of the forest that is to be passed without making a sound,
our people, who normally go along raising a din, now are making hand
gestures and shaking their heads; they look like fish out of water gasping
for air, and I can't help finding it a funny sight. There seemed to be talk of
our breaking our fast at Tsubaichi, but I still continue mine. From that
point on, there so many places that wanted to host us, we could barely
continue on our way. When we present our gifts, people seem to go to no
end of trouble for us.
The Izumi River was very full. As we were wondering what to do,
someone said, "A very skillful boatman has come up from Uji." The men
were deciding "No, that's too much trouble, let's just cross the river and
carry on by the usual route," but since the women said, "Let's go by boat
instead," that was what we did, and all got on board. How skillful the
boatman was taking us downstream such a long way. Starting with the
oarsman himself, all sang loudly as we went along. At a place close to Uji,
we got into carriages again. We were told, "Home is in a forbidden direc-
tion," so we stayed over at Uji.
As the preparations have been made ahead, there is an amazing
number of cormorant fishing boats; the whole river is teeming with them.
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 Book Two

not a pilgrimage ofyour own - Because she is part of her father's entourage.

"The return banquetfor the sumo tournament..."- Upon the completion of the sumo tournament,
it was the custom for the captains of the Right and Left Guards to host a return banquet. Kaneie's
current post is captain of the Right Guard.

"Yet, after all" - Allusion to poem no. 713 in KokinshU:

I know now your words
of love are false yet after all
is there anyone
whose promises I could trust
anyone who would be true (Rodd, KokinshU, 254)

that kind ofsuffering - The suffering of waiting for word from someone you love.

'a cloud bank far away' —Allusion to a poem by Prince Motoyoshi as quoted in Zoku Goshuishu,
poem no. 872:
Already now
the tree leaves have changed
color, so why
should a bank of clouds
far away start to pour? (Zenshu, 296-97)
She is likening herself to the bank of clouds that is far away, and the changing of the color of the
leaves is his loss of love for her.

There was an immediate reply - As in the first days of their marriage, this always meant the commu-
nication had been effective.

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 BOOK TWO

We say, "We would like to see them from close up," so something is ar-
ranged right at the water's edge. The carriages are drawn up to trestles.
When I get down, the cormorant boats are going back and forth right at
my feet. As I have never seen live fish before, I stare in fascination. Even
though I was tired from the journey, I watched so avidly that I didn't
notice the night was growing late, whereupon this and that attendant said,
"We had better go back now. There isn't really anything else to see." "All
right, so be it," and we clambered up. Yet, I am not tired of watching. Just
as before, the lamps of the fishing boats are lit the whole night. When I
doze off for a little while, at the sound of things knocking on the sides of
the boats I wake up, just as though those sounds were meant to rouse me
on purpose. At dawn when I look out, I see that a lot of ayu had been
caught. From there, they are preparing to distribute the fish to the various
places they should. It is an activity that seems so fitting. Since we departed
when the day was well on, it was dark by the time we arrived back at the
capital. I had intended to leave immediately for my own residence, but as
my people said they were tired, I stayed at my father's.
The next day, around noon, a letter arrives here from him. "I thought
to go and meet you, but since it was not a pilgrimage of your own, I felt it
might not be appropriate. Are you back home? I'll come over right away."
Seeing this, my attendants urge me on, "Hurry, hurry," and no sooner had
we arrived than he appeared. He seems to have remembered how it was
in the old days and came on purpose because he knew I would be think-
ing about it. The next morning early, he left with this plausible excuse,
"The return banquet for the sumo tournament is coming up." He always
had a good excuse for the morning, recalling the old poem, "Yet, after all,"
I am sad.
And so it came to the time when the next month would be the
eighth month. He had a usual period of abstinence for four days; that
lifted and I saw him about two times. The return banquet was over; I
heard he had gone to perform religious observances at a temple deep in
the mountains. For three or four days I didn't hear a word from him, then,
on a day when the rain fell miserably, this came. "Though having heard
that in this forlorn mountain dwelling, people would ask after one, now
there is one who suffers because that is not the case." For a reply, I sent,
"While I would be the first to feel word should be sent, I thought to let
you know that kind of suffering. Though I thought there was nothing left
of the dew of my tears, 'a cloud bank far away' absurdly pours down."
There was an immediate reply. Then about three days later, there was a
message, "I'm coming back today," and that night he appeared. As always,
since I could not really tell what he had in his heart, I hid my own feelings,

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 Book Two

"surely now the hail isfalling" - Allusion to Kokinshu poem no. 1077, one of five Shinto songs:
surely now the hail
is falling deep in the fair
mountains for on the
nearby slopes the creeping vines
are tinged with autumn's colors (Rodd, Kokinshu, 368)

the appeal to the Ishiyama Buddha - She is referring to her impulsive pilgrimage to Ishiyama last
year; perhaps she is still waiting for the meaning of the strange dream she had there to be revealed.

I fall into old age - The venerable pun on furi/furu, "fall" (as of rain) and "to grow old."

only someone like me to rely on - The fate of her household members also depends on her relation-
ship with her husband. There may have been relationships between Kaneie's attendants and her
attendants, which resulted in some of the children of that morning. When her husband does not
visit, it may have been difficult for their husbands to visit as well. I base this conjecture on evidence
from fiction of the era. For example, in The Tale of Genji, when Genji begins to visit Yugao, his
attendant makes it an opportunity to begin a liaison with one of Yugao's ladies as well. Moreover, in
Ochikubo monogatari, there is a parallel love affair between the maid of Lady Ochikubo and her
suitor's male attendant.

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 BOOK TWO

and he acted as though there was certainly no fault on his side. He barely
visited every seven or eight days.
Late in the ninth month, the sky took on such a melancholy as-
pect. Then yesterday and today, the wind was very cold and an autumn
drizzle fell from time to time. I felt a terrible sadness. Gazing out at the
distant mountains, one would have thought they had been painted with
indigo blue; it brought to mind the poem, "surely now the hail is falling."
I remarked, "The landscape is so lovely, it makes one feel like going on a
pilgrimage and combining it with sightseeing." Whereupon a close atten-
dant said, "Indeed, what a wonderful idea. The next time we go to Hase,
think about going just quietly on our own." I replied, "Well, last year, just
for a try, we went in such wretched state to Ishiyama. Sometime next
spring, after first seeing the results of the appeal to the Ishiyama Buddha,
let's do as you suggest. Mind you, I am not sure I can go on living so
miserably until then." Then murmuring forlornly:
sode hitsuru I used to grieve
toki wo dani koso when even my sleeves were
nageki shika dampened with rain,
mi sahe shigure now soaked to the skin, I fall
furi mo yuku kana into old age with the autumn drizzle.

It was a time when I had lost my taste for life, and it seemed that all living
and growing old in the world was meaningless. Going on in this way,
dawn to dusk, the twentieth of the month arrived. When the dawn comes,
I arise; when the sun sets, I go to bed; it feels so strange, but this morning,
too, what am I to do about it. This morning when I looked out, the roofs
were very white with frost. The children of the household still in their
night clothes raise a din with, "We'd better not let the frost bite us." It is
most touching. "Oh, it's so cold. This is a frost that puts snow to shame,"
others say covering their mouths with their sleeves. When I hear the
mutterings of these people who have only someone like me to rely on, I
hardly feel that I'm up to it. The tenth month passed, too, with me keenly
regretting our separateness.
The eleventh month was just the same; when the twentieth ar-
rived, he did visit, but after that he did not come for more than twenty
days. He just sent letters twice. Matters being thus, although my heart was
not at ease, as my emotions were spent and I was feeling weak, I was
hardly aware of this or that, when this letter arrived, "I will be strictly
observing a period of four days' abstinence. I was thinking of visiting right
now today," and so on; I found it strange for him to be writing so minutely
about his affairs. It was the sixteenth of the last month of the year.

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 Book Two

Sadly, I think . . . - There is a pillow word in this poem that is not translated directly but through its
connotations. The word is iso no garni, the old name for the Nara region, which contains another
place-name, furu, which evokes the perennial pun on "grow old" and "fall" (of rain). So this pillow
word evokes in the poem the notions of "falling rain" and "long ago."

Since my direction was forbidden - By this point, it really begins to be suspicious that her direction
is forbidden so often.

"rainfrog"- The word in Japanese, amagaheru, is homophonous with "the nun returns," hence the
joke.

a little sarcastically - I do not follow the Zenshu text for this translation. I follow Uemura and
Shinozuka by keeping the text as keshikute, "sarcastically" (Uemura, Taisei, vol. 5, 873) rather than
emending it to monosbikute, "gloomily."

"It seems no other direction is forbidden but mine" -The author appears to be indirectly accusing
Kaneie of inventing directional taboos for his own convenience.

No help to the rainfrog... -This poem takes its inspiration from the folk belief that if you put a dead
frog on a plantain leaf, it would be brought back to life. The word for frog, kaheru, is worked into
the last line in the meaning of "goes back on."

thatplace that was taboo to me- Presumably Omi's place. She is speaking figuratively when she says
it is taboo to her.

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 BOOK TWO

In a little while the whole sky clouded up and it began to rain.

This would be enough to stop anyone, I thought as I gazed out, and it
looked as though dusk was falling. Since it was raining so hard, it only
seemed reasonable that he wouldn't come, yet thinking of the past, tears
welled up; I felt such a painful longing it was difficult to control. I sent
someone to deliver this:
kanashiku mo Sadly, I think,
omohitayuru ka he has given up the thought
iso no garni of me, even though
sawaranu mono to long ago, he used to never
narahishi mono wo let the falling rain stop him.

Just when I was thinking that the messenger must have arrived by now, I
sensed there was someone outside the closed shutters of the south-facing
bed chamber. My servants had not noticed; it was only I who felt some-
thing was strange. I pushed open the side door and in he walked. Because
the terrible rain was just then at its peak, no one had heard a sound. But
now everyone heard the loud voices, "Quickly get his lordship's carriage
in out of the rain." He said, "You have held me at fault for many months
and years, but I felt if I came tonight, you might forgive me." And "Tomor-
row, this direction is forbidden, the day after that, it seems I must start a
period of abstinence. . . ."He said many things cleverly. Thinking that he
must have missed my messenger, I was much relieved. The rain let up
during the evening, and he left saying, "Well then, until later tonight."
Since my direction was forbidden, it was as I expected; I waited but he did
not appear. There was a letter from him in the morning, "Last night, some-
one arrived and as it got late and I needed to begin the reading of the
sutras, I canceled coming. As usual, I must have caused you a lot of worry."
After my coming back from the mountain retreat, he had nick-
named me "rain frog," so I sent this in reply. Among other things, I said a
little sarcastically, "It seems no other direction is forbidden but mine":
ohoba kono No help to the rain frog
kami no tasuke ya is the god of the plaintain leaf,
nakarikemu or so it seems—
chigirishi koto wo even when he makes a promise,
omohi kaheru wa he goes back on his intention.

And so it went and as usual; the days passed and the end of the month
arrived.
Since there was someone informing me that he was going every
night to that place that was taboo to me, I hardly passed the time with my
heart at ease. Nevertheless, the days and the months passed, and here it
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 Book Two

the last day ofthe year, the time to chase out devils - She gives us another account of this celebratory
ritual at the latter part of book one (p. 147), when she and Toshi are living in the same house.

270
 BOOK TWO

was, the last day of the year, the time to chase out devils; I was terribly
startled as both the adults and the children of the household rushed around
shouting, "Devils out! Devils out!" I just listened and watched quietly. It
seemed to me that this was the sort of thing that only households where
everything was going well would want to perform. Someone said, "It is
snowing heavily." As the year ended, it seemed that I had no attachments
left to anything.

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Book Three
 Summary

Book three, which covers again three years, 972 to 974, is most like a
conventional diary in that it has frequent entries that appear to have been
written right on the heels of events. Moreover, the events are more miscel-
laneous, rather than being focused, as in book two, on the author's struggle
with her feelings about her relationship. Indeed, in general the emotional
intensity of the first two books is absent; a more objective point of view
prevails as she brings into her narrative the stories of other people, nota-
bly the story of the mother of her adopted daughter, her son's courting of
two women, and the pursuit of her adopted daughter by a rather deter-
mined older man. Yet, in this book too, a dual point of view is discernable.
This is still her personal record, but as she tells the stories of herself and
others objectively, the narration takes on some of the qualities of a fic-
tional account. In the choice of details for description and even the choice
of events themselves, there is evidence of the desire to make a good story.
Accordingly, her mastery of prose narrative increases. It is as though we
see the diarist turning into a novelist.

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 BOOK THREE

third year of Tenroku —Or 972. This is the first and only time that she mentions a specific year in the
diary. The chronology of all the other entries has been established from this one.

ceremonial bow — This was a bow with dancelike movements performed in the four directions on
New Year's Day.
sutra reading service -This was a customary way to start the new year. Since it would, as a religious
rite, require abstinence during the days of the service, this indicates that she is not expecting Kaneie.
myperiod... inauspicious - The service would take a day or two, but if her period were to start, she
would be ritually unclean and have to stop the observance. Since menstruation was considered a
defilement, it seems like an inauspicious state in which to begin the new year.

emperor's Coming of Age Ceremony - Emperor Enyu, who had ascended the throne in 969. This
year, he is fourteen by Asian count. Emperor Enyu was the fifth son of Emperor Murakami. He was
mentioned in book one as the ultimate recipient of the string of goose eggs that Michitsuna's Mother
had sent as a present to the junior consort, Fushi (p. 143).
Presentation of the White Horses Ceremony - O n the seventh day of the first month, it was customary
for the Horse Guard of the Right and Left to present twenty-one white horses for the emperor's
inspection, after which the emperor hosted a banquet.

Shimotsuke, hey! - The ancient name for present-day Nikko, which in turn was connected with two
other place-names, Ooke, which is more or less homophonous with oke, "tub," and Futara, which is
homophonous with futa, "lid." So Shimotsuke became a pillow word for anything to do with lids
and tubs. Also floating in the background of this poem is the notion that if someone were thinking
of you, their image would appear in water or a mirror.

Looking at the lid. . .-In their return poem, the attendants pun on mi, which can mean both "self
as in mi osutete, "throwing away oneself," that is, "being earnest," and "fruit" or "snacks."

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 BOOK THREE

In this way, another new year dawns; it seems it is the third year of Tenroku.
Feeling my gloom and pain have quite cleared away, I help dress our
young lord and send him on his way to court. As I watch him run down
into the garden and straightaway give a ceremonial bow, he looks so
terribly splendid I want to cry. I think, Shall I hold a sutra reading service
tonight? but then my period is likely to come. That is the sort of thing
people usually consider inauspicious, and I wonder in my own heart once
more how will things turn out for me. However, this year, having resolved
firmly in my own mind that regardless of whether he might be the most
annoying person in the world, I will not lament over things, my heart is
very much at peace.
The third is the emperor's Coming of Age Ceremony; everyone is
excited. Although it was the day of the Presentation of the White Horses
Ceremony, I passed the seventh feeling rather uninterested in it all.
On the eighth day of the new year, he appeared saying, "This has
been a time of an awful lot of festivities." In the morning, just as he was
about to go back, one of his attendants who was waiting around wrote
this and sent it in with a lid of a storage tub to my women attendants:

shimotsuke ya Shimotsuke, hey!

woke no futara wo This lid of a tub, we see
adjikinaku unfortunately
kage mo uakabanu is a mirror whereon
kagami to zo miru your reflections do not float.

My attendants sent the lid back filled with sake and snacks. On an un-
glazed sake cup, one of them had written:

sashi idetaru Looking at the lid

futara wo mireba you sent out, we decided
mi wo sutete that your earnestness
tanomu ha tama no was not for apparitions
konu to sadametsu to come but food and drink.

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 BOOK THREE

betwixt and between - An ambiguous expression over which commentators have debated. The most
plausible interpretation is that she has been hesitating when to start a service of sutra readings
because she could not be sure when Kaneie was going to visit. Another interpretation is that feeling
betwixt and between in her status as wife, she could not decide whether to hold the service for fear
of appearing ostentatious.

this my Chinese robe - "Robe" was also a conventional metaphor for spouse; an old, well-worn robe
is the familiar wife. An undertone in this poem is his reference to her as his familiar wife.

the goods old — Refers to the used quality of the court robe, but is also a self-deprecating way of
referring to herself.

Annual Promotions - The reassignment of duties and promotions for the new year.

first call ofthe warbler- The warbler has such a lovely, liquid song, and there is a special poignancy
to the "first things" of the new year. Moreover, the backdrop to the scene is a rare snowfall. It was
indeed a scene to evoke poetry.

senior counselor - This position was a vice minister position, something equivalent to becoming a
member of cabinet in modern Japan (Uemura, Taisei, vol. 6, 69).

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 BOOK THREE

Thus feeling betwixt and between, the second week of the new
year passed without my holding the services that most people were busy
with at that time.
On the fourteenth, he sent over an old court jacket with this mes-
sage, "Make this over." Although he said, "I need it by such and such a
date," I didn't feel like rushing it. Then, a servant arrived the next morning
with this message, "It is taking too long," and this:
hisashi to ha Such a long time
obotsukanashi ya really makes me worry,
karagoromo this my Chinese robe,
uchi kite naramu I would wear it forever,
sate okurase yo so send it back as it is.

But going against his instructions, I rushed and got it done and sent it
back without a letter, whereupon he sent this, "This seems quite good.
What is bad is that you are never straight." Rather stung by this, I replied:
wabite mata Put in a tight spot,
toku to sawagedo I rushed and fussed to get it done,
kahi nakute all to no avail,
hodo furu mono ha that amount of time, the goods old,
kaku koso arikere it would turn out like this.

After that, except for "Busy with the Annual Promotions," there is not a
word from him.
Today, the twenty-third, before the shutters had been raised, some-
one rose early; she pushed open the door and just as she said, "What a lot
of snow has fallen," I heard the first call of the warbler, but^I feel as
though I have aged terribly because even with such a scene as this, not a
single word of poetry came to mind.
It is the Annual Promotions. On the twenty-fifth, although there is
a great fuss made about his promotion to senior counselor, so far as I am
concerned all this means is that he will have even less freedom to see me.
It seems like a joke for people to come and express their congratulations;
I'm not a bit happy. Only our young lord, although he cannot say any-
thing, seems secretly very pleased. The very next day, he sends a note,
"What's wrong with you? You don't even send a 'how very fortunate' sort
of greeting. My happiness seems to be for nothing."
Then, on about the last day of the month, there was this. "What's
wrong? It has been very busy over here. Why do I not hear even a single
word from you. It hurts." Thus, in the end, it seems he had gotten upset
back at me for not saying anything. That day too, I could not expect him
to come here himself, so for a reply I sent only this, "Now that you will be

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 BOOK THREE

Since I am no longer uncertain - She alludes to a poem from Kokin rokujo, no. 1370:
Uncertain whether
you would come to me or I
would go to you,
not even locking the fine
wood door, I fell asleep. (JZenshu, 204-5)

She turns this around by saying, "I am no longer uncertain about your coming, so I just leave the
door locked."

"I wondered if it was locked because I bolted over here"- He makes a pun on the word, sasu, which
means both to "do something directly" and "to lock a door."

in a soft court robe . . . - This is the first time in the diary that the author has given such a lovingly
detailed description of Kaneie's appearance. Her particular attention to his clothes may be partly
explained by the fact that she plays a major role in producing them.

"It seems they have done a rough job of burning the scrub in the front garden" - The burning of
stubble and grassy areas in the winter was common practice in agriculture, but it appears it was also
practiced in gardens. His surveying her grounds and making such a comment implies a sense of
responsibility for her dwelling.

having seen him off, Hooked out on the garden - She has accompanied him out onto the veranda to
see him off If the house has been closed up for a few days due to inclement weather, she will not
have seen the garden for that period.

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 B O O K THREE

serving in the imperial presence, it is very unlikely you will have any
leisure; I feel somewhat bereft."
Although our relations continued in this way, since I no longer
fretted about things, I actually felt quite at peace. One night when, with-
out a care, I had fallen into a deep sleep, I was quite surprised to be
awoken by a knocking at the gate. Since the gate was opened immedi-
ately, I was very flustered to hear someone standing just outside the door
saying, "Quickly open the door, hurry." My attendants had escaped and
hid because they were all in various states of disarray. Feeling awkward, I
crept to the door, and as I opened it, saying, "Since I am no longer uncer-
tain about whether you will come or not, how stiff the lock has become."
He replied, "I wondered if it was locked because I bolted over here." The
next morning, the sound of the wind blowing in the pines was so loud.
The many nights I have slept alone, the wind has never raised such a
noise. Listening to it, I go so far as to think I must be under some divine
protection to have had company on a night like this.
With the dawn, it seems it was already the second month. Rain
was falling very gently. Even though the shutters were raised, I did not
feel the usual fluster, perhaps because of the rain. However, I could not
expect him to stay. In a while he asked, "Have my attendants arrived yet?"
and getting up, going out of the room in a soft court robe, loosely belted,
with one layer of his nicely full underrobe of lustrous red silk showing
from under his hem, he sauntered out. My attendants warmly pressed him
to take some breakfast, "Some gruel, your lordship," to which he replied
good-humoredly, "Since I don't usually eat in the morning, I don't know
why I would start now." And then, "Please fetch my sword quickly," where-
upon our young lord brought it and waited for him on the veranda with
the sword laid across his knee.
He walked leisurely out and looked around, "It seems they have
done a rough job of burning the scrub in the front garden." Immediately,
his carriage fitted with rain flaps was drawn up. While his attendants held
it up as though it were ever so light, he got in. The lower blinds were
firmly shut; the carriage was drawn out through the main gate, and even
the voices of his outriders cheerfully clearing the way sounded hateful to
me.
For some days now, the wind had been blowing quite strongly so
we had not raised the shutters on the south side of the house. Now today,
having seen him off, I looked out on the garden for awhile. The rain was
falling gently; the garden looked quite neglected, but here and there, the
grass was pushing up freshly green. I found it touching. Around noon, the
wind shifted to blow from the other direction, and although the sky showed

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the place of'myfather - This is the first time she has described a family celebration.

offerings for the Kasuga Festival- The Kasuga Festival was held on the eleventh of the second month
that year. Kasuga Shrine was the home of the titular god for the Fujiwara family, and observances
there were a matter of primary importance for Fujiwara family members, particularly those of the
powerful northern house. Since clan membership was something inherited along the male line, it is
the male members of the family who are involved with arranging for offerings. It is noteworthy that
the author herself as a female member of the Fujiwara clan feels no special connection to Kasuga
Shrine; she only went to visit it when she was in the company of her father.

four day period of abstinence — The day after the Kasuga Festival would be a normal four day period
of abstinence for him. Since she knows that he will not be able to visit during that period, the
uncertainty of waiting is removed.

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a clear face, I felt strangely unwell right up until sunset and spent the day
in melancholy contemplation.
The third arrived and snow that had fallen during the night has
piled up to about three or four inches. It is still snowing now. As I raise
the blinds and gaze out, I hear voices here and there saying, "Oh, how
cold." What's more the wind is keen. The whole world seems sad.
After that, for some days, the weather was fair, and on the eighth
I went to visit the place of my father who has been away in the provinces.
Many relatives were there; there seemed to be a lot of young people.
Playing melodies that matched the season on koto and biwa, we spent the
whole day in laughter. The next morning after we guests returned home,
my heart felt peaceful.
Just upon returning home, there was a letter from him, "My time
has been taken up with a long abstinence and the affairs of my new office,
so I have been out of touch. I'm thinking of coming to see you today,
quite soon." It was written very considerately. I sent a reply. Even though
his letter seemed to indicate that he would come right away, That will be
the day, I think as I pass the time musing on how I was gradually becom-
ing someone he hardly knew. Then, just around midday, when everything
is in a frightful state of disarray, there is a commotion, "His lordship ar-
rives, his lordship arrives." He walks in just as we are all in a fluster.
Hardly feeling like myself at all, seated across from him, I am quite absent.
In a while trays of food are brought, and, after eating a little, about when
it began to look as though the sun was setting, he says, "Tomorrow, as I
have to see to sending off the offerings for the Kasuga Festival. . . . "
Carefully arranging his costume, and gathering his many attendants to-
gether, with a very impressive clearing of the way, he leaves.
Immediately, my attendants all gather, "For him to come when
things were in such a frightful mess, what must his lordship have thought?"
and so on, one after another, they express their apologies. As for me, I felt
even worse about all the unsightliness, but beyond that, I felt as though I
had lost his favor.
For whatever reason, these days, it clears and then clouds up again;
it seems like a year with a particularly cold spring. At night, the moon is
bright. On the twelfth, snow blown by an east wind swirled and was
scattered all around. From about midday, it turned into rain, and as it fell
quietly the whole day, how melancholy the world felt. As for him whom I
haven't heard from since that day, he has been acting as I had expected.
Then when I remembered that from today he would likely be entering a
four day period of abstinence, I felt a little more at ease.
It is the seventeenth. With rain falling gently, I recalled that my
house was likely in a forbidden direction for him, and just as I was feeling
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pilgrimage to Ishiyama - This was her impulsive pilgrimage to Ishiyama in the summer of 970 (pp.
206-15).

dharani — A sacred incantation, usually in Sanskrit.

and was suspicious - She reacts strongly to this message because the priest is intimating that there
will be political ascendancy for her family. The moon and the sun were often thought of as symbols
for the empress and emperor.
/ had her asked - Actually the gender for this diviner is nonspecific. However, as mentioned above,
in the absence of evidence otherwise, I have made the person female because the author's contacts
with males outside of her immediate family were severely circumscribed.

a gate with fourpillars — Such large gates were a privilege of high-ranking nobles.

Since I had only one son - Having only one child put a woman of that period in a precarious
position, and for women other than imperial consorts, if one were to have only one child it was
better for it to be a daughter. The main Fujiwara clan was always in need of beautiful, talented
daughters to marry into the imperial family. Moreover, just as daughters could marry into the impe-
rial family, daughters could always marry "up" the social scale, whereas a son's future was much
more tied to the combined statuses of his mother and father. Furthermore, in ironic reversal of the
situation later in Japan, sons were to some extent lost to their families because they married "out,"
but daughters stayed with their mothers.
this one fervent prayer— Here she reveals what the main reason for her various pilgrimages over the
years had been. It is evident that the gist of her prayers was for more children, and especially
daughters.
I am reaching an age where it will be very difficult — She is approximately thirty-seven years old at
this time and therefore reaching the end of her childbearing years.

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forlorn about our relations, a message arrived from a monk whom I had
met the year before last on my pilgrimage to Ishiyama. When I was pass-
ing night after night feeling so forlorn, there was a monk worshipping in
the Sacred Image Hall who read the dharani in such a reverent tone.
When I asked about him, I was told, "He has been on retreat here in the
mountains since last year. He has been following an austere fast, taking no
grains." I had said, "That being the case, please have him pray for me."
The message from that monk was this, "On the night of the fifteenth last,
I had a dream that your ladyship had received the sun and moon in your
sleeves. The moon you stepped upon; the sun you clasped to your breast.
This is what I seemed to see. Please have this dream divined." What an
exaggeration, I thought, and was suspicious. As I felt somewhat foolish in
this situation, I left it for awhile without having it divined. Then someone
happened by who was able to divine dreams, and I had her asked to
interpret this dream as though it had been someone else's dream. Just as I
expected, she reacted with great surprise, "What kind of person had this
dream? It means that person would like to control the throne and rule
according to their own will." "So it is as I thought. The interpretation is not
false; it is the monk who told me about it that I doubt. Let's say no more
about it. It certainly doesn't fit my situation," and with that, I put an end to it.
But again, someone else said, "I had a dream where I saw that a
gate with four pillars had been made for our residence, and I have been
told, This dream means that a high-ranking minister will issue from this
household.' One might think it was referring to your ladyship's husband
who has recently become a grand minister, but it is not that. It speaks of
the future of the young master."
Come to think of it, I myself had a dream the night before last
where a man suddenly wrote the character "gate" on the sole of my foot
and I drew my leg up to look at it. When I asked about this dream, I was
told, "It has the same import." As this too seemed quite ridiculous, I thought
it crazy, but then again, it wasn't as though such a thing were completely
out of the question for a family like ours. Perhaps there might be an
unexpectedly good fortune awaiting my only son; so I thought in my
heart.
For all these good omens, with things as they were at the moment,
I could only have uneasy feelings about the future. Since I had only one
son, over the years I had made pilgrimages here and there making this
one fervent prayer, but now I am reaching an age where it will be very
difficult. For the last few months the thought has occurred to me, How
about taking in a girl from a good family, I could take care of her, she
could be a good friend for my only son, and be therefor me in my old age;
I have discussed the idea with this and that person. One person said, "I
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Genji counselor Kanetada - This man was the descendant of Emperor Yozei.

