Cultural Imprints: War and Memory in the Samurai Age 9781501761645

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CULTURAL IMPRINTS

CULTURAL IMPRINTS

WA R A N D M E M O R Y I N T H E SA M U R A I A G E

E dited by E lizabeth O yler and K atherine Saltzman- L­ i

CORNELL EAST ASIA SERIES AN IMPRINT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

 Number 211 in the Cornell East Asia Series Copyright © 2022 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress​.­cornell​.­edu. First published 2022 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Oyler, Elizabeth, 1966– editor. | Saltzman-Li, Katherine, editor. Title: Cultural imprints : war and memory in the samurai age / edited by Elizabeth Oyler and Katherine Saltzman-Li. Description: Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2022. | Series: Cornell East Asia series; 211 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021016399 (print) | LCCN 2021016400 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501761621 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501761638 (epub) | ISBN 9781501761645 (pdf ) Subjects: LCSH: Samurai—Japan—History. | War in art. | War in literature. | Memory (Philosophy) | Japan— History—1185–1868—Historiography. Classification: LCC DS836 .C85 2022 (print) | LCC DS836 (ebook) | DDC 952/.025—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021016399 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov​ /2021016400 Cover image: Eighteenth-century Japanese armor. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Armor: Bequest of George C. Stone, 1935; horns (kuwagata): Gift of Bashford Dean, 1914.

Co n te n ts

Acknowl­edgments  vii

Introduction: Remembering the Samurai in Medieval and Early Modern Japan Elizabeth Oyler and Katherine Saltzman-­Li 1

1. Memento Mori: Mōri Warriors, Manase Physicians, and the New Medico-­Cultural Nexus of the Late Sixteenth ­Century Andrew Edmund Goble 15 2. Hideyoshi and Okuni’s Kabuki: Memories Preserved in a Screen Painting Marimi Tateno 52 3. Finding Origins and Meaning in the Warring States Luke S. Roberts 91 4. Plotting War during the G ­ reat Peace: The Uses of Warfare in Late Edo Tales of the Strange William D. Fleming 114 5. Ghosts along the Road: War Memory and Landscape in Medieval Narratives Elizabeth Oyler 134 6. Narrated and Danced Memory of War and Resignation: The Role of Musical Delivery Alison Tokita 162

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7. Performing Trauma and Lament: Gendered Scenes of Samurai Anguish on the Eighteenth-­Century Kabuki Stage Katherine Saltzman-­Li 186 8. In Memorandum: Dragonflies and Drums Monica Bethe 213 9. Representing Memory in the Warrior Plays Tom Hare 235 Contributors  251 Index  255

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This book came together thanks to the ideas, enthusiasm, and support of colleagues, friends, and organ­izations, and we are more than grateful for their many contributions. Before ­there was a book, ­there was a conference, “War and Remembrance: Cultural Imprints of Japan’s Samurai Age,” held at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It was an intellectually inspiring gathering in which we explored the concept that—­ wartime or peacetime, and especially through the workings of memory—­ ideas about the samurai ­were central to cultural development and cultural production in Japan over the seven centuries during which they ruled. We believed that this premise was best addressed through a truly interdisciplinary approach, and the conference included participants from several fields. The same is true of this volume, which includes scholars of art history, history, lit­ er­a­ture, and performing arts. We gratefully acknowledge ­those entities that gave financial support for the conference, which was or­ga­nized as a program of the UCSB Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies with UCSB cosponsorships from the College of Letters and Science, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the East Asia Center, and the Departments of Theater and Dance, History, and Comparative Lit­er­a­ture. Further impor­tant support came from the Japan-­U.S. Friendship Commission and the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies; we greatly appreciate the critical role that t­hese two funding sources play in supporting scholarly endeavors in Japa­nese studies, including, of course, our own. The chapters in the volume come from many of the conference participants, as well as a few additional scholars whose research seemed especially relevant as a result of conference and postconference discussions. In the l­ater stages of preparing the book, we benefited greatly from the comments provided by the three anonymous external reviewers for Cornell University Press. Their meticulous readings and judicious notes aided all authors, and as coeditors, we are particularly grateful for their individual suggestions and their united belief in the value of the volume. Thanks also to David Bialock and vii

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Michael Finke, each of whom offered valuable criticism that helped us better shape the volume and the introduction in par­tic­u­lar. Financial support for the volume was provided by the Japan Iron and Steel Endowments and the Richard D. and Mary Jane Edwards Endowed Publication Fund, both of the University of Pittsburgh, and an Academic Senate Faculty Research Grant from the University of California, Santa Barbara. At Cornell University Press, editor Alexis Siemon guided us expertly and was quick to provide us with answers to our numerous questions and to support this publication in all ways. We ­were also fortunate to begin the pro­cess with editor Mai Shaikhanuar-­Cota, whose long involvement with publishing books for Cornell on East Asia started us off in very experienced and capable hands. It was a ­g reat plea­sure working with each of ­these exceptional professionals. In a happy coincidence, assistance for both the conference and the volume came from Dr. Suzy Cincone. As a gradu­ate student, she aided in organ­izing the conference, and a­ fter finishing her doctoral studies, she was instrumental in bringing the volume to completion in her capacity as professional copy editor. Her intellect, creativity, and careful eye at both ends of the proj­ect ­were invaluable. Fi­nally, with admiration and ­g reat affection for the teachers who nurtured our intellectual growth and who continue to impact our lives, and with love for our families who have supported us in all ways necessary to have at long last brought this proj­ect to fruition, we offer our profound gratitude.

CULTURAL IMPRINTS

Introduction Remembering the Samurai in Medieval and Early ­Modern Japan Elizabeth Oyler and Katherine Saltzman-­L i

This volume brings together the work of an interdisciplinary group of scholars to address the impact of war and war memory during Japan’s “samurai age,” the period of time lasting from the establishment of the first shogunate as a result of the Genpei War (1180–1185) through the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868. We offer studies of “cultural imprints,” which we define as traces holding specifically grounded historical meanings that persist through time. Our se­lection of “imprints” includes literary works, artifacts, performing arts, and documents that w ­ ere created by or about the samurai. We examine them for what they can suggest about how thinkers, writers, artists, performers, and samurai themselves viewed warfare and its lingering impact at vari­ous points over the seven hundred years during which they dominated po­liti­cal and cultural spheres. In spite of the historical real­ity of many wars throughout the medieval era (thirteenth through the sixteenth c­ entury) and none during the Tokugawa period (seventeenth through most of the nineteenth c­ entury, also known as the early modern period), the significance of war, experienced directly or through re-­presentations in a variety of forms, cut across temporal demarcations within and between this divide. By drawing attention to specific but varied cultural practices related to war and memory, we highlight the overarching centrality in the cultural realm of representing and remembering samurai and the experience of warfare, its traumas and its glories. The chapters also gesture t­oward the formation of national 1

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identity in the modern age: samurai, banned as a class from the advent of the modern era, w ­ ere nevertheless newly mobilized in the modern imaginary as a coalescing f­ actor in the development of the Japa­nese nation-­state. That they could play such a role rested on the very cultural centrality we claim for them and the widely shared notions regarding samurai that had developed over the samurai age. Our focus on war and war memory places the chapters of this volume in conversation with the field of memory studies, in which scholars study acts of remembrance and forgetting, together with their c­ auses and consequences. In examining specific imprints, we address memorializing and memory itself in their capacity for sense-­making, identity formation, healing, and renewal. As we know, war trauma (all trauma) is not coterminous with its causal event. Its effects persist on trajectories through history, leaving a long-­lasting wake in ­human memories that carry down through generations with social and po­ liti­cal agency, and which often become memorialized in the kinds of artifacts explored in this volume. T ­ hese artifacts are both a foundation and the products of what Maurice Halbwachs identifies as “collective memory,” a shared perception of the past that is “reconstructed on the basis of the pre­sent.” He emphasizes the importance of “collective frameworks . . . ​the instruments used by the collective memory to reconstruct an image of the past which is in accord, in each epoch, with the predominant thoughts of the society.”1 What we call “cultural imprints” are components of ­these frameworks. Each instantiation, arising from a set of circumstances at a par­tic­u­lar moment, gives shape to the past in ser­vice to the pre­sent, reflecting or responding to gradually solidifying ideas about the samurai during the long time frame in which power was consolidated ­under successive shogunates, each led by the victors of war. Animated in part by what memory studies has brought to cultural historiography, we offer a rethinking of the long-­term historical and cultural significance of the samurai. We examine how experiences of war are presented through our imprints, each a signpost in the ongoing formation of a collective memory with Japan’s warriors at its center. Jan Assmann addresses the cultural dimension of collective memory, what he terms “cultural memory.” Examining and defining cultural memory means “investigat[ing] the conditions that enable [the text of memorable events] to be established and handed down. It draws our attention to the role of the past in constituting our world through dialogue and intercommunication, and it investigates the forms in 1.  Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis Cosar (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 40.

