JAPAN IN THE TENTH CENTURY

When the first volume of _The Tale of Genji_ appeared in English, the

prevailing comment of critics was that the book revealed a subtle and

highly developed civilization, the very existence of which had hitherto

remained unsuspected. It was guessed that so curious a state of

society, with its rampant æstheticism and sophisticated unmorality, its

dread of the explicit, the emphatic, must have behind it a protracted

history of undisturbed development, or (as others put it) must be the

climax of an age-long decadence.

And it is indeed true that the unique civilization portrayed in the

_Tale of Genji_ and _The Pillow-Book_ of Sei Shōnagon corresponds to

a unique record of isolation and tranquillity. The position of Japan,

lying on the edge of the Oriental world, has been compared to that of

England always in full communion with Europe, yet exempt from the worst

perils of contiguity—in fact, ideally ‘semi-detached.’

But the comparison has little force. Japan is eight times farther from

the mainland than we from France. One cannot swim across the Straits

of Tsushima. Yet phase after phase of civilization—agriculture, tools,

domestic animals at an age long before history, then later, the Chinese

ideograms, Indian religion, Persian textiles—managed to filter across

the Straits; while invasion, save for an occasional raid of pirates

from China, not merely during those early years, but until the abortive

Mongol descent in the thirteenth century, was almost unknown. In Europe

and on the continent of Asia no single strip of land has ever enjoyed

a like immunity. Across France, Hungary, Poland, Turkestan, how many

armies marched during the long centuries of Japan’s absolute security!

Thus arose a culture that, among other peculiarities, had that of

not being cosmopolitan. Rome, Byzantium, Ctesiphon, even Ch’ang-an

were international cities. In the streets of Kyōto a stray Korean or

Chinaman were, as specimens of the exotic, the best that could be hoped

for. The world, to a Japanese of the tenth century, meant Japan and

China. India was semi-mythical, and Persia uncertainly poised somewhere

between China and Japan.

Thus, since the establishment of the capital at Heian[3] in 794, had

grown up a highly specialized, intense and uniform civilization,

dominated by one family, the Fujiwara; a state of society in which the

stock of knowledge, the experience, the prejudices of all individuals

were so similar that the grosser forms of communication seemed no

longer necessary. A phrase, a clouded hint, an allusion half-expressed,

a gesture imperceptible to common eyes, moved this courtly herd with a

facility as magic as those silent messages that in the prairie ripple

from beast to beast.

It was a purely æsthetic and, above all, a literary civilization.

Never, among people of exquisite cultivation and lively intelligence,

have purely intellectual pursuits played so small a part. What strikes

us most is that the past was almost a blank; not least so the history

of Japan, extending even in mythological theory only to the seventh

century B.C. and remaining fabulous for fifteen hundred years.

It is indeed our intense curiosity about the past that most sharply

distinguishes us from the ancient Japanese. Here every educated person

is interested in some form or another of history. The busiest merchant

is an authority upon snuff-boxes, Tudor London, or Chinese jade. The

remotest country clergyman reads papers on eoliths; his daughters

revive forgotten folk-dances. But to the Japanese of the tenth century,

‘old’ meant fusty, uncouth, disagreeable. To be ‘worth looking at’

a thing must be _imamekashi_, ‘now-ish,’ up-to-date. By Shōnagon

and Murasaki the great collection of early poetry (the _Manyōshū_),

on the rare occasions when they quote it, is always referred to

in an apologetic way, as something which despite its solid merits

will necessarily offend the modern eye. Nor did they feel that the

future—with us an increasing preoccupation—in any way concerned them.

Their absorption in the present, the fact that with them ‘modern’ was

invariably a term of praise, differentiates them from us in a way

that is immediately obvious. The other aspects of their intellectual

passivity—the absence of mathematics, science, philosophy (even such

amateur speculation as amused the Romans was entirely unknown)—may not

seem at first sight to constitute an important difference. Scientists

and philosophers, it is true, exist in modern Europe. But to most of

us their pronouncements are as unintelligible as the incantations of a

Lama; we are mere drones, slumbering amid the clatter of thoughts and

contrivances that we do not understand and could still less ever have

created. If the existence of contemporary research had no influence

except upon those capable of understanding it, we should indeed be

in much the same position as the people of Heian. But, strangely

enough, something straggles through; ideas which we do not completely

understand modify our perceptions and hence refashion our thoughts to

such an extent that the society lady who said ‘Einstein means so much

to me’ was expressing a profound truth.

It is, then, not only their complete absorption in the passing moment,

but more generally the entire absence of intellectual background that

makes the ancient Japanese so different from us, and gives even to the

purely æsthetic sides of their culture a curious quality of patchiness.

At any moment these men and women, to all appearances so infinitely

urbane and sophisticated, may surprise us, even where matters of taste

rather than intellect are concerned, by lapsing into a _niaiserie_ far

surpassing the silliness of our own Middle Ages. It is this insecurity

which gives to the Heian period that oddly evasive and, as it were,

two-dimensional quality, its figures and appurtenances seeming to us

sometimes all to be cut out of thin, transparent paper.

Religious ceremonies were much in vogue, but were viewed chiefly from

an æsthetic standpoint. The recitation of sacred texts was an art

practised by the laity as well as the clergy. An exacting standard of

connoisseurship prevailed, and if Buddhist services were packed to

overflowing, it was upon appraising the merits of the performers rather

than upon his own spiritual improvement that a Heian worshipper was

bent.

Mimes, pageants, processions filled the Court calendar. Those organized

by the Church had a certain tinge of exotic solemnity; for till the

tenth century Indian Buddhism continued to send out fresh waves of

influence, which now reached China (and hence Japan) less circuitously

than in former days.

But it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that the real religion

of Heian was the cult of calligraphy. Certainly writing was the form

of conduct that was scrutinized most severely. We find beauty of

penmanship not merely counting for almost as much as beauty of person,

but spoken of rather as a virtue than as a talent, and the epithet

‘good,’ when applied to an individual, frequently refers not to conduct

but to handwriting. Often in Japanese romances it is with some chance

view of the heroine’s writing that a love-affair begins; and if the

hero happens to fall in love with a lady before he has seen her script,

he awaits the first ‘traces of her hand’ with the same anxiety as that

which afflicted a Victorian gentleman before he had ascertained his

fiancée’s religious views. It was as indispensable that a Japanese

mistress should write beautifully as that Mrs. Gladstone should be

sound about the episcopal succession.

Again, a considerable place in the lives of the ancient Japanese

was given to arts the very existence of which the West has barely

recognized. For example, the art of blending perfumes, regarded by us

as a mere trade, ranked in ancient Japan as the equal of music and

poetry.

These things, however, are only differences of emphasis. Calligraphy

has perhaps nowhere else so nearly achieved the status of a religion;

but it has been practised as an art throughout the East, and was

esteemed at certain moments even in Europe. So recently as the

beginning of the present century a small school, led by Dr. Bridges,

gave it a considerable prominence in one part of England. And even the

burning of perfumes, though on the whole neglected in this country, has

always been practised here and there, experimentally, in corners that

some chance has screened from the censure of Nordic virility.

Again, the purely æsthetic approach to religion, which was the rule

in Heian, has often been fostered in Europe by cliques of exceptional

people. At first sight, indeed, Buddhism (with its rosaries, baptism,

tonsured monks, and nuns; its Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell) appears to

have many points of resemblance to Catholic Christianity. But I fancy,

all the same, that the most fundamental difference between the Japanese

(or, for that matter, any Far Eastern nation) and us is the fact,

obvious indeed yet constantly overlooked, that they were not Christians.

The Buddhist is taught that the world of appearances, with all its

imperfection, is coeval with Buddha (using the name in its metaphysical

not its historical sense). He is, in fact, this world, and does not

exist outside it. Impossible, then, to reproach him with its sorrow

or iniquity. The Christian (or strictly, the adherent of any Semitic

religion; for it holds good of the Moslem and Jew) alone has compassed

the magnificent conception of a Being all-wise, all-powerful, the

incarnation of Good. But the world (His creation) is patently evil.

Is there then some mistake? Is this adored Being in reality powerless

against evil, or ignorant, or cruel? These are the questions that in

all ages have racked the Christian’s soul. Official solutions (which

it was heresy to reject) failed to satisfy him; the conflict became an

agony that has continually goaded Western man into what to the East

have seemed gratuitous turmoils and achievements, making his thoughts a

hard bed to lie on, waking him (as uneasy quarters drive a traveller on

to the road at dawn) not only to fresh adventures but to the discovery

of beauties that, wrapped in morning dreams, the East has ignored.

It has been suggested, as a dominating characteristic of the ancient

Japanese, that they were without a sense of sin. It would, I maintain,

be truer to say that they were not troubled by the Problem of Evil.