Shiga - Area on the shores of Lake Biwa.

That's right. There was something like that . . . - The following citation of her own speech is
remarkable for its length and detail. She even quotes poems exchanged by her husband and another
woman several years before, which would seem a prodigious feat of memory to do. One wonders
if she did not consult notes she had kept from that time in order to create this narrative of the affair.
In other words, perhaps this speech of hers was constructed rather than being a record of what she
actually said. If so, this would be a place where her leaning toward "novelistic" writing is especially
strong.
opportunity — A women left without protectors was vulnerable to casual advances.

returning with just a singlet of hers — The exchange of articles of clothing as love tokens was very
common. There is some variation on the interpretation of this passage, some commentators think he
gave the singlet to her.
The barrier crossed - The barrier is Osaka Barrier between the capital and Otsu on Lake Biwa, but
because of its meaning, "meeting barrier," it was often used in love poetry to stand for the first
meeting. Kaneie used this image in one of his first poems to the author. This poem was likely the first
"morning after" poem in their relationship.
traveler's sleep - It is odd for her to say traveler's sleep of herself, because it is the man who "travels,"
not the woman.

/ remember us laughing about that together- The author uses the phrase for "together," morotomo
ni, very sparingly in the diary and only for moments of great intimacy with her husband. It is almost
disconcerting to see that here the occasion for their intimacy is his sharing another love affair with
her. It appears she was not jealous of all his affairs, only certain ones, and since this diary is
essentially a record of emotion, it is the ones that occasioned the strongest feeling that get the most
attention.

flames of longing - Her poem contains the perennial pun on omo/hi, omohi, "long for, love," and
embedded in it, hi, "fire."

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have heard that a very beautiful little girl was born to the late Genji coun-
selor Kanetada's daughter, whom your husband used to visit in an amo-
rous way. If it's all the same to you, why don't you make inquiries about
her. I think the mother is now living at the foot of the mountains in Shiga,
relying on her elder brother who is a monk." Upon hearing that person
speak, it came back to me, "That's right. There was something like that.
The family is descended from the late retired emperor Yozei, is it not?
When her father, the counselor, had died and she was still in mourning,
since he was never one to pass up an opportunity like that, there was this
and that exchange between them and it did end up in an affair. On his
part, at first, it was just his usual sort of amusement; for her part, since her
household was not a fashionable one and she was not very young, she
probably didn't expect it to amount to anything. Nonetheless I believe that
around the time she responded to his letters, he himself went to see her
about two times. Now what was it? There was something about him re-
turning with just a singlet of hers. There were quite a few incidents, but
I've forgotten them. Now what was the poem he sent to her—
seki koete The barrier crossed,
tabine naritsuru having slept a traveler's sleep
kusa makura on a pillow of grass,
karisome ni hata yet, I do not think of it
omohoenu kana as a transient affair.

was I believe what he sent; since it was such as it was, her reply was not
terribly distinguished either:
obotsukana In bewilderment,
ware nimo aranu feeling that it was not me
kusa makura on a pillow of grass,
mada koso shirane never before had I known
kakaru tabine ha such a traveler's sleep.

was what she wrote. It's a little strange that she used the phrase "traveler's
sleep" too.' I remember us laughing about that together. After that, I didn't
really hear very much about her, but I seem to remember she replied like
this to some letter:
okisofuru Dampened through and through
tsuyu ni yona yona as night after night my tears
nurekoshi ha fall with the dew,
omohi no naka ni even in the flames of longing
kawaku sode kaha how are these sleeves to dry?

And so on, like that, they grew further apart and it ended as a fleeting
affair, but afterward I heard from his lordship, 'A girl was born at that
287
White horse presented as an offering to the Kamo Shrine on the occasion of the Aoi Festival. Traditionally,
white horses were presented to the emperor as part of the New Year's festivities (see pp. 276-77, and 379).'
Kiyomizu Temple. Michitsuna's Mother made a pilgrimage here in 972 (see pp. 300-301).
 BOOK THREE

pinching myself to know another's pain - A proverbial expression for sympathizing with another's
pain.
Naniwa - The ancient name for the Shiga area. As such, it is a name full of poetic connotations.
she must havefeelings left in her heart, she must have words left to say - This is one of the places in
book three where we see the author assuming something like a novelist's perspective. It is as though
the author feels drawn to imagine and tell this woman's story.

half-brother- literally, "elder brother from another womb." The coolness between siblings of differ-
ent mothers is also apparent in this passage.
had her go - Again there is no pronoun here in the original, but as has been my practice to this point,
I assume the people she is speaking to are women unless specified otherwise.

his reverence - That is, her half-brother.

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place I used to visit. She says it is mine. It may well be. Wouldn't it be
good to bring the child here and place it with you?' It must be the same
child. I shall do it," and thus, I came to decide. When I made inquiries
through an intermediary, I heard that the young person unknown to her
father was about twelve or thirteen years old. Apparently with only this
daughter for a companion, the mother had come to live in the eastern
foothills of Shiga; looking upon the lake in front and the Shiga Mountains
behind, dawn to dusk, she was living an inexpressibly forlorn existence.
When I heard this—as it is said, pinching myself to know another's pain—
my first thought was, there in Naniwa, living that way, she must have
feelings left in her heart, she must have words left to say.

Now her half-brother is a monk in the capital, and the person who
brought up the idea in the first place is his acquaintance, so I had her go
as an intermediary to bring him to discuss the idea. He said, "What could
be the problem? At least in my opinion, it is a wonderful idea. Why, there
she is trying to take care of her daughter, but the world has proven such
an uncertain place for her, I understand she is even thinking of becoming
a nun, and that is why she moved a few months ago to that lonely place."
With that, the very next day, he crossed over the mountain and visited
them. His sister apparently found it strange behavior on the part of a half-
brother who had never seemed very concerned about her. When she asked,
"What has brought you here?" he chatted with her about one thing and
another for a while and then brought up the plan. At first, saying neither
this nor that—one wonders what she really thought—she just cried and
cried pitifully. Then she somehow finally pulled herself together to say, "I
have felt this was the end for me, and although it has been very painful to
have dragged such a child to such a place as this, what else was I to do? If
some way or another, there might be something else for her, I beg you to
do as you think best." So he returned the next day and reported what had
happened. Amazingly it had gone as I hoped. Some karmic fate must have
been at work. I was very moved. When he said, "Well then, would your
ladyship please grace her with a letter?" I replied, "Of course," and com-
posed this, "Since over the years I have heard about you but have never
written to you before, I wonder how you could be anything other than
bewildered and questioning who I am. Although you must find this very
strange indeed, it seems that upon hearing from his reverence the hapless
sorrow I relayed to him, you have deigned to make a favorable reply. I
can only say that I am writing to you now with great joy. My request must
seem very callous, but, since I heard that you are thinking of becoming a
nun, I thought you might be willing to give up even such a beloved child."
This was dispatched and there was a reply the next day. With such phrases
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the thought that thefather might now take care of his daughter- Though left unspoken between the
two women, this must have been an important factor in both their decisions. By adopting a child of
Kaneie's, the author could hope the child might strengthen the bond between her and her husband.
For her part, the mother could hope Kaneie would take an interest in the daughter and look after her
future. Out in the countryside and seemingly only with monks for uncles, the daughter would have
been condemned to obscurity.
auspicious day — That is, according to the yin-yang diviner's astrological calendar.

rattan carriage - Used informally by the upper aristocracy and regularly by the middle aristocracy.

you've probably sought yourself out a young man - Ever since the return from Narutaki, the author's
descriptions of her husband contain more examples of his wit and humor than before. One wonders
if it is his personality that has changed or only her perception of him.

her hair was a little thin . . . — These details of her hair's appearance imply that she has led a life of
hardship.

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as, "I am happy," she gave her consent with good will. In this letter, she
also wrote the gist of her conversations with his reverence. Yet, at the
same time, imagining her feelings, I felt very sad indeed. She wrote on
and on, a myriad things, and then at the end, "Enveloped in a mist of
tears, I cannot tell what my brush writes; it feels strange." I felt that truly it
must have been so for her.
After that, with the exchange of only about two letters, the matter
was decided and his reverence went to bring the girl to the capital. It
seems she was to travel all alone; thinking of that, I felt sad. It could not
have been easy for the mother to let her go like that. She just must have in
the back of her mind the thought that the father might now take care of
his daughter. Even though one might hope for that, having her with me
did not necessarily mean he would look after her as his own, and if it did
not work out, then how very regrettable it would be. Although I felt wor-
ried by such thoughts, having made this promise, it was not as though I
could change my mind now. "As the nineteenth of this month is an auspi-
cious day . . . ," so it has been decided. I send a party out from here to
greet her. Not wanting to attract a lot of attention, I just send a fresh-
looking rattan carriage with four mounted attendants and a few extra ser-
vants. Our young lord gets in quickly, and I have the person who had first
spoken of the girl to me ride in back.
Today, most unusually, there has been news from him. I instruct
my son, "I fear he is on his way. It would not be good for you to run into
each other. Go as quickly as you can. Keep her out of sight for awhile. We
will just have to see how everything goes." This was to no avail, for my
husband arrived ahead, and before anything could be done, just a few
moments afterward, the welcoming party pulled in. When he asked, "Where
has our young lord been?" I tried to put him off by saying one thing or
another. However, since he seemed to suspect that something like this
was going to happen today, I finally told him. "Since I am so forlorn, I
have taken in a child that someone else seems to have abandoned." Where-
upon he said, "Well, let's see it. Whose child is it? Since I've gotten old,
you've probably sought yourself out a young man, and now you're going
to dismiss me." This was most amusing; I ask him, "Well, shall I show her
to you? Would you make her your own child?" "That would be fine. Please
bring her out. Come on, come on." And as I was quite curious myself, I
called her out.
She seemed very small for her age, in fact, she looked much like a
child. Calling her closer, he said, "Stand up," and when she did we could
see that she stood only about four feet high. It seemed that her hair was a
little thin, tapering toward the ends and about four inches shorter than her
height. She seemed quite charming; her hairline was lovely and her form
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As for the child herself, whatever she might be thinking - The author does not assume she under-
stands the child's emotions.
just like something out of an old tale - And indeed, the narration of this whole section has had a
storytelling quality to it.

and the letters came often - For a while, the hopes of both mothers seem to be fulfilled.

that place I think of with hatred- Lady Omi's place.

"Just a note slipped under your door" - Theritualphrase for sending messages when one is in ritual
seclusion.

there was nothing quite like it- Here we have another affectionate portrait of her husband's appear-
ance.

south was again a forbidden direction - In other words, since his house is to the south of hers,
having come to her house, he is now unable to return to his own residence.

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elegant. Looking at her, he said, "Ah, how charming she is. Whose child is
this? Come on, tell me." Thus pressed and thinking after all it was not
likely to be an embarrassment, I may as well reveal it, I said, "Well then,
do you really find her charming? Shall I tell you?" He pressed me even
further. "What a fuss you make. Can't you tell, she is your very own child."
He reacted with great surprise, "What? How? From where?" But since I
didn't reply right away, he said, "I wonder, could she be the child I was
told of at that place?" When I replied, "It would seem so," he went on,
"How astonishing. I knew her mother must be living in some miserable
state somewhere. But not to have seen the child until she was as old as
this . . ."He broke into tears. As for the child herself, whatever she might
be thinking, she too was looking down and crying. Those looking on
found it so touching, just like something out of an old tale, and everyone
cried. I couldn't help crying, bringing my sleeve to my eyes many times.
He said, "Well, I never, out of the blue like this, just when I was thinking
of not coming here anymore, now to have such a person here—I'll just
have to take you home with me." So he joked, until quite late at night; we
spent our time laughing and crying by turns, and then we all slept.
The next morning, when he was about to return, he called her
out, looked at her, and seemed to find her so charming. "I'll take you with
me right now. When the carriages come up, let's get in together." Then
breaking out into laughter, he left. After that, when he wrote letters, he
always asked, "How is the little one?" and the letters came often.
Then, on the night of the twenty-fifth, late in the evening, there is
shouting. It is a fire. I heard them say, "It's quite close," and it turns out to
be at that place I think of with hatred. While the twenty-fifth and twenty-
sixth are a regular period of abstinence for him, still a letter comes ad-
dressed, "Just a note slipped under your door." It is most kind and con-
cerned. These days, I find it strange when he writes that way. On the
twenty-seventh, my direction is forbidden to him.
On the twenty-eighth, around midday, came the shouts of "His
lordship arrives, his lordship arrives." The main gate was pushed open. I
looked out and saw his carriage being drawn in. There were a lot of
attendants holding on to the shafts; the outer blind was rolled up, the
inner blinds pushed to the left and right. When the support for the shafts
had been brought and placed, he leapt down. The red plums are just now
in full bloom; he strolled a little under them; there was nothing quite like
it. Lifting his voice and singing the refrain, "Ah, how charming it is . . . ,"
he climbed the stairs and came in. When he started thinking about the
next day, he realized south was again a forbidden direction for him. "Why
didn't you tell me," he asked. I replied, "If I had told you, what would you

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teaching calligraphy, waka composition and the like to the little one - Now the education of her
adopted daughter can serve as a diversion.

'Donning of the Train' ceremony - A ceremony for girls equivalent to the "Donning the Court Hat"
ceremony for boys to signal the attainment of adulthood. That he speaks of holding the ceremony in
concert with the ceremony for his second daughter by Tokihime, Senshi, is an indication that he is
taking a serious interest in the girl's future.
I will go to the retired emperor's palace - The palace of former emperor Reizei. Presumably it is in a
direction that will enable him to travel back to his own residence the next day without going in a
southerly direction. His eldest daughter Choshi is a consort of Emperor Reizei.
These days, the sky has mended its complexion . . . - This descriptive passage weaves together
allusions to both Chinese and Japanese poetry. "A breeze that is neither warm nor cold" alludes to
a couplet by the Chinese poet, Po Chii-i:
Neither bright nor dark, the hazy moon,
Neither warm nor cold, the gentle breeze.

"Wafts through the plums and invites the warbler" alludes to Kokinshu no. 13:
I will send the scent
of the plum blossoms along with
the wind as messenger
to invite the warbler
and guide him here.

Finally, the last line gestures to another Po Chii-i couplet:

At the roots of trees, snow disappears and reveals blooming flowers,
At the edge of the pond, the ice melts releasing the grasses to grow.
iZenshu, 320-21)

This passage demonstrates the author's familiarity with Chinese poetry. Moreover, Shinozuka notes
that Michitsuna's Mother's skillful combining of Chinese and Japanese poetic allusion with her own
observation of the scene indicates her growing mastery of prose style (Shinozuka, Kagero nikki no
kokoro to hyogen, 562-63).

intercalary second month — There is a second second month that year to adjust the calendar (see
note for the intercalary fifth month in book two, p. 168).

Maybe I should just go back now that it's out - Kaneie is ever the tease.

what a cramped position I am in — Now as senior counselor, he cannot just travel about as he
pleases.

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have done?" "I would have prepared to avoid this direction." "Well, from
now on, I must really try to divine what is really on your mind." And so it
went; neither of us would let it be and ended up saying one thing and
another. I turned to teaching calligraphy, waka composition and the like
to the little one, thinking that with this at least, he could not find me at
fault. Then, he said, "It would be bad not to do by her as expected. Some-
time soon, let us hold a 'Donning of the Train' ceremony for her along
with my daughter from the other place." Dusk fell. "As I mentioned be-
fore, I will go to the retired emperor's palace," he said, and with a loud
clearing of the way, he departed.
These days, the sky has mended its complexion, and the air feels
soft and gentle. A breeze that is neither warm nor cold wafts through the
plums and invites the warbler. One hears the peaceful voices of the chick-
ens in the garden. Gazing up to the roof, one sees the sparrows chirping
as they go in and out from under the tiles, building their nests. The garden
grasses raise faces released from the ice.
On the first day of the intercalary second month, rain falls gently.
After that the sky clears. On the third, although my direction is clear for
him, there is not a word. As night falls on the fourth day, thinking again
and again to myself how strange this is, I go to bed only to be awoken in
the middle of the night by the commotion of a fire somewhere. Although
I can hear that it is close by, I feel a certain heaviness and do not get up.
But one after another, people who might be expected to call come and
ask how we are, including some people of such status that they would not
normally come on foot. Well, I have to get up for them, so I come out and
respond to their questions. When they hear, "The fire seems to have died
down now," they go home. Just as I go back inside and lay down, I sense
that outriders have stopped in front of our gate. As I listen, thinking it
strange, "His lordship arrives," is called out. The lights have been extin-
guished, so it is very dark as he creeps into the room. "It's pitch black in
here. I guess you thought you could make do with the light of the fire
awhile ago. I came, you know, because it seemed the fire was close to
here. Maybe I should just go back now that it's out," says he, as he slips
into bed. "Actually, I had wanted to come earlier this evening, but since
all my attendants were out, I couldn't leave. If it were the old days, I could
have just come by myself on horseback, but now, what a cramped posi-
tion I am in. Turning over in my mind just what would it take for me to be
able make a visit at this time of night, I fell asleep, and then this big
commotion happened. Why, how intriguingly convenient, I thought. It
was really quite strange." He spoke with seeming concern for me. When
dawn came, he said, "My carnage must be quite a sight," and returned
quickly. I hear that the sixth and the seventh are a period of abstinence for
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it sounds as though the moss on the rocks suffers - An unusual and powerful simile, conveying both
the harshness of the rain and the sensitivity of her own state of consciousness.

Kamo - The Kamo Shrine in northeast Kyoto. This could be either the upper or lower shrine.
someone who said, "Let'sgo quietly together"- Of course, there is no way to know who the someone
was, but it can be assumed it was a woman friend. "Quietly" means without ostentation.

I wonder ifothers would think them hard done by - The phrasing of this has occasioned speculation
by commentators. It appears that she is drawing a contrast between what others might think and
what she thinks. Zenshu commentators suggest that she regards the farmer's physical hard work as
a manifestation of karmic retribution and writes this description to symbolically represent her own
mental suffering (Zenshu, 322). Uemura posits that, faced with the sight of the laboring peasants, she
is reflecting that "however physically hard their labor may be, they are probably spiritually happy. In
contrast to that, she herself has a physically comfortable life, but her spiritual suffering is so deep she
even feels envious of them. Of course, that is why the bright poem from the Man'yoshu . . . comes
into her mind in the face of this scene" (Uemura, Taisei, vol. 6, 416).
Kitano - At that time, the general name for the north end of Kyoto.
old poem about picking watercress - Poem from Man'yoshu, book 10:
For your sake
plucking cress in the marsh
of mountain fields,
in the water from melted snow,
the hem of my apron is drenched. (Aoki, Man'yoshu, vol. 3, 26)
Funaoka Hill- A hill in northwestern Kyoto.
that other place close to here - Omi's place. Since he has come so late at night without notice, she
suspects that he had some kind of trouble at the other place, perhaps a quarrel.

I findthis somewhat strange -It is strange that he came late in the evening when he knew he could
not spend the night.
offeringsfor a special dispensation - If the taboo was broken, one could make amends to the gods
with special offerings.

"But I shall not count this as one of the nights . . ." - This remark and the following section is
interesting for the way it makes explicit the lover's account book they both kept in their minds.

the snipeflapping wings — Allusion to poem no. 761 in Kokinshu:

one hundred times or

more I hear the fluttering
of the snipes' wings
as I count the lonely hours
till dawn when you have not come (Rodd, Kokinshu, 268)

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him. On the eighth, it rains. At night, it sounds as though the moss on the
rocks suffers.

On the tenth I made a pilgrimage to Kamo. Since there was some-

one who said, "Let's go quietly together," I thought, why not, and went
with her. It is a place that always makes one feel fresh and new. Today,
too, I felt my heart expanding. Even at the sight of farmers plowing the
field, I wonder if others would think them hard done by. As in former
times, we went by way of Kitano, and there we saw women and children
picking something in the marsh. In a flash, the line from the old poem
about picking watercress came to mind, and I imagined the hems of their
aprons. Taking a tour around Funaoka Hill was also lovely. I returned
home around dark and had just gotten to sleep when I heard urgent knock-
ing at the door. Waking up with my heart pounding, I found just what I
least expected, that it was he. The demon in my heart gave rise to the
thought, I wonder if he has run into trouble at that other place close to
here and has been sent home. While he looked perfectly nonchalant, I
spent the night with doubts that did not melt away. The next morning, he
returned when the sun had risen a little. Then, five or six days pass.
On the sixteenth, the pattering of the rain sounded so forlorn. As
it gets light, I find that an affectionate letter has come from him while I
was sleeping. It contains among other things the lines, "Today, it seems
your place is in a forbidden direction for me. Though I won't be able to
stay, what if I come anyway?" No sooner do I send off a reply than he
arrives himself. Since it is getting on for dusk, one can imagine I find this
somewhat strange. Night comes and he has the air of being undecided
about leaving. "How about making some offerings for a special dispensa-
tion tonight?" he suggests. "That would not be the proper thing to do," I
say, urging him to leave. Yet, as he moves to leave the room, in spite of
myself, I murmur under my breath, "But I shall not count this as one of the
nights that you actually visited." Hearing me, he says, "If that's the case, it
did no good at all to come. I don't care about the other nights, but you
must count tonight." Then, as might be expected after that, I didn't hear
from him for awhile; the eighteenth or nineteenth arrived. Thinking about
this, I could not get out of my mind that there had been something behind
his saying, "You must count tonight." Although it was becoming a rare
thing for me to do, I sent him a poem:
katatoki ni Converting moments
kaheshi yo kazu wo into whole nights, when you go
kazofureba and count that way,
shigi no moro ha mo along with the snipe flapping wings
tayushi to zo naku so many times, I tire and cry.
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the arrival of festival time - The Kamo Festival celebrated in the fourth month, in which flutes and
sakaki leaves play an prominent part. The warm weather makes her think of the festival.

Since this was not unusual - That is, for him to send work without coming himself.

Yahata Festival — Festival held at Iwashimizu Yahata Shrine.

the young people who had been left in charge - Her son and adopted daughter.

Biro carriage — A lightweight carriage with woven lattice roof and sides, used only by people of high
rank.
Reizei Palace gate - Apparently this was to the northeast of the present Nijojo in Kyoto.

Kiyotnizu — Temple in the eastern hills of Kyoto (see illustration on p. 289).

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His reply:
ikanare ya Well, what about it?
shigi no hane gaki As limitless as the snipe's
kazu shirazu flapping of wings,
omofu kahi naki my love, but to no avail,
kowe ni naku ramu it seems you still will cry.

Although it was a reply, it was enough to make me regret having sent a

poem in the first place; I asked myself why did I do it. These days, in the
garden, almost all the blossoms have fallen; it looks like a sea of petals.
Today, the twenty-seventh, rain fell from last night, and now the
wind sweeps away the remaining blossoms.
The third month has arrived. The leaf buds on the trees are just
big enough to hide the sparrows; sensing the arrival of festival time, one
thinks fondly of sakaki leaves and flutes. Along with being moved by the
season, since there has been no word from him for awhile, I still regret
having sent that poem, and, more than during our usual periods of sepa-
ration, I feel ill at ease. I wonder what's wrong with me.
The seventh day of this month arrived. Today I received this mes-
sage: "Please sew this. I am afraid due to an abstinence that I cannot visit."
Since this was not unusual, I simply sent back a nonchalant reply, "Missive
received." From around noon, rain began to fall gently.
The tenth: there is a big fuss over the celebration of the Yahata
Festival at court. Someone I knew was going, so I went along with that
person, attracting as little attention as possible. When we got back around
noon, since the young people who had been left in charge said, "We must
see the sights. The procession hasn't passed by here yet." I sent them right
out in the carriage we had just returned in.
The next day, people clamored to go and see the return proces-
sion. As I was feeling poorly and spending the day lying down, I certainly
did not feel like sightseeing, but being pressed by this and that person, we
finally did ride out in a Biro carriage in which only four could fit. We took
up a place just north of the Reizei Palace gate. As we did not see many
other people there, I began to feel more like myself. We had just been
there for awhile when the procession went by. Two people I knew, one
shrine musician and one dancer, were mixed in with the procession. These
days, there is nothing special to speak of.
On the eighteenth, again I went unobtrusively along with some-
one making a pilgrimage to Kiyomizu. After the evening service was over
and we had come back from the temple, it was around midnight. I re-
turned to my companion's place, and we were just having something to
eat when one of my attendants called out, "There appears to be a fire in
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his lordship Ko - From later in her account, it appears that this must be a family with quite close
connections to her own, but it is impossible to know just who it is.

running around barefoot-It would be a terrible humiliation for a Heian woman to be thus exposed
to the gaze of the world.
no rowdiness had occurred - Fires were a good opportunity for ruffians and thieves to loot.

those servants of his — Presumably some of his servants were posted at her residence on a regular
basis.

dark brown color - There is some controversy about just what color is actually meant here; some
suggest dark red. One thing is clear: the author finds it ugly.

/ did not want to look at them - Is she being an aesthete or does she take the poor quality of the
clothes as an indication of his regard for her?

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the northwest direction, let's go out and look." "It's still as far away as
China," said another voice. Just as I was thinking to myself, nevertheless, it
is in a worrisome direction, we heard from some people, "It is the resi-
dence of his lordship K6." At this, my alarm was extreme. Since my house
is only separated by a earthen wall from that residence, there was big
commotion. I could only think how upsetting this must be for the young
people, and, wanting to get back as quickly as possible, we left in confu-
sion—it was hardly a time to worry about affixing the carriage blinds. By
the time we had finally ridden back here, it was all over. Our house re-
mained; our neighbors who had lost their house were gathered here. Thanks
to the young lord being here, my daughter who I feared had been running
around barefoot on the ground, was safely placed in a carriage, and the
gate had been kept firmly shut during the confusion so no rowdiness had
occurred. Seeing and hearing how well he had managed things as a man,
I was choked with emotion. While the people who had come to stay here
were lamenting, "We barely escaped with our lives," the fire died down.
Although quite a while had passed, the one who ought to call had not
come. Meanwhile from all over the place, even people whom we did not
expect came inquiring after us. For so many years whenever he heard that
there might be a fire in this neighborhood, he would rush over; how
shocking to realize it had come to this. I had those servants of his who
would be likely to tell him that something had happened here asked if he
had been informed; when I heard that he had been told, it seemed stranger
and stranger to me. Just at that point, there was a knocking at the door. A
servant went to see who it was, and when I heard "His lordship has come,"
I felt my heart calm a little. Then, he said, "When my men who were here
came and told me, I was so surprised. I regret alarming you by not coming
sooner." Talking like this, the time passed until at last hearing again and
again the crowing of the cocks, we went to bed. I must have slept very
well because we slept right into the morning. Even now, as there is a
commotion of people coming to ask after us, I rise to answer them. "It will
probably only get busier," he said as he hurried off.
In a little while, there arrived from him a large quantity of men's
clothing. "This is what I could put together. Please have the governor pick
first, and then distribute the rest to the others gathered there," was the
message. But as he had arranged this on the spur of the moment, the
clothes were of a dark brown color. They were so wretched, I did not
want to look at them. When I went to see how everyone was faring, three
people had fallen ill and were complaining miserably.
And thus the sun set on the twentieth. I heard that from the twenty-
first to the twenty-fourth he was in the usual ritual seclusion. Since for the
people gathered here this year was one in which the southern direction
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moved to myfather's residence - One can surmise that the Ko family must have had a close relation-
ship with the author's family.

the emblems of the next ritual seclusion - Taboo emblems were put up for a period of ritual seclusion
to ward off evil influences and so that visitors would know not to call, and so on. If one really did not
care about whether one lived or died, one would not bother to observe these rituals. Various
commentators remark on the objectivity about her own situation that the author seems to have
attained by book three. Here is a specific instance of it. She has just expressed how little desire she
has to live, but then she takes a step back and observes her surroundings and makes an ironic
comment on the attachment to life that the emblems represent.

festival- Here it is the Kamo Festival, which began with Lustration Ritual on the banks of the Kamo
River.