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which the past pre­sents itself to us as well as the motives that prompt our recourse to it.”2 We explore such forms and motives in this volume, as well as what Assmann describes as the effects of the circulation of cultural memory, “disseminat[ing] and reproduce[ing] a consciousness of unity, particularity, and a sense of belonging among the members of a group.”3 Subjective responses figure and reconfigure memory, adding new layers according to changing circumstances without always erasing the old, and out of personal memories, group narratives arise. The pro­cess by which individual memories of war contribute to group narratives has been traced by anthropologist Efrat Ben-­Ze’ev, who has studied veterans’ memories of the 1948 Palestine war in relation to the national narrative.4 She stresses that individual memories differ in nature and purpose from national narratives, but that social cohesion is formed when singular narratives join together in vari­ous configurations and are transmitted over time. This pro­cess, also evident over the course of the samurai age, is not always organic but can also be directed through memory creation or revision, as some of our chapters highlight. While samurai be­hav­ior and values, transmitted through cultural production based in war memory, became crucial ele­ments in the development of a national Japa­nese identity in the modern era, war-­related cultural production created collectivity and group formations in e­ arlier periods as well, as many of our chapters demonstrate. Even as we argue for the long samurai age, we aim to break down the ahistorical, monolithic idea of the warrior through an examination of the changes and iterations of samurai existence over time as expressed by members of the warrior class itself, as well as by nonwarrior members of society. Interdisciplinarity is an impor­tant means ­toward this effort: gathering scholars from several fields who employ dif­fer­ent methodologies brings in a range of perceptions that cut away at uniformity, but also allow us to argue for a long time frame of historical and cultural significance of warrior activity and sensibilities as carried out ­under fluctuating historical circumstances. In the early medieval era “samurai” referred to a small segment of fighting men who ­were also identified by other generally analogous terms (musha 武者, mononofu or bushi 武士, tsuwamono 強者). They ­were also often described in early tales as men following the “ways of the bow and arrow” (yumiya no michi 弓矢の道) or masters of “the twinned arts of war and letters” (bunbu ryōdō 文武両道). In the 2.  Jan Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), ix. 3. Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 38. 4.  Efrat Ben-­Ze’ev, Remembering Palestine in 1948: Beyond National Narratives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

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Tokugawa period samurai was an official status within the fuller social organ­ ization. The term “samurai” therefore can be applied to men in several situations, and the chapters in this volume draw attention to the particularities of when and by whom the term is employed, and to what effects. The scope of materials focused on samurai, and the significance of the warrior to collective identity and cultural production—­mutually formative of each other—­increased during the seven hundred years we examine. Over time, cultural expressions and rec­ords that originally concentrated on specific memories and commemoration in a religious context for individual war dead shifted to include the perceived experiences and challenges of warrior life that ­were increasingly cast in a shared humanity: by the mid-­Tokugawa period a ­g reat variety of cultural practices and products paradoxically presented relatively consistent ideas about samurai conduct and social place and disseminated conceptions that became widely recognized. Borrowing from Assmann, we might say that our cultural imprints are constituents of “that body of reusable texts, images, and rituals specific to each society in each epoch, whose ‘cultivation’ serves to stabilize and convey that society’s self-­image.”5 Preceding the relatively fixed image of the samurai in the modern era—­conveyed largely through new media, particularly film, often u ­ nder nationalistic impulses that made good use of “traditional” values of loyalty, do-­or-­die bravery, and unquestioned commitment—­was the complexity of samurai identities in the samurai age and the cultural articulations through which ideas of the samurai ­were formed.

The Samurai Men with specialized expertise in the military arts in Japan predate the samurai age by centuries. From earliest times, warriors bore arms in the name of and in ser­vice to a superior, and they appear in chronicles from the eighth ­century as protectors of the throne and subjugators of threats at the realm’s peripheries. Often called on to exercise ­these impor­tant duties, they came to the fore as a recognizable segment of society in the latter half of the Heian 平安 period (794–1185), when they w ­ ere increasingly employed to suppress insurrections in the realm’s hinterlands and at its borders. They ­were, in the main, from the ­middle or lower ranks of the aristocracy, and they filled provincial government roles, including governors and officials serving ­under them. 5.  Jan Assmann, “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity,” trans. John Czaplicka, New German Critique 65, Cultural History/Cultural Studies (Spring–­Summer, 1995): 132.

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As representatives of the central government in sometimes quite distant locales, provincial administrators w ­ ere expected to keep order in the territories they oversaw, as well as ensure the safe transport of ­people and goods through ­those territories. Over time, ­these provincial responsibilities allowed certain families to build economic and geographic bases and rise to prominence as military clans. In the mid-­tenth ­century, two men holding such positions led insurrections near the edges of the realm: Fujiwara no Sumitomo 藤原純友 in the western maritime provinces on the inland sea and Taira no Masakado 平将門 in the eastern provinces. They w ­ ere put down by men of similar rank, in ser­vice to the emperor. A ­little over one hundred years l­ ater, warriors again clashed at the northeast extremity of the realm, and t­ hese clashes ­were brought to conclusion in f­ avor of the throne by members of one of the most power­ ful of the military families, the Minamoto 源. ­These conflicts ­were early signs of changes to come in the status of warriors, and they also presaged the eventual winners and losers in the b­ attles that ended the Heian period and led to the samurai age. By the ­middle of the twelfth ­century, two families, the Taira and the Minamoto, dominated the role of the central government’s enforcers, and when succession disputes rocked the imperial line in 1156 (the Hōgen Rebellion) and then again in 1159 (the Heiji Rebellion), members of t­ hese clans w ­ ere called on to support both sides. The Taira consistently chose the winning side and ­rose to the highest status as maternal relatives to the sitting emperor, causing resentment among longstanding aristocrats. As tensions swelled, t­hose aristocrats threw support ­behind the Minamoto, resulting in Japan’s first major civil conflict, the Genpei War (1180–1185). The outcome was the definitive defeat of the Taira and the establishment by the victorious Minamoto no Yori­ tomo 源頼朝 (1147–1199) of his shogunal headquarters in Kamakura, a small seaside village at the time, some three hundred miles from the capital city (modern-­day Kyoto). The establishment of the shogunate led to a system of bifurcated government, with the shogunal office and its samurai retainers increasingly taking on administrative duties, especially in the provinces. In one form or another, this system would dominate the po­liti­cal landscape of Japan ­until 1868, marking the bound­aries of the samurai age, although Minamoto control ended with the generation following Yoritomo. From Yoritomo’s time, military rulers took g­ reat interest in cultural m ­ atters, both material and intangible. Yoritomo sponsored the rebuilding of Tōdaiji 東大寺, among the oldest and most prominent t­ emples in the ancient capital of Nara, which had been destroyed during the Genpei War. Numerous new ­temples ­were constructed around his headquarters at Kamakura and elsewhere. He and his successors also nurtured strong ties with the aristocracy