But a sense of sin they certainly did not lack. Hell gaped at them

perpetually; no delicately Japanicized variety, but a true Dantesque

inferno, brutally depicted not only on monastery walls, but even amid

the gay elegancies of the Palace. The period at which Shōnagon wrote

her book corresponded with a time of general panic concerning the Life

to Come. In 985 appeared Eshin Sōzu’s _Ōjō Yōshū_ or ‘Essentials of

Salvation,’ with its ghoulish evangelism that culminated in the great

democratic ‘revivals’ of Hōnen Shōnin in the twelfth and Shinran in the

thirteenth century.

And if Eshin’s mission marked the beginning of a new phase in Japanese

religion, it was at the same time associated with the political

counter-currents that ultimately destroyed the civilization of Heian.

Among Eshin’s aristocratic adherents the most important were drawn

not from the dominant Fujiwara family but its rivals, the Taira and

Minamoto.[4] One of his most influential followers was Taira no

Koremochi, a lawless character, possibly the model for Murasaki’s Tayū

(the braggadocio suitor of Tamakatsura) in the third volume of _Genji_.

Koremochi had a dispute with one of the Fujiwaras about a piece of

land, and failing to win his case, waylaid and slaughtered his rival.

The consequences of this murder, committed with complete impunity,

were far-reaching. For centuries the Fujiwaras had been hedged round

by a mysterious prestige. Fiefs, titles, offices of state—all seemed

to belong to them by some inviolable decree, and each fresh claim met

only with a superstitious acquiescence. But now it had been discovered,

to everyone’s astonishment, that even a Fujiwara could crumple at the

touch of steel, ‘roll over like an ox and vanish unavenged.’ These

events took place in the extreme north of the main Island. Here, and

in all the border provinces the hold of the Fujiwaras was beginning to

weaken. The great struggle began early in the twelfth century; but when

it came it was a contest not between civilization and barbarism—for

the effeminate and decadent society of Heian disappeared at the first

breath of conflict—but between a long series of rival swashbucklers and

dictators. And with the advent of a robust militarism the old attitude

towards religion, half childish, half cynical, gave way on the one

hand to the intense, peasant faith of Hōnen, and on the other to the

passionate mysticism of the Nō plays.

The life of the Heian Court in the tenth century is known to us

chiefly through two documents, _The Tale of Genji_, a novel by Murasaki

Shikibu, and _The Pillow-Book_ by Sei Shōnagon. The first has, as a

document, the disadvantage of being fiction. Murasaki shows us the

world, particularly the male part of it, rather as she would like it

to have been than as she actually found it. She dreamed of lovers who,

though in every sense men, should yet retain the gentleness and grace

of her girl friend Saishō.[5] How different was the world she actually

lived in we can see in her _Diary_, which fortunately is also preserved.

The _Pillow-Book_, on the other hand, is a plain record of fact, and

being at least ten times as long as Murasaki’s _Diary_, and far more

varied in contents, it is the most important document of the period

that we possess.[6]

Sei Shōnagon, the authoress of the _Pillow-Book_, was born in 966

or 967, the daughter of Kiyohara no Motosuke. The Kiyohara clan

was descended from Temmu, the fortieth Emperor of Japan. For many

generations, Motosuke’s ancestors had held office as provincial

governors, a respectable but undistinguished form of employment.

Chiefly, however, they are known for their devotion to learning and

literature. Prince Toneri, the founder of the family, was one of the

compilers of the _Nihongi_, or ‘Chronicles of Japan’;[7] another

ancestor, Natsuno,[8] who died in 837, was the author of an important

work, the _Ryō no gige_ or ‘Commentary on the Penal Code,’ while

Shōnagon’s great-grandfather, Fukayabu, became the typical Court-poet

of the early tenth century, and his thin elegant verse still figures in

every anthology.

Motosuke held a series of governorships; but he, too, is best known

as a poet and student of poetry. He lectured upon the text of

the _Manyōshū_, a collection of ancient poems that were already

becoming difficult to understand, and was one of the compilers of the

_Gosenshū_, the second official anthology. He was appointed to his last

governorship, that of Bingo, in 986 and died in 990.

A year later Shōnagon, now aged about twenty-four, entered the service

of the little Empress Sadako, who had arrived at Court the year before.

The Empress, a daughter of the Prime Minister, Fujiwara no Michitaka,

was now fifteen: she died in childbirth ten years later, and it is with

these years, from 991 to 1000, that the _Pillow-Book_ deals.

It consists partly of reminiscences, partly of entries in diary-form.

The book is arranged not chronologically, but under a series

of headings, such as ‘Disagreeable Things,’ ‘Amusing Things,’

‘Disappointing Things,’ and the like; but often this scheme breaks down

and the sequence becomes entirely arbitrary.

To keep some kind of journal was a common practice of the day. No other

miscellany like the _Pillow-Book_ exists; but there may well have been

others, for Heian literature has not survived in its entirety. Thus,

Shōnagon gives us a list of her favourite novels. Out of eleven, only

one (_The Hollow Tree_) survives; and from other sources we know the

names of over twenty novels belonging to this period, all of which are

lost. The question whether the particular form in which she cast her

book, that of grouping the entries under headings such as ‘disagreeable

things,’ ‘amusing things,’ etc., was suggested to her by some previous

work is difficult to decide. There exists a book[9] by the Chinese

poet Li Shang-yin (813–58) called _Tsa Tsuan_, or ‘Miscellaneous

Notes,’ which is arranged on this principle, though its matter is very

different, the author remaining content with mere enumerations, for

example:

_Things that certainly won’t come._

A dog, if called to by a man with a stick in his hand.

A singing-girl, if summoned by a penniless student.

_Inappropriate Things._

For a Persian to be poor. For a doctor to fall ill. For a schoolmaster

not to recognize an ideogram. For a butcher to recite the

Scriptures.[10]

_Things that make a Bad Impression._

To fall off one’s horse at polo. To choke when eating with one’s

superiors. To return to worldly life after having been in a monastery

or convent. To lie on someone else’s bed with one’s boots on. To sing

love-songs in the presence of one’s parents.

Whereas Shōnagon almost always illustrates her categories by long

anecdotes and reminiscences, the Chinese writer, as we have seen,

confines himself to bald lists. Shōnagon is concerned with her own

likes and irritabilities; Li Shang-yin merely expresses a sort of

generalized proverbial wisdom. Her experience is drawn exclusively from

the Court; his illustrations are drawn from market-place and farm.

Despite these differences, the particular form in which the

_Pillow-Book_ is cast might quite conceivably be due to the _Tsa

Tsuan_. The difficulty is that Li Shang-yin’s book does not seem to

have reached Japan till many centuries later. That no single copy of

the _Tsa Tsuan_ existed in Japan at a particular date is a thing that

obviously cannot be proved. The question is not in itself of much

importance, but it is worth mentioning in order to call attention to

the Chinese book, which is a singularly interesting document of social

history.

Shōnagon protests, as do most diarists and makers of journals, that the

_Pillow-Book_ was intended for herself alone. But it quickly fell into

other hands. In 1002 she writes:

When the present Captain of the Bodyguard of the Left (Minamoto no

Tsunefusa) was governor of Ise (i.e. in 995 or 996) he one day called

on me at my home. By accident a mattress that was pushed out into

the front room for him to sit on had my book lying on it. The moment

I realized this I snatched at the book and made frantic efforts to

recover it. But Tsunefusa carried it off with him and did not return it

till a long time afterwards.

So far as I remember, this was the beginning of my book being handed

about at Court.

What Tsunefusa saw and handed round in 995–6 was, of course, only part

of the work, most of it having been written later than this.

Printing did not become general in Japan till the seventeenth century.

The _editio princeps_ of the _Pillow-Book_ is in movable type and

is said to date from the Keichō Period, 1596–1614. Many mediæval

manuscript-copies exist; but their relative age and trustworthiness

have not been fully investigated.

Concerning her arrival at Court, Shōnagon writes as follows:

When I first entered her Majesty’s service I felt indescribably shy,

and was indeed constantly on the verge of tears. When I came on duty

the first evening, the Empress was sitting with only a three-foot

screen in front of her, and so nervous was I that when she passed me

some picture or book to look at, I was hardly capable of putting out

my hand to take it. While she was talking about what she wanted me

to see—telling me what it was or who had made it—I was all the time

wondering whether my hair was in order. For the lamp was not in the

middle of the room, but on a stand immediately beside where we sat,

and we were more exposed than we should have been even by daylight.

It was all I could do to fix my attention on what I was looking at.