Ichifo grand minister— Kaneie's elder brother, Koremasa, who in the previous year had just assumed
the position of regent, the most powerful position in government.

bearing people say-In the original she also says omofu hito mo kiku, "I hear people thinking." How
does one listen to people's thoughts? Zenshu commentators suggest she is speaking figuratively, of
seeing people's admiration for Koremasa on their faces (Zenshu, 328).

Chisoku Temple — Apparently in the Murasakino district of northern Kyoto.

he apparently sent this — The verb ending for this phrase in the original, meri, indicates surmise on
the speaker's part, based on some objective, often visual, evidence. However, it can also be used
simply to soften statements. It is pertinent how she introduces this subject of her son's love poems,
because the author will devote a lot of space to this poetry in the rest of book three. Some commen-
tators suggest that she pays so much attention to her son's poems because she was actually their
composer, or at least had a hand in them. In the poem collection at the end of the volume, a preface
to a few of Michitsuna's courting poems plainly states that they were composed for him by his
mother (p. 389). Others suggest that her recording of his poems reflects a mother's pride in son's first
literary (and amatory?) efforts.
The other interesting issue involved with Michitsuna's love poems is that only poems
from those suits that were ultimately unsuccessful are recorded. We know from other historical
records that around this same time Michitsuna had formed a liaison with a woman who bore him a
child a year later, but that affair is not mentioned at all in the diary.
Having begun to long . . . - His poem puns on afuhi, the name of the heartvine plant, which is the
principal decoration for the Kamo Festival, and can also be construed as "meeting day."

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was forbidden, they could not stay here long, so on the twentieth they all
moved to my father's residence. While thinking it must be a relief for
them, I only seemed to become more aware of my own misery. Since I am
in such a wretched position, I feel as though I would hardly regret leaving
this dreamlike life. Then, when I look around and see the emblems of the
next ritual seclusion stuck on the pillars of the house, it seems that I am
still very much attached to this life. We entered the period of ritual seclu-
sion on the twenty-fifth. On the night it was to end, there was a knocking
at the gate; when a servant said, "We are in seclusion, the gate is firmly
shut/" there was the sound of him leaving thwarted.
On the next day, even though he knew that my direction was
forbidden to him, he appeared during the day, and left just about the time
to light torches. After that, as per usual he sent messages with various
excuses for not meeting.
Over here too, we had a lot of ritual seclusions; a little after the
tenth of the month, the world began to buzz with excitement about the
festival. Someone invited me to go along "on the quiet," so I saw every-
thing starting with the Lustration Ritual on the banks of the Kamo. When I
went to present my own offerings at the Kamo Shrine, I happened to be
there at the same time as the Ichijo grand minister. If one spoke of an
impressive commotion, that was it. Seeing his dignified bearing, I thought
how much he resembled my husband, and it seemed to me that on public
occasions my husband must not be inferior to him at all. But hearing
people say, "Oh, how splendid, what a man," I was thrown back into my
own melancholy thoughts.
Drawn along by someone who was not of the same cast of feel-
ings, on another day I went to see the return procession around Chisoku
Temple; the young lord followed behind in his own carriage. Just as the
carriages were to return, he got attracted by a fine-looking woman's car-
riage and started to follow her. Although he chased her, doing his best not
to be left behind—perhaps she did not want him to know where she
lived—he soon lost her and then began to chase around making inquiries.
On the next day, he apparently sent this:

omohi some Having begun to long,

mono wo koso omohe oh now, how I long for you.
kefu yori ha From today
au hi haruka ni the next Aoi Festival is far,
nariya shinuramu must I wait so long to meet you?

This was what he sent, but it seems she only said, "I haven't the faintest
idea what this is about." So, he wrote again:

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my heart soars to the cedars - Michitsuna is indicating that he knows she is connected with the
Yamato area around Nara by alluding to Kokinshu poem, no. 982:
my hut stands at the
foot of Miwa Mountain so
if you long to see
me once more come and visit
at the gate where cedars stand (Rodd, Kokinshu, 332)
The allusion also contains the invitation he hopes to receive.
There is also a pun in this poem on sugitachi, "cedars standing" and "have gone too far"
(in terms of emotions).

Most inauspicious — She refers to a legend about a snake god of Miwa Mountain who visited a
princess at night disguised as a man.

he was no more visible than the cuckoo in the unohana - She turns away from describing Michitsuna's
courting to reflect on her relations with Kaneie. The unohana was the flower of the season. The
cuckoo was traditionally thought to hide in the unohana. It will be remembered that in her first
correspondence with her husband, she referred to him as a cuckoo.

longest iris roots - Part of the festivities of the Tango Festival on thefifthday of thefifthmonth was
to gather iris roots and arrange them into festoons to decorate the eaves of the houses. Their
fragrance was supposed to protect the household from illness during the coming heat of summer.
the one over there who is about the same age as our little one - Kaneie's second daughter by Tokihime,
Senshi. Kaneie had spoken of holding the coming-of-age ceremonies for both girls at the same time.

In a hidden marsh . . . it began to grow — Obliquely referring to the author's adopted daughter.

Theyoung lord also preparedanotherfestoonforthatplace— Hereafter, when Michitsuna is sending

a courting poem, "that place" or "the usual place" always refers to the Yamato woman's place.
These sleeves of mine-This translation makes the poem a little more explicit than it is in the original.
The grammar of the original makes ambiguous what he wants to dry by laying them on someone
else's sleeves; it could be the iris roots or it could be the sleeves. Either way, however, the poem is
suggestive.

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warinaku mo I cannot help it,

sugitachi ni keru my heart soars to the cedars
kokoro kana at Miwa Mountain's foot,
miwa no yama moto the first time I asked after you,
tadzune hajimete I was already too far gone.

He said this because the person would seem to be from the Yamato area.
I believe her reply was:
miwa no yama Most inauspicious,
machi miru koto no it would be to attend you
yuyushisa ni at Miwa Mountain,
sugi tateri to mo I surely would not tell you
e koso shirasene even where the cedars stand.

Things going on in this way, even though it was getting on to the

end of the month, he was no more visible than the cuckoo in the unohana,
and the month ended without even a word from him.
Actually, on the twenty-eighth, it seems he had sent word on his
way back from worshipping at the shrine, "I have not been feeling well. . . . "
The fifth month arrived. The young people here made quite a fuss
over finding the longest iris roots, and since we didn't have much else to
do, we gathered them up and strung them together into festoons. I said,
"Let's send this to the one over there who is about the same age as our
little one here." So I wrote this and attached it to the middle of the bundle:
kakure nu ni In a hidden marsh,
ohisome ni keri it was that it began to grow,
ayame gusa this iris plant,
shiru hito nashi ni without anyone knowing,
fukaki shita ne wo it put down deep roots.

and sent it along with the young lord.

This was sent in reply:

ayame gusa This iris plant root,
ne ni arawaruru has been revealed to us
kefu koso ha finally today
itsuka to machishi waiting and wondering when,
kahi mo arikere has met with good result.

The young lord also prepared another festoon for that place:
waga sode ha These sleeves of mine
hiku to nurashitsu in pulling up iris roots
ayame gusa have gotten all damp,

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sleeves with no design - The Yamato girl puns on aya, which means "design," as of a pattern on
cloth, and also in the combination aya naki, which can mean "no design," "no plans," implying in
this context, "I have no plans to fall in love with you."

some people have been swept away - Historical records for 972 do report extensive flooding in the
capital that year.

monk I had met at Ishiyama Monastery - Whether this is the same monk who sent her the letter
about the dream or not is not clear.

If at least the wind blew not so cold.. .'- Allusion to a poem by Sone Yoshisada, a poet who was a
contemporary of the author:
On the night I wait
if at least the wind blew
not so cold
I would not regret not seeing
the one who does not come. iZenshu, 333)
Since she quotes this poem in midsummer when the wind is anything but cold, it has a sarcastic ring
to it. It is like saying, the wind isn't cold so I do not care whether I see you or not, but saying that
would invite the misfortune of turning him away completely.
the aprons of those tending thefields — This looks like an allusion to an old poem, but no source
poem has been definitely identified.
I have not even heard the voice of the cuckoo — Sensitivity to seasonal phenomena was highly culti-
vated by Heian society. The cuckoo only calls at night so one must sleep lightly to hear it.

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hito no tamoto ni would that I could dry them

kakete kawakase by laying them over yours.

The reply:
hiki tsuramu These sleeves that would draw
tamoto ha shirazu themselves near with iris roots,
ayame gusa I know them not at all,
aya naki sode ni I would not have you lay them
kakezu mo aranamu over sleeves with no design.

This is what she seems to have said.

From early in the morning on the sixth day, rain begins, and it
falls for three or four days. The rivers overflow and they say some people
have been swept away. That too has taken its place in my myriad melan-
choly thoughts, and even though my thoughts are quite beyond expres-
sion, since I am now used to it, I do not fret about what to do. In the midst
of this train of thought, I receive this message from that monk I had met at
Ishiyama Monastery, "I am praying for your ladyship," to which I reply,
"Now, as I feel I am one who has reached the end, what could even the
Buddha do for me. Only now, I would just have you pray for the young
lord, that he might come into his own as a man." Yet, as I write this, I don't
know why, my eyes cloud over and tears pour down.
The tenth arrived. Today, he sent a letter here with the young
lord. "I have not been feeling well at all, and thus I have lost touch with
you. How are you?" As for replying, I waited until the next day when the
young lord was going for a visit and composed this: "Yesterday, I thought
perhaps I ought to have sent back a reply right away, yet, it has gotten to
the point where it feels awkward for me to send word to you unless our
son is paying a visit. You deign to inquire, 'How are you?' I wonder, 'Well
what is there to say?' It has become perfectly reasonable for things to be
this way. Actually, not having seen you for months, my heart is very much
at peace. Yet, were I to say, If at least the wind blew not so cold . . .'
perhaps that would seem to invite misfortune." Dusk fell, the young lord
reported, "He was away on a trip to the Kamo Springs, so I have returned
without even delivering your reply." "Well, isn't that just fine," was what I
said, although it is not what I felt.
These days, the appearance of the clouds is never calm, one never
knows what the weather will do next, and I imagine how the aprons of
those tending the fields are always drenched. I have not even heard the
voice of the cuckoo. Although people who brood over love are not sup-
posed to be able to sleep when they lie down, strangely enough, I seem to

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had not yet nourished his ears - This phrase stands out in the original as a direct translation of a
Chinese poetic expression.

It's all right; it's all right' - Translates yoi zo, yoi zo, which is the old gardener's attempt to render
what he hears as their message in an onomatopoeic way.
"That's so; that's so" - Translates shika, shika, which is the author's onomatopoeic rendering of the
cicada's response. The voices of the cicada fill the summer air with a din that has an electric quality
to it. In the buzz, many different sounds can be imagined.
how touching, and I was desolate- Her mention of desolation at the end of this delightful passage is
unsettling. However, the association of beauty and sadness pervades classical Japanese discourse.
Here, the elderly gardener suddenly being able to hear the cicadas, and thus freshly becoming aware
of the season and its passing, evokes the poignancy of the passing of time and of old age. The author
has reached the point where growing old is no longer a distant, inconceivable thing.
the usual place — The Yamato woman's place.
spindle tree - Soba tree, a variety of the nishikigi or "brocade tree," much admired for its autumn
colors.
neglected, lamenting tree -Pun on nageki, "cast-off tree" and "to lament."

dipped in the vat of flattery - She turns the leaves of his natural image into "leaves of words" and then
shifts to the imagery of an artificial process, the dyeing of cloth. The phrase "vat of flattery" is implicit
in the original but made explicit in the translation.

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be sleeping very well. But one or the other of my attendants will say,
"Night before last, I heard its voice." "It was crying this morning at dawn
too," and since others have heard it, I feel rather ashamed to say that I am
one who hasn't yet, so not saying anything to others, just feeling this in
my heart:
ware zo ke ni Is it really so,
tokete nurameya when I melt thus into sleep,
hototogisu that my love longing
mono omohi masaru becomes the voice of the cuckoo
kowe to naruramu who then sings all the more sadly.

Thus, I spoke quietly to myself.

Like this, with time weighing heavily on my hands, I came into the
sixth month. Since the heat from the morning sun on the east side of the
house was unbearable, I moved over to rooms in the south gallery; just
when I had moved there, I had the uncomfortable feeling that someone
was close by, so quietly lying down behind something, I listened. The
voices of the cicada were so exuberant, but there was an old man hard of
hearing who had not yet nourished his ears with them. Broom in hand, he
was about to sweep the garden; just as he was standing under a tree,
suddenly the cicadas cried out so stridently, he was startled and looking
up said something like this, "So you cicadas come to say, 'It's all right; it's
all right.' Even you insects know your seasons." And in unison with his
words, the cicadas filled the garden with cries of "That's so; that's so." The
feeling arose, how charming, how touching, and I was desolate.

The young lord sends to the usual place this poem attached to a
branch of the spindle tree, on which a few leaves had turned red:
natsu yama no Since the dew is deep
ko no shita tsuyu no under the trees of summer mountains,
fukakereba so soon the color
katsu zo nageki no can flame on branches of this
iro mo eni keru neglected, lamenting tree.

She replied:
tsuyu ni nomi Just touched with dew,
iro mo enureba and they flame with such color?
koto no ha wo I would like to know
iku shiho to ka ha how many times your leaves of words
shiru bekaruramu were dipped in the vat of flattery?

Around the time these words were being exchanged, I found myself stay-
ing up late into the night, and a rare, rather warmly written letter from him
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/ notice that he seems somewhat despondent - If one were to speculate on why Kaneie may have
been feeling despondent around that time, one would consider the health of his eldest brother, the
regent and chancellor, Koremasa. Eiga monogatari reports a lengthy illness for Koremasa that even-
tually lead to his resigning his duties in the tenth month and to his death in the eleventh month of
this year (McCullough and McCullough, A Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 110. Note that McCullough
gives the reading Koretada for Koremasa's name). It seems reasonable that members of the family
would have been aware of his illness in the summer. Kaneie's recent good fortune had rested on his
relationship with Koremasa. His relations with his second eldest brother, Kanemichi, were bad, so
any danger to Koremasa's health must have made Kaneie nervous about his own political future, as
well as making him poignantly aware of the uncertainty of life.
the house of myfather. . . is torn down - Since she makes no mention of a disaster, we assume this
was a demolition to make way for a new structure.
I wonder how it must look to the other people - In front of her relatives, she is embarrassed by his lack
of attention.
worried over the offerings to he madefor Obon - The annual observances for the dead in the eighth
month. Arranging for offerings and so on seems to be one of the services that he has performed for
her over the years, but she cannot be sure he will continue to do so. The uncertainty of knowing
when the marriage relationship is over causes a variety of anxieties.

kutsukutsuhoshi - An onomatopoeic name for a type of cicada.

"Only I saying nothing''- A line from a poem in Utsubo monogatari:

So very noisy
the voices of the insects
perched in the greenery
only I saying nothing
grieve all the more.
(Kono Tama, Utsubo monogatari, vol. 10 of Nihon koten bungaku taikei [Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
1959; reprint 1980], 212.)

I have been given a revelation - She may have had a dream or received the augury from a yin-yang
diviner. This was possibly her thirty-seventh year, and according to traditional astrology, a women's
thirty-third and thirty-seventh years were supposed to be particularly dangerous. In fact, the conjec-
ture that the author was nineteen at the time of her marriage to Kaneie is based on calculating back
from this year as her thirty-seventh year.

Even strike me or pinch me, why don't you? - It is as if Kaneie is trying to incite her old feelings of
jealousy and chagrin. Perhaps he misses it.

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arrived. The first word in over twenty days, how sporadic our communica-
tion has become. Since I have gotten used to this terrible state of affairs,
there is really no use complaining, and I treat the letter as a matter of no
great import, but then again I notice that he seems somewhat despondent
and, feeling quite sorry for him, I reply with greater promptness than before.
Around that time, as the house of my father, away on duty in the
provinces, is torn down, the whole household has moved here, and with
so many relatives around, there is a bustle of activity from dawn to dusk,
but there is not a word from him, to the point that I wonder how it must
look to the other people.
After the tenth of the seventh month, when all the guests had
returned home—you could hardly tell they had been here—again there
was very little to do, I began to hear various sighs from my people as they
worried over the offerings to be made for Obon; I felt very sad and anx-
ious too. Then on the fourteenth, as per usual, the offerings were sent
over with a note from his household office. I thought to myself, / wonder
for how long he will continue to do at least this.
In this way, the eighth month arrived. On the first, rain falls all
day. It is almost like autumn drizzle; around late afternoon, it clears up.
Listening to the cries of the kutsukutsuboshi cicada, which are so noisy, I
intone the old poem, "Only I saying nothing." For what reason I wonder,
it is a day when I feel strangely forlorn and tears well up. I have been
given a revelation that I might die next month; I wonder if it might even
be this month. There is a great fuss being made over the return banquet
for the sumo tournament, but I hear it as something outside my concern.
The eleventh arrived and a letter from him said, "I have had a very
unexpected dream. One way or another, I need to talk to you," and so on,
as per usual, he said many things I could hardly think were true,

[There is a break in the text here, a portion seems to be lost. Presumably,

in the lost section, he arrives and they converse.]

As I could not say anything, he says, "Why don't you say something?"
When I respond with "What is there for me to say?" I am assailed with,
"Say, 'Why don't you come?' 'Why don't you ask after me?' Say, 'I hate
you.' Tm miserable.' Even strike me or pinch me, why don't you?" "Since
you have just said all that I would say, what is there left?" and so we
stopped. The next morning, saying "Soon after this business of the return
banquet is over, I will come and visit," he goes back. I heard that indeed
the return banquet took place on the seventeenth.
As the end of the month arrives, although I notice that much time
has passed since the business after which he promised to come was over,
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the ill-omened month - The ninth month in which she is predicted to die.

she has never let him see anything in her own hand - She has never written anything in her own
hand because it is a revelation that invites further intimacy. We will recall that the author did not
send anything in her own hand to Kaneie for a long time, arousing just this same resentment (pp.
59-^0.
In the evening... - The word for "wife," tsuma, is embedded in the word tsumadzuma, "corners."
Kakikeru means "spin a web" but also can mean "to have written." The poem as a whole refers to
the folk belief that if a spider spins a web near you, especially with a thread attached to your
clothing, then you will be visited that night by your lover.

pricked into whitepaper- Apparently, she has pricked her poem with a sharp point into thick white
paper, producing something like Braille. It is a very clever way of technically answering in her hand
without actually revealing her hand (in more ways than one).
It is strange... - She picks up his pun on "to write" and "spin" and implies that if she writes in any
serious fashion, he will be indiscreet with her letters.

Is this Tajima? - The poem alludes to a passage in Nihon shoki, "Chronicle of Japan," the eighth-
century official history of Japan. The story tells how Prince Homutsuwaki, who apparently was
unable to speak as a child, miraculously spoke his first words, "What is that?" when he saw a swan
flying across the sky. His father was overjoyed and had a retainer follow the bird to capture it. The
retainer eventually accomplished the task in the district of Tajima. Furthermore, Tajima, the place-
name, was used as a pillow word for "white sand beach" in poetry, and "traces of a bird" became a
figure for "writings of a brush."

too old fashioned for her- The allusions to a scholarly text in Chinese like the Nihon shoki may have
appeared stuffy to the young woman.

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I don't really feel anything about that now, but just pass the time feeling
sad, pondering the ill-omened month that draws near.

The young lord sends a letter to the usual place. Since in all the
various replies from before, she has never let him see anything in her own
hand, he is feeling resentful:
yufu sare no In the evening,
neya no tsumadzuma as I gaze at the corners
nagamureba of my bed chamber,
tedzukara nomi zo I notice spider wives
kumo mo kakikeru only spin by their own hand.

was what he sent. What did she think of it—she sent a reply that had been
pricked into white paper:
kumo no kaku It is strange about
ito zo ayashiki the thread the spider spins;
kaze fukeba when the wind blows,
sora ni midaruru it is scattered in the sky,
mono to shiru shiru this is something I know well.

To which he replied immediately:

tsuyu nite mo With a life as
inochi kaketaru fragile as dew depending
kumo no i ni on the spider's web,
araki kaze wo ba as for rough winds that blow,
tare ka fusekamu who could ward them off but I?

They said, "It is already dark." There was no answering poem.

The next day, perhaps he was thinking of her poem on white
paper from yesterday, he spoke thus:
tadjima no ya Is this Tajima?
kuguhi no ato wo Today I look for traces
kefu mireba of that fine white swan,
yuki no shirahama all I see is white on a
shirokute ha mishi white sand beach covered with snow.

and sent it to her. But they said, "The mistress seems to be out," so there
was no response. The next day, he went in person to beg for a word from
her, "Has the lady returned? Is there a response?" But he was told, "Oh,
yesterday's poem, the young mistress felt it was too old fashioned for her,
so she didn't reply." The next day, he sent a note, "So my poem of the
other day was too old fashioned. How very true":

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How true it is... - He puns onfuru, "time passing" and "to grow old," as well as being a place-name
in the Yamato district, which links the poem to her personally.

I feel lost as though . . . — Again, he alludes to a story in the ancient chronicles, this time the legend
of the sun goddess who, upset at her brother's outrageous behavior, locked herself in a cave in
heaven, plunging the world into darkness. While Michitsuna spends sleepless nights longing for his
love, it takes so long for dawn to come, that it is as though the sun goddess has locked herself away.
He is also implying that the Yamato woman has locked herself away from him.

So that's how it is . . . — Kazuraki Mountain is in the Yamato area, so this place-name makes a
connection with the Yamato woman. Another name for the god of that mountain is Hitogoto
Nushinokami, the "One Word God."

Young people areprone to write like this - What is "like this"? We are clearly to get it from the context,
but it is not so easily grasped at this point so distant in time and culture. On the one hand, Shinozuka
suggests that she may be referring to her son's predilection in verse writing for references to ancient
stories and mysterious legends. This in turn reminds her of her own youth and obsession with the
romantic world of "the old tales" (Shinozuka, Kagero nikki no kokoro to hyogen, 614-15).
On the other hand, the author may be merely summarizing young love. Kakimoto glosses
this passage as, "Young people pass their time exchanging love letters like this while I . . . " (Zen
chushaku, vol. 2, 103). This connects this passage by contrast with the description of her own
activities that follow.
Ipaint pictures - This is the most explicit mention of her painting as a pastime.
waiting to die — It will be remembered that she had received some sort of augury that she was to die
that month.
offended the earth god — In yin-yang cosmology, the earth god was thought to shift his residence
with the seasons; in the spring, it was the hearth; the summer, the gate; autumn, the well; and winter,
the garden. If one needed to repair any of those areas when the earth god was in residence, it was
known as "offending the earth god." To escape retribution for this offense, one could move tempo-
rarily. Since this is autumn, they must have had to make some repairs on their well and hence the
need for a temporary removal (Shinozuka, Kagero nikki no kokoro to hyogen 617).

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kotowari ya How true it is!

ihade nagekishi During the months and years I have
toshi tsuki mo lamented secretly for you,
furu no yashiro no on the face of the god of Furu Shrine,
kami sabi ni kemu moss has surely grown.

Even so, giving the excuse, "Today and tomorrow are periods of absti-
nence," there was no response. When it was still early on the morning of
the day, he thought the abstinence would have been lifted, he sent this:
yume bakari I feel lost as though
mite shi bakari ni I have just been seeing
madohitsutsu something like a dream,
akuru zo osoki the dawn is slow to come
ama no tozashi ha the door of heaven, slow to open.

This time too, they put him off with some excuse or another, so he wrote
again:
samo koso ha So that's how it is,
kadzuraki yama ni you must be friends with the god
naretarame of Kazuraki Mountain,
tada hito koto ya you offer only one word
kagiri narikeru and that is the end of it.

"Who taught you this?"

Young people are prone to writing like this.

As for me, usually on spring nights, or in the idleness of autumn,
rather than spend my time in brooding thoughts, I paint pictures, thinking
they may be looked upon as mementos by the people left behind. In the
midst of this, I was living my life waiting to die, wondering, Will it be now?
Will it be today? Nonetheless, as little by little the month drew to a close
and the days went by, there it was, it appeared I was not going to die.
While I reflected that it is the lives of people blessed with fortune that are
short, as might be expected, the ninth month arrived with nothing unto-
ward happening to me. Around the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth, the
household offended the earth god. Just at that time when I was spending
a night elsewhere, most unusually there was a message from him deliv-
ered to my house. Even when my servant came to inform me of it, I didn't
feel anything. Listlessly I did nothing.

It is the tenth month, and these days it seems to be drizzling more

than usual. Sometime after the tenth of the month, persuaded by this and
that attendant who suggests, "Let's go on a pilgrimage and view the maple
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the usual mountain temple - Probably Narutaki, where she went for her retreat.

"The Ichijo grand minister has passed away" - Kaneie's eldest brother, Koremasa, whom the author
had happened to see at the Kamo Festival the previous spring. He held the office of both regent and
chancellor at his death. He was only forty-nine years old.

his increasing importance - The world was full of rumors about her husband's future, but the
prognostications were not good. The death of Koremasa paved the way for the second brother,
Kanemichi, to accede to the high offices of his elder brother. High on Kanemichi's priorities was to
promote his own offspring and frustrate the aspirations of Kaneie and his children.
opening ofthe new year- It is thefirstyear of the Ten'en era, 973.

it is a little strange how often he has appeared — The author seems unaware that Koremasa's death is
a setback for her husband's political career. It has happened before that, when Kaneie had political
troubles, he has sought out the author for company. The most noteworthy occasion was when he
was given a post in the office of military affairs. While the author may have been a demanding
partner in love, it seems that at least she was not interested in the relationship for the political
benefits it might afford her family. In times of political adversity, this alone must have made her a
comforting companion.

the color ofthese blossoms - The poem plays on the conceit that, in times of great suffering, people
cried tears of blood.

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leaves at the same time," I go to the usual mountain temple. Today, the
drizzle falls and lets up by turns all day long; it is a time when this moun-
tain is so beautiful. On the first of the eleventh month, the world goes into
a turmoil with the news that, "The Ichijo grand minister has passed away."
On the night we are commiserating, "How terrible a thing to happen," the
first snow falls, leaving seven to eight inches on the ground. So sad, I
imagine how it will be for his sons trudging in the funeral procession, but
there was nothing I could do about it, and as I was thinking such thoughts,
the world of affairs buzzes with the news of his increasing importance.
Past the twentieth of the twelfth month, he did make an appearance here.
Then, when the year ended, as usual, there is a great bustle of
activity with the opening of the new year, but although it is already the
third or fourth day of the festivities, there is no feeling of renewal here.
Only the warbler has been quick to sing; I listen to it deeply moved. He
appeared during the day around the fifth and then on the tenth and again
around the twentieth just as everyone was in dishabille on their way to
bed. This month, it is a little strange how often he has appeared. Around
this time, due to the New Year's Promotion activities, he seems to be
extremely busy as usual.
The second month has arrived. The red plums are a deeper color
this year than usual and are putting forth a splendid fragrance. It seems to
be me alone who looks at them with deep emotion; there is no one else
who sees them as anything special. However, the young lord breaks off a
branch and sends it to the usual place:
kahi nakute As fruitlessly I
toshi he ni keri to have gazed at you from afar,
nagamureba the years have gone by,
tamoto mo hana no my sleeves have been steeped in
iro ni koso shime the color of these blossoms.

Her reply:
toshi wo hete As the years go by,
nado ka ayanaku why do you without good sense
sora ni shimo and to no avail,
hana no atari ni stand around amid blossoms
tachi ha somekemu to become stained by their hue?

"Well, isn't this just like her," he said as he looked at the awaited reply.