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via traditional cultural practices, studying poetry and painting ­under the tutelage of established masters from the capital and learning the literary canon. At the same time, both aristocrats and warriors began to embrace performing arts originating in rural areas. Among ­these ­were narrative arts associated with recounting the Genpei War, a subject of inherent po­liti­cal and cultural import to the Kamakura shogunate. War tales (gunki monogatari 軍記物語) flourished during the first centuries of warrior domination. The best known ­today is Heike monogatari 平家物語 (Tale of the Heike), which narrates the rise and fall of the Taira clan during the late 1100s, and in which warrior vocation and encounters, on the battlefield and off, became the subjects of lyrical paeans and memorable stories. Other war tales closely connected to Tale of the Heike took form over the course of the Kamakura 鎌倉 and Muromachi 室町 periods, including Gikeiki 義経記 (Tale of Yoshitsune) and Soga mono­ ­ rothers). ­These tales, consisting of mulgatari 曽我物語 (Tale of the Soga B tiple variants of both oral-­performative and written provenances, not only presented the first artistic descriptions of warriors but also set a foundation for ­later cultural definitions of the samurai. Several of the chapters in this volume address material rooted in the war tales, particularly the chapters that focus on the performing arts by Alison Tokita, Katherine Saltzman-­Li, and the chapters on the noh play Tomonaga by Monica Bethe and Tom Hare. One function of the Tale of the Heike and other war tales was to serve an elegiac role, preserving the memory and soothing the spirits of the war dead. Proper care of ­these spirits was essential for a society holding a general concern about the pos­si­ble destructive intentions of malevolent spirits ­toward the living. Within the religious context, foreshortened lives raised the possibility of posthumous regret or anger that required appeasement, even beyond the usual placation practiced for any dead, resulting in war tales and other artistic forms of memorialization. T ­ hese memorializing genres and religio-­cultural practices and beliefs—­including t­ hose under­lying many noh plays—­contributed strongly to the early formation of warrior identity, celebrating and commemorating the individual, but always in terms of his role as an actor in larger webs of culture and community. The thirteenth through sixteenth centuries continued to be rocked by military conflict. A military clash between emperor and shogun (the Jōkyū Disturbance, 1221), and two attempted invasions from the continent by the Mongols (1274 and 1281) dominated the thirteenth c­ entury. The f­ourteenth ­century was equally momentous: the Kamakura shogunate fell in the third de­ cade, to be replaced by a branch ­family of the Minamoto, the Ashikaga (who established their power base in the Muromachi district of Kyoto, giving rise to the name of the period during which they ruled), and a rift between branches

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of the imperial ­family led to nearly sixty years of competing imperial courts (1336–1392)—­the only such occurrence in Japan’s imperial history—­and sporadic warfare. War tales chronicling the events of this period, including Jōkyūki 承久記 (Rec­ord of the Jōkyū Disturbance) and Taiheiki 太平記 (Chronicle of the ­Great Peace), emerged and developed through interaction with tales of ­earlier conflicts and other rec­ords. The multiple variants and long period of development for all of ­these works led to mutual and complex lines of influence among them, a topic explored by Elizabeth Oyler in this volume. During this time, warriors, and particularly the heroes from war tales, also appeared prominently in other medieval narrative and per­for­mance traditions, including setsuwa 説話 (anecdotes), legends, noh drama, and the narrative performing art known as kōwakamai 幸若舞, whose repertoire derives from Tale of the Heike and other war tales. Noh, kōwakamai, and recitation of the Tale of the Heike enjoyed the patronage and often participation of members of the warrior class; noh, in par­tic­ul­ar, owes its rise to prominence in large part to the patronage of the third Ashikaga shogun, Yoshimitsu 義満 (1358–1408). ­Under the patronage of ensuing generations of Ashikaga shoguns and other elite samurai, t­ hese arts commemorating warrior experience gained cultural status. At the same time, the war tales ­were carried through the archipelago by storytellers or troupes of performers and as such w ­ ere accessible not only to the elite but to all levels of audience in even the furthest reaches of the realm. They contributed to what Barbara Ruch termed Japan’s first “national lit­er­a­ture,” a body of narratives shared across social groups and geographic locales.6 Medieval repre­sen­ta­tions reflect a broad range of portrayals of warrior be­hav­ior, but in general they lament the irreconcilable situation warriors faced on the battlefield: taking life is a Buddhist sin, but it is the inevitable duty of the man born to a military ­house. By the late fifteenth ­century, the country had fallen again into civil war, with power­f ul warlords based in provincial locales vying for power. Known as the Warring States period (Sengoku jidai 戦国時代), the iconic warlords and ­battles of the sixteenth ­century loom large in cultural memories of the samurai age. In the latter part of the sixteenth ­century, three power­f ul warlords, the “three ­g reat unifiers,” Oda Nobunaga 織田信長 (1534–1582), Toyotomi Hideyoshi 豊臣秀吉 (1537–1598)—­a key figure in chapters in this volume by Marimi Tateno and Andrew Goble—­and Tokugawa Ieyasu 徳川家康 (1543–1616), ­were able to rally large armies to their c­ auses. Military dominance by the 6.  Barbara Ruch, “Medieval Jongleurs and the Making of a National Lit­er­a­ture,” in Japan in the Muromachi Age, ed. John W. Hall and Takeshi Toyoda (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 279–309.

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Tokugawa clan at the end of the sixteenth c­ entury fi­nally brought the Warring States period to a close. Early in their tenure, the Tokugawa established a social hierarchy that defined a specific and superior status for samurai as a class, a new condition in the formation of samurai identity for both the samurai themselves and t­ hose of other classes with whom they coexisted. Tokugawa-­period samurai led oddly contradictory lives; they existed as idle martial men meant for action but with no chance to act. The period is marked by attempts to come to terms with this contradiction and to find purpose and place in the new order; an early example is explored in the chapter by Luke Roberts. Placed at the top of the po­liti­cal and social hierarchy, warriors no longer needed to exercise their primary function and peacetime turned many of them instead into bureaucrats and men of culture. In spite of, or as a result of, the ­legal freezing of social mobility, po­liti­cal thinkers like Ogyū Sorai 荻生徂徠 (1666–1728) pushed for the ancient Confucian idea of identifying and relying on men of virtue and talent. While his concern was largely with governance and thus with forming the minds and outlook of his samurai-­class followers, his promotion of relatively open doors based on talent had an impor­tant cultural effect as artistic and social circles w ­ ere expanded beyond an individual’s narrow rung on the hierarchy to include men with similar interests and talents gathered in like-­minded and shared pursuits. Diversity of backgrounds and diversity of interests became a hallmark of cultural circles, resulting in remarkable cross-­fertilization of creative output. By the end of the first c­ entury of Tokugawa rule, Kyoto and its exclusive aristocracy ­were losing their cultural preeminence. In the late Heian period, high-­ranking warriors had begun to adopt Kyoto court customs and practices, but the most significant new products of medieval culture—­noh drama, renga poetry, extended oral narrative—­had found initial patronage from the warriors themselves. The rate of artistic change and development, and the expansion of ­those involved in artistic production and consumption, picked up dramatically with Tokugawa peace, expressed through a dizzying succession of variations on artistic form and content in lit­er­at­ ure—­one such genre of fiction is explored in the chapter by William Fleming—­the performing arts, and also in the visual arts, especially with the advent of woodblock prints as well as the formal and decorative attention given to practical-­use objects. The number of new urban centers grew rapidly, with Edo, the city of the Tokugawa rulers and their government, as the most significant in size and importance. In the early eigh­teenth c­ entury, only about one hundred years ­after it began to transform from a village into one of the world’s biggest and most sophisticated urban centers, Edo had a population of around one million.