Only part of her Majesty’s hand showed, for the weather was very cold

and she had muffled herself in her sleeves; but I could see that it

was pink and very lovely. I gazed and gazed. To an inexperienced

home-bred girl like me it was a wonderful surprise to discover that

such people as this existed on earth at all. At dawn I hurried away,

but the Empress called after me, saying I seemed to be as frightened

of the daylight as the ugly old God of Katsuragi.[11] I lay down

again, purposely choosing an attitude in which she could not get a

full view of me. The shutters had not yet been opened. But soon one of

the ladies came along and the Empress called out to her, ‘Please open

those things!’ She was beginning to do so, when the Empress suddenly

said, ‘Not now!’ and, laughing, the lackey withdrew. Her Majesty then

engaged me in conversation for some time, and said at last: ‘Well, I

expect you are wanting to be off. Go as soon as you like.’ ‘And come

back in good time to-night,’ she added. It was so late when I got

back to my room that I found it all tidied and opened up for the day.

The snow outside was lovely. Presently there came a message from the

Empress saying it was a good opportunity for me to wait upon her in the

morning. ‘The snow-clouds make it so dark,’ she said, ‘that you will be

almost invisible.’ I could not bring myself to go, and the message was

repeated several times. At last the head-girl of our room said: ‘You

mustn’t shut yourself up here all the time. You ought to be thankful to

get a chance like this. Her Majesty would not ask for you unless she

really wanted you, and she will think it very bad manners if you do

not go.’ So I was hustled off, and arrived once more in the Imperial

Presence, in a state of miserable embarrassment and confusion.

Shōnagon goes on to describe the ease and nonchalance with which those

in attendance upon the Empress went about their duties or lay ‘with

their Chinese cloaks trailing across the floor.’ ‘How I envied the

composure with which they took and handed on the Empress’s notes and

letters, standing up and sitting down, talking and laughing without

the slightest trace of embarrassment! Would a time ever come when I

should feel equally at home in such surroundings? The mere thought made

me tremble.... Presently there were loud cries of “Make way!” Someone

said it was the Prime Minister, and a great scuffling began, everyone

clutching at whatever possessions they had left lying about and making

hastily for the alcove.’

Shōnagon goes on to tell us that the visitor turns out to be not

Michitaka, the Prime Minister, but his son, Korechika, the Empress’s

favourite brother, then a lad of eighteen.

+Korechika.+ These last two days I have been supposed to be in

retreat.[12] But I wanted to see how you were getting on in this

tremendous snow-storm.

+Empress.+ I did not expect you. I thought ‘no roads were left....’[13]

+Korechika.+ Did you think that would stop me? I made sure ‘your heart

was filled with pity....’

What, I thought, could have been more elegant than such a conversation

as this? It was up to the most high-flown passages in any of the novels

I had read.... After a while my Lord Korechika asked who was behind the

curtains-of-state, and someone having told him it was I, he rose to

his feet, intending, as I first thought, to go away. But instead, he

came close up to the curtains and spoke about something that he heard

had happened to me before I came to Court. I had already been feeling

utterly awe-struck as I gazed at him through the curtains; and now when

he actually came up and began to address me, I almost fainted.

Sometimes at festivals and processions he had seemed to be looking in

the direction of our carriage; whereupon we had immediately made fast

the blinds and even hidden our faces with our fans, lest he should get

a momentary view of our profiles. And now, sitting terror-stricken

before him, I wondered how it was that I had ever consented to embark

upon a career for which I was so hopelessly ill-qualified. Even the

fan with which I was attempting to hide my embarrassment he now took

from me. I felt certain at once that my hair was straggling down in

the wildest disorder, and whether it really was or no, probably I

looked quite as distraught as I was feeling. Twisting my fan in his

fingers, he began asking who painted it, and other questions—I all the

while hoping only that he would soon go away. But it was clear he had

no intention of doing so, for he was now reclining on his back close

to the curtains. I think her Majesty felt at last that his long stay

was disconcerting me, for she called to him: ‘Come over here! I want

you to tell me whose writing this is.’ How thankful I felt! But Lord

Korechika replied: ‘Send it along and I will look at it!’ and when she

still insisted that he should come to her, he said: ‘I would come; but

Shōnagon here has hold of me and will not let go.’ This, of course,

was whimsical enough, but rather embarrassing for me, considering the

immense difference in our ages and positions.

Her Majesty was now looking at some piece or other of writing in

cursive syllabary. ‘If you want to know who wrote it, show it to this

lady. I’ll be bound there’s not a hand in the world that she would not

recognize.’ So he went on, always trying to say something that would

get an answer out of me.

‘Shōnagon, do you like me?’ the Empress asked presently. ‘Why, Madam,

what else do you suppose?’ I was beginning to reply, when someone in

the breakfast-room sneezed violently. ‘There!’ cried her Majesty. ‘That

shows you are not telling the truth. Of course, it would be nice if you

liked me, but it can’t be helped.’

Next morning, when Shōnagon is in her room, someone brings her a note

written on light green paper, and very prettily got up. In it is the

poem: ‘Never had I known, never had known that false was false; save

for the God of Truth whose voice resounded in the empty air.’ ‘It had

been dictated,’ Shōnagon continues, ‘to one of her ladies. I felt

terribly mortified and confused. How I should have liked to get hold of

the person who produced that unlucky sneeze!’

Shōnagon’s reply—‘Thankless my lot who, for the trespass of another’s

nose, am thought of shallow heart’—contains puns and ingenuities which

it would be tedious to explain.

Thus began Shōnagon’s career at Court. There are, however, in the

_Pillow-Book_ two passages which refer to an earlier period in her

life. In 986, when she was about twenty, she attended a Buddhist

Ceremony at the palace of Fujiwara no Naritoki, Colonel of the

Bodyguard and Assistant Councillor of State. ‘The heat,’ she says,

‘was desolating, and we had things to attend to that could not be left

over till next day; so we meant only to hear a little of the service

and then go home. But such surging oceans of carriages had pressed in

behind us, that it was impossible to escape. When the morning part of

the ceremony was over we sent word to the carriages at the back of us

that we were going away, and being glad enough to get a little closer,

they at once let us through, and themselves moved up into line. We had

to put up with a good deal of chaffing as we retired.... His lordship

Yoshichika[14] called to me as we passed: “You _do well to retire_.” At

the moment I was suffering so much from the heat that I did not see the

point: but afterwards I sent a man to him with the message: “Among five

thousand arrogants, you too will surely find a place.”’

The allusion (and nothing would so have covered Shōnagon with shame as

that it should be thought she had not recognized it) is to a passage

in the _Lotus Sūtra_ where five thousand of Buddha’s hearers walk out

during one of his sermons. Buddha makes no attempt to stop them, saying

only: ‘Arrogant creatures, _they do well to retire_.’ It is precisely

this part of the _Lotus Sūtra_ that is read at the end of the morning

service on the first day of the ceremony in question, so that Shōnagon,

who became the great pastmaster in the art of capping quotations,

begins her career with a very light ordeal.

The following passage also seems to belong to about the year 986:

On that day too (the seventh of the first month) I loved being taken

to see the White Horses.[15] We girls living at home used to drive off

to the Palace in a coach marvellously furbished. When we came to the

ground-bar of the Middle Gate, there was always a terrible bump. Heads

knocked together, combs fell out, and, if one did not instantly rescue

them, got trampled upon and smashed to pieces. Near the guard-room

were a lot of officers, who used to take bows from soldiers in the

procession and twang them, to make the White Horses prance. This we

found very entertaining. In the distance, through one of the gates

of the Inner Palace, we could see shutters, behind which figures

were moving to and fro, ladies perhaps of the Lamp or Wardrobe. How

marvellous they seemed to us—these people who walked about the Palace

as though it belonged to them!

So close did the procession pass that one could study the very texture

of the soldiers’ faces. I remember one who had put on his powder

unevenly, so that here and there his dark skin showed through, looking

like those black patches in the garden, when the snow has begun to

melt. An absurd sight. But when the horses reared and plunged wildly

about I was frightened, and shrinking back into our coach saw nothing

more of the show.

Here is an after-breakfast scene in the Palace, dating from the spring

of 994:

Presently we heard those who had been handing the Imperial Dishes

tell the serving-men they might clear, and a moment later His Majesty

reappeared. He asked me to mix some ink ... and presently folded a

white poem-slip, saying to us gentlewomen: ‘Write me a few scraps

of old poetry—anything that comes into your head.’ I asked my lord

Korechika what he advised me to choose. ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said. ‘Write

something quickly and hand it in. This is entirely your affair. We men

are not intended to help you.’ And he put the inkstand by me, adding:

‘Don’t stop to think! The _Naniwazu_[16] or anything else you happen to

know....’ Really there was nothing to be afraid of; but for some reason

I felt terribly confused, and the blood rushed to my face. Two or three

of the upper ladies tried their hands, one with a spring song, another

with a poem on this or that flower. Then it came to me, and I wrote out

the poem: “The years go by; age and its evils crowd upon me, but be

this as it may, while flowers are here to see, I cannot grieve.’ But

instead of ‘flowers’ I wrote ‘my Lord.’ ‘I did this out of curiosity,’

said the Emperor, while he was looking at what I had written. ‘It is so

interesting to see what is going on in people’s heads.’ A conversation

followed, in the course of which he said: ‘I remember my father, the

late Emperor Enyū, once[17] saying to his gentlemen-in-attendance:

“Here is a book. Each of you shall write a poem in it.” Several of them

found great difficulty in getting started. “Don’t bother about your

handwriting,” my father said, “nor, for that matter, whether your

poems are suitable to the season. It’s all one to me.” Thus encouraged

(but still making rather a burden of it) they set to work. One of them

was the present Prime Minister! He was only a captain of the Third

Rank then. When it came to his turn he wrote the old poem: “Like the

tide that rises on the shore of Izumo, deeper and deeper grows my love

for you; yes, mine.” But he altered “love for you” to “devotion to my

Sovereign,” which pleased my father very much.’