Then early in the month, on about the third, around midday, he

appeared. Although it was very painful to feel the shame at having aged,
what was there to do about it? After a bit, he rose to leave saying, "This

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I do not say it because I dyed it, but the brocade pattern on his glowing cherry blossom damask. . . -
Cherry blossom damask was apparently a fabric that was white on the surface with magenta threads
showing from underneath. The actual appearance of these Heian textiles is difficult to reconstruct.
There is something very touching about her recognition of the garments as her own creations. This
is the second time she has described her husband in terms of his costume, and both times a feeling
of fondness is woven through the description. The glowing quality of his appearance in the passage
also serves to draw a contrast with her own feeling of shabbiness. Iwasa Miyoko has analyzed in
detail the role of clothing description in the Kagero Diary. In this passage, she underlines the quiet
pride that suffuses this description of the author's textile creations, even despite the bleak contrast
between these lustrous garments and the author's aged appearance (Iwasa Miyoko, "Waga sometaru
to mo iwaji: Kagero nikki fukushoku hydgenko" in Dcho nikki no shinkenkyu [Tokyo: Kasama
Shoin, 1995], 307-8).
/ looked at my attire . . . - Here is another one of the places in book three where the author's
"objectivity" with respect to her feelings and her situation is apparent. Gone, for example, is the
litany of "I feel miserable, wretched, bereft." She just gives us the sensory data.
"How much more are the buds on this tree of sorrow made to swell" - This statement is a gesture
toward a poem from Kokin rokujd:
If the spring rains fall
the flames of my thoughts
will not even be extinguished
how much more will the buds
on this tree of sorrow be made to swell. (Zenshu, 342)

that hateful place - Omi's place, where there had been a fire the year before last.
small bow archery contest at the Reizei Palace — As we have seen in the past, archery contests were
a customary event for the third month. It will be remembered that Kaneie is father-in-law to the
retired emperor Reizei.

Yahata Festival- The festival held in the third month at Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine. According to
historical records, it was held on the twenty-seventh of the third month that year.

a letter from his lordship — This is the only place in the diary where the author refers to Kaneie with
an honorific phrase in the narrative part of her prose. All other instances of the use of honorific forms
with respect to her husband have been in quoted speech by others. Zenshu commentators explain
this uncharacteristic usage by saying " . . . it becomes a style of writing where she puts distance
between herself and Kaneie, treating him as an objective existence" (Zenshu, 343).

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direction is forbidden for me." I do not say it because I dyed it, but the
brocade pattern on his glowing cherry blossom damask was vivid, and the
smooth pattern of his trousers was lustrous—as I listen to the cries of his
outrunners fading into the distance, I think to myself, how painful to have
been caught off guard in such a state; I looked at my attire, it is terribly
shabby; I look in the mirror, my face seems so ugly. I can't stop thinking
about how this time too, he must have ended up disgusted. Brooding
endlessly over this sort of thing, since there had been a lot of rain from
early in the month, all I could think of was, "How much more are the buds
on this tree of sorrow made to swell." In the middle of the night on the
fifth, I heard a great commotion in the vicinity. I found out that this time
that hateful place, where there had been a fire before, had completely
burned down. Around the tenth, once again he appears early in the mid-
day. He even says, "It seems I must make a pilgrimage to the Kasuga
Shrine; I'm concerned about you." Since this has become an unusual thing
for him to say, it strikes me as strange.
Preparations for the small bow archery contest at the Reizei Palace
have begun; there is a bustle of activity with the practicing. The teams are
divided in the "before" and "after" and are costumed accordingly. I help
with that for the young lord. The day of the contest arrives and afterward,
his father tells me excitedly, "Many high-ranking nobles attended; there
was no end to them this year. The lad had not been taking the small bow
seriously enough and really concentrating on his practice, so I wondered
what would happen, but on his first time up, both his arrows struck home.
After that, one after another, so many hit the target, and then this arrow
here struck home and the contest was won." Then, when even two or
three days later he said, "Our young lord's two arrows striking the target
moved me to tears," at that, I was moved to tears too.
In the world at large, as usual around this time, the Yahata Festival
was being celebrated. Having nothing else to do, I parked my carriage
inconspicuously to view the sights, when someone came along having
their way cleared in a most ostentatious manner. When I looked, wonder-
ing who it was, I recognized some attendants among the advance guard.
So it's him, I thought as I looked on, feeling all the more the wretchedness
of my own position. The blinds were raised and inner curtains pulled
aside so one could see quite clearly inside. Noticing my carriage, he quickly
raised his fan to cover his face as he went by.
In the margin of a response to a letter from his lordship, I wrote,
"My attendants have been saying, 'His lordship seemed to act shy as he
passed by.' Why was that? You need not have and it seemed childish." His
response went like this, "It was actually the embarrassment of old age.
Anyone regarding it as the shyness of youth is just being spiteful."
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but he wasn't experienced . . . —This translation follows Shinozuka (Kagero nikki no kokoro to
bydgen, 635-36). There is some dispute here as to which of the two young people is the subject of
the two sections of the sentence.

this ins plant is still under the water — A reference to her youth.

Here is just a clump of wild rice . . . - Unlike iris roots, one does not dig up the roots of wild rice.

he appeared very quickly - This fire was large enough to be mentioned in historical records. Hun-
dreds of houses in the capital were lost. It was apparently started by arson at the home of Minamoto
Mitsunaka, one of Kaneie's fellow conspirators in the Takaakira affair. Shinozuka speculates that
Kaneie may have appeared more quickly than usual because he was fearing other reprisals against
those related to him (Shinozuka, Kagero nikki no kokoro to bydgen, 637).

"The conscript soldier's signal fire always burns" - Allusion to a poem in Kokin rokujo:
Guarding the court
the conscript soldier's signal fire
burns at night
in the day, it goes out
but his longing is stronger than ever. {Zenshu, 345)

The cuckoo bird - Like the iris roots, the cuckoo bird is also an approved topic for the fifth month.

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Then, for a while, communication ceased again, and the tenth of

the month passed. As this seemed longer than the usual break in commu-
nication, I wondered again what was going to become of us. The young
lord kept corresponding with the usual place, but he wasn't experienced
and they kept talking about how much younger she is than he, and so he
sent this:
mikagure no Although it is said
hodo to ifu to mo this iris plant is still
ayame gusa under the water,
naho shita karuramu yet, I would dig up its root,
omohi afu ya to to see if our thoughts match or not.

The reply was rather ordinary:

shita karamu Here is just a clump
hodo wo mo shirazu of wild rice that knows nothing
makomo gusa of dug up roots,
yo ni ohi sowaji and to think of them taken
hito wa karu to mo by someone not suitable?

Things going on in this way, he appeared again around the twentieth of

the month. On the twenty-third or twenty-fourth, there was the commo-
tion of a fire nearby. When the alarm went up, he appeared very quickly.
It was windy. After a long time, the fire moved away and the cocks crowed.
Saying, "It seems all right now," he went back. Listening to one of my
attendants say, "Hearing the gateman talk about those people who heard
that his lordship was here and came to pay their respects, how important
it made one feel," I thought it probably looks that way to her when she
contrasts it to the state our household has fallen into. Then, it was around
the last day of the month. Coming into the room, he said, "On the night
that the fire was close, it was really lively around this house, wasn't it?" To
which I replied, "The conscript soldier's signal fire always burns."
When the first day of the fifth month arrived, the young lord car-
ried on as usual:
uchitokete The cuckoo bird
kefu dani kikamu will have to let down her guard and
hototogisu sing at least today,
shinobi mo ahenu for the season now has come
toki ha ki ni keri when she dare not hide away.

The reply:
hototogisu This cuckoo bird,
kakurenaki ne wo if she were to let you hear
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unsheltered and abandoned - Both these meanings are present in the long kakehanarenuru.

"What has she got to be resentful about?" — Her poem clearly accuses him of courting elsewhere.
When we know that a little over a year later, a child of his is born to another woman, the Yamato
woman's suspicions seem confirmed. He must have started relations with that woman around this
time. This brings up the question again of why the author records only this affair in the diary.
Shinozuka suggests that this might have been the affair for which the author had access to the
correspondence. Shinozuka also speculates that this affair caught her imagination because it started
like a old romantic story with the man just getting a glimpse of a woman at a festival parade, and
because the correspondence has an extended run with interesting poems (Shinozuka, Kagero nikki
no kokoro to hydgen, 641-43).
provisions basket —A bamboo basket lined with cloth. Her reference later to poems leaking out is
because of the openwork nature of the container.

"Tell me which ones you think are well done" — His appeal for a critical evaluation of these poems
demonstrates how he valued her opinion in these matters.

Is it because my heart only yearns for the east wind... - Her play o n the w o r d s kocbi, "east wind"
and "here," and kaeshi, "the other way," "the reply," lets her say, "Since I favor you, your poems look
better to me than the ones by the other person."

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kikasete ha her unhidden voice,

kakehanarenuru she would become one
mi to ya naruramu unsheltered and abandoned.

On the fifth, he sent:

mono omofu ni Lost in love longing,
toshi he keri to mo while the years have passed away,
ayame gusa looking at irises,
kefu wo tabi tabi today I realize how
sugushite zo shim many times I've seen them before.

The reply:
tsumori keru I notice not
toshi no ayame mo even the irises of the years
omohoezu that have piled up,
kefu mo suginuru since today I have seen that
kokoro miyureba your heart has passed to another.

"What has she got to be resentful about?" he said, and seemed much
puzzled.

Now, this month too, from time to time, I have brooded in the
same way over the usual thing. Around the twentieth, there was this, "Please
sew a cloth bag for this provisions basket that I want to give someone
who is going far away." As I was sewing it, this came, "Have you finished
it? Please fill it to the brim with poems. Over here, I haven't been feeling
well at all and am not likely to compose any." How amusing, I thought to
myself and sent back this, "The poems you ordered, I will compose as
many as possible, but they might leak out of this bag and be lost. Hadn't
you better send a different bag?" About two days later, this arrived, "Even
though I was feeling so ill, it would have taken too long to send another
bag, so I just gritted my teeth and filled the bag with poems myself. The
poems I received in reply were as follows." He included the poems and
added, "Tell me which ones you think are well done." Since this arrived
while it was raining, there was something of an aura of refinement about
it. I eagerly looked at the poems. I could see some that were excellent and
some that were inferior, but it hardly felt appropriate for me to pronounce
judgments with a knowing air, so I sent back this:
kochi to nomi Is it because
kaze no kokoro wo my heart only yearns for the
yosumereba east wind to come here,
kaheshi ha fuku mo that when the wind blows the other
otoruramu kashi way, it does not seem as good.
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the usual place - Presumably Omi's place.

Nakagawa atHirohata - The Naka River is thought to be the present Kyogoku River, or at least what
is left of it, which runs west of and parallel to the Kamo River. The house was probably close to the
present-day district of Teramachi in Kyoto. In the Heian period, this area was the northern extremity
of the city, a sort of suburb. This decision to change residences is a signal that she has somehow
accepted that the marriage, at least as a regular visiting arrangement, is over. There was no formal
way to end a marriage in the Heian period. The husband simply stopped visiting, but the stopping
itself was often sporadic. The phrase in the Heian period to describe this situation was toko hanare,
"grown distant from the bed."

a fog had risen and rolled in . . .- A gesture toward a poem in Kokin rokujo:
As river fog,
has risen to enfold
the foothills,
now we see autumn mountains
floating in the sky. CZenshu, 349)

Time and the riverflowin a bed - The verb "flow," nagarete, refers to both the passage of time and
the current in a river. "Bed," toko, is both riverbed and marriage bed. Finally waga naka, "our marital
relations," pivots into nakagaha, the Naka River.

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This was all I sent.

The sixth and the seventh months passed by in much the same
fashion. On the twenty-eighth at the end of the seventh month, he ap-
peared saying, "The sumo tournament is going on. I was serving at court
but I left early thinking to come and see you." But then, just like that, I do
not see him again until past the twentieth of the eighth month. Asking
around, I hear that his visits to the usual place are most generous. I realize
how everything has changed. While I have been somewhat out of touch
with reality, my dwelling place has fallen more and more into disrepair. As
I don't really have enough people to keep it up, I am giving it up to
someone else, and my father, whom I depend on, has decided that I should
live in one of his houses. So today or the next day, I am to move to the
area around Nakagawa at Hirohata. That such a thing might happen I have
hinted to him before on several occasions, but now, since it is to be today,
I thought I had better inform him. Although I sent the message, "I have
something to tell you," the response was, "Due to an abstinence, his lord-
ship is not to be disturbed." As he seems so little concerned, I thought,
why bother, and moved without telling him.
It is close to the mountains, with one edge of the property a
riverbank where water from the river is drawn in to use as we please. I
feel it is a rather touching place to live. Two or three days passed and it
seemed he still did not know that I had moved. About five or six days
later, there was only this, "So you have moved without telling me." In
response, I wrote in a rather final way, "I thought I would inform you that
this move was about to happen, but I felt that it is hardly likely you would
come to visit this inconvenient place. I had wanted to speak to you once
more in the place where we used to meet." He responded, "So that is how
it was, I understand. And as you say, you are now living in an inconve-
nient place. . . . " After that, I heard nothing from him.
The ninth month arrived, still very early in the morning, I raised
the shutters and looked out; on the stream within the grounds and on the
river outside, a fog had risen and rolled in. Gazing in the distance at the
mountains, I couldn't see the foothills, such a sadness pervaded the scene:
nagarete no Time and the river
toko to tanomite flow in a bed I had come
ko shika domo to rely on,
waga nakagaha ha but between us the water
ase ni kerashimo seems to have grown shallow.

This is what it brought to my lips. The rice in the fields in front of the east
gate has been cut, bundled, and hung over the drying frames. When, rarely,
there are visitors, we have the green blades of rice stalks cut to provide
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I have thrown myself into such tasks . . . - This is the first time we see the author interested and
involved in work other than clothing production. She would not have been involved with these
agricultural activities before.
one who keeps small hawks — Michitsuna. We remember him at the age of fourteen letting all his
hawks go as a gesture of determination to follow his mother into monastic life.

Like this, no one knots... - In the background of this poem are two folk beliefs. One is that the soul
of a person desperately in love will leave his or her body at night in search of the beloved. The other
is that if one sees a soul at night, one can exorcise it by chanting a spell three times and tying a knot
in the hem of one's garment. This returns the wandering soul to its owner. Moreover, the expression
"the cord of my soul" is related to the notion that the soul is connected to the body by an invisible
cord. When the cord snaps, the person dies. Finally, the word for "skirt," tsuma, is homophonous
with "wife."

The thick autumn dew - Of course, dew is also a metaphor for his tears.

I shall pass without recording it - This is an interesting editorial comment. It makes us wonder on
what basis she chose to include and exclude poems.

I attended to the garments and sent them back without a letter- So the marriage in the sense of these
duties does continue.

At the end of the month — This is the end of the tenth month. This would be a request for the
preparation of winter clothes since the official date for changing into winter clothes was the first of
the eleventh month.

a birth at the house of my father- Polygyny made it more possible for this kind of family situation to
arise: a child is born to her father when the author is already thirty-eight years old, almost two
generations older than her new half-sister. We know that the child is a girl from the reference to
plum blossom in the poems. There is no information about the identity of the mother. There is some
speculation that this half-sister grows up to become the mother of the author of the Sarashina Diary,
which is the last of the major autobiographical diaries written by women in the Heian period.

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fodder for the horses. I have thrown myself into such tasks as having
grilled rice cakes made from the new grain. As there is one who keeps
small hawks, several of the hawks rise and wheel in the sky right outside
the gate. It seems he sent this to the usual place hoping to arouse her
sympathy:
sa goromo no Like this, no one knots
tsuma mo musubanu their skirts for me night after night,
tama no wo no the cord of my soul
taemi taezumi is about to break, then it holds,
yo wo ya tsukusamu I may not be long for this world.

There was no reply. So again after a while, he sent this:

tsuyu fukaki The thick autumn dew
sode ni hietsutsu chills my sleeve as I lie
akasu kana awake until dawn,
tare nagaki yo no meanwhile, these long cold nights,
kata ki naruramu who have you lying by your side?

There was a response to this one, but I shall pass without recording it.

Even though it is already past the twentieth of this month, there

has been no communication from him. Astonishingly, however, a pile of
winter clothes has been brought with the instructions, "See to these." When
the messenger said, "There was a letter but it got lost on the way," I was
appalled by the stupidity of it all, saying, in that case, I would not send a
return message. I gave up without finding out what it had been. I attended
to the garments and sent them back without a letter.
After that, the path to him in my dreams was cut, and so the year
grew old.

At the end of the month, work was delivered again. The instruc-
tions were "See to this," and once more there was not so much as a note.
It was material for a underrobe. I hesitated over what to do, and I dis-
cussed it with one or two of my attendants. "Well, why don't you just do it
this time and see how it turns out. Otherwise, it would seem ill-willed."
And so it was decided. I kept it, did a not uncareful job on it, and, on the
first of the month, sent it with the young lord, who reported back, "He
said, 'How beautifully done,'" and that was the end of it. To say this was
dumbfounding would be an understatement.
Then, this eleventh month, there has been a birth at the house of
my father who has been away in the provinces, and it has passed without
my being able to pay a visit. Now, the fiftieth day after the birth has come.

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this occasion - It was customary on the forty-ninth day after a baby's birth to send congratulatory
presents and greetings.

certain captain of the Crown Prince's Guard- Custom required that congratulations on the birth of
a baby be sent with a soldier.

Blooming in the snow . . . - It is not clear who composed the reply poem. It could have been the
mother or the author's father.

the celebrations of the new year - The second year of the Ten'en era, 974.

just seems to have a damp sleeve - The girl's sleeve is literally damp because she has been holding an
icicle in it, but damp sleeves evoke the notion of tears cried into one's sleeves.

While sheets of ice... — The poem plays on haru, "spring" and "to spread," and tokeru, "to melt" and
"to relax."

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Although I thought that at least on this occasion, I would like to do some-

thing, I was not able to do anything elaborate. I just expressed my feeling
of congratulations by sending words. This was according to custom. Tak-
ing a basket that had been painted white and placing a branch of plum
blossom in it, I sent this poem:
fuyu gomori Lost for what to do,
yuki ni madohishi closed in by the snows of winter,
wori sugite the occasion passed,
kefu zo kakine no now today, I send my greetings
ume wo tadzuneru to the plum blossoming in the hedge.

I sent this with a certain captain of the Crown Prince's Guard, having him
arrive in the evening. The next morning, the messenger returned. He was
bearing an overrobe of pale silk:
eda wakami Blooming in the snow,
yuki ma ni sakeru this first flower from a
hatsu hana ha young branch of plum,
ika ni to tofu ni upon receiving your greetings,
nihohi masu kana grows even more radiant.

While these sorts of exchanges went on, the celebrations of the new year
passed by too.
"How about going to some quiet out of the way place for a pil-
grimage?" someone invited; "Why not?" I said and went along, but it turned
out there were a lot of people making a pilgrimage to the same place.
Even though it was unlikely there was anyone who would know me, I felt
painfully self conscious. At the purification place, the icicles hung down
indescribably. On the way back I kept looking at them thinking, "How
lovely they are," and I noticed someone walking who, although she was
an adult, was dressed in a child's costume with her hair done up nicely in
plaits. Looking more closely, I could see she had one of the icicles wrapped
up in the sleeve of her singlet and was eating it as she walked along. Just
as I was thinking, there must be some reason for her behavior, my com-
panion addressed her, whereupon, she responded with her mouth still full
of ice, "Do you mean me, Ma'am?" Hearing her, we realized that she was
of rather low status. Bowing low to us, she said, "Those who don't eat this
ice don't get their wishes." I murmured to myself, "It hasn't brought her
luck yet; the one who says it just seems to have a damp sleeve." Then I
reflected:
waga sode no While sheets of ice
kohori ha haru mo spread on my sleeve know not
shiranaku ni that spring has come,
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Kamo Shrine - See book one, pp. 136-43.

Thus the twelfth month came and the eleventh month went - There is a time disjunction in the text
here. Just a little while before she has mentioned the arrival of the new year, and the poem for her
new half-sister and the poem immediately above both make reference to spring, but now the
narrative returns to the eleventh and twelfth months, which she seems to have spent convalescing.
This disjunction is likely the result of a copyist error. However, modern commentators have left the
text as it has been transmitted.

the moon so lovely — Since the calendar is a lunar one, the fifteenth always coincides with the full

"mountains of no thoughts"-An allusion again to the Gosenshu poem about wanting to escape the
pain of seeing the cherry in full bloom (when one knows they must fall soon) by entering the
"mountains of no thoughts" (see book two, p. 224).

Such were my feelings — In this passage, her emotions have moved from amusement and poignant
appreciation of beauty to sadness and loneliness. While she seems to have accepted the inevitability
of the end of her marriage, at moments of heightened perception the sorrow returns.

assistant director of the Right Stable - Most of the offices of the Heian court had "right" and "left"
divisions. The Right Stable was in charge of administering the imperial stable of the right division,
including managing pasturage in the various provinces for the provisioning of the horses. Since
horses were prized possessions and played important roles in many court ceremonies, positions
with the imperial stable carried more prestige than one might expect. There were two executive
positions within the stable, the top position, kami, "director," and the second in command, suke,
"assistant director" (as translated by McCullough and McCullough, A Tale ofFlowering Fortunes, vol.
2, 816). The author from this point on will refer to her son only by his new title, and the director of
his office will become a major figure in the narrative.
director of his new office, his paternal uncle- Tdnori, a younger half-brother to Kaneie by a different
mother. Tonori's age is not known, but judging from Kaneie's age and that of another younger
brother, Tonori is probably in his mid-thirties.
she was not old enough to be of any interest to him - Thus begins Tonori's courting of the adopted
daughter, which is the major story of the latter part of the diary. As mentioned immediately above,
Tonori was in his mid-thirties, and while such differences in age were not so exceptional during the
Heian period, he is still rather old for a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl.

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kokoro toketemo others seem to walk about

hito no yuku kana with hearts melted in good spirits.

About three days after coming back from there, I made a pilgrim-
age to the Kamo Shrine. The wind blew and snow fell, unspeakable weather
and so dark. Not only was it a miserable trip, but I caught cold and lan-
guished in bed. Thus the twelfth month came and the eleventh month
went.
The fifteenth of the first month, there is the burning of the New
Year's decorations. When I hear our young lord's men servants raising a
commotion, "Let's build the bonfire," one can tell they are getting too
drunk. Then voices can be heard, "Hush, don't be so noisy." Amused by
this, quietly I went out onto the veranda to take a look outside, and there
was the moon so lovely. Gazing out toward the east, the mountains were
veiled in mist, just barely visible—I feel desolate. Leaning against the pil-
lar, the thought comes to mind, there are no "mountains of no thoughts"
He hasn't communicated with me since the eighth month, and now, in
vain has the new year already come; feeling this way, my tears well up in
sobs and spill down. Then:
moro kowe ni The one who should
naku beki mono wo cry joining voices with mine,
uguhisu ha the warbler,
mutsuki to mo mada can it be he knows not
shirazu ya aruramu the new year is already here.

Such were my feelings.

On the twenty-fifth, concerned about the promotion lists, the young
lord busily makes observances at temples and shrines. Just as I was think-
ing, why does he go to all this trouble, the announcement of promotions
arrived. In a rare letter from him, we were informed, "There has been a
promotion to assistant director of the Right Stable." As our new assistant
director went the rounds to express his appreciation, he also paid a visit
to the director of his new office, his paternal uncle, who congratulated
him warmly and in the course of another conversation asked, "The young
lady in your household, what sort of a person is she? How old is she, how
many years?"
When he returned and related to us that this had happened, I
wondered how the director could have heard of her. The girl had no idea
about that sort of thing yet and she was not old enough to be of any
interest to him, so I put it out of my mind.
Around that time, there was excitement over the archery contest
to be held at the Reizei Palace. The director and the assistant director were

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lost portion of text - Unfortunately, due to this lacunae, we never learn the content of her dream.
However, there was likely some connection between her dream and the decision to go on a pilgrimage.

Not as deep in the mountains as all that - Phrase from a poem in Tales ofYamato, section 43, when
a monk was asked where he had gone to practice austerities (Yamato monogatari, in Nihon koten
bungaku zenshu, vol. 8, 297).
since the blossoms are strangely late — Allusions to two poems of the Kokinshu are woven into this
passage, giving it a richness of texture. The first one is no. 10:
has spring come early—
or are the plum blossoms late—
I would like to know
but not even the song of
the mountain thrush trills the answer (Rodd, Kokinshii, 52)

The second one is no. 535:

would that my love could
know my yearning deep as
these lonely mountains
where not even the songs of
soaring wild birds can be heard (Rodd, Kokinshu, 202)

each bead of the rosary - There are 108 beads on a Buddhist rosary, so this is a relatively strenuous
ritual.

Did I ever dream . . . - The word for "nun," ama, is embedded in both the word for "sky," amatsu,
and "rain cloud," amagumo.

I seemed tofeel—This is another place in book three where she seems to be speaking from a position
of observing herself.
poor dear one who was right by my side —This is assumed to be a reference to her adopted daughter,
which would indicate that this pilgrimage had been undertaken for her daughter's sake.

'Has his lordship said anything about this matter to you?' - From Tonori's mode of speaking, it is
evident that Tonori's relationship with Kaneie is not close. It appears, for example, that he cannot
expect to speak to his elder brother in person about this matter; he must use an intermediary like
Michitsuna. In fact, Tonori's interest in the stepdaughter may be primarily motivated by a desire to
connect himself more closely with his more powerful brother.

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on the same side, so they saw one another every day at practices at which
the director would always talk about the same thing. "What must he have
on his mind?" the assistant director asked as he related this to us. Then, on
about the twentieth of the second month, I had a dream . . .

[Lost portion of text]

I decided to go secretly to a certain place. It is a place of which one might

say, "Not as deep in the mountains as all that, but deep enough." It is
around the time when the fields are burnt, but since the blossoms are
strangely late this year, the path that one might have expected to be lovely
is not yet so. Since it is very deep in the mountains where one does not
hear the birds, even the warbler made not a sound. Only the water, in an
unusually impressive way, gushed and gurgled as it flowed. So tired I was
as I walked along, thinking over and over to myself, there must be people
who never have to do this, it just seems to be my miserable lot to go from
one trouble to another. We arrived just as the bell was being rung for the
evening service. We lit votive offerings and performed our devotions, ris-
ing and sitting for each bead of the rosary, getting more and more tired.
Just as we heard that dawn had come, it began to rain. Thinking how very
unfortunate this was, we went along to the monastery living quarters, and
as we were discussing what we should do, it became quite light. People
bustle about with "Here are raincoats, here are rainhats." I stand quietly
and gaze out—from the valley in front, clouds were softly rising, how
strangely melancholy:
omohiki ya Did I ever dream
amatsu sora naru that I would come to tread this
amagumo wo mountain like a nun,
sode shite wakuru parting with my sleeves rain clouds
yama fumamu to ha of the sky of heaven?

So I seemed to feel. Although the rain fell unspeakably hard, as we could

not stay where we were, we simply made the best of it and departed.
When I looked at my poor dear one who was right by my side, I felt so
sadly moved I forgot my own tiredness.
We got back finally. The next day, the assistant director returning
late at night from archery practice comes to where I am lying down and
relates the following. "His lordship said, The director of your bureau has
been going on a lot about this matter since last year. How is the girl over
there doing? Has she grown? Does she have a woman's feelings?' Then
when the director mentioned it again to me and asked, 'Has his lordship
said anything about this matter to you?' I replied that he had. Then the
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pay a courtesy call to the apartments of the waiting woman, Musashi —In the original, the use of
honorifics in Tonori's letter provide clues about his relationship to Musashi. He uses no honorifics
with reference to Musashi, as though he were speaking of someone closely connected to himself, yet
he appends an honorific to "apartments" since they belong to Michitsuna's Mother. This would
indicate that Musashi may have been someone formerly in his employ. It was customary to use a
servant in one's confidence to deliver love poems and to arrange meetings with the woman one was
wooing. It is interesting how the arrangement of marital liaisons in aristocratic households still
mimicked the conducting of a secret affair. In this case, Tonori first approaches the father and then
the stepmother of the girl to get their tacit permission; now he announces how he plans to send his
billet-doux and arrange meetings with the girl. If the author were to agree to his courting, she would
allow him at this point to proceed as he suggests.

old poem about 'Isonokami'- A poem from Kokin rokujo:

At Isonokami
even if the rain falls, how could
I let it stop me
since I have told my girl
| would not fail to come. (Zenshu, 358)

deeper in color are these sleeves-He sends his message on scarlet paper with a branch of red plum.
Colors deepen when wet. This all contributes to strengthening the conventional hyperbole about
crying tears of blood when one suffers.
"My dear lord. . ."- The Isonokami foundation poem and the fact that he is waiting for a man has
lead T5nori to assume the persona of a woman in this poem and communication. He really aban-
dons himself to the persona with the repeated entreaty of "My dear lord," but then seems to think
better of it by crossing it out. His task at this juncture of the courting game is to convince the girl's
guardian of the sincerity of his passion for the girl. Distress is part of the pose.