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Along with Edo itself, t­ here w ­ ere hundreds of c­ astle towns spread across the country. ­These regional seats of power, many with populations in the tens of thousands, ­were home to daimyo, samurai lords, and their retinue of retainers. Daimyo ­were also required to maintain mansions in Edo and to make the journeys back and forth from domain ­castle to Edo mansion with their large entourage of retainers, typically living alternate years in their domain and in Edo (with their wives and heirs remaining in Edo while they w ­ ere away at the domain c­ astle). Not only did this famous system, known as sankin kōtai 参勤 交代, contribute to the stability of Tokugawa power, but it also led to other notable achievements of the period: the development of an extensive road system and infrastructure to facilitate the movement of the daimyo groups and ­others traveling for vari­ous reasons and the change from an agriculture-­based economy to a monetary one that could support the commercial culture that grew in cities and along the roads that connected them. The networks of movement between centers large (Kyoto, Edo, Osaka), medium-­sized (­castle towns), and small (roadside villages, agricultural hamlets, and market towns along the way) furthered the effects of the peripatetic narrators of medieval Japan. From “national lit­er­at­ure” to the formation of a national culture, an awareness of community on the largest level began to form. With reunification by Tokugawa Ieyasu in the early seventeenth c­ entury and the secure position mandated for samurai as a class, the fashioning of the samurai took new turns, in both the hands of t­ hose with the right to call themselves samurai and t­hose of the newly emergent urban classes with whom they interacted in a world of social stratification but cultural collaboration. The Buddhist framework and religious ideology that governed the pre­sen­ta­ tion of samurai lives in medieval works gave way to the conditions of popu­ lar culture—­continually morph­ing reiterations of familiar material, secular and often playful, willing and ­eager to poke fun. Genres, creators, and audiences expanded, and the construction of samurai images proceeded through the Tokugawa-­period centuries in an interplay of self-­image and image, with contributions from both the demobilized men themselves and from ­those who bought, perused, and contributed to the creation of the vari­ous materials out of which an enduring image of the samurai emerged.

Volume Organ­ization and Contributions The chapters in this book take up moments in the long history of samurai rule and cultural production during the samurai age. They revolve around the two major crises or po­liti­cal and social alterations of the seven hundred years that

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we demarcate: first, the late twelfth-­century Genpei War and the institutionalization of samurai rule in its aftermath, marking the start of the samurai age; and second, the sixteenth-­to seventeenth-­century establishment of a final, long-­lasting shogunate ­after an intense c­ entury of warfare. Four chapters (Oyler, Tokita, Bethe, Hare) directly address practices that developed and w ­ ere prevalent between t­ hese two temporal points, all of them related to memorializing the Genpei War and responding to beliefs in its potential for lingering harm. Three chapters (Goble, Tateno, Roberts) address the second major transition point, from medieval warfare into Tokugawa peace. The remaining two chapters (Fleming, Saltzman-­Li) look to war from the comfort of the Tokugawa period, when references to ­earlier wars and samurai lives gave rise to new communal definitions, largely through popu­lar culture and within radically altered social conditions. The chapters are arranged to move thematically rather than simply chronologically in an effort to emphasize threads linking disparate moments, pre­ sen­ta­tional modes, and ways in which a pre­sent is understood in relation to the past. We begin with two chapters addressing topics related to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the second of the “three ­g reat unifiers” at the end of the Warring States period and a man of epic ambitions and eclectic tastes. Next is a chapter that focuses on early Tokugawa-­period samurai, who sought new self-­ definitions by looking back to the period of warfare in which Hideyoshi played such an impor­tant role. Two chapters then examine literary works structured around war, one in the lyrical language of medieval Japan and one from the vibrant literary world of the Tokugawa period. Fi­nally, four chapters consider war and memory in the performing arts. Some chapters examine similar material but from dif­fer­ent perspectives; in other cases, a topic stands out for its unique contribution to our thesis regarding the shaping influence of both a­ ctual and perceived warrior activity and the power that war memories had in forming collective identities over a large portion of Japa­nese history. The questions of who circulates whose memories, and with what intended meanings, are thus at the center of this volume. We look for the who and why of each “imprint” that we examine, keeping in mind that t­hese questions serve several goals: from the illumination of specific practices and objects to an understanding of the ramifications of knowing what is told and what is not. The following brief summaries of the volume contributions are offered to enable readers to begin to engage with ­these goals. Andrew Goble’s chapter, “Memento Mori: Mōri Warriors, Manase Physicians, and the New Medico-­Cultural Nexus of the Late Sixteenth ­Century,” focuses on documentary evidence, and particularly correspondence, to elucidate the close and multifaceted relationship between the Mōri, a power­f ul warrior

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f­amily, and the Manase ­family of medical prac­ti­tion­ers. Members of each served together on Hideyoshi’s military campaigns and other­wise built up the best-­attested relationship between warriors and cultural figures of their age. The chapter reveals impor­tant ways in which warrior po­liti­cal and military power ­were connected to the cultural sphere of medical learning and medical prac­ti­tion­ers. Highlighted Manase figures likened governing to healing and other­wise took part in the nonmedical ambitions of their high-­placed Mōri patients. In drawing attention to personal communications, Goble illustrates a ­human dimension of Hideyoshi’s campaigns and the ways individuals positioned themselves and their families—­with an eye ­toward an uncertain ­f uture—at this pivotal historical moment. In “Hideyoshi and Okuni’s Kabuki: Memories Preserved in a Screen Painting,” Marimi Tateno draws attention to the well-­known screen Okuni Perform­ ing Kabuki, an impor­tant source for understanding the early years of kabuki per­for­mance. Tateno’s focus is not on the per­for­mance itself, but rather on the subject of the screen, its intended viewer, and how it was meant to be viewed. Depicting an audience composed of both commoners and the social and po­liti­cal elite, Tateno focuses on two viewing boxes, one that accommodates a man and three ­women. She joins other scholars in proposing Hide­ yoshi as the male figure, even though the event postdates his death, and she identifies the other figures in the boxes as members of the imperial f­ amily and their attendants. In situating Hideyoshi in relation to members of the imperial ­family, and in portraying him as a patron of emerging arts, the screen’s true function, she proposes, was memorialization. She explores the significance of the warlord-­as-­aristocrat Hideyoshi in the cultural memory of the very early Tokugawa period, anticipating the complex engagement with the warrior past that ­will appear time and again in Tokugawa-­period cultural artifacts of samurai culture. Luke Roberts examines one warrior domain’s response to Pax Tokugawa in “Finding Origins and Meaning in the Warring States,” a study of the ways in which the ­battles that brought an end to the Warring States period ­were remembered in Tosa domain over the Tokugawa period. Roberts discusses a body of writings from Tosa, particularly by partisans of the Chōsogabe and Yamauchi clans, that rec­ord or investigate clan histories of the sixteenth-­ century Unification era. Marking three stages in documenting clan relationships to that final period of pre-­Tokugawa warfare, he finds complex motivations ­behind the creation and content of ­these discourses that illuminate the politics of war memory for peacetime samurai of the Tokugawa period. In “Plotting War during the ­Great Peace: The Uses of Warfare in Late Edo Tales of the Strange,” William Fleming explores the specter of war and its

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trauma under­lying kidan 奇談 (“tales of the strange”), a genre of fiction dating from the late eigh­teenth and early nineteenth centuries. Focusing particularly on the portrayal of warriors and warfare in this genre centered on the eerie, he argues that while late Tokugawa-­period historical fiction possesses a complicated, multivalent relationship with the past, its authors w ­ ere closely attuned to con­temporary po­liti­cal concerns. The uncanny in kidan provided a vehicle for exploring the uncertainties of the pre­sent, while highlighting the current era of peace in which the strange was made reassuringly distant. The uneasy relationship between a past and pre­sent sundered by warfare, and the vari­ous forms memorialization of the past might take, are again the subjects of Elizabeth Oyler’s “Ghosts along the Road: War Memory and Landscape in Medieval Narratives,” a discussion of an early medieval travelogue, Kaidōki 海道記 (Rec­ord of a Journey Along the Eastern Sea Route, 1223). Although Kaidōki—­part pilgrimage rec­ord, part memorial—­has long been recognized as an impor­tant allusive referent for the Tale of the Heike, this chapter extends the consideration beyond traditional literary allusion to emphasize how a realm fractured by civil conflict is restructured in an early literary text addressing travel through formerly peripheral but suddenly meaningful landscapes. In “Narrated and Danced Memory of War and Resignation: The Role of Musical Delivery,” Alison Tokita explores the musical substyles that enhance storytelling in the narrative arts collectively known as katarimono, particularly the medieval musical narrative genres of Heike recitation and kōwaka danced ballads, but also in l­ater Tokugawa-­period genres. The narration of war-­related content and war memory in t­ hese genres is supported dramatically and affectively by musical formulae and musical styles that combine both vocal and instrumental delivery. Tokita discusses styles related to Heike recitation that have persisted over time and that have been adapted to dif­fer­ent per­for­mance genres, exploring the proposition that the formulae and musical substyles employed for specific kinds of narrative content, in this case content related to war, enhanced the memorability of the narratives and their impact on listeners. In “Performing Trauma and Lament: Gendered Scenes of Samurai Anguish on the Eighteenth-­Century Kabuki Stage,” Katherine Saltzman-­Li looks at two of the same per­for­mance sections discussed by Tokita, monogatari and kudoki, as they ­were adapted for kabuki. As found in puppet-­derived jidaimono (period plays) of the mid-­eighteenth ­century, monogatari and kudoki dramatize the extreme consequences of samurai action and duty resulting from the unbending codes that characterize the conditions for kabuki samurai-­class heroes. She examines the role of memory in ­these impor­tant eighteenth-­century scenes and the gendered reactions to terrible choices and circumstances arising from past events, also addressing further developments in the nineteenth c­ entury.