Shōnagon then tells us of the Emperor’s astonishment that people should

be able to read such vast quantities of poetry. Twenty chapters (the

length of the _Kokinshū_, the first official anthology) was far too

much. ‘I am sure for my part,’ said the Emperor, ‘I shall never succeed

in getting beyond Chapter 2.’

Another extract:

From the beginning of the fifth month,[18] it had been dark, rainy

weather all the time. I became so bored that at last I suggested we

had better go out and see if we couldn’t somewhere hear the cuckoo

singing. This idea was very well received, and one of the girls

suggested we should try that bridge behind the Kamo Shrine (it isn’t

called Magpie Bridge, but something rather like it). She said that

there was a cuckoo there every day. Someone else said it was not a

cuckoo at all, but a cricket. However, on the morning of the fifth

day, off we went. When we ordered the carriage, the men said they

didn’t suppose that in such weather as this anyone would mind if we

were picked up outside our own quarters and taken out by the Northern

Gate.[19] There was only room for four. Some of the other ladies asked

whether we should mind their getting another carriage and coming too.

But the Empress said ‘No,’ and though they were very much disappointed

we drove off rather hard-heartedly without attempting to console them

or indeed worrying about them at all. Something seemed to be happening

at the riding-ground, where there was a great press of people. When

we asked what was going on, we were told that the competitions were

being held, and that the archers were just going to shoot on horseback.

It was said, too, that the Officers of the Bodyguard of the Left

were there; but all we could see, when we had pulled up, was a few

gentlemen of the Sixth Rank wandering vaguely about. ‘Oh, do let us

get on,’ someone said; ‘there’s no one of any interest here.’ So we

drove on towards Kamo, the familiar road making us feel quite as though

we were on our way to the Festival.[20] Presently we came to my lord

Akinobu’s[21] house, and someone suggested we should get out and have

a look at it. Everything was very simple and countrified—pictures of

horses on the panels, screens of wattled bamboo, curtains of plaited

grass—all in a style that seemed to be intentionally behind the times.

The house itself was a poor affair and very cramped, but quite pretty

in its way. As for cuckoos, we were nearly deafened! It is really a

great pity her Majesty never hears them. And when we thought of the

ladies who had wanted so badly to come with us, we felt quite guilty.

‘It’s always interesting to see things done on the spot,’ said Akinobu,

and sending for some stuff which I suppose was husked rice, he made

some girls—very clean and respectable—along with others who seemed

to come from neighbouring farms, show us how the rice was thrashed.

Five or six of them did this, and then the grain was put into a sort

of machine that went round, two girls turning it and at the same time

singing so strange a song that we could not help laughing, and had soon

forgotten all about the cuckoos. Then refreshments were brought on a

queer old tray-stand such as one sees in Chinese pictures. As no one

seemed much interested in its contents, our host said: ‘This is rough,

country fare. If you don’t like it, the only thing to do in a place

like this is to go on bothering your host or his servants till you get

something you can eat. We don’t expect you people from the Capital to

be shy. These fern-shoots, now. I gathered them with my own hand.’ ‘You

don’t want us to arrange ourselves round the tray-stand like a lot of

maid-servants sitting down to their supper?’ I protested.

‘Hand the things round,’ he said ... and while this was going on, in

the midst of the clatter, one of the men came in and said that it was

going to rain, and we hurried back to our carriage. I wanted to make

my cuckoo-poem before we started; but the others said I could do it

in the carriage. Before going we picked a huge branch of white-flower

and decorated our carriage with it, great trails of blossom hanging

over the windows and sides, till one would have thought a huge canopy

of white brocade had been flung across the roof of the coach. Our

grooms, throwing themselves into the thing, began with shouts of

laughter squeezing fresh boughs of blossom into every cranny that would

hold them. We longed to be seen by someone on our way back, but not

a soul did we meet, save one or two wretched priests or other such

uninteresting people. When we were nearly home we made up our minds it

would be too dull to finish the day without anyone having seen us in

our splendour, so we stopped at the palace in the First Ward and asked

for the Captain,[22] saying we were just back from hearing the cuckoo.

We were told he had been off-duty for some time and had got into easy

clothes; but was now being helped into his Court trousers. Wouldn’t we

wait? We said we couldn’t do that, and were driving on to the Eastern

Gate, when he suddenly appeared running after us down the road. He had

certainly changed in a marvellously short space of time, but was still

buckling his belt as he ran. Behind him, barefooted in their haste,

panted several dressers and grooms. We called to the coachman to drive

on and had already reached the gate when, hopelessly out of breath, he

staggered up to us. It was only then that he saw how we were decorated.

‘This is a fairy chariot,’ he laughed. ‘I do not believe there are real

people in it. If there are, let them get down and show themselves.’

‘But, Shōnagon, what poems did you make to-day? That’s what I should

like to hear.’ ‘We’re keeping them for her Majesty,’ I replied. Just

then it once more began to rain in earnest. ‘I have always wondered,’

he said, ‘why when all the other gates have arches, this Eastern gate

should have none. To-day, for example, one badly needs it.’ ‘What

am I to do now?’ he asked presently. ‘I was so determined to catch

you up that I rushed out without thinking what was to become of me

afterwards.’ ‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ I said. ‘You can come with us to

the Palace.’ ‘In an _eboshi_?’[23] he asked. ‘What can you be thinking

of?’ ‘Send someone to fetch your hat,’ I suggested. But it was now

raining badly and our men, who had no raincoats with them, were pulling

in the carriage as quickly as they could.[24] One of his men presently

arrived from his palace with an umbrella, and under its shelter he now,

with a slow reluctance that contrasted oddly with his previous haste,

made his way home, continually stopping to look back at us over his

shoulder. With his umbrella in one hand and a bunch of white-flower in

the other, he was an amusing sight.

When we were back in the Palace, her Majesty asked for an account

of our adventures. The girls who had been left behind were at first

inclined to be rather sulky; but when we described how the Captain

had run after us down the Great Highway of the First Ward, they could

not help laughing. Presently the Empress asked about our poems, and

we were obliged to explain that we had not made any. ‘That is very

unfortunate,’ she said. ‘Some of the gentlemen at Court are bound to

hear of your excursion, and they will certainly expect something to

have come of it. I can quite understand that on the spot it was not

very easy to write anything. When people make too solemn an affair of

such things, one is apt suddenly to feel completely uninterested. But

it is not too late. Write something now. You’re good for that much,

surely.’ This was all true enough; but it turned out to be a painful

business. We were still trying to produce something when a messenger

arrived, with a note from the Captain. It was written on thin paper

stamped with the white-flower pattern, and was attached to the spray

that he had taken from our carriage. His poem said: ‘Would that of this

journey I had heard. So had my heart been with you when you sought the

cuckoo’s song.’ Fearing that we were keeping the messenger waiting, her

Majesty sent round her own writing-case to our room, with paper slipped

into the lid. ‘You write something, Saishō,’ I said. But Saishō was

determined that I should write, and while we argued about it the sky

suddenly grew dark, rain began to pour, and there were such deafening

peals of thunder, that we forgot all about our poem, and frightened out

of our wits ran wildly from place to place, closing shutters and doors.

The storm lasted a long time, and when at last the thunder became less

frequent, it was already dark. We were just saying we really must

get on with our answer, when crowds of visitors began to arrive, all

anxious to talk about the storm, and we were obliged to go out and look

after them. One of the courtiers said that a poem only needs an answer

when it is addressed to someone in particular, and we decided to do

no more about it. I said to the Empress that poetry seemed to have a

bad _karma_ to-day, and added that the best thing we could do was to

keep as quiet as possible about our excursion. ‘I still don’t see why

some of you who went should not be able to produce a few poems,’ she

replied, pretending to be cross. ‘It isn’t that you can’t; of that I

am sure. You have made up your minds not to.’ ‘The time has passed,’ I

said. ‘One must do those things when one is in the right mood.’ ‘Right

mood? What nonsense!’ she exclaimed indignantly. But all the same, she

did not worry me any more about it.