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director said, The day after tomorrow will be an auspicious day, I'll send
a letter of proposal then.'" Thinking over and over how bizarre this all was
and that she was not yet ready for such attentions, I fell asleep.
Then, on that day, the letter arrives. Truly, it was the sort of letter
one could not answer in an unguarded way. Among other things he said
this, "For months, I have been thinking about her. When I had someone
speak to his lordship about it, I was told, 'His lordship has listened to your
request. Now, he says just go speak directly to her guardian.' Yet I re-
frained from speaking as I feared you might think ill of me as one having
unsuitable intentions. Thus thinking that there just seemed to be no good
chance, what should I find when I looked at the announcement of the
new appointments but that your assistant director had been posted in the
same bureau. So I thought, now no one could take it amiss if I were to
come and visit." It was written as it should be, and in the margin, he
wrote, "I should like to pay a courtesy call to the apartments of the wait-
ing woman, Musashi." A reply had to be written, but first I wanted to ask
her father about it. It was taken by the assistant director, but he came back
with it saying, "I was told he was in ritual seclusion or something, that the
timing was inconvenient, so I did not get to show it to him." By this time,
it was the twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth.
The director seemed to feel very uneasy, for he called our assis-
tant director to him with this message, "I have something urgent to speak
to you about." The assistant director sent the servant back right away with
the message, "Coming right away." Just at that point it began to rain, but
saying it would be painful to have the director wait, he was just about to
leave when he received another letter. Bringing it in, he looked at it. It
was on thin scarlet paper to which a branch of red plum had been at-
tached. It said, "You do, I believe, know the old poem about Isonokami'":

harusame ni Even more than this

nuretaru hana no branch of blossoms drenched in
eda yori mo the spring rain, deeper
hito shirenu mi no in color are these sleeves
sode zo warinaki of one unknown, who suffers.

"My dear lord, my dear lord, you must come." It was written thus, but the
"my dear lord" part had been crossed out. The assistant director said,
"What shall I do about an answer?" "How very troublesome. You had
better just leave and say you met the messenger on the way there," I said
and sent him off. He returned and reported, "The director was awfully
upset and complained, 'Couldn't a reply have been written to me even
while you were waiting to hear news from his lordship?'"

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might interpret his visits in a different way - That is, might think he was paying court to the author.

lam at a loss - She is in a difficult position to mount a diplomatic resistance. She does not want her
adopted daughter to enter into marriage yet. She seems to have genuine concerns about the girl's
youth. Moreover, she is likely hoping to do better for her. Tonori is a little old and not on a
distinguished career path. After all, one of Kaneie's daughters by Tokihime is already married to a
retired emperor, and the other one is being groomed to become an imperial consort. The author
must have hoped that Kaneie might do as well for this daughter. Yet, if such a brilliant future were
not possible, then Tonori, provided he proves reliable, might not be such a bad match. Thus she can
neither risk encouraging him nor dare to alienate him.
'does not let people approach recklessly' - Allusion to a poem from Gosenshu:
You say you want to
see so very much the waterfall
of Shirakawa
but it is something that does not
let people approach recklessly. (Katagiri, Gosen wakashu, 322)
With this cryptic note she lets him know he will not be welcomed into Musashi's apartments.
no auspicious days - As with so many other matters in Heian life, yin-yang cosmology determined
days on which it was auspicious to marry.
I found this very strange that he should be so hastily choosing a date - The author is also in a difficult
situation with Kaneie. She cannot refuse his choice if he decides that Tonori is to marry her daughter;
all she can do is stall as long as possible. For his part, Kaneie does not appear overly concerned with
the girl's future. It seems that he neither wants to discourage Tonori nor anger the author by rushing
the match.

his usual handsome self—This remark seems a little odd because, so far as the diary has informed us,
this is the first time she would have seen him. She could be speaking of his reputation for good looks
or there is some slip in the time frame; as she writes remembering back, he was as handsome as she
came to know was usual for him.

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Now, two or three days later, the assistant director has reported, "I
finally was able to show the letter to his lordship. He said, 'What is all the
fuss about? I told him I would think about it and decide soon. As for a
response, quickly write him a tactful letter. It is probably still not appro-
priate for him to visit. People do not generally know that there is a young
girl there. They might interpret his visits in a different way.'" Hearing that,
I thought, How maddening, and just how did that person who might be-
come the source of such rumors get to know that there was a young girl
here?
Well then, today I write the reply letter. "As I assumed we must
owe the pleasure of your most unexpected letter to the recent reassign-
ment of duties, I knew it should be responded to directly; however, your
mention of having spoken 'to his lordship' was very puzzling and unset-
tling to me, and in the course of making inquiries, it took 'from here to
China and back,' for which I express my apologies. Nevertheless, since I
am not convinced about this, I am at a loss how to respond to you." In the
margin, I added, "You mention visiting the apartment of the attendant
Musashi, but I suspect she will tell you that she 'does not let people ap-
proach recklessly.'" In this fashion, he was answered. After that he sent
the same kind of letter several times. As I did not respond to every letter,
he restrained himself a good deal.
The third month arrived. It seems that the director has been using
a lady attendant to press his affairs with his lordship, and he showed me
one of the responses he had received from this intermediary. His letter
went like this, "Since you seem to be so suspicious, I thought I would
show you what his lordship has been saying." I looked at it. "'There are no
auspicious days in this month. Let us consider next month.' This is the sort
of thing, and if you would be so good as to look at a calendar, you will see
that he is actually speaking about this month right now." I found this very
strange that he should be so hastily choosing a date—what a thing to do—
I did not consider it possible but rather suspected it to be the fabrication
of the person who wrote the letter.
Around noon of the seventh or eighth day of the fourth month,
someone calls out, "The director of the Right Stable has arrived." Just as I
tell my attendants, "Quiet now. Tell him I am not here. I know he has
something he wants to talk about but it is too soon and not appropriate,"
he enters the yard and stands waiting in front of a hedge where he is quite
exposed. He is his usual handsome self in a well-filled glossy robe with a
soft formal cloak over it and a sword slung from his waist. He does not
look out of the ordinary, but as he stands there toying with a red-colored
fan that is a little in disorder, and as the brisk wind blows up the ribbons
of his court cap, it is just like a picture. "There's a handsome man here,"
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theirfrightful sleeve openings - It is a kind of indecent exposure.

I want to sit herefor thefirst time - The act of sitting on the veranda will make him feel as though he
has actually had a first visit.

my frightful voice — Presumably a voice grown ugly with age.

invited into the gallery - In the Heian aristocratic residence, there was an outer veranda under the
eaves that was otherwise exposed to the open air, an inner gallery that could be opened to the
outside but was normally closed at night with lattice shutters, and inner chambers. She would be
waiting for him in an inner chamber behind bamboo hanging blinds or a curtain. She places a light
on the veranda so the two men can see one another dimly and then invites the director to sit on a
cushion in the inner gallery space.

his clothes rustling in a pleasant way - The intentness of her listening is conveyed throughout this
passage by the auditory detail in the description. It must be remembered that this is the first time in
a long while that she has spoken to a man outside her immediate family circle.

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say the serving women from the back of the house. Just at the moment
when they come forward with their trains all in disarray to peek out at
him, the wind blows the bamboo blinds in and then out. The women who
are relying on the blinds for cover completely forget themselves in the
commotion of pushing the blinds back out and then pulling them in. My
goodness, I think, he has seen everything right up to their frightful sleeve
openings-, I could have died, it was so embarrassing. This happened while
someone was going to rouse the assistant director, who had returned late
from archery practice last night and was still sleeping. Finally, the assistant
director gets up and gives the excuse that I am not in. Feeling uneasy
about the wind, I had already had all the outer shutters of my room low-
ered earlier, so that what he said seemed perfectly reasonable. The direc-
tor ventured to come up onto the veranda, "Today is an auspicious day.
Lend me a straw cushion. I want to sit here for the first time." He went on
talking for a while. Then he sighed, "What a waste it was to come today,"
and left.
About two days later, I dispatched a servant just to convey orally
my regrets. "I understand you favored us with a visit while I was out, I am
very sorry." After this came his perennial request, "I took my leave the
other day with so many things uncertain in my mind, would you be so
kind as to see me?" Because it was not suitable for him to come, I said, "I
would be too embarrassed to have you hear my frightful voice," and thus
did not allow an interview. Nonetheless, he arrived one night on the pre-
text, "There is something I want to tell the assistant director." What was I
to do? I had only two bays of shutters raised, and a light placed on the
veranda outside, then he was invited into the gallery room. The assistant
director went to greet him. "Please come," he said, and the director came
up onto the veranda. When the assistant director opened the gallery door
and seemed to say, "Through here," the director made as to walk into the
room but then drew back. In a quiet voice, he said, "I would have you first
convey my respects to her ladyship." The assistant director came in to me
and delivered the message. When I said, "He has my leave to come and
speak in this place that he has been so interested in," the director chuck-
led a little and came into the room with his clothes rustling in a pleasant
way.
He and the assistant director spoke so quietly together that all I
could hear was the sound of his fan striking his baton of office from time
to time. Within, I made not a sound. When quite some time had passed,
the assistant director came to say, "He says to tell you, 'Since I took my
leave that day without achieving anything, I have been fretting in sus-
pense.'" The assistant director bade him speak to me directly. Although he
did come closer, he didn't say anything right away. I was just as silent as
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"This area has such an eerie atmosphere . . ." - This is an indirect way of hinting that he ought to
leave; she is suggesting he may be reluctant to be on his way because it is such a unsettling place so
far from the center of the capital.

At the thought that he might have been able to see at least my shadow - When the light on the veranda
went out, she would have become visible by her faint light, because it would have been the only
light.

One of his attendants replied, "It was nothing to us"- This passage is difficult to construe. It seems
odd that she would have a direct conversation with one of the director's attendants when such
elaborate procedure was necessary to bring her into direct conversation with the director himself.

the assistant director happened to see a dead dog . . . - C o m i n g into c o n t a c t w i t h a n y t h i n g d e a d

rendered him ritually polluted, so he could no longer participate in the rites.

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ever. Thus we remained for awhile. I thought how uneasy he must be

feeling and made a slight sound as though clearing my throat, which he
seized upon as a chance to speak, beginning with "That day, I chose an
inopportune occasion to wait on you. . . ."He went on at great length
going right back to the first time he had taken an interest in the girl. From
within, I replied in this fashion, "She is at an age when to consider such a
thing is inauspicious. Your speaking like this is fantasy. Why, she is so
little, she is hardly what the world calls a baby mouse. It is simply out of
the question." When I heard him painfully trying to control his voice, it
was very uncomfortable for me too. It was an evening when the rain fell
with abandon and the voices of the frogs were very loud. As the night
grew late, I ventured to say, "This area has such an eerie atmosphere,
even we people who live here hardly feel at ease." To which he replied,
"Not to worry. I am just thinking to take my leave shortly, and I am not
afraid of anything." As he went on like this, the night got awfully late. He
said, "The assistant director will soon be busy with getting ready for the
Kamo Festival, and I expect I shall be calling on him to attend to various
matters around that time. I shall report to his lordship what I have been
told here, and receiving his reaction, I shall tell you what he has to say. I
shall likely attend upon you tomorrow or the day after." Assuming he had
left, I parted the curtains of the screen of state to look out, only to find
that the light placed on the veranda had gone out sometime before. Be-
cause I had had a light placed behind something within, I had not been
able to tell that the light out there had gone out. At the thought that he
might have been able to see at least my shadow, I was appalled, and said,
"That scoundrel, he didn't even tell me that the light had gone out." One
of his attendants replied, "It was nothing to us," and then left.
Having come once, now he came often. Since he simply repeated
the same thing, I responded with, "As for my position, when permission
may be granted from the place it should come, then, even if we find it
hard, we will just have to accept it, but until such time . . ."To this he
would say, "I have the requisite permission," pressing his case most vigor-
ously. Even though he pressured me with statements like, "His lordship
has even said it is to be this very month. There is supposed to be an
auspicious day after the twentieth," I could not possibly think of anything
else while the assistant director was getting ready to serve as an attendant
from his office for the Kamo Festival, and so the director was to wait until
after that business was over. Then, on the day of the Lustration Ceremony,
the assistant director happened to see a dead dog. There was nothing that
could be done about it; he had to give up serving as an attendant.
Well, so far as I was concerned, I still felt that this talk of marriage
was far too hasty, I couldn't really consider it, yet meanwhile, all we heard
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Feeling much relieved - This gives her a reprieve of four months.

Whatever happened... - In his poem, he refers to himself as the cuckoo hidden in the unohana
shrub.

Have a little patience... - The orange blossom is an emblem of the fifth month. The usual pun on
afuhi, "heartvine" and "meeting day," indicates the present time, which is just after the Kamo Festival
in the fourth month.
With this reply, the direct poetic correspondence between Tonori and Michitsuna's Mother
begins. Thus Tonori's courtship of her daughter allows her by proxy to once again participate in the
world of poetic romance. The author's mention of Tonori's excellent hand in calligraphy is part of
her evocation of that world.

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from the director through the assistant director was, "Please press my case
with your mother. Tell her I do have his lordship's permission." So I wrote
to her father, "Why have you been speaking to the director in that fashion?
As he has become most annoying, I must have something from you to
show him. Please send a letter." He responded with this: "Although I actu-
ally had thought to let the marriage take place in the fourth month, what
with all the business of the assistant director's attendance at the festival, it
ended up getting postponed. If the director has no change of heart, let us
think about having it take place around the eighth month." Feeling much
relieved, I sent this to the director, "This would seem to be his lordship's
intention. Indeed, this is why I kept saying that his hasty fixing of a date
was not really certain." Without sending a response, in a little while he
came in person. When he sent in the message, "I have come to say some
very provoking things," I had someone say to him, "What is wrong? You
appear to be in a most threatening mood. Such being the case, come in."
He said, "Well, well, it seems my waiting in attendance like this day and
night has actually delayed things." He did not come in but rather stayed
outside talking with the assistant director. Getting up to leave, he asked
for an inkstone and some paper. When these were sent out, he wrote
something and, folding over both margins, sent it in to me. When I looked
at it, this is what was written:
chigiri okishi Whatever happened
udzuki ha ika ni to the fourth month and our pledge?
hototogisu This doleful cuckoo
waga mi no uki ni must leave the shade of flowers
kake hanare tsutsu becoming more and more estranged.

"What am I to do? I am so disheartened. 'Til this evening." The hand it was

written in, too, would have put anyone to shame. I wrote this response
and quickly sent it after him:
naho shinobe Have a little patience.
hana tachibana no Is there not a branch of
eda ya naki orange blossom for you
afuhi suginuru even though the fourth month and
udzuki naredomo the heartvine's day of meeting is past.

Then, on the night of the twenty-second, which he had already

chosen from before as the night of first meeting, he visited. This time,
unlike other times, he was very serious, and the way he applied pressure
was quite unbearable. He said, "His lordship's permission no longer opens
the way. It seems so far off, please have some consideration for me; won't
you let me see her?" "What must you be thinking of to talk in such a way?

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/ will at least do one or the other - That is, to see the daughter or the stepmother. Here, for the first
time, there is a hint that Tonori may have been paying court to the daughter with the thought in the
back of his mind that an affair with the stepmother might be interesting. He must at least have been
curious to see her, since later records credit her with having been one of the great beauties of the
era.
How awfully late it seems to have become - Her sangfroid in the situation is impressive. She shows no
alarm and so calms the situation.

Your calendar has been rolled up - That is, "you have no more time for me."

The cuckoo bird went... - The poem contains a pun on tofu, "to visit" and "to fly.'

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You speak of marriage as far off; her becoming a woman is also far off."
To which he said, "No matter how young she is, she talks surely." "Such is
not the case with her. Unfortunately, she is still so young she hates to
meet strangers." Even though I spoke like this, he did not seem to under-
stand and just looked miserable. "I am so wrought up, my heart is pound-
ing in my chest. I'll leave only after I have had the satisfaction of waiting
on you within your curtains. I will at least do one or the other. Please have
some consideration for me." Saying this, he placed his hand on my cur-
tain, and although it was most alarming, I pretended not to have heard
him and said nonchalantly, "How awfully late it seems to have become. It
is usually nighttime when one feels that way." He responded, "I really had
no idea you could be as cold as this. I suppose I should be feeling aw-
fully, terribly, endlessly happy that you allow me to visit at all. Your calen-
dar has been rolled up. I have spoken badly to you and apologize for
giving you offense," and so on. He looked so utterly depressed; with warm
feeling for him, I said, "You see it was an unreasonable request. Just keep
your mind off this sort of thing as you do during the day when you are
serving at the palace or at court." He replied in such a miserable way,
"Nothing could be more painful than to try and feel that way." There was
really nothing I could say that had any effect. Since I was at a loss how to
respond, in the end, I said nothing, whereupon he said, "How sorry I am.
You seem to be out of temper. If that's how it is, unless you say something
now, I will not speak further. I am so sorry." Snapping his fingers in irrita-
tion, he said nothing for awhile and then got up to leave. As he was
departing, I sent someone to offer him a torch. When I heard, "He has
already left without taking one," I felt very sorry for him, and the next
morning early, I wrote this and sent it to him. "It is unfortunate that you
seem to have gone back without even asking for a torch; I hope you
returned home safely:
hototogisu The cuckoo bird went
mata tofu beku mo not even saying, "I will fly
katarahade this way again—"
kaheru yamadji no the road home through the mountains
ko kura kari kemu among trees, black it must have been.

It pained me to think of you thus." The message was simply delivered

without expecting a reply. However, just this came from him:
tofu kowe wa Although it says not
itsu to nakeredo when it will call again,
hototogisu the cuckoo bird
akete kuyashiki feels such remorse at dawn,
mono wo koso omohe Oh, how he broods on things.

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I know nothing of mountain peaks, but if you should want a guide for the valley - This seems to be an
expression based on a tag of poetry, but no source poem has been positively identified. The consensus in
interpretation is that losing oneself on a mountain peak is a euphemism for leaving the world, by either
becoming a monk or dying, while going through the valley means staying in the world. She is offering to
be his guide through the difficult time on his way to marriage, if he does not lose heart.

interestingly drawn women's pictures - These are pictures intended for women; that is, they are
suitable pictures for illustrating romances. Drawing such pictures was a popular pastime among
women.

What would I do if. . . — Lovely variation on the theme of poem no. 1093 in Kokinshu:
if ever I should
change my mind and banish you
from my heart then would
great ocean waves rise and cross
Suenomatsu Mountain (Rodd, Kokinshu, 372)

Suenomatsu means "pines of Sue." The author imagines that the woman in the picture is looking at
the pines on the miniature island and considering the possibility of her lover's infidelity. The poem
also makes the perennial pun on matsu, "to pine, to wait" and "pine tree."

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"I am terribly sorry."

Even though he was sulking like that, he arrived at the gate the
next day, calling out, "Assistant director, I have a round of visits to make
today, and I came to see if you wanted to go into the office together." As
before, he requested an inkstone and it was sent out with some paper.
When I looked at what he sent back, it was written in a strange shaking
hand, "What sins must I have committed in a former lifetime to become
one so obstructed like this. Things just seem to get stranger, and to have
what I want to have happen seems more difficult. But I would not speak
of these things further. Soon I shall just lose myself on a mountain peak
somewhere," and so on; he wrote profusely. I wrote this as a reply and
sent it out, "How frightening. Why would you speak like this? The one to
whom you should speak your resentment is not me. I know nothing of
mountain peaks, but if you should want a guide for the valley . . . " Where-
upon, he and the assistant director went off in the same carriage. The
assistant director came back later riding on a beautiful horse that he had
been given.
That evening, the director came again, "When I think of how the
other night I said things for which I am sorry, I feel sorry all over again.
Tonight, having turned over a new leaf, I have come intending to say,
Trom now on, I shall simply abide by the term his lordship has decreed.'
You said to me, 'Do not die,' but I feel that even were I blessed with a
thousand years of longevity, the pain I'm feeling now would make me
want to give it up. When I bend my fingers to count, three fingers mark
the months that I shall somehow spend lying down and waking. When I
think of the long distance ahead, all those days and months when I shall
have nothing to do, I wonder if you wouldn't allow me just to be your
night watchman and live on the veranda." Since he spoke like this so
utterly at odds with my intentions, I replied accordingly, and tonight he
returned quickly.
The assistant director is at the beck and call of the director, day or
night; he is always over there. As there were some interestingly drawn
women's pictures over there, he took them, put them in his pocket and
brought them home. I looked at them and saw that one was the painting
of a woman leaning on the balustrade of a building called a fishing pavil-
ion, gazing at the pines on the little islands in the middle of the pond. I
wrote this on a strip of paper and stuck it to the painting:
ika ni semu What would I do if
ike no midzu nami the waves of the pond water
sawagite ha were all stirred up
kokoro no uchi no and swept over the pines
matsu ni kakaraba of pining within my heart.
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Like the spider's thread . . . — We have seen the spider's thread used as a metaphor for love letters
before in poems between Michitsuna and the Yamato woman. The spider thread image is intro-
duced with the pillow world, sasagani ni. There is quite a network of puns in this poem, the i of
idzuko, "where," means "thread"; kakute means "spinning hand," "writing hand," and "thus." With
the meaning of "spinning hand" in mind, amata, "many," suggests the many legs of the spider.

The assistant director took this back to the director- Both poems above can be interpreted as hidden
admonitions to the director. "My daughter fears you will be a fickle husband," and "You are probably
the type of suitor who scatters your love letters everywhere." But as Shinozuka points out, the author
takes such pleasure in this correspondence, it is not simply a case of wanting to discourage him
(Kagero nikki no kokoro to hydgen, 721).

mill he be entertained so lavishly over at your place all the while . . . - Kaneie displays something
close to jealousy here. He seems to have intuited that Michitsuna's Mother is enjoying the communi-
cation with Tonori.

"The cuckoos pass right through the house"- Apparently a proverb referring to the strident quality of
the cuckoo's voice. Since she mentions worrying under a restless sky and such, people seem to have
thought an excess of cuckoo's calls somehow ominous.

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On another picture, where a bachelor leaves off writing letters and with
his chin resting on his hands seems sunk in brooding thoughts, I wrote
this:
sasagani ni Like the spider's thread
idzuko to mo naku cast upon the blowing wind,
fuku kaze ha not sure where it will land,
kakute amata ni thus he sits and writes so much,
nari zo sura shimo wondering what will become of it.

The assistant director took this back to the director.

Thus the same kinds of things went on; as the director was always
pressing me to plead his case with his lordship, I thought to get a re-
sponse from him that I could display, so I wrote to him, "Since he just
goes on like this, I am put in a difficult position to make an answer." He
sent this. "The date has been set as we said; I wonder why he carries on
like that? What the world seems to be gossiping about is, will he be enter-
tained so lavishly over at your place all the while he waits for the eighth
month? It just makes me want to sigh." For a while I just thought he was
joking, but he made comments like that so often I found it odd and so sent
this to him. "It is not I who am urging him on. I have found him most
annoying and have told him, It is not just to me you should plead,' but he
carries on all the more; it is really too much for me. And what do you
mean by those insinuations?
ima sara ni Now, more than ever,
ikanaru koma ka what colt would think to draw near
natsuku beki this abandoned grass,
susamenu kusa to left to whither in the fields,
nogare ni shi mi wo such a one am I.

How horrid of you."

The director kept demanding and pressing his suit while it was
still the fourth month. These days more than in usual years, the cuckoos
have been making a racket with their cries. As it is in the old saying, "The
cuckoos pass right through the house." In the margin of a letter to the
director, I wrote this, "As never before, the cuckoos make such a din with
their visits, one worries under a restless sky." Since I wrote with a genuine
sense of anxiety, the director did not respond with anything improper.
The assistant director was going to borrow a horse feeding trough
from the director "for a while." In the margin of one of the usual letters
from the director, he wrote, "Please tell the assistant director, If things
don't go the way I want, there will be no trough either.'" In my response
as well, I said, "As for the horse trough, since it seems to come full of

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to lay the trough in the right place - There is just a touch of innuendo in the verb "to lay.'

go on a pilgrimage to a certain place - She does not name it, but because she writes three poems,
Zenshu commentators suggest it may be the Fushimi Inari Shrine again (Zenshu, 373).

/ wonder if the goddess could divine what frame of mind I was in - Zenshu commentators, among
others, remark here that she is again looking at herself objectively (Zenshu, 374). She has already
basically accepted that her marriage as an intimate relationship with Kaneie is over, yet she writes
these poems wistfully pleading for a renewal of their relationship. Perhaps she is wondering at the
workings of her own heart as much as she is wondering about the perceptive powers of the
goddess.

single-minded as this singlet - Pun on hitohe, "single-minded" and "singlet."

the fifth - The fifth day of the fifth month and therefore the Tango Festival, time to put up the iris
decorations.
my brother — Again we assume this is Masayoshi.

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obligations, perhaps it is more trouble than it is worth." He responded to

this right away, "Certainly the obligation is mine; I shall come tomorrow
or the next day to lay the trough in the right place."
Thus the fourth month ended. Perhaps he was discouraged now
that the marriage was such a long way in the distance; the fifth month
began with no word from him. On the fourth, just when it was raining
heavily, this came addressed to the assistant director, "If the rain lets up,
please drop by. There is something I have to tell you. Please tell your
mother, 'Since you are well aware of the fate that has befallen me, I will
say no more.'" Calling upon the assistant director just like that all the time
wasn't for anything important, he just wanted to correspond for the fun of it.
Today, despite the rain, I intended to go on a pilgrimage to a
certain place with someone from the household. As we were about to set
out not letting the rain stop us, one of my attendants came up beside me
and whispered, "For the goddess, they say it is good to make offerings of
clothing one has sewn. Please do so." "Well, let's give it a try," I said and
sewed three doll's outfits out of closely woven plain silk. On the under
layer of each, I wrote these poems; I wonder if the goddess could divine
what frame of mind I was in:
shirotahe no This robe of pure white
koromo ha kami ni like mulberry, to the goddess,
yudzuritemu I offer it up,
hedatenu naka ni may our relations return
kaeshi nasu beku to the closeness of before.

And:
karagoromo Chinese robe spouse,
nare ni shi tsuma wo well-worn and familiar,
uchi kaheshi now turned inside out,
waga shitagahi ni oh, for a way to have things
nasu yoshi mogana go again as I would have them.

And:

natsu goromo This robe of summer

tatsu ya to zo miru I cut looking for a sign,
chihayaburu single-minded as
kami wo hitohe ni this singlet, I place my trust
tanomu mi nareba in the awe-inspiring gods.

We returned at dark.

The next day was the fifth. At dawn, my brother comes visiting.
"Hey, why are you so late with your iris decorations today? You know it's
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herb charms - It was traditional to weave herbs, ribbons, andflowerstogether into charms for good
luck.

"Visiting mountain cuckoo . . ."- Reference to a poem in Kokin rokujo:

From foot wearying
far mountains, visiting cuckoo,
is it for today
the festival, that you trip among
the irises and sing. (Zenshu, 375)

Back and forth, no end... - There is a pun in this poem. Waga naka is "our relationship, friend-
ship," which pivots into Nakagawa, the name of the river.

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best to get them up by evening." When he says this, the servants awake,
and when they could be heard thatching the irises, all the other attendants
get up. As they are putting up the lattices, I say, "Leave them down for a
while. Let's really think about how we are going to cover them. We can
get a good look at them that way." But as everybody was already up and
busy at it, they do the thatching in all sorts of different ways. The wind
that swept away yesterday's clouds is still blowing, so the fragrance of the
irises quickly fills the house, so lovely. The assistant director and I sit out
on the veranda together, and have all kinds of herbs and plants gathered.
"Let's make some really unusual herb charms," we say, and as we sit with
our fingers busily occupied, there is a commotion about a flock of cuck-
oos on the outside roof. Cuckoos themselves are hardly worthy of note
these days, and their voices are loud, yet, right now, hearing two or three
voices together as they soar into the sky, the pleasure of it thrills me to the
core and there is not a one of us who does not intone aloud the old poem,
"Visiting mountain cuckoo, is it for today the festival?" The whole house-
hold seemed to enjoy making merry. When the sun is up a little, the
director comes to say to the assistant director, "If I go to see the archery
on horseback contest, will you come with me?" The assistant director says,
"I will attend upon you." When someone came to urge them, "Hurry up,
it's late," they left.
The next day early in the morning, the director does not come
himself but sends this to the assistant director, "You were all having so
much fun yesterday reciting poems, that I did not get a chance to say
anything. As for the cold treatment your mother gives me, there is nothing
I can say. Nonetheless, I would like to see my relations with your sister
come to some fruition while I am alive. If I were to die, no matter how
much I cared for her, what would it matter? All right, all right, these are
just my private thoughts." Then about two days later, early in the morning,
this arrives for the assistant director, "Would it be good for you to come
here? Or shall I go there?" I say, "You go to him quickly. What is there for
him to do here?" and send him off. He came back later saying as usual, "It
was really nothing important." Now, about two days later, the director
writes just this, "There is something I must tell you. Please come." It was
still early in the morning. The assistant director sends the reply, "I will be
there shortly." But then in a while, it began to rain heavily. It kept up right
until evening, so he was unable to go. "What a shame," the assistant direc-
tor said, "Well, I had better at least send him word." So he wrote this, "I
am sorry to have been stopped by this terrible rain, as sorry as this"—
taezu yuku Back and forth, no end
waga nakagaha no to our friendship until the

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 BOOK THREE

speaking of your threefingers - Earlier he had spoken of bending fingers to count the three months
he must wait before marrying.