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An heirloom robe held by the Kanze troupe of noh actors is the focus of Monica Bethe’s “In Memorandum: Dragonflies and Drums.” The robe was purportedly worn by the fifteenth-­century Kanze troupe leader On’ami in connection with a 1443 per­for­mance of the warrior play Tomonaga dedicated to the repose of the recently deceased shogun Yoshikatsu 義勝. The play includes an enactment of the Kannon senbō repentance rite, and since On’ami’s time, the robe has been used exclusively for the variant per­for­mance of this rite (this variant is also discussed in chapter 9). Bethe situates the robe within its nexus of meanings: originally an elegant warrior costume, it was l­ater made into a monk’s robe and subsequently returned to the secular world of per­for­mance only to be re-­ritualized by its specific connection to the dramatization of the senbō rite performed for the deceased warrior in Tomonaga. In “Representing Memory in the Warrior Plays,” Tom Hare discusses vocabulary of memory and remembering, tracing usage in five noh plays that have a central warrior-­ghost character. His par­tic­ul­ar focus is the play Tomonaga (also discussed in chapter 8). He argues that memory operates differently in Tomonaga than in the four other plays discussed. In t­ hose four plays, all attributed to Zeami, the character of the warrior-­ghost fills the primary role (shite) in both acts of the play. In Tomonaga, the ghost only appears in the second act, compounding the very idea of who remembers and why. Hare notes the effect that the special devotional framework of Tomonaga has on the idea of remembering and suggests that this unusual play also points to the complexity and ambiguous nature of memory in noh. A uniform image of samurai ethos belies the real­ity of change over the seven hundred years during which warriors ­were in po­liti­cal control. Over the course of the medieval era, warrior identities shifted with the changing po­ liti­cal landscape: they w ­ ere defenders of the shogun or the throne; defenders of the realm against a foreign invader; aspiring aristocrats or bureaucrats; retainers in ser­vice to a warlord. Who was considered a samurai, and what a samurai’s social or po­liti­cal role could be, varied over time and circumstances. Conflating all fighting men, w ­ hether lower-­level foot soldiers or top po­liti­ cal leaders, ­under the term “samurai” only began to make sense four hundred years into the samurai age. Warriors did not belong to a single, discrete group ­until the Tokugawa period, when they ­were officially designated as such despite continuing differences in rank. Gradually, an ideal was given lasting form during this period through intersections between the established sociopo­liti­ cal structures, the role of Confucian philosophizing in upholding samurai morale and purpose during the long period of peace, and the popu­lar arts. Inherited descriptions from the medieval world of warriors fighting on real battlefields, winning or losing within a context of Buddhist resignation, w ­ ere

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transformed during the Tokugawa period into exemplars of duty and loyalty to one’s superior carried out on battlefields preserved from the narrative past. Some scholars have applied the notion of “in­ven­ted tradition,” made famous by Eric Hobsbawm, to the idea of the samurai that developed over the Tokugawa period and carried into the modern era.7 However, the term “samurai” had a continuous development with changing significations over time, even during the Tokugawa period. Even so, heroes developed through Tokugawa-­period cultural forms stood the test as national self-­representations u ­ nder the pressure of modernization and contributed to a cohesion that served the nation-­ building pro­cess. The fluid, dynamic experimentation that led to proto-­national identity formation in the Tokugawa period lay a perfect groundwork for mani­ pulation and intentionality in forming a unified notion of Japan, within and to the outside world. From the early establishment of the Kamakura shogunate to the end of the Tokugawa period, warriors not only led the government but also took a central place in cultural expressions that continuously or intermittently renewed their currency and repre­sen­ta­tional relevance. Warrior identity in the early medieval era was s­ haped in part by developing narrative arts in which warriors ­were praised for be­hav­iors ranging from sly trickery to fierce bravado to courtly elegance. Cultural depictions narrowed over the course of the Tokugawa period to an ideal that was solidified through repeated treatments, both serious and parodic, formulating a way of life that was quite removed from samurai existence of the time. Careful not to ascribe the l­ ater reified image anachronistically, we explore the mutability of memory to inscribe action and definition for a succession of pre­sent moments. Our samurai age is given shape, not so much by politics, as by the collection of its cultural imprints.

7.  Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

C ha p te r   1

Memento Mori Mōri Warriors, Manase Physicians, and the New ­Medico-­Cultural Nexus of the Late Sixteenth C ­ entury Andrew Edmund Goble

One integral part of the cultural legacy of the Mōri 毛利 warrior ­family is their embrace of the theme of health in daily life. That theme emerged more broadly in the late sixteenth ­century, an era associated with the transformational warlords Oda Nobunaga 織田信長 (1534– 1582) and Toyotomi Hideyoshi 豊臣秀吉 (1536–1598). In embracing that theme, the Mōri ­were participants in and contributors to the unfolding of one of the major developments of the late sixteenth ­century, namely, the emergence of a new medico-­cultural nexus in Japa­nese society.1 That new medico-­cultural nexus provided the basis for traditional Japa­nese medical culture from the seventeenth c­ entury onward. Proactive attention to issues of medicine and health maintenance became embedded in the rhythms of daily life and culture. It was manifested in such ­things as attention to diet, production of illness rec­ords, information networks particularly focused on ­family health, health-­themed poetry and song, access to ready-­reference medicine handbooks, and wide knowledge of medicines and formulas. With the Mōri, unusual for this era, we are able to follow, over a period of de­cades and at least three generations, the interest in health (or illness) of a 1.  For an overview of some dynamics and ele­ments of this emerging nexus, see Andrew Edmund Goble, “The Development of Urban Medical Culture during the Transition from the Medieval to the Early Modern Era,” UrbanScope 8 (2017): 1–23. 15

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single ­family, in tandem with the interest in the health of that same ­family, over the same period, of a leading group of medical professionals, the Manase 曲直瀬 school of physicians based in Kyoto. This material is the most extensive example of its kind, and, while it might be pos­si­ble to argue that it is not representative, as an integrated body whose vari­ous ele­ments resonate with information gleaned more fragmentarily from other sources, we may take it as indicative of a general environment. Also of ­great interest in the overall context of cultural creation and legacy is that we are able to gain an appreciation that the creation of legacies involved interactions with ­others and that t­ hose interactions also contributed to the creation of the legacies and heritage of ­others. This chapter ­will explore the initial contacts between the Mōri and the Manase and then the emergence of the Mōri and Manase patient-­physician information network. Next, against the backdrop of the churning po­liti­cal, military, social, and cultural dynamics of the heyday of Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the 1580s and 1590s, I ­will engage three other episodes in the theme of health in daily life. ­Those episodes ­were intertwined with larger events which took place first in Kyushu, then in Kyoto, and fi­nally in ­Korea. As a prelude, I touch on some aspects of the Mōri ­family history that provide background on the unfolding of the relationship between the Mōri and the Manase, which commenced in the 1560s.