Two days afterwards Saishō was talking about our excursion, and

mentioned the fern-shoots that Akinobu had ‘plucked with his own hand.’

The Empress was amused that Saishō seemed to have retained a much

clearer memory of the refreshments than of anything else that happened

during the expedition, and picking up a stray piece of paper she

wrote: ‘The memory of a salad lingers in her head,’ and bade me make a

beginning for the poem. I wrote: ‘More than the cuckoo’s song that she

went out to hear.’ ‘Well, Shōnagon,’ she said, laughing, ‘how you of

all people can have the face to mention cuckoos, I cannot imagine.’ I

felt very crestfallen, but answered boldly: ‘I don’t see anything to

be ashamed of. I have made up my mind only to make poems when I feel

inclined to. If, whenever there is a question of poetry, you turn upon

me and ask me to compose, I shall stay in your service no longer. When

I am called upon like that, I can’t even count the syllables, still

less think whether I am writing a winter song in spring, or a spring

song in autumn.... I know there have been a lot of poets in my family;

and it would certainly be very nice if, after one of these occasions,

people said: “Of course, hers was much the best; but that is not

surprising, considering what her father was.” As it is, not having the

slightest degree of special talent in that direction, I object strongly

to being perpetually thrust forward and made to behave as though I

thought myself a genius. I feel I am disgracing my father’s memory!’ I

said this quite seriously; but the Empress laughed. However, she said I

might do as I pleased, and promised that for her part she would never

call upon me again. I felt immensely relieved.

... Late one night when Korechika came in and began giving out themes

upon which the ladies were to write poems, everyone else was delighted

and poems were turned out in bundles. I meanwhile went on talking to

the Empress about other matters. Presently Korechika caught sight of

me and asked why I did not join the others and make some poems. ‘Come

and take your theme,’ he said. I told him that I had, for good reasons

of my own, given up writing poetry. This he was very loath to believe.

‘I am sure,’ he said, ‘my sister would not allow you to do so. It is

the most absurd thing I ever heard of. Well! you may do as you like on

other occasions; but I am not going to let you off to-night.’ However,

I took no notice. While the poems of the other ladies were being

judged, a minute slip of paper was handed to me by the Empress. On it

was the poem: ‘Shall she, who of the famed Motosuke an offspring is

deemed, alone be missing from to-night’s great tournament of song?’...

To this I replied: ‘Were I another’s child, who sooner had enrolled

in this night’s tournament of song?’ And I told the Empress, that if

I were anyone else, I should be only too pleased to present her with

thousands of poems.

A few weeks before the cuckoo-expedition, the Empress’s father, the

Prime Minister Michitaka had died at the early age of forty-eight. In

the normal course of affairs he would have been succeeded by his eldest

son, Korechika; for already the Fujiwaras had established a kind of

kingship in Japan, at the expense of the Mikado, who, though he had to

be handled according to certain fixed rules, was a mere pawn in their

game. But Michitaka’s brother, Michinaga, still a young man and with

far more gift for politics than his nephew Korechika, was determined to

shift the succession to his own branch of the family. For this purpose

it was necessary to get up some kind of popular agitation against

Korechika, and if possible to discredit his sister, the Empress Sadako,

and replace her by a child of Michinaga’s own. Just as Genji,[25] in a

rather similar situation, gave a handle to his enemies by his impudent

escapade with Oborozuki, so the Empress’s brother Korechika lost no

time in providing the opposing faction with a magnificent lever for his

overthrow.

We are now in the fourth month of 995. To understand how Korechika

gave the desired opportunity to his enemies it is necessary to go back

some years. In 984 the Emperor Kwazan had ascended the Throne at the

age of sixteen. Almost immediately Kane-iye, the then Prime Minister,

decided that the new Emperor was inconveniently old. He wanted to make

an Empress of his grand-daughter, Sadako, a child of about ten. She

could enter the Palace in a couple of years, but it would be a long

time before she could be formally established as Empress. Meanwhile the

Emperor would have grown to years of unmanageable discretion. A plot

was hatched to replace Kwazan by his younger cousin, the subsequent

Emperor Ichijō.[26] The problem was how to induce Kwazan to retire.

The opportunity came when in 986 one of the Emperor’s Court ladies,

a certain Fujiwara no Tsuneko,[27] died suddenly. Kwazan was much

affected, and obviously in a state of mind upon which it would be easy

to work. Kane-iye’s son Michikane went to the Palace and after a great

harangue on the transience of all human things, announced that he was

about to enter the priesthood, and called upon Kwazan to resign the

vanities of kingship and follow him to the cloister. Kwazan agreed,

but saw no necessity for the moment to make any formal gesture of

abdication. Fearing that he would change his mind, Michikane packed up

the regalia and with his own hand deposited them in the Heir Apparent’s

quarters.

+Kane-Iye+

|

|

+—————————————————————+——+——————————————————————+

| | |

+Michitaka+ +Michikane+ +Michinaga+

| |

+——————+——————————+ |

| | |

+Korechika+ The Empress The Empress

+Sadako+, born 976. +Akiko+

(Sei Shōnagon’s (Murasaki’s

Empress) Empress)

+Tamemitsu+

(brother of Kane-iye)

|

|

+——————————+——————————————+————+—————————+———————————————+———————————+

| | | | | |

+Narinobu+ +Tadanobu+ +Kiminobu+ +Tsuneko+ The Third The Fourth

(Shōnagon’s (‘The Captain’) (Kwazan’s Sister Sister

lover) concubine; (courted by (courted by

died young) +Korechika+) +Kwazan+)

There was an elder sister (name unknown) who does not come into the story.

Michikane then led the Emperor to a monastery on the outskirts of the

Capital, and stood by while he received the tonsure. When it came to

his own turn he said he must first go back to the City and obtain his

father’s consent.

Kwazan saw that he had been the victim of a plot and burst into tears.

The step which he had taken was irrevocable; it only remained to

make the best of it. Officially he was a monk in the Flower Mountain

Temple; but it began to be rumoured that under another guise he was

to be seen nightly in Kyōto. Kwazan abdicated in 986. In 995[28] it

was said that he was secretly frequenting the palace of the late High

Falconer Tamemitsu—the very house from which ‘the Captain’ (Fujiwara no

Kiminobu) had come running down the highway in pursuit of Shōnagon’s

carriage.

In the first month of 996, less than a year after his father’s death,

Korechika gave his enemies the opportunity for which they had been

waiting.[29] He had for some while been in love with one of Kiminobu’s

sisters. He got it into his head that the ex-Emperor Kwazan was cutting

him out. He stationed himself, along with his brother Taka-iye, outside

Kiminobu’s palace, and when a muffled figure crept out in the darkness,

shot at it with his bow. Kwazan was wounded in the leg, but managed to

crawl back to his monastery. The story leaked out, and both brothers

were accused of sacrilege against the Church and the Imperial Family.

It was no very reputable specimen either of royalty or priesthood who

had been thus assaulted; but popular feeling, as regards the sanctity

both of the Throne and the Church, was at that time passionate, and

amid universal reprobation Korechika was banished to Kyūshū, his

brother to Izumo. The Empress Sadako seems to have shared to some

extent in her brothers’ disgrace. In the third month of 996 she left

the Court and moved into her own house, the ‘Small Palace in the Second

Ward.’ There was, however, an adequate reason for this removal. She was

going to have a baby, and pregnant women were not allowed to remain in

the Palace.

Only when all these commotions were over did Korechika discover that

Kwazan’s visits to the First Ward had been paid not, as rumour (which

commonly makes light of such details) had informed him, to the Third

Sister but to the Fourth, a lady in whom Korechika took no interest

whatever.

The banishment of the young lords and the retirement from the Palace of

the Empress Sadako were events which would in any case have moved Sei

Shōnagon very deeply. It so happened, however, that she herself became

unexpectedly involved. She had for years past carried on a desultory

love-affair with Kiminobu’s brother, Tadanobu. He was naturally

furious at the scandal of his sister’s connexion with the ex-Emperor

becoming known, and openly sided with Korechika’s prosecutors. It is

likely enough that on some occasion, at a time when everyone’s nerves

were on edge, Shōnagon flared up on behalf of her lover.

In any case, she was regarded as being ‘on the other side,’ and after

the Empress’s move to the Second Ward, was allowed to remain in

miserable suspense at her brother’s house.

This went on for about four months. But in the autumn of 996 a certain

captain of the Bodyguard of the Left told Shōnagon that he had been

talking with some of the Empress’s women, and had gathered from their

conversation that her Majesty would welcome Shōnagon’s return. ‘At

any rate go and have a look,’ said the captain. ‘The peonies in front

of the terrace give the place an amusingly Chinese air. I am sure

you would be delighted by it.’ ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t like people

thinking such things of me as they have thought.’