"I suppose you'll get the autumn geese to cry as well" - Justflippingthe calendar to the eighth month
will not work, he will have to get the seasonal signals to cooperate too.

this letter - The letter from Kaneie where he suggests that people are gossiping about a flirtation
between Tonori and the author.

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 BOOK THREE

midzu masari Nakagawa rose,

wochinaru hito zo and I am left longing for
kohishikarikeru you on the other side.

The reply:
awanu se wo If we both languish
kohishi to omohaba out of love, unable to meet,
omofu dochi let us both languish
hemu nakagaha ni together, let me live there
ware wo sumase yo beside the Nakagawa.

While they were exchanging such messages, night arrived, the rain lifted,
and the director came himself. He just goes on in the same vein about his
anxieties, so I say, "Well, speaking of your three fingers, the time will pass
just like that before you have time to bend even one." "Well, I wonder.
Since there are things I cannot depend on, I get disheartened, and I may
yet be made to bend my fingers for a further extension. The way I feel
right now, I'd like somehow to get his lordship's calendar and cut out the
middle section and then paste it together again." This struck us as a charming
notion, so I respond with, "I suppose you'll get the autumn geese to cry as
well," and we break into hearty laughter. Then I remember the remark
about the lavish treatment the director has been getting here, "But seri-
ously, this matter is not up to me alone, and I find it very difficult to press
matters with his lordship," to which he replies, "What is going on here?
Why is it difficult, tell me." As he pressed me again and again, I wanted
somehow to let him know my situation, yet it was difficult for me to speak
about it myself. So I said, "Even though I feel embarrassed to have you see
this letter, it is just that seeing this, perhaps you will understand how
difficult it is for me to speak to his lordship as you would wish." Tearing
off the portion of the letter that I did not want him to see, I passed it out
to him. He slipped out onto the veranda and putting it to the light of the
hazy moon, looked at it for a long time and then brought it back in. "The
writing got confused with the color of the paper; I could not make it out at
all. I will come again during the day to have a look at it," he said and
pushed it under my curtain. When I said, "I will tear it up now," he said,
"No, please keep it for a while." There was not a trace in his facial expres-
sion that he had actually seen what was written there. He simply said,
"Now, since the event over which I have fretted so much is getting close,
that people would say I should refrain from coming here makes me utterly
forlorn." From time to time, he was saying something I couldn't quite
hear; he seemed to be chanting a poem. "Tomorrow morning, I have some-
thing I must attend to at the office. I will come directly here first to speak
to the assistant director." With that, he left.
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 BOOK THREE

the part of the letter where I had written in response the poem, "What colt" - Presumably she had
written out her response poem onto Kaneie's letter before drafting the clean copy. This was com-
mon practice when paper was so precious.

someone was under ritualprohibition here — She has suspected her husband of using ritual prohibi-
tions of one sort or another to excuse delays or lack of communication, and here she is doing the
same.
'what heart is hidden there' —Allusion to poem no. 720 in KokinshU:
Endlessly flowing
the Asuka River, were
it ever to stop
what heart is hidden there is
what people would wonder.

You may be thinking that the color of that letter might still be difficult to make out even in the light of
day . . . - But come and see for yourself, is the invitation.

the cuckoo in his misery is wasting into a shadow in the unohana — Pun on mi no u, "one's misery"
pivoting into unohana.

This seems indeed to be your response foryesterday -He has apologized for not responding promptly,
but with this remark she assures him that he has made an appropriate reply for yesterday's poem.

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 B O O K THREE

The next day when I looked at the letter by my pillow that I

showed him last night, I saw that I had torn off a different piece than I had
thought, and not only that, but another piece had also been torn away. As
I was thinking how very strange this was, I realized that he must have torn
and taken away the part of the letter where I had written in response the
poem, "What colt." Still early in the morning, a message arrived for the
assistant director. "I seem to have caught a bad cold and am unable to
come as I said I would. Please come here around midday." The assistant
director, thinking that as usual it was not anything of real importance, had
not yet gone there when this letter arrived from him for me. It said, "I
intended to speak with you even sooner than usual but was unavoidably
detained. The letter of last night was so terribly hard to read. It seems it
has become very difficult for me to ask you specifically to speak to his
lordship on my behalf, but I am begging you to do your best for me as the
occasion arises. How sad it is that I have become this much of a pathetic
figure." It was written with more restraint than usual and in a splendid hand.
As for a reply, thinking it wasn't necessary every time, I didn't
send one. But then the next day, I felt sorry for him and also thought that
perhaps I had been a little childish. I wrote this, "Yesterday, someone was
under ritual prohibition here, and then it got dark, so I ended up not
sending a letter. For you, it must have been as in the old poem, 'what
heart is hidden there.' I am thinking what I could do for you as the occa-
sion arises but, as you know, I have become one for whom such chances
do not exist. You seemed so wretched at the end of your letter, truly I
understand. You may be thinking that the color of that letter might still be
difficult to make out even in the light of day." When this was delivered to
his house, it so happened that it was just as a lot of monks arrived and
there was quite a commotion; the messenger simply left the letter and
came back. The next morning while it was still early, this came from him.
"A number of men of the cloth came here yesterday and then it got late, so
your messenger returned empty-handed:
nagekitsutsu Sorrow, sorrowing,
akashi kuraseba as he lives from dawn to dusk,
hototogisu the cuckoo in his
mi no unohana no misery is wasting into
kage ni naritsutsu a shadow in the unohana.

What am I to do. Tonight, I fear I must send my regrets." My response was,

"This seems indeed to be your response for yesterday. You seem so strange":
kage ni shimo Wasting to a shadow,
nado ka naruramu how should you ever come to that,
unohana no when on the branch of
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 BOOK THREE

"Ifeel this is most foolish of me"- She is embarrassed to be carrying on this correspondence. The
source of her embarrassment is that he has seen the poem she wrote to her husband.
The governor of the Left Ward - Fujiwara Tomoto, younger brother by the same mother to Tdnori,
and younger brother by a different mother to Kaneie.

a story that certainly puts my mind at rest- Now, she need no longer worry about fending off his
advances to her adopted daughter.

what a strange heart he has - Readers are likely to concur with this opinion at this point. He had
seemed to be languishing for love of the adopted daughter, and yet all the while he must have been
paying court to another woman.

Since I make a request of you in a different respect - His expression is vague here. He seems to be
referring to still needing the services of Michitsuna.

outbreak ofsmallpox- This smallpox epidemic of 974 is recorded in historical chronicles as a major
disaster (Zenshu, 383).

Even the director, though he has lost face in the world - Of course, Michitsuna and Tonori are still
colleagues in the same office, so it is natural there would still be a connection. Nonetheless, it is
noteworthy that his friendship with the author and her son survived his outrageous behavior.

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 BOOK THREE

eda ni shinobanu unohana, you sing forth

kokoro to zo kiku your heart for all to hear.

was what I wrote, but then I crossed the upper part out and wrote in the
margin, "I feel this is most foolish of me."
In the meantime, he was informed that "The governor of the Left
Ward has passed away." Consequently, he entered a period of strict mourn-
ing, retreating often to a mountain temple. From time to time he wrote,
and so the sixth month passed.
The seventh month arrived. As I felt the eighth month growing
nearer, the one that I was caring for still seemed so young, and I was lost
in persistent thoughts of what was going to happen to her; all concerns I
might have had for myself quite vanished. It was around the twentieth of
the month. The director was being most aggressive and just at the time
when I was very conscious of him depending on me, one of my attendants
came up with this news, "It seems the director of the Right Stable has
stolen another man's wife and hidden her away. It's incredible; everybody
is talking about it." Hearing this, I thought to myself, well now, this is a
story that certainly puts my mind at rest. I had been worrying about what
I was going to say to him at the end of the month. Yet, as I think about it,
what a strange heart he has. Then, a letter arrived from him. When I looked
at it, it was as though he was responding to an inquiry from me. "Well,
what a terrible thing. I must tell you of something I did not intend to
happen; I won't be able to make my appointment in the eighth month.
Since I make a request of you in a different respect, nevertheless . . ."In
my reply, I said, "What did you mean by 'something you did not intend to
happen? However, to hear you say 'in a different respect' seems to indicate
you have not forgotten entirely about us, which brings me some relief."

The eighth month arrived. The whole world is in a commotion

about the outbreak of smallpox. Around the twentieth of the month, it
reached our neighborhood. The assistant director has come down with an
extremely severe case. There is no help for it. It is to the point that his
father, with whom all communications have ceased, should be informed,
but my feelings are in a whirl and I don't know what to do. I simply have
to tell him, I think, but when I inform him by letter, his reply is very curt.
And after that, he only had a servant inquire by word of mouth how the
assistant director was. When I see that even people of whom it would not
normally be expected are coming to pay him a visit, the feelings I have are
accompanied by agitation. Even the director, though he has lost face in
the world, comes often to visit. On the first of the ninth month, he recov-
ered. Rain that began to fall around the twentieth of the eighth month has
361
 BOOK THREE

two lesser counselors, sons of the late Ichijo grand minister - These are the sons of Kaneie's elder
brother, Koremasa, who had only died himself the year before.

the woman whom he had sent letters to before - The Yamato woman.

when we bumped before, it was also like this- There is a pun on kakaru, "to bump" and "like this."

ditto marks - She emphasizes her rejection of his advances with ditto marks.

that place I hold taboo - Omi's place.

a child has been born — This is Omi's daughter Suishi, who later becomes consort to an emperor.

my brother — Presumably Masayoshi. From the fact that her brother seems to be living at the house
to which she has removed temporarily, it may be assumed that she is at her father's residence.

362
 BOOK THREE

not let up this month either; it is dark with falling rain. Since it looks as
though the Nakagawa and the Kamo River are about to flow together, I
feel that at any moment even we might be swept away. The world has
become a sad place indeed. We have not been able to gather in the har-
vest from the rice fields in front of the gate yet. In the rare breaks in the
rainfall, to make a little bit of toasted rice, this is about all that has been
done.
The smallpox spreads even further in the world; the two lesser
counselors, sons of the late Ichijo grand minister, die on the same day, the
sixteenth of this month; it is talked about everywhere. It is unbearable to
imagine. Hearing about this, thinking of the one who has recovered, I feel
awed. Even though the assistant director has recovered, because he has
nothing in particular to do, he is not yet going out. Around the twentieth
comes an ever-so-rare letter from him. "How is the assistant director? Ev-
eryone here has recovered and I was wondering why I had not seen him.
I have been worried. Since you seem to feel a great dislike for me, even
though I have not intended to estrange you, somehow the time has passed
with our being at odds with each other. Although I have not forgotten you
. . ."It was written with concern; I found it strange. In my reply, I wrote
only about the one he had asked after, but then in the margin added,
"Indeed, 'forgotten,' that is how it seems."
The first day that the assistant director went out, he met by chance
on the road the carriage of the woman whom he had sent letters to before
and somehow the axle hubs of their carriages knocked together and caused
trouble. The next day, he sent this, "Yesterday evening, I did not know it
was you. However—"
toshi tsuki no The months and years
meguri kuruma no have rolled round into the wheels
wa ni narite of our carriages,
omoheba kakaru I remember, when we bumped
wori mo arikeri before, it was also like this.

So this was sent. She took it in, looked at it, adding in the margin of the
letter in a very ordinary hand, "No it wasn't, not for me," with a lot of ditto
marks, and it was returned that way; how very like that person.
Sometime after the twentieth, when I had moved temporarily to
another residence due to a ritual transgression, I heard that at that place I
hold taboo a child has been born. Although one would think I would feel
hate upon hearing such a thing and not be able to let it be, I remained
unconcerned. Then, in the evening, when the torches had been lit and I
was just about to eat, my brother drew near and took out from his pocket
a letter on thick white mulberry paper that had been tied into a knot and
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 BOOK THREE

those syllables from the poem I had regretted sending my husband - "What colt" is from her poem
where she compared herself to withered grass. Clearly the person who has written this poem has
seen her poem.
his lordship Horikawa — This is Kaneie's elder brother, Kanemichi. It is interesting that she guesses
immediately who the poem is from. The relations between Kanemichi and Kaneie were antagonistic
around this time, and Kanemichi was doing everything in his power to frustrate the career of Kaneie.
This is recorded candidly in Eiga monogatari, a contemporary history (McCullough and McCullough,
A Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 112—15). One is tempted to speculate why Kanemichi would send a
flirtatious poem to the author at this time. Was he looking for a way to annoy his brother in a
personal way by courting his former wife? Or was he genuinely interested in the author and feeling
some sympathy for her neglect by Kaneie? Or was he simply desiring one of her poems for a literary
memento?
my rather old-fashionedfather - Her father has finished his last assignment as a provincial governor
and is back living in the capital, looking for a new post. His appearance in this sequence suggests
strongly that the author is staying at his residence.
Write a reply quickly, and it must be sent back with his lordship's servant - While her attitude toward
this overture from Kanemichi is one of amusement, her father is very eager. He cannot afford to pass
up, even through the proxy of his daughter, an opportunity for communication with the great and
powerful.

a long time had passed without an answer, Ifound it most amusing - It is humorous to think of
Kanemichi cudgeling his brains trying to frame a suitably witty response. Timing was everything
with this kind of correspondence; once a certain amount of time had passed, he would no longer be
able to send a response.
Special SecondaryKamo Festival -The official Kamo Festival was held in the fourth month. This was
a special irregular festival held this year in the autumn, actually the twenty-third day of the eleventh
month.

364
 BOOK THREE

attached to a spray of withered pampas grass. When I say, "My, how odd.
Whose is this?" he says, "Just have a look at it." I open it, and looking at it
in the lamplight, see that it is in a hand resembling that of the person I am
estranged from. This is what was written. "What ever happened to 'What
colt?"
shimokare no Frost withered myself,
kusa no yukari zo the bond I feel with the dry grass
aware naru is sad and moving,
koma gaherite mo becoming a colt again
natsukete shigana I would want to draw near you.

"Ah, what a pity." Since it contained those syllables from the poem I had
regretted sending to my husband, it was so strange. When I asked, "What
is this?" and "Did it come from his lordship Horikawa?" I was told, "Yes, it
is a letter from the grand minister. One of his attendants came with it and
when told, 'Her ladyship is not in,' said, 'Please make sure she receives
this,' and gave it to me." Although I thought and thought, it was so strange;
I could not figure out how he could have heard of that poem. When I
talked this over with others, my rather old-fashioned father, hearing of it,
admonished me, "This is a very serious matter. Write a reply quickly, and
it must be sent back with his lordship's servant." Well, I did not intend to
write such a silly poem, but it was just tossed off:
sasa wakeba Parting scrub bamboo,
are koso masame you approach but the grass is
kusa kare no more withered and distant,
koma natsuku beki is it really beneath these trees
mori no shita ka ha that a colt would want to draw near?

This is what I wrote and sent. I heard later from an attendant, "His lord-
ship intended to write a reply to your poem, but after getting it half done,
he said, 'I haven't quite got an ending yet,'" and since indeed a long time
had passed without an answer, I found it most amusing.
The Special Secondary Kamo Festival is to be held day after to-
morrow. At the last minute, the assistant director has been invited to be
one of the dancers. This prompted his father to send a rare letter. "How
are things going with your preparation?" it said, and along with it he sent
all the things that would be needed for the performance. On the day of
the rehearsal, this message came. "Since this is a period when I am on
leave from my duties due to a defilement, I shall not be able to go to court
for the rehearsal. I am thinking to come and get the assistant director
ready to go from your place, but since you may not even let me in the
door, I have been wondering what to do and feeling most uneasy." My

365
Procession entering Kamo Shrine. This photograph and the next three were taken dur-
ing the Aoi (Kamo) Festival of April 1996. The contemporary festival is still celebrated in
Heian-period costume. These images are presented to help readers visualize the scene
of the Special Secondary Kamo Festival held in early winter of 974, which is described
by Michitsuna's Mother on p. 371.
Man in Heian costume leading a horse in the Kamo Festival procession. The provision
of horses for such ceremonial occasions as this would have been part of Michitsuna's
responsibilities in his post as assistant director of the Right Stable (see pp. 332-33).
Kamo Festival musicians (see p. 371).
Kamo Festival musicians during a break in the proceedings. "My old-fashioned father,
who was not permitted to be in the audience, was mingling among the musicians with
blossom-festooned caps" (p. 371).
 B O O K THREE

Sleeves of purple brocade layered over lustrous red silk spilled out - Women often let their sleeves trail
out from under carriage blinds to attract notice.
a man ofthe sixth rank - The costumes of courtiers were coded to their rank. This man would have
been wearing green, the color of the sixth rank.

men in costumes of red and black - Vermilion was the color of the fifth rank. The designation of
color to rank changed several times during the Heian period, so it is difficult to know just which rank
black represented at this time, but it is likely it was for courtiers above the fourth rank.
there are some men there we have seen before - This remark by one of her attendants makes it clear
that it is Kaneie in the carriage.
Things had gotten underway a little earlier than usual - What she goes on to describe is not the
parade proper but a rest stop for the participants.

the one I care deeply about - Her son, Michitsuna.

My old-fashioned father, who was not permitted to be in the audience, was mingling among the
musicians - Zenshu commentators speculate that since her father was "out of office" at the time, he
would not be permitted to view the event alongside the grand nobility. Mingling with the musicians
gave him the opportunity to be a spectator (Zenshu, 359). He would not want to miss the chance to
see his grandson in full regalia.
sought out in the crowd and offered a cup ofsake - Presumably Kaneie has ordered that this special
mark of respect be made to him.
just for that moment in time, I seemed tofeel content- It is an unusual occasion in that the three most
important men in her life are all gathered in one place around her. Kaneie is there with another
woman, but she is no longer distressed by that. She basks in the reflected glory of her son. She
appreciates the small mark of respect made to her father. Zenshu commentators remark that this
scene can actually be regarded as the final scene in the diary (Zenshu, 389) because what follows is
a sort of coda of love poems between Michitsuna and a new woman. This final scene provides the
opportunity for the author to look with serenity on the men who have been important in her life.
The lady camefrom around the area ofYatsuhashi- Yatsuhashi, "Eight Bridges," is a place in Aichi
Prefecture close to present-day Nagoya, made famous in the Tales oflse by a poem on irises that
Ariwara Narihira composed there on his way to the east. However, it was clearly too far away for the
kind of correspondence that will be described, so it is assumed there was a place called Yatsuhashi
within the Kyoto city limits, or, like the Yamato woman, the Yatsuhashi woman has some familial
connection with Yatsuhashi.

Kazuraki God - The god that Michitsuna has invoked before in poetry who is famous for speaking
only one word (see p. 317).

On the way back here... - At Yatsuhashi in Aichi Prefecture, the river fans out into many channels,
evoking the image of a spider's web, hence the connection with spiders. There is a pun on fumi,
"footsteps" and "letters."

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 BOOK THREE

heart felt crushed, now that things had come to such a pass, what could
be done? Thoughts ran rampant. "Quickly change into your costume and
go over there," I said and set about busily getting the assistant director
ready to go, but the moment he was out the door, I burst into tears. His
father practiced the dance with him and then sent him off to court.
On the day of the festival, no matter what, I had to go and have a
look. As I set out, I noticed on the north side of the street an unremark-
able palmwork carriage parked with its blinds, both in back and in front,
pulled down. Sleeves of purple brocade layered over lustrous red silk
spilled out from underneath the bamboo blind in front. Just as I was look-
ing at this thinking it must be a woman's carriage, a man of the sixth rank
with a sword at his waist approached from the gate of the house behind
the carriage and with great dignity knelt with one knee on the ground to
say something. With some surprise, when I looked more closely, I could
see that beside the carnage that man had come out of, there were all sorts
of men in costumes of red and black standing there all crammed together,
so many I couldn't count them all. One of my attendants said, "If one
looks carefully, there are some men there we have seen before." Things
had got underway a little earlier than usual. The high nobility and their
followers as well, all seemed to notice him; they stopped and parked their
carriages in the same place with the fronts of their carriages facing his. As
for the one I care deeply about, he and his attendants too looked magnifi-
cent even though they had had little time to prepare. When the high nobil-
ity offered him snacks with their own hands and spoke to him, I felt
proud. My old-fashioned father, who was not permitted to be in the audi-
ence, was mingling among the musicians with blossom-festooned caps.
When he was sought out in the crowd and offered a cup of sake brought
forth from the other house, just for that moment in time, I seemed to feel
content.
Now then, a person who liked to meddle in things said to the
assistant director, "Are you going to stay a bachelor like this forever?" She
had a woman for him to court. The lady came from around the area of
Yatsuhashi. His first poem to her was:
kadzuraki ya Kazuraki God,
kami yo no shirushi if his tokens be still potent
fukakaraba as in the Divine Age,
tada hito koto ni then with this one word only
uchi mo tokenamu would your heart melt and yield to me.

Apparently, there was no answer this time:

kaheru sa no On the way back here,
kumo de ha idzuko where did the spider's hand go?
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 BOOK THREE

even were your footsteps seen ... -The pun on fumi, "footsteps" and "letters," is invoked again. The
sense is, "Even if your letter were read, what could you possibly expect?"

Once settingfoot has begun - Again through the pun on fumi, "letter," is understood, "Once we have
started to exchange letters, I will depend on that to get us somewhere."

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 BOOK THREE

yatsuhashi no At Yatsuhashi,
fumi mite kemu to I depended on my footsteps
tanomu kahi naku. being seen—to no avail.

There was a reply this time:

kayofu beki Since Yatsuhashi
michi ni mo aranu is not a road upon which
yatsuhashi wo you will go to and fro,
fumi miteki to mo even were your footsteps seen,
nani ni tanomuran on what were you depending?

This had been written by an attendant with a fine hand. Again from here,
he sent:
nani ka sono What? Why should it be
kayohamu michi no so difficult that path I
katakaramu would take to and fro?
fumi hajimetaru Once setting foot has begun,
ato wo tanomeba I will depend on the track made.

Again, there was a response:

tadzunu tomo Even if you look for me,
kahi ya nakaramu it will be to no avail,
ohozora no in the vast sky,
kumodji wa kayofu traveling the path of clouds,
ato ha kamo araji no track is ever left behind.

With a look of determination, not to be beaten, he replied:

ohozora mo In the vast sky,
kumo no kakehashi if there were no cloud ladders,
naku ha koso in vain, it would be
kayofu hakanaki to think of going to and fro,
nageki wo mo seme then, indeed, would I lament.

Her reply:
fumi miredo So you would try to
kumo no kakehashi tread the ladder in the clouds,
aya fushi to you don't even know
omohi shirazu mo how fraught with danger it is,
tanomu naru kana and thus you would depend on it.

And he wrote back:

naho woramu Like this I shall stay
kokoro tanomoshi with a heart ever hopeful,

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 BOOK THREE

Sleeves spread on one side alone-When people slept alone, they ranged their sleeves neatly on one
side.

she sent back a branch of the soba tree with only, "I have seen it" - It is winter, so the branch of the
soba tree will have no leaves and be only a branch, in Japanese, miki, which is homophonous with
miki, "I have seen." In further complication, the verb sobamu, which can be conjugated in the past
as sobamiki, means "to look askance" or "to look away." So her cryptic message could be construed,
"I saw your letter and I am not interested."
are things so bad between us, we have to look away? — By recycling the vocabulary of her code, soba,
"the soba tree," sobamu, "to look away," and miki, "branch" and "I have seen," he indicates that he
understood her message.

Since I am a pine... - She incorporates another meaning of soba, "steep cliff," into her poem. While
she is saying that her color is eternal green, it is also like saying, my feelings will never change
toward you. Given that the feelings she has expressed this far have not been positive, she is not
being encouraging.

seasonaljuncture-This is setsubun, the day on which spring began in the solar calendar. Due to the
slip between the solar and lunar calendars, this year spring is arriving before the year of the lunar
calendar has ended.
the directional taboo — It was traditional to spend the night before the seasonal juncture in a house
other than one's own. Of course, his invitation is rhetorical since virtually never did the woman visit
the man's home.
that the longings in my heart would clear within the year, just as spring comes now - There is a pun
on haru, "to clear" and "spring."

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ashi tadzu no do I not possess

kumodji orikuru the wings with which the marsh cranes
tsubasa ya ha naki fly the cloud paths and descend?

This time, with the excuse, "It's dark," she stopped writing.

The twelfth month arrived; he wrote again:

katashiki shi Sleeves spread on one side
toshi ha furedomo alone, thus have I slept as
sagoromo no the years passed by,
namida ni shimuru yet never have my night robes
toki ha nakariki been so soaked with tears as now.

Her servants said, "She has gone out," so there was no answer. The next
day, when he sent someone to ask for a response, she sent back a branch
of the soba tree with only, "I have seen it." Right away, he wrote back:
waga naka ha It makes me wonder,
soba minuru ka to are things so bad between us,
omofu made we have to look away?
miki to bakari mo Is that what you meant to say
keshikibamu kana with only, "I have seen it?"

Her reply:
amagumo no Since I am a pine
yama no harukeki growing on the far mountains
matsu nareba where clouds meet the sky,
sobameru iro ha my color on the high cliff
tokiha narikeri is ever eternal green.

As the year drew to a close and the seasonal juncture arrived, he sent
word to her, "You are welcome to observe the directional taboo by com-
ing here":
ito semete Somehow at least this,
omofu kokoro wo that the longings in my heart
toshi no uchi ni would clear within
haru kuru koto mo the year, just as spring comes now,
shirase shigana would that I could let you know.

There was no reply. It seems he tried again, "Really, if only for a little
while, pass some time here":
kahi nakute If it be so that
toshi kure hatsuru the year has drawn to a close
mono naraba all to no avail,

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If you are pining... - Use of the perennial pun on matsu, "pine tree" and "to wait, pine," as well as
an allusion to the old Kokinshu poem about the waves engulfing the pines of Sue if the lover was
untrue.

occupied today with other business — This has been interpreted as meaning the household is prepar-
ing for the girl's marriage to someone else.

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ham ni mo awanu should we meet not in spring,

mi to mo koso nare I shall not live to meet it alone.

Again this time there was no answer. Wondering what was happening, he
heard, "There seem to be a lot of men addressing her in this way." So that
was it:
ware naranu If you are pining
hito matsu naraba for someone other than me,
matsu to ihade call not yourself "pine,"
itaku na koshi so do not cause the white waves of
okitsu shiranami the deep sea to engulf us.

Her reply:
koshi mo sezu Neither beckoning
kosazu mo arazu to be engulfed nor avoiding it,
nami yose no this beach upon which
hama ha kaketsutsu the waves approach and break
toshi wo koso fure passes the year favoring none.

As the end of the year approached:

samo koso ha So that's how it is,
nami no kokoro ha the heart of these waves is cold,
tsurakarame yet, there is a pine
toshi sahe koyuru that would wait ever unchanging
matsu mo arikeri for a whole year to pass.

Her reply:
chitose furu For the pine tree that
matsu mo koso are lives for a thousand years,
hodo mo naku the going and coming
koete ha kaheru of one year is hardly any
hodo ya tohokaru time at all, you call it long?

This was what she wrote. It seemed strange; he wondered what was she
talking about. At a time when the wind was blowing fiercely, he sent this:
fuku kaze ni Stirred up with the
tsukete mo mono wo blowing of the wind these
omofu kana brooding, worrisome thoughts,
ohoumi no nami no within the waves of a great sea,
shidzugokoro naku my heart is not at ease.