The Mōri Background The Mōri ­family is descended from Mōri Suemitsu 毛利季光 (1202–1247), fourth son of Ōe Hiromoto 大江広本 (1148–1225), the foundational administrator of the Kamakura shogunate (1185–1333), which came into being as a result of the Genpei War of the 1180s. The Mōri are one of the most well-­ attested warrior entities in Japa­nese history and are among a select few warrior families—­the Date 伊達, Shimazu 島津, and Tokugawa 徳川 being some ­others—­whose long-­term continuing existence has resulted in the formation of a significant cultural heritage. The material components of that heritage include administrative documents (the Mōri trove alone contains tens of thousands of items, if not more, dating back to the twelfth c­ entury), private letters, essays, poetry, pottery, portraits of f­amily members, armor, clothing, wedding accoutrements, c­ hildren’s toys, among other t­hings. The Mōri collection is extensive, and even what is believed to have been Hiromoto’s personal riding crop is preserved in the Mōri ­family museum. A beautifully preserved suit of armor presented by Hideyoshi to Kobayakawa Takakage



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17

小早川隆景 (1533–1597), third son of Mōri Motonari 毛利元就 (1497–1571),

graces what is likely the finest private collection of Japa­nese armor held outside Japan.2 Though the Mōri are commonly known as a warrior ­family, which of course was the basis for their social existence, such categorization does not do them justice. The Mōri ­were also administrators, poets, patrons and prac­ti­tion­ers of the tea ceremony, authors, literary editors, artists, and avid networkers in numerous social and cultural spheres, and both female and male ­family members (biological, ­adopted, or fostered) ­were central figures in the art of marriage diplomacy.3 Being po­liti­cally and culturally involved, they also received gifts, which constitute an integral part of their heritage. The numerous Mōri artifacts, and what we know of individuals and their activities in their own lifetime and as they ­were remembered by ­later generations, also make it pos­si­ble for us to discern that, certainly in the sixteenth c­ entury, Mōri ­family members ­were conscious that they w ­ ere shaping their legacy and imprinting themselves on the ­f uture. Nonetheless, for a living legacy to exist, the Mōri had to survive. What became the quin­tes­sen­tial statement of the Mōri attitude to f­amily survival, and the basis for Mōri self-­identity for hundreds of years up through the pre­sent, is encapsulated in one of the most well known set of f­amily instructions ever written by a Japa­nese warrior. Motonari’s Injunctions (Motonari ikai 元就遺誡), also commonly referred to as the Injunctions to Three Sons (Sanshi kyōkunjō 三子 教訓状), is a fourteen-­article document dated the twenty-­fifth day of the eleventh month of 1557.4 It was written by the sixty-­one-­year-­old Motonari soon ­after he had eliminated the Ōuchi 大内 warrior f­amily, which had been hegemonic 2.  On Takakage, see Mitsunari Junji 光成準治, Kobayakawa Takakage, Hideaki: Kiesōrōwan tote, hikarimasu to mōsu 小早川隆景、秀秋：消え候わんとて、光増すと申す (Tokyo: Mineruba Shobō, 2019); Shin Jinbutsu Ōraisha, ed. 新人物往来社編, Kobayakawa Takakage no subete 小早川隆景のすべて (Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ōraisha, 1997). For portraits of Takakage, see Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan, ed. 東京国立博物館編, Mōri Motonari ten: Sono jidai to shihō 毛利元就展：その時代と至宝 (Tokyo: Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan, 1997), plates 158, 159; commentary 238. On Motonari, see Kishida Hiroshi 岸田裕之, Mōri Motonari 毛利元就 (Tokyo: Mineruba Shobō, 2014); J. Gabriel Barbier-­Mueller, Art of Armor: Samurai Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-­Mueller Collection (Dallas, TX: The Ann and Gabriel Barbier-­Mueller Museum, 2011), 327–47, “The Mōri Ensemble,” particularly plate 103, and 330–33. 3.  For an in-­depth study of this complex and fascinating topic, with much on the Inland Sea region and the Mōri orbit, see Nishio Kazumi 西尾和美, Sengokuki no kenryoku to kon’in 戦国期の権力と 婚姻 (Osaka: Seibundō, 2005). 4. “Mōri Motonari jihitsu shojō” 毛利元就自筆書状, Kōji 弘治3 (1557).11.25, in Dai Nihon ko­ monjo, iewake 8, Mōri-ke monjo 大日本古文書, 家わけ 8, 毛利家文書, hereafter DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 2, document 405 (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shiryō Hensanjo, 1920–1924); and Dai Nihon komonjo, iewake 9, Kikkawa-ke monjo 大日本古文書, 家わけ 9, 吉川家文書, hereafter DNK Kikkawa-ke monjo, vol. 1, document 190 (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shiryō Hensanjo, 1925–1932).

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in western Japan for some two hundred years. (Sic transit gloria mundi.) However, as has been demonstrated, the concerns that lay b­ ehind the injunctions ­were not new.5 Accordingly, the injunctions should be understood as a proactive effort to avoid a f­ uture prob­lem. In this case, the potential prob­lem, often resulting from worldly success, was internal disunity and disorder, which was the destructive bane of so many con­temporary warrior families. Motonari’s Injunctions was addressed to three ­people, all full b­ rothers. And since their portraits have been preserved, we know them not just as names, but as ­faces. The three w ­ ere Motonari’s oldest son and heir (and accomplished artist), the thirty-­five-­year-­old Mōri Takamoto 毛利隆元 (1523–1563); his twenty-­eight-­year-­old second son, Kikkawa Motoharu 吉川元春 (1530–1586), compiler of the authoritative Kikkawa text of the Taiheiki 太平記, one of the most impor­tant works of medieval Japa­nese lit­er­a­ture; and his twenty-­five-­ year-­old third son, Kobayakawa Takakage (about whom we ­will learn much).6 In 1557 each son was heir to or head of a separate f­amily. The fourteen articles in Motonari’s Injunctions touch on a number of ­matters, mention specific ­people inside and outside the f­ amily, and also refer to a classical Chinese text on military strategy. However, the main point is that the three b­ rothers w ­ ere ­under all circumstances to maintain ­family unity, regard their Mōri identity as primary, and ensure that the Mōri name was never extinguished. On the twenty-­sixth day of the eleventh month of 1557, the day ­after Motonari penned his Injunctions, the three sons agreed in writing to uphold its instructions.7 Remarkably, all of Motonari’s other nine sons and his at least five ­daughters, and their ­children and subsequent generations, also adhered to this fundamental ­family imperative. Occasionally, notably in the context of larger po­ liti­cal dynamics, the commitment was reaffirmed in writing.8 However, ­family unity and survival depended not just on the mind. It depended also on the body. While Motonari himself was to live to the ripe old age of seventy-­five, ­others in the f­amily had not been (and w ­ ere not to be) so lucky. 5.  See Gojō Saeko 五條小枝子, “Mōri-ke kakun no keishō” 毛利家家訓の継承, parts 1–2, Kenritsu Hiroshima Daigaku sōgō kyōiku sentā kiyō 県立広島大学総合教育センター紀要 2 (2017): 68–51; 3 (2018): 98–75. 6.  On Takamoto, see Kanaya Toshinori 金谷俊則, Mōri Takamoto 毛利隆元 (Tokyo: Chūōkōron Jigyō Shuppan, 2008). For a portrait of Takamoto, see Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan, Mōri Motonari ten, plate 14; commentary 236. For portraits of Motoharu, see Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan, Mōri Motonari ten, plates 153, 154; commentary 237–38. 7. “Mōri Takamoto, Kikkawa Motoharu, Kobayakawa Takakage rensho ukesho” 毛利隆元, 吉川 元春, 小早川隆景連署請書, Kōji 3 (1557).11.26, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 2, document 407. 8.  “Kikkawa Motoharu, Kobayakawa Takakage rensho jō” 吉川元春, 小早川隆景連署状, Tenshō 天正 10 (1582).4.2, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 3, document 845; “Mōri Sōzui (Terumoto) hoka jūichi mei rensho kishōmon” 毛利宗端（輝元）外十一名連署起請文, Keichō 慶長 20 (1615).4.14, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 3, document 1038.