Shōnagon, however, relented, and soon afterwards we find her in the

Small Palace. As I came from my room, she writes, I passed a group of

ladies who were whispering together. I caught something about ‘being

in with Michinaga’s party’; but when they saw me coming, they stopped

talking, and edged away from me in so hostile a manner that I made up

my mind I would not enter the Presence. This went on for several weeks,

and though I was constantly asked to return, I would not do so; for I

was sure that those about the Empress were all the while telling her I

was on the other side, and every sort of other lie. For a long while

her Majesty seemed completely to have forgotten me.

At last, Shōnagon tells us, a messenger arrived with a letter

from the Small Palace. On opening it she found a single petal of

the mountain-azalea, wrapped up in a sheet of paper. On the paper

nothing was written, but on the petal were the words: ‘My love, long

silent....’[30]

Then to Shōnagon in her excitement the strangest thing happened. When

she sat down to write her reply she could not remember the first words

of the poem to which she knew the Empress was alluding. Not to make

some reference to these words would place her under a suspicion hardly

less grave than that from which she seemed just to be emerging. To side

with Michinaga was indiscreet; but to misunderstand a literary allusion

was disgraceful. Fortunately a small boy who happened to be in the room

heard Shōnagon fumbling for the elusive words and piped out: ‘Like a

river that has dived....’

When I arrived, continues Shōnagon, describing her meeting with the

Empress, I felt very nervous.... Her Majesty pretended not to know me

and asked whether I was a new lady-in-waiting. Then turning to me she

said: ‘It was a bad poem that I made use of. But for a long time I had

been feeling that something of the kind must be said. I am wretched all

the time, when you are not here.’ I could see at once that everything

was right again. Presently I confessed that I had been in difficulties

about the beginning of the poem, till a little boy told me how it

went. She was very much amused. ‘That is just what happens,’ she said.

‘It is always those old tags that slip one’s memory. One grows careless

about them....’

The banishment of the Empress’s brothers was not a very serious affair.

Korechika paid a secret visit to the Capital in the late autumn of 996,

and in the spring of 997 both brothers were officially recalled, in

consequence of the general amnesty which celebrated the birth of the

Empress Sadako’s child.

In the summer of that year Sadako and her ladies returned to the

Emperor’s Palace, bringing with them the little princess Osako.

The following extract dates from 998:

While the western side-room was being got ready for the Continual

Service, there were, of course, a lot of priests about, hanging up

Buddhas and so on. Two days after this we heard a strange voice out on

the veranda saying: ‘There’ll be some scraps left from the offerings,

I suppose,’ and one of the priests replied that it was too early yet

to say. We wondered who it could be, and looking out saw an old

nun, wearing an extraordinarily grimy pair of hunting-trousers, very

narrow and short, and something in the nature of a cloak, that hardly

came more than five inches below her belt and was as dirty as the

trousers—the sort of garment, indeed, that is put on to a performing

monkey. ‘What is she saying?’ I asked, and the old woman herself in a

strange, affected voice croaked that she was a disciple of Buddha. ‘I

am only asking for the Lord Buddha’s leavings,’ she said. ‘But these

monks are stingy and won’t give me any.’ Her voice was refined and her

speech that of someone who had moved in good society. I could not help

feeling very sorry that a gentlewoman should have sunk to so miserable

a plight. I said I supposed she never ate anything but Buddha’s holy

leavings, and said it was an edifying diet. She saw that I was laughing

at her and cried out at once: ‘Not eat anything else! I don’t eat

scraps from the altar, I can tell you, when I can get anything better!’

We then put some fruit and some broad-cakes into a basket and sent

them out to her. When she was feeling thoroughly comforted inside, she

became very talkative. The young girls teased her with questions,

asking whether she had a lover, and where her house was. Her replies

were very lively, not to say scurrilous. Someone asked her whether she

could sing and dance, which set her off on a long ballad about ‘With

whom shall I sleep to-night? With the sheriff of Hitachi will I sleep;

for his skin is the best to touch.’ There was a great deal more of

it. This was followed by ‘Many as the red leaves on the peak of Mount

Otoko are the tongues that whisper my shame.’ While she was singing,

she rolled her head from side to side in the most extraordinary manner.

We were now all getting rather tired of her.... Some said we ought to

give her a present before we drove her away. The Empress heard this.

‘I can’t think what possessed you to let her make such a painful

exhibition of herself,’ her Majesty exclaimed. ‘Her singing was really

more than I could endure. I was obliged to stop up my ears. Here, take

this cloak and send her off with it as quickly as you can.’

‘Her Majesty sends you this cloak,’ we told her. ‘Your own is rather

soiled; it would be nice if you were to put on something fresh.’ We

tossed it to her, and she received it with a profound bow; then threw

it across her shoulders and executed a sort of dance. But we could not

stand her a moment longer, and went indoors.

After this she got into the habit of coming, and was always trying in

one way or another to call attention to herself. We used to call her

‘the sheriff of Hitachi.’ She still wore the same filthy cloak, and we

wondered how she had disposed of the one we gave her. She had, indeed,

long ceased to amuse us when one day Ukon, the Emperor’s waiting-woman,

came over to her Majesty’s apartments and the Empress began telling

her that we had taken up with this extraordinary old creature, who was

always coming to the Palace. Then she made Kohyōye do her imitation of

‘the sheriff of Hitachi.’ ‘Do show her to me one day,’ cried Ukon; ‘I

long to see her. Don’t think I shall run off with her. I quite realize

that she is your perquisite.’

However, soon after this another nun, crippled but very well-behaved

and respectable, called us out on to the veranda and begged for

assistance. She seemed so ashamed of having to beg, that we were sorry

for her. When we gave her some clothes, she did indeed prostrate

herself profoundly, but in how different a manner from the other! Just

as she was going off, with tears of gratitude in her eyes, ‘Hitachi’

turned up. She saw her, and was so jealous that she did not come near

us again for ever so long afterwards.

A great friend of Sei Shōnagon’s was Fujiwara no Yukinari, a first

cousin of her chief lover, Tadanobu.

One day[31] when my lord Yukinari came to see us, he stayed for an

immense while talking to someone outside. ‘Who was it?’ I asked,

when he at last appeared. ‘Ben no Naishi’ (one of the Empress’s

gentlewomen), he replied. ‘What can you have found to talk about with

her, that took so long?’ I asked, very much surprised. ‘If the Clerk

of the Grand Secretariat[32] had come along, you would soon have found

yourself left in the lurch.’ ‘Now who, I should like to know, has told

you about that business,’ he said, laughing. ‘As a matter of fact, that

was what she was talking to me of just now. She was trying to persuade

me not to tell anyone about it.’

Yukinari has no particular talents,[33] or indeed any characteristic

likely to recommend him on a superficial acquaintance, and everyone

else is content to take him as he seems. But I have had opportunities

of seeing the deeper parts of his nature, and I know that he is far

from being so ordinary as he appears. I have often said so to the

Empress; and as a matter of fact, she knows it quite well herself....

But the young girls are always abusing him and openly repeating the

most disagreeable stories about him. ‘What a wretched sight he is!’

they say. ‘And why can’t he recite the Scriptures and make poems like

other people? He is really very tiresome.’

The truth is, these ladies do not interest him and he never addresses

a word to them. He always says: ‘I wouldn’t mind if a woman’s eyes

stood upright in her head, nor if her eyebrows spread all over her

forehead and her nose were crooked, provided she had a good mouth and

a fine chin and neck. A bad voice I couldn’t, of course, stand.’ ‘But

come to think of it,’ he would add, ‘faces are rather important. It

_is_ unpleasant when people are ugly.’ This has added to the number

of his enemies all ladies who believe themselves to have narrow chins

or mouths that are lacking in charm, and it is they who have tried to

prejudice her Majesty against him.

As it was I whom he first employed to carry messages to the Empress,

he seems unable to communicate with her in any other way. If I am in

my room he sends for me to the front of the house, or else comes right

into our quarters. When I am not at the Palace but in my home, he

follows me there and even if he has written a note[34] he brings it

in himself, saying that if anything prevents my going back to Court

immediately, he will be obliged if I will send a messenger to her

Majesty ‘with instructions to report what he is now about to tell me,’

and so forth. It is useless for me to point out that there are plenty

of people in the Palace who would gladly give a message. He rejects one

after another. Once, with the best intentions, I suggested that it is

often a good thing to act according to circumstances, instead of making

for oneself these hard-and-fast rules. But he said it came natural to

him to live according to rule, and ‘one can’t change one’s nature.’