To this was sent the response, "The person whom one would expect to
reply is occupied today with other business." This was sent in a different

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a branch with only one leaf- The presentation of this branch has been interpreted as meaning, this
will be the last message. This long string of courting poems has provided a coda to the diary, and
now it too has come to the end.
Although I regarded no one but you . . . — The phrase "one leaf," hito ha, is embedded in the line hito
hata soto ha, "no one other." The "branch of sorrow," nageki no eda, can also be understood as
"branch of a cast-off tree," since "cast-off tree" is an alternate meaning for nageki.

festival of the souls' return - The souls of those departed were thought to return on the last night of
the year.

when the knocking comes to the door- On the last night of the year, it was traditional for guardsmen
to go from house to house, banging on the door to chase away evil spirits. She has described this
custom in book one when she and Lady Joganden were staying in the same house and she had
members of her household start the noisemaking even before it got dark (see book one, p. 147). It
is somehow fitting that she ends the diary with a sound that betokens a beginning. There is never
closure to life as we live it. It is also appropriate that she ends with a metaphor of being on the edge,
both in terms of time, "at the edge of the year," and space, "at the edge of the capital." Her diary has
largely been a record of being on an emotional edge.

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hand, attached to a branch with only one leaf. He replied in turn, "How
painful," and seems to have added this poem:
waga omofu Although I regarded
hito hata soto ha no one but you as the one
minasedomo I was in love with,
nageki no eda ni on this branch of sorrow, there
yasumaranu kana is no peace for this one leaf.

This year the weather has not been particularly bad, we have only
had snow that stayed in patches on the ground about two times. While I
have been preparing the clothes for the assistant director's attendance at
New Year's festivities and then at the Presentation of the White Horses,
the end of the year has arrived. Having the clothes for tomorrow folded
and rolled up, directing the work of the attendants, when I think of it,
having lived on thus and arrived at this day, it seems somehow amazing.
Even as I watch the festival of the souls' return, the year's edge has arrived
with me deep in the usual endless thoughts. Since we are at the edge of
the capital, it is very late at night indeed when the knocking comes to the
door.

379
The Poetry of Michitsuna's Mother
 Summary

All extant manuscripts of Kagero nikki have this short collection of poetry
appended to them. Since the narrative introductions to the poems use an
honorific level of language in speaking about both Michitsuna's Mother
and Michitsuna, it is clear that the collection was not assembled and anno-
tated by either of them. When Michitsuna is mentioned, he is referred to
by the title, imperial tutor, a post he assumed in 1007, which means the
collection must have been compiled after that date. There is no indication
who did the compiling.
The collection contains poems from various times in Michitsuna's
Mother's life, but the majority of them are from the period after the diary
ends. This is one of the things that makes the collection interesting, be-
cause in it we get brief glimpses of the author's life after 974. We see her
sending poems to Kaneie's second daughter, Senshi, after she had become
empress. There is further evidence of how often she was called upon to
compose poems for others. One preface to a poem mentions specifically
that she composed love poems for Michitsuna when he was just entering
the courting game. There are quite a few of Michitsuna's courting poems
in this collection, and one wonders if indeed we are to assume that all of
them are compositions by his mother. Moreover, there are a number of
poems composed expressly for poetry contests, in which we can get a
sense of the author as "professional poet." If nothing else, this collection
gives assurance that Michitsuna's Mother continued to be an active poet
throughout her life.

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Ceremony of Calling on the Buddha Names - Originally a ceremony held at court on the fifteenth of
the twelfth month and lasting for three days, during which time the names of the various Buddhas
were called upon to clear away the sins and defilements of the year. It later came to be practiced as
a private ceremony having no fixed date or term in residences of the nobility.

Obon Ceremony - The summer observances for the dead. It will be remembered that arranging for
the Obon services for her mother was something Kaneie did for Michitsuna's Mother over the years.
There is no way to know which year this particular exchange took place. Once they had grown
apart, she worried every year whether he would continue to do her this service.

she thinks as she waitsfor us - That is, the spirit of the author's mother.

Written in place of his lordship - Here is another place where it is clear she wrote poems for her
husband.

festivitiesfor the Day ofthe Rat- On the first Day of the Rat in the new year, the Day of the Rat being
the first day of the Asian calendar's twelve-day cycle, it was traditional to hold a party to gather
young herbs and pine shoots in the hills. This particular party was given in honor of the fourth
prince, Emperor Murakami's fourth son, Tamehira, on the fifth day of the second month of 964 when
Tamehira was twelve years old. It was a grand occasion, which a contemporary history, Okagami,
characterizes as "the one time when it seemed Prince Tamehira had not lived in vain" (Helen
McCullough, Okagami, 130-31). It will be remembered this is the same Prince Tamehira who mar-
ried Minamoto Takaakira's daughter and was passed over in the succession to the throne due to the
conspiracy of the Fujiwara.
the dowager empress — Murakami's consort, Tamehira's mother, Anshi, elder sister to Kaneie. She
died on the twenty-ninth day of the fourth month of 964.
a spring of changed colors — In other words, a spring when the prince's sleeves and those of his
attendants had changed to the colors of mourning.

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The next morning after the Ceremony of Calling on the Buddha Names,
when snow had fallen . . .
toshi no uchi ni In this garden where
tsumi ketsu niwa ni the sins of the year have melted away,
furu yuki ha after such observances,
tsutomete nochi ha I would have thought that next morning
tsumorazaramu the fallen snow could not have stayed.

A long time had passed since his lordship had grown distant from her;
then, on the fifteenth of the seventh month, the time for the Obon Cer-
emony, this was her reply to a letter from his lordship:
kakarikeru Not knowing what state
kono yo mo shirazu our relations have reached,
ima tote ya "Now, they come,"
ahare hachisu no she thinks as she waits for us
tsuyu wo matsuramu to offer the lotus dew together.

Written in place of his lordship for the fourth prince on the occasion of
festivities for the Day of the Rat:
mine no matsu The pine on the peak,
ono ga yohahi no how many thousand more
kazu yori mo generations than
ima iku chiyo zo one's own span of years does it live?
kimi ni hikarete May it draw my lord along with it.

She had borrowed the journal of the festivities of the Day of the Rat from
someone in the service of the prince. That year, the prince's mother, the
dowager empress, passed away, and as the year came to an end, the new
year and then spring, she returned the manuscript with the following writ-
ten in the margin of the accompanying letter:
sode no iro Not knowing this is
kahareru haru wo a spring of changed colors
shirazu shite for your sleeves,

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principal handmaiden — Kaneie's sister Toshi, otherwise known as Lady Jdganden, who has ap-
peared in the diary many times before. Since she is referred to here by the name of the office she
assumed in 969, it may be supposed that the poem was written sometime after that date.
to compose a poem on the theme, "The Angel's Feather Robe" - She is being asked to produce a poem
as a performance rather than as an integral part of communication. "The Angel's Feather Robe" refers
to a Japanese folktale in which a fisherman finds a feather robe left on a pine tree while an angel
bathes in the sea. This feather robe is what enables the angel to fly to heaven. There are many
different versions of the legend, some in which the fisherman forces the maiden to stay on earth and
become his wife, and some in which he returns the robe and the angel returns to heaven.
To the damp robes of— The poem takes its point of departure from two puns, nureginu, which
means both "damp robes" and "scandalous rumors," and ama, meaning both "heaven" and "fisher-
man." The author imagines a fisherman caught in rumors about a love affair. He uses the feather
robe to soar away from his troubles, but since he left the fires of his salt kilns burning—which can
also be interpreted as his smoldering feelings of love—the smoke from these unextinguished emo-
tions spreads rumors that follow him to heaven. It is a playful poem of fantasy.
herfather brought back. .. pictures he had painted of interesting places in Michinoku - Michinoku
in northern Japan was her father's first post as provincial governor. His departure for Michinoku in
955 is recorded in the beginning of book one. Like many courtiers, her father was an amateur artist
as well.
If I could but see . . . — Chika Island and Azalea Hill were famous places in Michinoku.
Kamo Festival — The big Kamo Shrine festival held annually in the fourth month.
happy as a heartvine - The aoi or heartvine was the emblematic flower for the Kamo Festival. Aot in
its ancient spelling afuhi is also homophonous with "meeting day." He makes use of the pun in his
response.
she wrote this in place of the bride— Here is more evidence of her writing poems for others.

period of mourning for theirfather- Her father died in 977.

where grass grows deep —An image of neglect. She imagines the house falling into ruin now that the
master is gone.

her brother-in-law, Tamemasa — This is the brother-in-law who married one of her sisters early in
book one.

In all our hearts . . . - With associative language in the same vein, "deep grass," "fading away,"
"dew," "short rushes," he echoes her sentiments.

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kozo ni naraheru just learning from last year,

nobe no matsu kamo the wild pines put forth green shoots.

When she was requested by the principal handmaiden to compose a poem

on the theme, "The Angel's Feather Robe":
nure ginu ni To the damp robes of
ama no hagoromo scandalous rumors the fisher
musubikeri tied the feather robe
katsu ha moshiho no to soar away, but since he
hi wo shi ketaneba left the fires of his salt kilns burning . . .

Written when her father brought back to the capital pictures he had painted
of interesting places in Michinoku:
michinoku no If I could but see
chika no shima nite Michinoku's Chika Island
mimashikaba from close up,
ikani tsutsuji no wo how charming I would find
okashikaramashi the slopes of Azalea Hill.

A certain person, on the day of the Kamo Festival, was thinking of taking
in a son-in-law; the prospective groom sent word that he would be as
"happy as a heartvine to make this the trysting day," and in response she
wrote this in place of the bride:
tanomazu yo On you, I rely not,
mikaki o sebami just as the heartvine
afuhiba ha find the sacred fence
shime no hoka ni mo too narrow and stretch their leaves
ari to ifu nari beyond, you have others too.

On the occasion of the period of mourning for their father, all the children
gathered in one place; once the mourning period was fulfilled, the others
returned to their own houses and she was the only one left:
fuka kusa no Left behind to care
yado ni narinuru for this house where grass grows deep,
yado moru to feeling about as
tomareru tsuyu no likely to live on as the dew
tanomoshige nasa that stays on the grass blades.

A reply from her brother-in-law, Tamemasa:

fukakusa ha In all our hearts,
tare mo kokoro ni the deep grasses of sorrow
shigeritsutsu have grown wild;
asadji ga hara no we shall fade away like the
tsuyu to kenu beshi dew on a field of short rushes.
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 T H E POETRY OF MICHITSUNA'S MOTHER

Fiftieth Day Ceremony - The first big celebration for a newborn child was held on the fiftieth day
after its birth.
birth of a prince — While there is some debate over whose birth this might be, the consensus is that
it is most likely the birth of Senshi's first son, the future emperor Ichijo. That birth took place in 980.
Senshi was Kaneie's daughter by Tokihime and was about the same age as the author's adopted
daughter. It is suggested that the adopted daughter may have become an attendant to Senshi after
she became empress (Zenshu, 92). If that is so, it would explain why the author maintained a
correspondence with Senshi as evidenced by this poem and one other in the collection.
wild boar doll - Wild boars were famous for being very fertile and having large litters, and thus they
came to be associated with the safe delivery of healthy children.
yamabuki — In English, the kerria rose, a small yellow flower that grows on a bushy shrub.

come in ten petals - The point of this poem, which escapes rendering in English, is that the word for
"ten petals," tohe, is homophonous with "visit." She would rather he visited than send flowers. The
cleverness of this pun had sufficient appeal for it to be included in the late Heian imperial anthology,
Shikashu, completed in 1151 {Zenshu, 398). If nothing else, this fact demonstrates that the Kagero
Diary was circulating and read throughout the Heian period.
her brother was due to go down to Michinoku Province as governor - The entry does not specify
which brother, and there is no outside corroboration for this because neither of her brothers is
recorded in the court records as having taken up the post of governor in Michinoku.
Kahaku, "Dry God"- There was an Afu Kahaku Shrine in Michinoku Province. The characters with
which the name is written mean "Chief of the River," but it is also roughly homophonous with
kawaku, "dry," hence the pun that gives rise to the poem. Making this pun between kahaku and
kawaku is possible evidence that the distinction in sound between ha and wa in middle syllables of
words was collapsing at this time (Zenshu, 398).

Now truly I know... - The point of the poem is that since the god of the Kahaku Shrine appeared
as the sun to dry up the rain, that god must be none other than the great sun goddess, Amaterasu no
Omikami, the Heaven Shining Deity.

For the topic, "warbler on a willow branch" - This title indicates that this poem was written for a
public occasion like a poetry contest, when poets were assigned set topics.
Though the threads . . . - The slender branches of the willow in early spring were conventionally
thought to resemble long threads and therefore called up associative vocabulary for spinning and
weaving, as in this poem, "threads," "fine," "spin out," and "endlessly," literally, "without being cut."
This poem skillfully weaves that associative vocabulary together with the theme of the warbler's
song, creating an effect of synesthesia. The poem was included in a personal poetry anthology by
the later Heian poet, Noin, and then was picked up for the late Kamakura imperial collection, the
Gyokuybshu {Zenshu, 399).
imperial tutor -This was a post that Michitsuna assumed in 1007 at the age of fifty-three. Although
he only occupied the position for a year, since this was a high point of his official career, he was
known for the rest of his life by this title. This reference suggests that this poetry collection at the end
of the volume was compiled after 1007.
she wrote this in his place - Here is clear evidence that she did write a number of love poems for
Michitsuna. This would support the interpretation that all the poems she records in the diary as
Michitsuna's are in fact her own compositions. It is likely the case for all the poems that follow here.

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 T H E POETRY OF MICHITSUNA'S MOTHER

On the occasion of the Fiftieth Day Ceremony after the birth of a prince,
she sent this attached to a wild boar doll that she had made:
yorodzu yo wo Celebrated for
yobafu yamabe no a myriad generations,
wi no ko koso may the mountain boar
kimi ga tsukafuru roaming the hills ever
yohahi narubeshi be at your beck and call.

Written when her lordship had sent her a present of some eight-petaled
yamabuki:
tare ka kono Who is it decided
kazu ha sadameshi the number of their petals?
ware ha tada Were it up to me,
tohe to zo omofu I'd have them come in ten petals,
yamabuki no hana these yamabuki blossoms.

It had been raining for a long time when her brother was due to go down
to Michinoku Province as governor, but the day he was to leave, since it
cleared up, he wrote this referring to the Kahaku, "Dry God," for that
province:
waga kuni no Has the god of my
kami no mori ya province come to accompany me?
soherikemu For a sign, look to
kawaku ke arishi the wide blue sky where his
amatsu sora kana dry spirit is evident.

Her reply:
ima zo shiru Now truly I know
kawaku to kikeba when I hear the name "Dry God"
kimi ga tame for the sake of you,
amateru kami no it is none other than the
na ni koso arikere Heaven Shining Deity.

For the topic, "warbler on a willow branch":

waga yado no Though the threads of
yanagi no ito ha the willow at my lodging
hosokutomo be ever so fine,
kuru uguhisu ha would that the warbler spin out
taezu mo araramu his song with them endlessly.

When the imperial tutor was first beginning to court women with letters,
she wrote this in his place:

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he made a likeness of a cuckoo - Again it could have been Michitsuna's Mother who made the
likeness. Likeness could mean either a picture or a doll of some kind. The cuckoo is known for
having other birds hatch its eggs and rear its young.
Flying back andforth - Since this poem accompanies the likeness of a cuckoo, it is understood as
referring to that bird's flighty ways. There is a pun on nageki, meaning both "to lament" and
"abandoned tree," and another pun on kahesazaruramu, "will not respond" and "will not hatch,
nurture." The poem implies that the woman has been exchanging letters with other men but has not
deigned to reply to Michitsuna.

What is to become... — This poem introduces the image of a spider's web with sasagani no, a pillow
word for spider. Spiders in love poems are associated with the notion that if a spider attaches its web
to you, you will be able to meet the beloved. However, here the spider's thread is a metaphor for the
letters he has sent out to her. In the last line, midaru is a pun on "to be wild, disordered" and mitaru,
"to have seen" (in this case, his letters). This translation is a little free in assigning agency to the wind
playing havoc, by extension, with his meaning.

Relation cut off. . . - There is a pun on e, meaning "shore" and "karmic bond." Suminoe's shore
refers to the shoreline of Sumiyoshi, where there was a famous shrine. Moreover, grasses with the
power to make you forget the pain of love were thought to grow on Suminoe's shore as, for
example, in Kokinshu no. 1111:
if I knew the road,
I would go there to gather
those grasses of love's
forgetfulness they tell me
grow on Suminoe's shores (Rodd, Kokinshu, 378)
If she will not send him words, then he asks rhetorically for some medicine to help him forget.

Sumiyoshi - Sumiyoshi is a variation on the place-name Suminoe.

plans to marry her - We assume this is the same woman as in the previous exchange.
Sanekata, assistant captain of the Middle Palace Guards - Another member of the Fujiwara clan
distantly related to Michitsuna. He is recorded to have held this office from 978 to 984.
he himselfwas still assistant lieutenant ofthe Left Palace Guards- "He himself is Michitsuna, and he
is recorded as holding this office from 983 to 984. The overlap in the tenure of the offices of these
two men dates this exchange of poems to 983 or 984.
oakforest- A euphemistic expression for Sanekata's place of appointment, the Middle Palace Guards,
hence standing for Sanekata.
Mikasa Mountain - A euphemistic expression for Michitsuna's place of appointment, the Left Palace
Guards, hence standing for Michitsuna.
keeps loving to no avail - There is a pun in this last line that is not translated. Kahi naki can mean
both "to no avail" and "there is no pass through the mountain."

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 T H E POETRY OF MICHITSUNA'S MOTHER

kefu zo to ya Thinking, "Surely today?"

tsuraku machi mimu thus will I wait in misery,
waga kohi ha this love of mine
hajime mo naki ga would seem to have been here
konata naru beshi from time immemorial.

Since time and again, there had been no response to his letters, he made
a likeness of a cuckoo:
tobi chigafu Flying back and forth,
tori no tsubasa wo this flighty bird on the wing,
ika nareba why did it come to this?
su tatsu nageki ni It neither answers nor nurtures
kahesazaruramu the one who cries to leave the nest.

And as still there was no response:

sasagani no What is to become
ika ni naruramu of me in this web of words?
kefu dani mo At least today,
shirabaya kaze no I want to know the wind's mien
midaru keshiki wo as it plays havoc with my meaning.

and again:
taete naho Relation cut off—
sumi no e ni naki if there be no bond between us,
naka naraba then I desire the
kishi ni ofunaru forgetting grass that grows on
kusa mogana kimi Suminoe's shore, this I beg you.

Her reply:
sumiyoshi no That such a thing grows
kishi ni ofu to ha on the shore of Sumiyoshi,
shiri ni keri I have just found out,
tsumamu tsumaji ha but to pluck it or pluck it not
kimi ga mani mani is surely up to you, my lord.

He heard that there were plans to marry her to Sanekata, assistant captain
of the Middle Palace Guards; this must have been while he himself was
still assistant lieutenant of the Left Palace Guards:
kashihagi no I hear that at least
mori dani shigeku the oak forest grows lush
kiku mono wo with leaves of words,
nado ka mikasa no why is it that Mikasa Mountain
yama no kahi naki keeps loving to no avail.

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The oakforest and... - Speaking to Michitsuna, she is in effect saying, "both you and Sanekata are
lush with greenery"—that is, send lots of billets-doux—"but I am not paying attention to either of
you."

stalk of marsh sedge - This sets up the pun around which the poem is built. Marokosuge, "marsh
sedge," contains both the word maro, afirst-personpronoun, and suge of sugenashi, "nonchalant,
casual." The entire word, marokosuge, can also be seen as a preface introducing maro, which is a
very informal first-person pronoun. The poem is both playful and entreating. In essence, he asks her
to judge his sincerity for herself.

Composed when he was ill - It is possible that this poem was written when he was ill with smallpox,
which was in 974. However, if that is the case, then this poem is not in chronological order with the
rest of the series, which, as mentioned above, can be dated to 983 or 984.

Three Fords River - Three Fords River is the river to the underworld after death.

Her reply - If one accepts the theory that the previous poem was written when Michitsuna was ill
with smallpox, then the author of this poem would be different from that of the preceding series.
The tone of the following poem is much more intimate than the other poems and seems to imply a
prior relationship between the couple.

Written at a time when sometimes there was a reply from the woman and sometimes not - Again,
depending on the interpretation of the previous poem, this could be a different woman or the same.

Seeing the spider's web suspended — The verb for "suspending" a spider's web is kaku, which is
homophonous with the verb "to write." By this association, the spider's web becomes the woman's
letters.

Tanabata, seventh day of the seventh month — A festival imported from China that celebrated the
legend of the weavermaid and the herdsboy, who only get to meet for one night a year on the
seventh day of the seventh month.
The thread I trail... — It was a custom on the night before Tanabata to hang colored streamers from
a pole as tokens of the wishes one wanted fulfilled. In the morning one drew the streamers in. This
poem puns on tawamu, which means both "to bend from the weight of moisture or snow" and "to
yield."

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 T H E POETRY OF MICHITSUNA'S MOTHER

Her reply:
kashihagi mo The oak forest and
mikasa no yama mo Mikasa Mountain, both are
natsu nareba lush with greenery,
shigeredo aya na because it is summer, yet
hito no shiranaku no one is there to notice.

He heard that she was being prevented from answering by her parents or
brothers, so he sent this attached to a stalk of marsh sedge:
uchi soba mi Take a sidelong look,
kimi hitori miyo just see for yourself alone,
marokosuge these words on the sedge,
maro ha hito suge while all the world accuses me
nashi to ifu nari of being a trifler.

Composed when he was ill:

mitsuse gaha I had always thought
asa no hodo mo there was no way to know the depth
shirareji to of Three Fords River,
omohi shiware ya now it seems that I shall be
madzu watari namu the first to cross and find out.

Her reply:
mitsuse gaha At Three Fords River,
ware yori saki ni if you are to cross over
watarinaba ahead of me,
migiha ni waburu shall I just be left alone
mi to ya narinamu to mourn and weep on the bank?

Written at a time when sometimes there was a reply from the woman and
sometimes not:
kakumeri to Seeing the spider's
mireba taenuru web suspended, then broken,
sasagani no makes the wind
ito yuwe kaze no seem more cruel than if the web
tsuraku mo aru kana had never been there at all.

Tanabata, the seventh day of the seventh month:

tanabata ni The thread I trail
kesa hiku ito no this morning for Tanabata
tsuyu wo omomi bends heavy with dew,
tawamu keshiki mo will things end with my never
mide ya yaminamu seeing you bend to me?

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 T H E POETRY OF MICHITSUNA'S MOTHER

a "next morning"poem - That is, a poem written the morning after the consummation of a marriage.
It will be remembered that Heian marriages began in a fashion that mimics a secret liaison, with the
couple sleeping together for three nights in a row before the marriage is acknowledged by the
family. If all the poems attributed to Michitsuna in this collection are assumed to be the compositions
of his mother, it would mean that Michitsuna even received help from his mother in composing
"next morning" poems.
Since parting from you . . . - The groom had to part from the bride before dawn on the first two
nights. He would return home while dew was heavy on the garden foliage, hence his becoming
drenched. The drenching of the dew is also a metaphor for the tears he sheds in the pain of parting.
Written on the part o/Tamemasa 's daughter... - Since Tamemasa was married to the author's elder
sister, this daughter is the author's niece. The niece was married to Fujiwara Yoshichika, a cousin to
Kaneie. Yoshichika took the tonsure upon the abdication of Emperor Kazan in 986, whereupon he
became known as a lay priest. His relations with his wife would have ended with his becoming a
priest.
sun-ray wig—This was a head piece, woven from thread, that was worn by Buddhist monks as a wig
to cover their tonsured heads during attendance at Shinto ceremonies. It is speculated that the
request of a wig here was for the Enthronement Rites of the next emperor after Emperor Kazan
{Zenshu, 403).
weaving it together, us apart? - Pun on musubu, "to weave, tie" and "to join husband and wife."
Written when Senshi was still in the position of empress . . . - Senshi, Kaneie's s e c o n d d a u g h t e r by
Tokihime, was made consort to Emperor Enyu and officially declared empress in 986. She took the
tonsure in 991. The Eight Lectures on the Lotus Sutra was a special rite in which two lectures a day,
one in the morning and one in the evening, were offered for four days. Zenshu commentators
speculate that this particular service was held to mark the passing of Senshi's mother, Tokihime, in
990.
that sing in Mani Pond — Mani Pond is the lake in the Pure Land, a Buddhist heaven. The waves
between the lotuses floating on the pond were thought to constantly sing hymns of praise.

imperial tutor — Michitsuna, this being the title by which he was generally known to posterity.
Perhaps he sent the tachibana flowers as an offering for Senshi's service.

Have you called on us . . . - Her poem plays on three puns, kabakari, which can mean both "like
this" and "fragrance alone," e, which means both "branch" and "bond," and tohi, which can mean
both "to visit" or, with a slight sound change to tobi, "to fly." In the background of this poem is also
the notion that the fragrance of the tachibana calls up the memory of someone in the past. In this
case, Senshi may be implying that she is a person of the past for Michitsuna because he has not
come to visit for a long while.

Even if the fruit is there . . . - Michitsuna makes his inferior status an excuse for not visiting more
often. His poem echoes the associative language and the pun on "to visit" and "to fly" of Senshi's
poem, and adds a pun on mi, which means both "fruit" and "status."

Ichijo captain - Fujiwara Naritoki, a cousin to Michitsuna. He held the position of captain over many
years and died before Michitsuna was made imperial tutor, so the mention of ranks here does not
help in dating the exchange.

Shirakawa - An area in the northeast corner of Kyoto where many aristocrats kept villas.

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 T H E POETRY OF MICHITSUNA'S MOTHER

This was written as a "next morning" poem:

wakatsu yori Since parting from you,
ashita no sode 20 these sleeves of morning have been
nure ni keru drenched with dew,
nani wo hiruma no what to do for consolation
nagusame ni semu the long day while they dry.

Written on the part of Tamemasa's daughter when she was requested to

weave a sun-ray wig for her former husband, the lay priest, some time
after he had ceased to visit her:
kakete mishi What I counted on
suwe mo taenishi seeing to the end has ended,
higage gusa this sun-ray piece
nani ni yosohete to what should I compare it,
kefu musuburamu today weaving it together, us apart?

Written when Senshi was still in the position of empress, on the occasion
of her sponsoring Eight Lectures on the Lotus Sutra, to which she [Michi-
tsuna's Mother] sent a rosary made of lotus seeds as an offering:
tonafunaru Though its beads are not
nami no kazu ni ha as numerous as the waves
aranedomo that sing in Mani Pond,
hachisu no uhe no let this be blessed with
tsuyu ni kakaramu the dew on the lotus petals.

Around the same time, the imperial tutor presented some tachibana flow-
ers to Senshi, and she sent back:
kabakari mo Have you called on us
tohi ya ha shitsuru before like this, yearning for
hototogisu the fragrance, cuckoo,
hana tachibana no your bond is with these branches
e ni koso arikere of flowering tachibana.

His reply:
tachibana no Even if the fruit is there,
nari mo noboranu as you know, I am not in a
mi wo shireba position to climb,
shidzue narade ha I have always heard the cuckoo
tohanu to zo kiku flies among the lower branches.

When the Ichijo captain was visiting Shirakawa, he sent word to the impe-
rial tutor, "You must come to visit," but while he was waiting for him to
come, it began to rain heavily, and the tutor was unable to go, so the
395
 T H E POETRY OF MICHITSUNA'S MOTHER

"heavy with rain" — An allusion to a poem from the Kokin rokujo:

I have been waiting

to hear the cuckoo but he
does not sing tonight,
perhaps he is avoiding
the path heavy with rain. (Zenshu, 404)

the Chujb nun — This woman was a daughter of Minamoto Kiyotoki and is noted in contemporary
court records as a poet.

Thefloating leaf of.. . - She imagines the lotus leaf in the Pure Land to be too narrow to make room
for her as a dewdrop, just as the heart of the Chujo nun was too small to provide her room in this
world.

Her reply — That is, the reply of the Chujo nun.

jewels of dew. . . our souls - There is a pun on tama, meaning "jewel" and "soul."

Awata - An area in the Higashiyama district of Kyoto.