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His great-­grandfather Hiromoto 熙元 (1432–1464) had died at the age of thirty-­ three. His f­ather, Hiromoto 弘元 (1466–1506), had died at age forty-­one, possibly due to alcohol abuse. His older ­brother Okimoto 興元 (1492–1516) died at the age of twenty-­five ­after an illness brought on by alcohol abuse. Okimoto’s child and successor, Kōmatsumaru 幸松丸 (1514–1523), died at the age of nine, at which point Motonari, at the age of twenty-­seven, became f­amily head. This ­family history appears to have left an indelible impression on Motonari. De­cades ­later, in a letter written to the m ­ other of his grand­son Terumoto 輝元 (1553– 1625), in which he admonished her about Terumoto’s drinking habits, he adduced t­ hese three adult deaths as a warning.9 Motonari was also gravely concerned about the health of his own c­ hildren. For example, in letters sent to his eldest son and heir, Takamoto, which w ­ ere prompted by the illness of his second son, Motoharu, he urges that both moxibustion treatment and prayers for recovery be conducted and that all be cautious since the illness was occurring in a yakudoshi 厄年 year (one when by common belief the person is at an age when he or she w ­ ill be visited by misfortune).10 Illness in o ­ thers, however, sometimes benefited the f­amily. Takakage was ­adopted into the Kobayakawa f­amily, into which Motonari’s full s­ ister had married and which was the natal f­amily of Motonari’s wife Myōkyū 妙玖 (1499–1546), Takakage’s m ­ other, ­because the presumptive Kobayakawa heir had been afflicted with blindness.11 In 1563 sixty-­seven-­year-­old Motonari’s fears about f­ amily survival w ­ ere heightened. In that year the forty-­one-­year-­old Takamoto fell acutely ill while on campaign against the Amago ­family in Izumo province and died within a few days. It takes no stretch of the imagination to think that the death of Takamoto in the prime of his life may have had a significant emotional impact on Motonari. But t­ here is no need to imagine that this may have been the case, since two portraits of Motonari provide a stark visual rec­ord. Poignantly, the first portrait was commissioned by Takamoto in 1562 in honor of his ­father. In it the sixty-­six-­year-­old Motonari is astride life: he has a vigorous visage; a glossy black beard; a piercing gaze; and a radiant posture. The second portrait was commissioned by Motonari himself in 1566 and makes its own statement. In it the seventy-­year-­old Motonari looks old and world-­weary: his hair has turned gray; his beard is wispy, white, and straggly; his eyes appear warier and 9.  On Terumoto, see Mitsunari Junji 光成準治, Mōri Terumoto 毛利輝元 (Tokyo: Mineruba Shobō, 2016). “Mōri Motonari jihitsu shojō,” undated (likely late 1560s), in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 2, document 599. In his letter Motonari lists the respective ages at death of the three as thirty-­three, thirty-­ nine, and twenty-­four. 10. “Mōri Motonari jihitsu shojō,” undated, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 2, documents 477–79. 11.  See two undated “Ichinin (Ankokuji Ekei) oboegaki” 一任 (安国寺恵瓊) 覚書, Kodai chūsei shiryō hen 古代中世資料編, in Hiroshima kenshi 広島県史, hereafter HKS (Hiroshima-­ken, 1980), 5:405.

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duller; his posture is more slumped; and the body appears a ­little wizened. He seems to have aged overnight.12 Takamoto’s death, however, seems to have been the catalyst for the creation of a new ele­ment in the Mōri familial and cultural environment. That ele­ment was a sustained focus on health maintenance. The interest in health was not per se a new one, since the Mōri, like most leading warrior families, employed doctors to attend to their h ­ ouse­hold, and wound specialists w ­ ere attached to 13 their forces. However, the new focus on health maintenance went well beyond this. It extended into most areas of life. The theme of health and healing was incorporated by the Mōri into such existing areas of interest as governing and poetry. The Mōri developed a new interest in medical writings, ­were the recipients of highly valued medical works, and received practical-­use medical works that addressed their known and everyday health needs. The knowledge of health was drawn from an array of Chinese, Korean, and Japa­ nese sources. The Mōri interacted with physicians to create a new set of po­ liti­cal and cultural networks, which paralleled existing ones, in such areas as diplomacy, tea ceremony, and poetry competition.

The 1560s: First Contacts As far as we can tell, the first contact between the Mōri and the Manase took place in 1562, when Manase Dōsan 曲直瀬道三 (1507–1594; see figure  1.1) was selected by the ill-­fated shogun Ashikaga Yoshiteru 足利義輝 (1536–1565) as one of his envoys in peace negotiations between Motonari and his opponent ­ hose negotiations ended in failure. Amago Yoshihisa 尼子義久 (d. 1610).14 T 12.  For ­these well-­known portraits see, for example, Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan, Mōri Moto­ nari ten, plates 1, 2; commentary 210. Also, for the 1562 portrait and a partial translation of the inscription on the portrait, see Shimizu Yoshiaki, ed., Japan: The Shaping of Daimyō Culture 1185–1868 (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1988), 68–70. 13.  See Miyamoto Yoshimi 宮本義己, “Sengoku ki ni okeru Mōri shi ryōgoku no iryō to ijutsu” 戦国期に於ける毛利氏領国の医療と医術, in Sengoku Shokuhō ki no seiji to bunka 戦国織豊期の政治と 文化, ed. Maibara Masayoshi Sensei Koki Kinen Ronbunshū Kankōkai 米原正義先生古希記念論文集 刊行会 (Tokyo: Zoku Gunsho Ruijū Kansei Kai, 1993), 376–84. 14.  For a useful survey of Dōsan and the Manase, see Yakazu Dōmei 矢数道明, “Nihon igaku chūkō no so: Manase Dōsan” 日本医学中興の祖: 曲直瀬道三, in Kinsei Kanpō igakusho shūsei 2, Manase Dōsan 1 近世漢方医学書集成 2, 曲直瀬道三 1, ed. Ōtsuka Keisetsu 大塚敬節 and Yakazu Dōmei (Tokyo: Meicho Shuppan, 1979), 7–50. For a portrait of Dōsan, ­housed in the Kyōu Shooku library of the Takeda Kagaku Shinkō Zaidan in Osaka, see the frontispiece section of Takeda Kagaku Shinkō Zaidan Kyōu Shooku, ed. 武田科学振興財団杏雨書屋編, Manase Dōsan to kinsei Nihon iryō shakai 曲直 瀬道三と近世日本医療社会 (Osaka: Takeda Kagaku Shinkō Zaidan, 2015).



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Figure 1.1.  Portrait of Manase Dōsan. Held in the collection of the Kyo-­U Library of the Takeda Science Foundation. Reproduced with permission.

Dōsan served as envoy during a second round of negotiations, likewise unsuccessful, in 1564, at which time he also provided some medical treatment for Motonari.15 Yet ­these occasions provided an opportunity for Motonari and Dōsan to get to know each other. Their backgrounds w ­ ere dif­fer­ent. Motonari was a confident and highly educated warrior-­statesman from western Japan who had just 15.  Miyamoto Yoshimi, “Manase Ikkei Dōsan to Ashikaga Yoshiteru” 曲直瀬一渓道三と足利義輝, Nihon rekishi 日本歴史 350 (1977): 70–81; Miyamoto Yoshimi, “Sengoku daimyō Mōri shi no wahei seisaku: Gei, un wahei seiritsu wo megutte” 戦国大名毛利氏の和平政策: 芸 ・ 雲和平成立をめぐって, Nihon rekishi 367 (1978): 19–36.