‘Don’t stand on ceremony,’ I answered. He did not see the allusion,[35]

and laughing in a puzzled way, he said, ‘I am afraid there has been a

good deal of talk lately about our being so friendly. Well, suppose we

are! I don’t see anything to be ashamed of. I think, by this time, you

might uncover your face, and so on.’ ‘I daren’t,’ I answered. ‘I have

heard how particular you are about the shape of people’s chins, and

mine is very ugly.’ ‘Is it really?’ he asked seriously; ‘I had no idea

of that. Perhaps after all you had better not let me see you.’ After

this I always covered my face on any occasion when he could possibly

have seen me; but I noticed that he never looked my way, and it seemed

clear that he had taken what I said about my own ugliness quite

seriously.

One morning Shikibu no Omoto [one of the Empress’s ladies] and I lay

in the side-room (where we had slept that night) till the sun was well

up. Suddenly we heard someone sliding back the door that leads into

the main building, and there before us stood the Emperor and Empress!

We were so much surprised that we simply lay helpless, while their

Majesties stood by, laughing immoderately at our confusion. Presently

they came across and stood half hidden behind the pile of rugs and

cloaks (for we had buried ourselves head and all under our bedding),

to watch the people going to and fro between the Palace and the

guard-room. Several courtiers (not, of course, having the least idea

who was inside the room) came to the window and saluted us. The Emperor

was much amused and begged me not to give him away.

When their Majesties went back to the main building, the Empress said,

‘Come along, both of you,’ intending us to go on duty that minute. ‘Do

at least give us time to make up our faces!’ I answered, and we stayed

where we were. Later on, when Shikibu and I were still talking about

their Majesties’ visit, we became conscious of something swarthy which

had suddenly loomed up close to the front door of our room, and was

visible through a chink in our curtains, where one flap had got caught

up upon the framework. We thought it was only Noritaka,[36] but on

looking more closely we saw that the face was not the least like his.

With a good deal of laughing and scuffling, we began pulling the

curtain back into its place; but before we had finished doing so, we

realized that it was Yukinari who had been looking at us. This was very

annoying, for I had made a point of his never seeing me. Shikibu was

sitting with her back to him, so she came out of it all right. Stepping

forward, he now said: ‘This time I have really managed to see you

completely.’ ‘We thought it was only Noritaka,’[37] I explained, ‘and

were careless. I must say that, for a person who is supposed to take

no interest in women, you stared pretty hard.’ ‘Someone,’ he answered,

‘told me recently that there is a particular charm in women’s faces

just at the moment they wake from sleep; so I came along here this

morning hoping to get a chance of peeping into one of the bedrooms. I

was already watching you when their Majesties were here, but you did

not notice me.’ Presently he raised the curtains[38] and made as though

to join us.

[The section which follows dates from 999, second month.]

When I was away from the Palace on holidays there were several Court

gentlemen who used to come and visit us. This seemed to agitate the

people of the house. I was, however, not at all sorry to see it put a

stop to, for I had no very strong feeling about any of these visitors.

But it was difficult without rudeness to be invariably ‘not at home’ to

people who were calling repeatedly at all hours of the night and day;

all the more so because, precisely with those whose visits were causing

most scandal, my acquaintance was in reality very slight.

So this time I made up my mind not to let my whereabouts be generally

known, but only to tell Tsunefusa,[39] Narimasa[40] and a few others.

To-day Norimitsu came, and told me in the course of conversation

that yesterday my lord Tadanobu had tried to find out from him where

I was, saying that as I was Norimitsu’s ‘sister’[41] he must surely

know my address. ‘He was very insistent,’ Norimitsu said to me, ‘but

I was determined not to give you away. He refused to believe that I

didn’t know, and went on pressing me in a way that really made me feel

very uncomfortable. Moreover, Tsunefusa was sitting near by, looking

perfectly innocent and unconcerned, and I was certain that if I caught

his eye I should inevitably burst out laughing. In the end I was

obliged to choke my laughter by seizing upon an odd sort of cloth that

was lying on the table and stuffing it into my mouth. Everyone must

have thought me very greedy, and wondered what new delicacy I had found

to devour between meals. But I managed all the same to avoid telling

him anything. If I had laughed, it would of course have been fatal.

In the end, he really thought I did not know. It was splendid...!’ I

begged him to go on as he had begun, and for days afterwards heard no

more about it.

But very late one night there was a tremendous banging on the front

gate, enough to have woken a houseful of people at twice the distance.

I sent someone to see what was the matter, and was told it was an

Imperial Guardsman ‘with a letter from the Major of the Bodyguard of

the Left,’ that is to say, from Norimitsu. Everyone in the house was in

bed, so I took the letter close to the hall-lamp, and read: ‘To-morrow

is the last day of the Spring Reading in the Palace. If Tadanobu is

there keeping the penance-day with their Majesties, he may easily ask

me where you are, and if (in front of everyone) he insists upon my

telling him, I certainly shall not be able to keep up the pretense that

I do not know. May I tell him you are here? I certainly won’t unless I

have your permission to do so.’

I wrote no answer, but sent him a minute piece of cloth,[42] wrapped up

in paper.

Next time he called, Norimitsu said: ‘He got me into a corner and

went on at me about it all night. It is really very disagreeable

to be pestered like that, and as you did not answer the letter in

which I asked for your instructions.... But, by the way, I did

receive a wrapper containing a piece of rag. No doubt in a moment of

absent-mindedness....’

As if one could conceivably do such a thing by accident! He still could

not in the least understand what I had meant, and evidently thought I

had merely sent him a very mean and useless present. Irritated by his

stupidity, I made no reply, but seizing the inkstand wrote on a scrap

of paper the poem: ‘If from the fishing-girl who dives beneath the

waves the present of a rag you have received, surely she hints that to

the world you should not tell in what sea-bed she hides.’[43]

‘So Madam has started writing poems, has she?’ he exclaimed. ‘I, for

one, shall not read them,’ and scrunching up the piece of paper, he

marched off.

So it came about that Norimitsu and I, who had always been such good

friends and allies, were for a while rather cool towards each other.

Soon, however, he wrote to me saying: ‘I may have been to blame; but

even if you don’t wish to see me, I hope you do not regard our old

alliance as altogether a thing of the past. That, after all, would

mean the breaking of a good many promises....’

It was a favourite saying of his that people never sent him poems so

long as they liked him. ‘It’s a sure sign that they have turned against

one,’ he used to say. ‘When you have made up your mind that you can

bear me no longer, just send me one of those, and I shall know what to

make of it.’

Despite this warning, Shōnagon sent him another acrostic poem. ‘I don’t

suppose he ever read it,’ she continues, ‘and in any case he never

answered. Soon afterwards he was promoted to the Fifth Rank and became

Lieutenant-Governor of Tōtōmi; since when our friendship has come

completely to an end....’

The following dates from about the same time:

A Court lady, when she is on holiday, needs to have both her parents

alive.[44] She will get on best in a house where people are always

going in and out, where there is a great deal of conversation always

going on in the back rooms, and where at the gate there is a continual

clatter of horsemen. Indeed, she would far rather have too much noise

than too little.

It is very annoying if one is living in someone else’s house and a

friend comes from Court, either openly or in secret, just to ask how

long one will be away or to apologize for not having written (‘I did

not even know you were on holiday ...’)—it is, as I say, extremely

annoying, particularly if he is a lover, to have the owner of the

house coming and making a scene (‘very dangerous ... at this time of

night too,’ and more in the same style) merely because one has opened

the front door for a moment, to let the visitor in. Then later on:

‘Is the big gate locked?’ To which the porter grunts in an injured

tone: ‘There’s someone here still. Am I to lock him in?’ ‘Well, lock

up directly he goes,’ says the landlord. ‘There have been a lot of

burglaries round here lately.’ All of which is not very pleasant to

overhear.

After this the master of the house is continually poking out his head

to see whether the visitor is still there, to the great amusement of

the footmen whom the guest has brought with him. Most alarming of all

is to hear these footmen doing an imitation of the landlord’s voice.

What a row there will be if he hears them!

It may happen that someone, who neither appears to be nor indeed is in

any way a lover, finds it more convenient to come at night. In that

case he will not feel inclined to put up with the churlishness of

the family, and saying: ‘Well, it _is_ rather late; and as it seems

to be such a business for you to open the gate ...’ he will take his

departure.

But if it is someone of whom the lady is really fond, and after she has

told him again and again that she dare not receive him, he nevertheless

goes on waiting outside her room till dawn; at which point the porter,

who has during his nightly rounds continually lingered regretfully by

the gate, exclaims in a tone intended to be heard: ‘The morning’s come’

(as though such a thing had never happened before!) ‘and that front

gate has been ——[45] open all night,’ whereupon in broad daylight,

when there is no longer any point in doing so, he locks the gate—all

that sort of thing is very trying.

As I have said, with real parents of one’s own, it would be all right.