Tamemasa - The author's brother-in-law. The exact date of his death is not known, but it is gener-
ally assumed to have happened prior to 1002.
Fumon Temple - This was a temple that once existed in the Iwakura district to the north of the
capital.
Ono Villa - The Ono area is around present-day Ohara. Tamemasa's father apparently had a villa
there.
Chopping firewood . . . — Chopping firewood is a metaphor for performing devotions to the Lotus
Sutra that the author derives from a poem attributed to the early Heian holy man, Saint Gyogi:
My understanding
of the Lotus Sutra rests in
chopping firewood,
plucking herbs, drawing water,
serving thus, I understand it. (Zenshu, 405)

The author also weaves into this poem a reference to a Chinese legend about a man who returned
from working in the woods one day and came upon two old men playing chess. Absorbed with
watching their game, he lost all track of time. What he did not realize was that the two men were
immortals. When he woke up from his enchantment with their game, he had been there so long his
axe handle had rotted. The word for "axe," wono, is also homophonous with the place-name Ono.
his lordship, the regent - Kaneie became regent in 986 with the accession of Emperor Ichijo, who
was his grandson. However, the event related here most likely took place much earlier, when Kaneie
was still captain of the Right Guards, a position that involved him with horse racing. Accordingly, the
retired emperor here would be Reizei, to whom Kaneie's eldest daughter was married.

396
 T H E POETRY OF MICHITSUNA'S MOTHER

captain sent a retainer with the message, "heavy with rain" to inquire after
him. The tutor's reply:
nuretsutsu mo Even though it may
kohishiki michi ha be soaked, the path of love is
yokanaku ni not to be avoided,
mada kikoezu to do not fret about not
omohazaramu hearing from me yet.

She was going to borrow a house from the Chujo nun. When it was not
lent to her:
hachisu ba no The floating leaf of
uki ha wo sebami the lotus is so narrow,
kono yo ni mo in this world as well,
yadoranu tsuyu to there is no place for this dewlike
mi wo zo shirinuru self to dwell as I now know.

Her reply:
hachisu ni mo On the lotus there,
tama wi yo to koso just as jewels of dew rest
musubi shika here, our souls will find
tsuyu ha kokoro wo a place, such is Buddha's bond,
okitagahekeri your dewlike self has it wrong.

On her way back from seeing the fields of Awata:

hana susuki The pampas grass plumes
maneki mo yamanu never cease to beckon me—
yama sato ni at that mountain village,
kokoro nogari to it seems that I have left
tometsuru kana behind my heart entirely.

She had attended a service held by the late Tamemasa for offering a thou-
sand copies of the Lotus Sutra at Fumon Temple; on the way home the
flowers of the Ono Villa were so enchanting that she had her carriage
drawn into the yard, as she was about to return home:
takigi koru Chopping firewood,
koto ha kinofu ni we exhausted ourselves
tsuki nishi wo all day yesterday,
iza wono no e ha now here in Ono let us
koko ni kutasamu let the axe handle rot away.

Since it became apparent that his lordship, the regent, had lost a horse
race, at the loser-hosted banquet, he wanted to present a silver lunch box
in the shape of a half melon to the retired emperor. So he came to her with
397
 T H E POETRY OF MICHITSUNA'S MOTHER

Lasting as a thousand . . . — This poem cleverly intertwines the two themes of melons and horse
racing. The melon lasts a thousand generations because it is made of silver. Yamashiro no Koma,
translated here as Colt's Field, is a famous place for the production of melons. Embedded in the
place-name, as the translation here indicates, is koma, the word for "colt." Koma ni kurabe by itself
can mean horse racing. However, another meaning for kurabe is "to enjoy oneself with friends."
Thus, kurabeshi uri can mean "the melon enjoying itself." Finally, the phrase suwe nari means both
"the fruit at the end of the vine" and "the result," which in this case is the winning of the race.
On a painting — Here is yet another example of poems done in response to art.

presented at the poetry contest held in the second year of the Kanna era - During this period it was
still not common for women to participate in poetry contests in person. Michitsuna apparently took
this composition of his mother's to the contest, which was held in 986.

On the great ocean . . . — This poem appears playfully irreverent. It puns on ama, which can mean
both "fisherman" and "nun," as well as on nori, which means "to ride" and the Buddhist "law."

Written when his lordship had grown distant from her- This is the only poem from the diary that is
repeated in the poetry collection. It will be remembered that she wrote this poem when Kaneie
accused her of encouraging gossip by treating the adopted daughter's suitor, Tonori, too warmly.

Presented at a poetry contest - This series of ten poems seems to have been prepared for a poetry
contest held by the crown prince Iyasada on the fifth day of the fifth month in 994. The list of ten
topics is identical with the topic list for that contest, and five of these poems, "Unohana," "Cuckoo,"
"Smudge Fire," "Cicadas," and "Love," are recorded in the proceedings of the contest as being the
entries from the team of the right. How Michitsuna's Mother became involved with this contest is not
known (Zenshu, 407).

unohana - The unohana puts forth a mass of white blooms at the beginning of summer.

398
 T H E POETRY OF MICHITSUNA'S MOTHER

the request, "I would like a poem to engrave on this." This is what she
wrote:

chiyo mo heyo Lasting as a thousand

tachikaheritsutsu generations come and go,
yamashiro no the merry melon
koma ni kurabeshi at the end of the vine in
uri no suwe nari Colt's Field honoring your win.

On a painting of a woman gazing out her window in a mountain village,

just as the cuckoo calls:

miyako bito People of the capital,

nete matsurameya have you fallen asleep while waiting
hototogisu for the cuckoo's call,
ima zo yamabe wo which just now he sings forth
nakite sugunaru as he passes through the hills.

This poem was presented at the poetry contest held in the second year of
the Kanna era.

On the picture of a monk riding in a boat:

watatsuumi ha On the great ocean,

ama no fune koso boats of nuns are what there is,
ari to kike thus have I heard,
noritagahetemo perhaps the reverend monk has
kogi dekeru kana rowed out in the wrong vessel.

Written when his lordship had grown distant from her and remarked to
her, "There seems to be someone else visiting you":

ima sara ni Now, more than ever,

ikanaru koma ka what colt would think to draw near
natsuku beki this abandoned grass,
susamenu kusa to left to wither in the fields,
nogare ni shi mi wo such a one am I.

Presented at a poetry contest:

Unohana

unohana no The unohana

sakari naru beshi must be coming into full bloom,
yama sato no in mountain villages,
koro mo sahoseru it will look as though summer
ori to miyuru ha clothes have just been put out to dry.

399
 T H E POETRY OF MICHITSUNA'S MOTHER

Irises today . . . - On the fifth day of the fifth month, people searched for long iris roots. This poem
puns on ne, which means both "root" and "voice." It rests on the conceit that the irises could hear the
poet's voice.

Tokonatsu "Forever Summer" — Another name for the Japanese pink.

barley autumn - Barley is harvested in early summer, so it is a case where something associated
with autumn—harvest—occurs in summer. Thus, one euphemism in Chinese for the fourth month
(closer to May in the Western calendar) was "barley autumn." Moreover, some types of cicada start
to sing in early summer, even though cicadas are traditionally thought in both China and Japan as
"sending off autumn, that is, singing it on its way. These two seasonal anomalies were joined in a
single line in a Chinese poem by the T'ang poet Li Chia-yu as follows:
The voices of the cicadas in the fifth month send off barley autumn.
The couplet containing this line was well known in Heian Japan even though the whole poem was
lost very early. The couplet is anthologized in Senzai kaku, an anthology of Chinese couplets (ca.
947), and also in the later Wakan roeishu (ca. 1018). Kawaguchi Hisao in his supplementary com-
mentary to Wakan roeishu identifies this poem of Michitsuna's Mother as a translation in waka form
of the above line of poetry. If he is right, it is more evidence of Michitsuna's Mother's knowledge of
Chinese poetry (Kawaguchi Hisao, Wakan roeishu, 264).

400
 T H E POETRY OF MICHITSUNA'S MOTHER

Cuckoo
hototogisu Just now the cuckoo
ima zo sa wataru flies by calling out as it passes,
kowe sunaru even without
waga tsuge naku ni my telling my lover,
hito ya kikikemu I wonder if he will hear it.

Irises
ayame gusa Irises today
kefu no migiha wo as I have come to seek them
tazunureba by the water's edge,
ne wo shirite koso knowing my voice as I know
katayori ni kere their roots, they bend to me.

Fireflies

samidare ya Fifth month rains,

ko kuraki yado no these lodgings dark among the trees,
yufu sare ha in the evening,
omo teru made mo fireflies, is it you who shine
terasu hotaru ka so bright that faces blush?

Tokonatsu "Forever Summer"

saki ni keru If there were no stems
eda nakariseba that blossomed into flowers,
tokonatsu mo then surely we would
nodokeki na wo ya never have had such a
nokosazaramashi gentle name, "Forever summer."

Smudge Fire

aya nashi ya A thoughtless thing to do—

yado no kayaribi since we first lit the smudge fire
tsuke somete at our lodging,
katarafu mushi no the voices of the insects we would
kowe wo saketsuru like to hear have moved away.

Cicadas

okuru to ifu They send off the season,

semi no hatsugowe so it is said, from hearing
kiku yori zo the first cicadas,
ima ka to mugi no I knew right at that moment—
aki wo shirinuru so this is barley autumn.

401
 T H E POETRY OF MICHITSUNA'S MOTHER

Will the colt come to graze - The colt is a metaphor for a lover, as seen in the "What colt" poem she
sent to her husband in book three (see p. 351; it is also repeated in the collection, p. 399). In the
present poem it is not the withered grasses of old age but the lush summer grasses of a woman's full
bloom.

crane - The crane is an auspicious symbol because of its association with long life.

Places where I did not understand'.. . . - This anonymous copyist's note indicates that the text had
lacunae and mistakes at the time of copying.

Asfor the congratulatory poems... - The congratulatory poems prepared for the screens to celebrate
the fiftieth birthday of Kaneie's uncle, Fujiwara Moromasa (see book two, pp. 186-87). The fact that
the copyist notes them especially shows the importance these examples of Michitsuna's Mother's
"professional" work as a poet were accorded by her near contemporaries. This passage also indi-
cates the copyist's intention not to repeat poems that had already appeared in the diary. In retro-
spect, then, the inclusion of the "What colt" poem in the collection must have been a mistake.

402
 T H E POETRY OF MICHITSUNA'S MOTHER

Summer Grass
koma ya kuru Will the colt cc hie to graze,
hito ya wakuru to will he come parting the grass?
matsu hodo ni All the while I wait,
shigeri nomi masu it just grows more and more lush,
yado no natsugusa the summer grass of my dwelling.

Love
omohitsutsu Thinking, thinking thus,
kohitsutsu ha neji loving thus, there is no sleep,
afu to miru I see him, we meet,
yume wo samete ha to be woken from that dream
kuyashikarikeri that is suffering indeed.

Celebrating a Marriage
kazu shiranu Less than the countless
masago ni tadzu no grains of sand where the crane stands,
hodo yori ha less than his many years,
chigiri somekemu the thousand years we have just
chiyo zo sukunaki pledged to each other are too few.

[Copyist's Note]

Places where I did not understand what was written, I just copied as it was
in the text. As for the congratulatory poems, I did not write them here as
they were included in the diary.

403
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Mostow, Joshua. Pictures of the Heart: The One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each
Collection, Its Commentaries and Pictures. Honolulu: University of Ha-
waii Press, 1996.
. "Japanese Nikki as Political Memoirs." In Political Memoir: Essays on the
Politics of Memory, 106-20. George Egerton, ed. London: Frank Cass,
1994.
. "Self and Landscape in Kagero Nikki." Review ofJapanese Culture and
Society (December 1993): 8-19.
. "The Amorous Statesman and the Poetess: The Politics of Autobiography
and the Kagero Nikki." Japan Forum 4.2 (October 1992): 305-15.
Murai Jun. Kagerofu nikki zenhyokai. 2 vols. Tokyo: Yuseido, 1978.
Nickerson, Peter. "The Meaning of Matrilocality: Kinship, Property, and Politics in
the Mid-Heian Period." Monumenta Nipponica 48.4 (1993): 429-67.
Oka Kazuo. Michitsuna bo. Rev. ed. Tokyo: Yuseido, 1970 (1986 reprint).
Okada, H. Richard. Figures of Resistance: Language, Poetry, and Narrating in the
Tale ofGenjiand Other Mid-Heian Texts. Durham: Duke University Press,
1991.
Okumura Tsuneya. Kokin wakashu. Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1978.
Ono Susumu et al. Iwanami kogo jiten. Tokyo: Iwanami, 1974.
Rodd, Laurel Rasplica, trans. Kokinshil: A Collection of Poems Ancient and Mod-
ern. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Sarra, Edith. Fictions of Femininity: Literary Inventions of Gender in Japanese Court
Women's Memoirs. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Seidensticker, Edward, trans. The Tale ofGenji. New York: Knopf, 1976.
, trans. The Gossamer Years: The Diary of a Noblewoman of Heian Japan
[Kagero nikki]. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1964 (1985 reprint).
Shinozuka Sumiko. Kagero nikki no kokoro to hydgen. Tokyo: Benseisha, 1995.
. "Kagero nikki to afura bein no shokantai shosetsu." In Ocho nikki no
shinkenkyu, 379-401. Ikeda Tsuyako, ed. Tokyo: Kasama Shoin, 1995.
. "Women, Letters and Literature." Unpublished address at the Institute of
Early Women's Writing, University of Alberta, September 1993.
. "Shokan to bungaku: Richaadoson no shokantai shosetsu to kagero nikki
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. "Kagero nikki no shudai o megutte." In Joryu nikki bungaku koza, vol. 2,
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. "Kagero nikki noto: atena no nai tegami." Nos. 1-87 in Keisei (March
1977-July 1991).
Tachibana Kenji. Okagami/Ryojin hisho. Vol. 20 of Nihon koten bungaku zenshu.
Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1974.
Tahara, Mildred M. Tales of Yamato: A Tenth Century Poem Tale [Yatnato
monogatari]. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1980.
Uemura Etsuko. Kagero nikki kaishaku taisei. 9 vols. Tokyo: Meiji Shoin, 1983-95.
Waley, Arthur, trans. The Tale of Genji: A Novel in Six Parts by Lady Murasaki.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1935.
Watanabe Minoru. "Style and Point of View in the Kagero Nikki." Richard Bowring,
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. Heiancho bunshoshi. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1981.
. "Tojishateki hyogen—Kagero nikki." In Heian bunshoshi. Tokyo: Tokyo
Daigaku Shuppankai, 1981.
. Ise monogatari. Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1976.
Whitehead, Wilfred, and Eizo Yanagisawa. The Tale of Lady Ochikubo. Tokyo:
Hokuseido, 1965.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. London: Grafton Books, 1977.

408
 Index

adopted daughter, 11, 19, 32, 293-96, Eakin, Paul John, 4

297, 306, 332-33, 334-35, 338, Eiga monogatari, 9, 15, 31, 33, 312,
360, 388, 398 364
Akiyama, Ken, xiii, 6, 21, 42, 78, 104 engo (verbal association), 41
Ana Historic, ix Enyu (emperor). See Morihira
Anshi, 15, 33, 384-85
Aoi Festival. See Kamo Festival The Female Autograph, ix
Austen, Jane, 3 Fifth Month Festival (Tango, Iris
autobiography, 2, 4, 5; autobiographi- Festival), 132-33, 228-29, 306-7,
cal truth, 4 352-53
fires, 297, 301-3, 322-23
blues lyrics, 6 Fujiwara clan, 6, 14
Bowring, Richard, ix Fujiwara Kaneie (author's husband),
Bronte sisters, 3 12, 15, 28-29; building a new
Brownstein, Rachel, 3 residence, 174-75; "drunken"
butsumetsu day, 23 behavior, 216-17; escorting author
back from Narutaki, 253-55; first
calligraphy, 56-57, 106-7, 108-9, 133, appearance as a suitor, 56-57;
144-45, 184-85, 296-97, 344-45 first attempt to bring author back
Choshi, 152-53, 168 from Narutaki, 234—35; long
Chujo nun, 396-97 poem, 95-97; meeting his long-
Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthol- lost daughter, 292-95; mentioned
ogy, x as regent, 396-97; other wives,
clothing, 12, 80-81, 123, 158-59, 162, 29-30; posting as assistant master
190-91, 194-95, 220-21, 223, 278- of crown prince's household,
79, 280-81, 286-87, 301, 320-21, 142-43; posting to War Ministry,
328-29, 339, 353, 379 100-101; promotion to major
colloquial expressions, 76, 258 captain, 216-17; promotion to
congratulatory screen, 33 middle captain, 146-47; promo-
cormorant fishing, 260-61, 263-65 tion to senior counselor, 278—79;
Cranston, Edwin, 39 sudden illness, 124-29; taking
care of funeral and memorial
director of the Right Stable. See services for author's mother, 118-
Fujiwara Tonori 19, 204-7, 312-14, 384-85; "wild
dreams, 151, 211, 228-29, 285, 334-35 behavior" at residence of author's

409
 INDEX

father, 258-59; with another Fujiwara Sukemasa, 25, 144—45

woman at the Special Kamo Fujiwara Tadafumi, 230
Festival, 370-71 Fujiwara Tamemasa, 27, 70-71, 122,
Fujiwara Kanemichi, 17, 202-3, 312, 144, 192, 386-87, 394-95, 396-97
364-65 Fujiwara Teika, 34
Fujiwara Koremasa, 17, 220, 304-5, Fujiwara Tomoto, 360-61
312-13, 318-19, 362-63 Fujiwara Tomoyasu (author's father),
Fujiwara Kuniaki, 31 26, 56-57, 65-66, 67, 88-89, 97,
Fujiwara Masayoshi or Masato (elder 114-15, 132-33, 242-43, 252-53,
brother), 26-27, 116-17, 124-25, 282-83, 312-13, 327, 328-29, 370-
352-53, 362-63 71, 364-65, 386-87
Fujiwara Michinaga, 9, 14, 23 Fujiwara Tonori (Kaneie's younger
Fujiwara Michitaka, 31, 160-61, 250- brother by a different mother,
53 director of the Right Stable), 11,
Fujiwara Michitsuna (author's son), 32, 332-61, 398
31-32, 68-69, 78-79, 88-89, 91, Fujiwara Yoshichika, 394
92-93, 96-97, 112, 134-35, 168, Fushi (junior consort), 142-43
175-177; affair with a woman not Fushimi Inari Shrine, 24, 134- 39, 252
recorded in diary, 324; archery
contest winner, 320-21; ceremony Genji counselor Kanetada's daughter.
of manhood, 216-17; courtship See Minamoto Kanetada's daugh-
poems with the Yamato woman, ter
304-7, 308-9, 310-11, 314-17, Gosechi Festival, 132-33
318-19, 322-25, 328-29, 362-63; Gosenshu, 162, 224, 238, 332, 338
courtship poems with the Gossamer Diary, x
Yatsuhashi woman, 370—79; first Gossamer Journal, x
time addressed by mother as Gossamer Years, x
taifu, "young lord," 236-37, 238- Gyokuyoshu, 388
39, 243-45, 246-47, 257, 277, 284-
85, 293, 309; ill with smallpox, Hase Temple, 24, 152-53, 156-59, 259,
360-61; in procession of Special 261, 262, 267
Kamo Festival, 370-71; poems Hepburn romanization, xii
written for him by his mother, Hoshi, 206
388-97; post of imperial tutor, Hyakunin isshu, 34, 70
383; posting as assistant director
of the Right Stable, 332-33, 353, Ichijo (emperor), 396
355; promotion to lower fifth Imuta Tunehisa, xiii
rank, 216, 234-37; releasing his Ishikawa Takuboku, 36
hawks, 204-5, 210-11, 215; Ishiyama Temple, 24, 206-15, 266-67,
triumph as archer and dancer, 284-85, 308-9
190-91, 193, 197, 201 Iwasa Miyoko, 320
Fujiwara Moromasa, 33, 186-87, 402 Izumi Shikibu, 13
Fujiwara Morosuke, 15, 142 Izumi Shikibu Diary, 1
Fujiwara Morouji (Azechi grand
counselor), 160-61, 260-61 Jelinek, Estelle, 3, 4
Fujiwara Nagayoshi or Nagato, 26-27
Fujiwara Naritoki, 394-95 kagerofu (kagero), explanation of
Fujiwara Sanekata, 390-91 term, x, xiii, 162
Fujiwara Saneyori, 31, 194-95, 202 kakekotoba (pun), 39-40

410
 INDEX

Kakimoto Tsutomu, 204, 316 place," 353; children, 31-32;

Kamo Festival, 107, 128-29, 300-301, domestic quarrel, 134—35; ex-
304-5, 343; Special Secondary change of poems while "gazing at
Kamo Festival, 364-71, 386-87 the flowers of the front garden,"
Kamo Shrine, 22, 24, 106, 136-43, 82-85; father, see Fujiwara
298-99, 304-5, 332-33 Tomoyasu; Fushimi Inari and
Kamo Tale {Kamo no monogatari), Kamo Shrine, 134-43; Hase
156-57 Temple, 152-63, 258-65; illness,
Kaneie. See Fujiwara Kaneie 173-77; Ishiyama Temple 206-15;
Karasaki, 24, 196-201, 206 Kamo Shrine, 298-99, 333;
Kasuga Festival, 282-83 Karasaki purification, 196-201;
Kawaguchi Hisao, 400 Kiyomizu (temple), 300-301;
Kazan (emperor), 394 listening to old gardener and
Keichu, xiii cicada, 310-11; mention of having
keri suffix, 45-46 only one son, 284-85; mother, 26-
Ki no Tsurayuki, 20, 42, 48, 174, 206 27, 59, 112-17, 119, 384-85;
Kimura Masanori, xiii painting, 240-41, 316-17; pilgrim-
Kiyomizu Temple, 300-301 ages, 24; piling up goose eggs,
Kokin rokujo, xiv, 146, 162, 236, 280, 142—43; poems presented at
320, 326, 336, 354, 396 poetry contests, 398—403; "quiet
Kokinshu, xiv, 18, 20, 35-38, 42, 48, out of the way place," 331;
58, 60, 92, 116, 118-19, 120, 156, referring to her husband with an
162, 222, 232, 236, 244, 252, 256, honorific, 320-21; relationship to
258, 264, 266, 296, 306, 334, 348, other Heian woman authors, 27-
358, 390 28; requests for public poems, 33,
Kondo, Jun'ichiro, 6 186-89, 383, 385, 386-87, 399,
kotoimi, 168 400; residences, 12, 76-77, 132-
ku, 36 33, 146-47, 170-71, 184-85, 224-
25, 326-27; retreat at Narutaki,
Lady Joganden. See Toshi 233-53; siblings, 27-28, 388;
Li Chia-yu, 400 sisters, 71, 122-23, 144-45, 168-
long poems, 88-93, 94-97 69, 192, 206-7, 216, 222-23, 240-
41, 250-51, 254-55, 329-31;
Machi Alley woman, 30, 39, 68-69, 73, writing poems in her husband's
74, 80-81, 87, 98-99 place, 384-85, 398-99
makura kotoba (pillow word), 40-41 Minamoto Kanetada's daughter, 20,
man's hand (otokode), 106-7, 109 30-31, 286-87
Man'yoshu, 298 Minamoto Takaakira, 15-16, 172-73,
Marlatt, Daphne, ix 176, 182, 186, 384
marriage customs, 9-10 Mitsune Collection, 258
McCullough, Helen, x, 100, 312 mono no aware, 5—6
menstruation, 232-33, 237, 276-77 monogatari, 2, 20-22, 42, 56
Michitsuna. See Fujiwara Michitsuna Morihira (fifth prince, east prince,
Michitsuna's Mother (Michitsuna no Emperor Enyu), 142-43, 148-49,
Haha), adoption of daughter, 285- 190, 194, 276-77, 394
95; augury of impending death, Mostow, Joshua, xii
312-13, 314-15, 316-17; aunt, Munro, Jane, xi
120-23, 236-37, 239; birth of son, Murai Jun, 88, 104
68-69; birthdate, 26; "a certain Murakami (emperor), 33, 142-43, 146,

411
 INDEX

206-7, 384 to Michitsuna's Mother, 27

Murasaki Shikibu, 13; family connec- Seidensticker, Edward, x, 3
tion to Michitsuna's Mother, 27 Senshi, 14, 32, 296-97, 306-7, 383,
Murasaki Shikibu Diary, 1, 20 388, 394-95
music, 18, 120-23, 190-91, 199, 263, Senzai kaku, 400
295 Shigeyuki Collection (Shigeyuki shu),
256
naishi no kami, (principal Shikashu, 388
handmaiden), 13 Shinozuka Sumiko, xiii, 6, 7-8, 19, 64,
Narutaki, 44, 106, 112, 230, 256, 319 88, 202, 204, 222, 240, 268, 296,
New Year's Festivities, 146-47, 168-69, 316, 322, 324, 350
220-21, 271, 277, 319, 333, 378- Shu'i wakashu, 114
79, 384-85 Sone Yoshisada, 308
Nihon shoki, (Chronicle of Japan), 314 Sonpi bunmyaku, 8, 33
Nihongi ryaku, 192 Stanton, Domna, ix
Noin, 388 Sugawara Takasue's daughter, family
Noriakira (Prince), 41, 100-107, 110- connection to Michitsuna's
11, 132-33 Mother, 28
Suishi, 31, 206, 362-63
O no Yoshimochi, 190-91
Obon Ceremony, 106-7, 204-5, 384- taifu, general designation for those of
85 fifth rank, translated as "young
Okada Richard, 45, 46 lord," 236-37
Okagami, 9, 14, 15, 33, 34 Takaakira. See Minamoto Takaakira
Omi (Lady of the Wing Chamber), 31, Tale of Captain Tonomine (Tonomine
206-7, 220-21, 222, 268-6.9, 294, shosho monogatari), 25n.42, 182-
320, 326-27, 362-63 83
Ono no Komachi, 224 Tale ofGenji (Genji monogatart), x, 1,
2, 3, 18, 21, 43, 48, 128, 132, 266
Peach Blossom Festival, 70-71, 170-71 Tale of Lady Ochikubo (Ochikubo
Pillow Book ofSei Shonagon, 1, 27 monogatart), 22, 56, 266
Po Chii-i, 76, 296 Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (Taketori
Presentation of White Horses Cer- monogatart), 21, 35
emony, 276-77, 288 Tales oflse Use monogatart), 21, 35,
pronouns, avoidance of, 43-45 142, 148, 258, 370
provincial governor, 2, 13, 26, 64, 208 Tales ofYamato (Yamato monogatart),
78, 334
Reizei (emperor), 14, 142, 152, 190, Tamehira (prince), 15, 172, 384
216-17, 296-97, 320, 396 Tanabata Festival, 98-99, 106-7, 392-
religion, 22—25 93
Richardson, Samuel, 19 tanka, 36
Rodd, Laurel Rasplica, xiv tenseless narrative, 45—47
therapy, 7
San no kami (Takaakira's wife), 15, third morning (of marriage), 10, 62-63
176-83, 184-85 Tokihime, 29-30, 39, 74-75, 79, 89,
Sanjo (emperor), 206 112, 124, 128, 152, 168, 184, 388,
Sarashina Diary {Sarashina nikkt), 1, 394
28, 328 Tonori. See Fujiwara Tonori
Sei Shonagon, 13; family connection Tosa Diary {Tosa nikkt), 42, 48

412
 INDEX

Toshi (Lady Joganden, principal woman's hand (onnade), 19-20, 106-

handmaiden), 32-33, 144-45, 146- 7, 108
53, 190, 202-3, 248-51, 256-59, women's pictures, 348-49
270, 386-87 Woolf, Virginia, ix, 1, 5, 11

Uemura Etsuko, xiii, 128, 170, 182, Yahata Festival, 300-301, 320-21
204, 236, 268, 298 yamabushi (ascetic practioner), 250-
Uji, 152-53, 158-61 51
unohana (description), 142-43 yin—yang cosmology, 2, 23, 64, 224,
Utsubo monogatari, 312 316
Yoro legal code, 10
waka, 36-38, 41-42, 48, 78, 128, 297
Wakan roeishu, 76, 400 Zoku Goshilishu, 264
Waley, Arthur, x

413
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sonja Arntzen received her Ph.D. in Japanese Literature from the Univer-
sity of British Columbia and is currently an Associate Professor at the
University of Alberta. In addition to numerous articles, she has published
two books on the life and poetry of the Muromachi-period Zen monk,
Ikkyu Sojun: The Crazy Cloud Anthology oflkkyu Sojun (1986), and Ikkyu
Sojun: A Zen Monk and His Poetry (1973). She is actively involved in the
promotion of Japanese art and theater in Canada.

415