But step-parents can be a nuisance. One is always wondering how they

will take things; and even a brother’s house can be very tiresome in

this way.

Of course, what I really like is a house where there is no fuss about

the front gate, and no one particularly minds whether it is midnight or

morning. Then one can go out[46] and talk to whoever it may be—perhaps

one of the princes, or of the lords attached to his Majesty’s

service—sit all through a winter’s night with the shutters open, and

after the guest has gone, watch him make his way into the distance. If

he leaves just at daybreak, this is very agreeable, particularly if he

plays upon his flute as he goes. Then, when he is out of sight, one

does not hurry to go to bed, but discusses the visitor with someone,

reviews the poems he made, and so gradually falls to sleep.

‘I saw someone, who had no business here, in the corridor early this

morning. There was a servant holding an umbrella over him. He was just

going away....’ So I heard one of the girls say, and suddenly realized

that it was to a visitor of mine that she was referring!

However, I really didn’t know why she should describe him as ‘having no

business here.’ As a matter of fact, he is only a _chige_,[47] a person

of quite comfortable eminence, whom I have every right to know, if I

choose.

Presently a letter came from the Empress, with a message that I was to

reply instantly. Opening it in great agitation, I saw a drawing of a

huge umbrella; the person holding it was entirely hidden, save for the

fingers of one hand. Underneath was written the quotation: ‘Since the

morning when dawn broke behind the fringe of the Mikasa[48] Hills....’

The whole affair was a trivial one, but her Majesty might easily have

been cross about it, and when the letter came I was actually hoping

that no one would mention the matter to her. And now, instead of a

scolding, came only this joke, which, though it humiliated me, was

really very amusing. I took another piece of paper and drawing upon it

the picture of a heavy rainstorm, I wrote underneath: ‘It is a case of

much cry and no rain.’

+Masahiro+

Everyone laughs at Masahiro.[49] It must really be very painful

for his parents and friends. If he is seen anywhere with at all a

decent-looking servant in attendance upon him, someone is sure to send

for the fellow and ask him whether he can be in his senses, to wait

upon such a master. Everything at his house is extremely well done and

he chooses his clothes with unusually good taste; but the only result

is to make people say: ‘How nice those things would look on anyone

else!’

It is true that he does sometimes talk in the most peculiar way. For

example, he was sending home some things he had been using when on duty

at the Palace and he called for _two_ messengers. One came, saying that

there was not more there than one man could easily carry. ‘You idiot,’

said Masahiro, ‘I asked for two messengers because there is someone

else’s things here as well as my own. You can’t ask one man to carry

two men’s stuff, any more than you can put two pints into a one-pint

pot.’ What he meant no one knew; but there was loud laughter.

Once someone brought him a letter, asking for an immediate reply. ‘What

a moment to choose!’ Masahiro cried. ‘I can hear beans crackling on

the stove. And why is there never either ink or brushes in this house?

Someone must steal them. If it were something to eat or drink that got

stolen, I could understand....’

When the Emperor’s mother, Princess Senshi, was ill, Masahiro was sent

from the Palace to inquire after her. When he came back, we asked him

what gentleman had been in waiting upon the Princess. ‘So-and-so and

so-and-so,’ he said, mentioning four or five names. ‘No one else?’ we

said. ‘Oh yes,’ answered Masahiro, ‘there were others there, only they

had gone away.’

Once when I happened to be alone he came up to me and said: ‘My dear

lady, I have something I must tell you about at once.’ ‘Well, what

is it?’ I asked. ‘Something,’ he said, ‘that I have just heard one of

the gentlemen say.’ And coming quite close to my curtain: ‘I overheard

someone who instead of saying “Bring your body up closer to mine,” said

“Bring your five limbs[50] ...” and he went off into fits of laughter.

Once on the second of the three Appointment nights[51] it fell to

Masahiro to go round oiling the lamps. He rested his foot on the

pedestal of a lamp-stand, and as it happened to have been recently

covered with _yutan_[52] and was not yet dry, it stuck to him, and as

soon as he started to move away the lamp-stand toppled over. So fast

was the framework stuck to his stockinged foot, that the lamp banged

along after him as he walked, causing a regular earthquake at each step.

The Palace roll-call[53] has a special charm. Those who are actually

waiting upon his Majesty do not have to attend it, but are checked off

on the spot by officers who come from seat to seat. But the rest all

come clattering out into the courtyard, pell-mell. In our quarters,[54]

if one goes to that side and listens hard, one can actually hear

the names, which must have caused a flutter in many a susceptible

breast.... Some by their manner of answering win great approval, while

on others very severe judgments are passed. When it is all over,

the watchmen twang their bows, and there is another great clatter

of shoes, among which is discernible the even heavier tread of the

Chamberlain who is advancing to take up his position at the north-east

corner of the balcony, where he kneels in the attitude called the

High Obeisance, facing the Emperor’s seat, while with his back to the

watchmen he asks them who was there.... Sometimes, if for one reason

or another a good many courtiers are absent, no roll-call is held,

and when the head-watchman reports this, the Chamberlain generally

asks him to explain the reason why there was no roll-call, and then

retires. But when Masahiro is on duty he does not listen to what he is

told, and if the young lords try to teach him his duties, flies into a

temper, lectures them on the impropriety of omitting a roll-call, and

is laughed at for his pains not only by these lords, but by the very

watchmen whom he is rebuking.

On one occasion Masahiro left his shoes on the sideboard in the Royal

pantry. Everyone who passed broke into exclamations of disgust and

called upon the owner of the filthy things to take them away at once.

It was very awkward, for though no one dared mention Masahiro’s name,

everyone knew they were his. ‘Who do these things belong to? I haven’t

the least idea,’ said the Chief Steward or someone of that kind.

Suddenly Masahiro appeared, saying: ‘Those dirty things are mine!’ The

fact that he had the face to come for them in person caused a fresh

sensation.

Once when neither of the chamberlains was on duty and there was no

one near the High Table, Masahiro took a dish of beans that was lying

there and hiding behind the small partition,[55] began stealthily

devouring them. Presently some courtiers came along and pulled away the

partition....

I have a great objection to gentlemen coming to the rooms of us

ladies-in-waiting and eating there. Some gentlewomen have a tiresome

habit of giving them food. Of course, if he is teased long enough and

told that nothing can happen till he has eaten, a man will in the end

give way. He cannot very well express disgust at what he is offered,

cover up his mouth, or turn his head the other way. But for my part,

even if they come very late and very drunk, I absolutely refuse to give

them even so much as a bowl of rice. If they think this is mean, and

don’t come again—well then, let them not come!

Of course, if one is at home and food is sent from the back room, one

cannot interfere. But it is just as unpleasant.

Elsewhere Shōnagon says:

The things that workmen eat are most extraordinary. When the roof of

the eastern wing was being mended, there were a whole lot of workmen

sitting in a row and having dinner. I went across to that side of the

house and watched. The moment the things were handed to them, they

gulped down the gravy, and then, putting their bowls aside, ate up all

the vegetables. I began to think that they were going to leave their

rice, when suddenly they fell upon it and in a twinkling it had all

disappeared. There were several of them sitting there together and they

all ate in the same way; so I suppose it is a habit of builders. I

can’t say I think that it is a very attractive one.

Another of Shōnagon’s butts was Fujiwara no Nobutsune, Assistant in the

Board of Rites.

‘I am very ready at making Chinese poems or Japanese,’ he said to her

one day,[56] ‘you need only give me a subject....’ ‘That is easily

done,’ I said. ‘It shall be a Japanese poem.’ ‘Good,’ he cried. ‘But

you had better give me a whole lot, while you are about it. _One_ would

hardly be worth while.’ But when I gave him the subject, he suddenly

lost his nerve and said he must be going. Someone told us it was his

handwriting that he was uneasy about. ‘He writes an atrocious hand in

Chinese and Japanese,’ this lady said, ‘and he has been laughed at

about it so much that he is apt to take fright.’

In the days[57] when he had an appointment in the Board of Household

Works, he sent a plan to some craftsman or other with ‘This is the way

I want it done’ written underneath in Chinese characters of a sort

one would never have supposed anyone in the world could perpetrate.

The document was such a monstrosity that I seized it and wrote in

the margin ‘I should not do it quite in this way, or you will indeed

produce a queer object.’ The document then went to the Imperial

apartments, where it was passed from hand to hand, causing a good deal

of amusement.

Nobutsune was very angry about this.

+Annoying Things+

When one sends a poem or a _kayeshi_ (‘return-poem’) to someone and,

after it has gone, thinks of some small alteration—perhaps only a

couple of letters—that would have improved it.

When one is doing a piece of needlework in a hurry, and thinking it is

finished unthreads the needle, only to discover that the knot at the

beginning has slipped and the whole thing come undone. It is also very

annoying to find that one has sewn back to front.