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p­ ropelled the Mōri to a position of national military and po­liti­cal significance. Dōsan was a prodigiously ambitious and learned individual who represented the first generation of a new type of physician, one who was regarded not just as a technical specialist but also as a member of Kyoto’s intellectual and cultural elite. Yet they w ­ ere not direct competitors, and they shared interests in tea ceremony, painting, waka poetry, Chinese classical thought, calligraphy, and portraiture. In 1564, the year a­ fter Takamoto’s death, the circumstances may have been particularly conducive to discussion of issues of life and existence between two middle-­aged men who w ­ ere both concerned about the long-­term survival of ­family and, it seems, the creation of a legacy. The next recorded meeting between Motonari and Dōsan took place in 1566 (which was, coincidentally, Dōsan’s kanreki 還暦 sixtieth year, seen as the completion of one “life cycle,” and an occasion for reflecting on life’s larger issues). The meeting was held ­because t­ hose around Motonari ­were sufficiently concerned about his state of health that they invited Dōsan to come and give an overall health assessment. And, as a letter from Kobayakawa Takakage in­ ere ­eager for Dōsan to assess the health of the new dicates, the Mōri also w Mōri heir apparent, the fourteen-­year-­old Terumoto, Takamoto’s son and Takakage’s nephew (for whom Takakage would serve as mentor and guide for the next three de­cades).16 Dōsan’s visit to the Mōri in 1566, in addition to any immediate medical treatment, generated two themes that became the core of the relationship between the Mōri and the Manase for the next several de­cades. ­Those themes ­were the dissemination of medical knowledge and the provision of counsel by Dōsan. The details of t­ hese themes in the 1560s (particularly t­ hose relating to po­liti­cal counsel) w ­ ill be part of a separate study, but ­here they are 17 noted briefly. With re­spect to the dissemination of medical knowledge, Dōsan exhibited a new approach. Whereas the con­temporary practice was for medical knowledge to be held close as proprietary social and cultural capital, Dōsan’s view was that it should be disseminated widely for the benefit of both physicians and patients. Dōsan’s visit provided three examples of this. First, having given a special set of lectures over seven nights to Mōri ­house doctors, at the request of ­house doctor Ian Jōjun 委庵乗順, Dōsan augmented that content with additional material, 16.  “Kobayakawa Takakage jihitsu shojō” 小早川隆景自筆書状, ca. Eiroku 永禄 9 (1566).8.2, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 3, document 380. 17.  A preliminary engagement appears in Andrew Edmund Goble ゴーブル・エドムンド・アン ドリュー, “Shokuhō ki ni okeru Manase ke no iryō bunka no tenkai: Mōri daimyō ke to no kankei wo rei ni” 織豊期に於ける曲直瀬家の医療文化の展開: 毛利大名家との関係を例に, in Takeda Kagaku Shinkō Zaidan Kyōu Shooku, Manase Dōsan to kinsei Nihon iryō shakai, 9–13.



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producing for them a highly regarded technical guide to Manase medical theory, the 108-­article Unjin yawa 雲陣夜話 (Night Talks while in Camp in Izumo).18 Second, Dōsan worked up and presented to the doctors another work, the Nichiyō yakushō nōdoku 日用薬性能毒 (A Daily Use Guide to the Effective and the Harmful Qualities of Medicinals). This was an elaboration of a work that Dōsan had written the previous year (1565), the Honzō nōdoku 本草能毒, which appears to be the first Japa­nese effort in at least two centuries to compile a reliable and accessible authoritative guide to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. More broadly, this text may be regarded as part of Dōsan’s larger effort to “unify” Japa­nese medicine, an endeavor that paralleled the better-­known pro­cess of po­liti­cal unification that was unfolding at this time.19 Third, Dōsan gave Motonari private instruction and provided him with a ready-­reference medical handbook that he titled Unjin yawa hoi hiden 雲陣夜話補遺秘伝 (Private Instructions Supplementary to the Unjin yawa).20 This work was a daily-­use manual addressing medical concerns specific to Motonari, such as eye diseases and what was colloquially termed military camp illnesses (jin ekibyō 陣疫病), a generic term for infectious diseases (such as colds, influenza, measles, smallpox) that afflicted ­those with weak constitutions and spread aggressively among populations. The work is characterized by a colloquial writing style; a readiness to identify materia medica by both Sinified and vernacular nomenclature; a preference for noting formulas derived from Dōsan’s own experience; and clarification of the ­causes of some common ailments (which included correcting one mistaken theory). Thus, the Private Instructions provides practical information readily to hand and furnishes useful information that facilitates proactive health maintenance. With re­spect to po­liti­cal counsel, the most vis­i­ble evidence is the Unjin chawa 雲陣茶話 (Tea Conversations while in Camp in Izumo), which is a work of advice for the Mōri on the art and ethical under­pinnings of governing.21 In contrast to con­temporary warrior h ­ ouse codes and injunctions to descendants 18.  Unjin yawa, in Kinsei Kanpō igakusho shūsei 4, Manase Dōsan 近世漢方医学書集成 4, 曲直瀬道 三, ed. Ōtsuka Keisetsu and Yakazu Dōmei (Tokyo: Meicho Shuppan, 1979), 551–600. 19. Endō Jirō 遠藤次郎, “Manase Dōsan no igaku: Igaku no ue de tenka tōitsu wo mezashita Manase Dōsan” 曲直瀬道三の医学: 医学の上で天下統一を目指した曲直瀬道三, Kyōu 杏雨 10 (2007): 125–40. 20.  Unjin yawa hoi hiden, manuscript held in Yamaguchi-­ken monjokan shozō 山口県文書館所蔵, Mōri-ke bunko 毛利家文庫 16, Sōsho 叢書 61. While Unjin yawa hoi hiden is significant both for the Mōri and Manase relationship and for sixteenth-­century medical history, as far as I am aware the only scholarly comment on it is Miyamoto Yoshimi, Sengoku bushō no yōjōhō 戦国武将の養生法 (Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ōraisha, 2010), 124–31. 21.  Unjin chawa, in Unjin yawa hoi hiden. Though Unjin chawa was the title by which the essay was known within the Mōri orbit, in the late nineteenth c­ entury historians of the Historiographical Institute at Tokyo University labeled it Dōsan’s Opinions (Ikensho 意見書). See “Manase Dōsan ikensho” 曲直瀬道三意見書, Eiroku 10 (1567).2.9, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 3, document 864. For an unannotated (­there is one footnote) modern Japa­nese translation see Kishida, Mōri Motonari, 374–81.

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(such as that penned by Motonari), Dōsan’s is a work of po­liti­cal philosophy. The importance of the advice is highlighted by the fact that it is addressed to three generations and five members of the Mōri leadership: seventy-­one-­year-­ old Motonari; his second son, thirty-­eight-­year-­old Kikkawa Motoharu; his third son, thirty-­five-­year-­old Kobayakawa Takakage; his fifth son, sixteen-­year-­ old Sugimori Motoaki 椙杜元秋 (1552–1585); and his grand­son and new heir, fifteen-­year-­old Terumoto. The timing of the essay possibly was influenced by po­liti­cal and strategic concerns in 1567.22 However, as the title suggests, it had its genesis in Izumo in the previous year, 1566, in an atmosphere conducive to discussion of larger issues of culture and society. Unjin chawa is without pre­ce­dent as a work on po­liti­cal thought written by a Japa­nese physician. It attests to Dōsan’s stature as a man of learning, demonstrates his acquaintance with the Chinese classical heritage, and offers a bold new intellectual perspective. The essay (consisting of an introduction, nine articles, and concluding comment) addresses specific topics, but two larger informing themes are of note.23 The first theme, resonating with (and using citations drawn from) such classics as Confucius’s Analects, stresses that ruling authority must be informed by an ethical humaneness that serves the collective good. The second theme articulates the notion that medicine and government are like enterprises that share a common foundation, the impulse to heal. Simply characterized, healing (chiryō 治療) brings order to physical bodies and governing (chikoku 治国) brings order to physical realms; medicine (healers) and governance (rulers) seek to prevent disorder, treat it when it does break out, take mea­sures to prevent relapse, and look to long-­term practices and policies to maintain balance. Thus, both medicine and ruling are worthy avocations. While this link between medicine and governing may seem obvious, ­there is no rec­ord of it having been made in Japan prior to this time. Dōsan’s assertion no doubt resonated well with the Mōri.

22. Mitsunari, Mōri Terumoto, 104–5. 23.  The nine articles of the Unjin chawa are article 1, “On Discriminating between Slothfulness and Industriousness” 怠勤之辧; article 2, “Restraint in Sustenance and Residence” 飲食居所之倹約; article 3, “The Appropriate Employment of Song and Dance” 歌舞之用捨; article 4, “Authority and Virtue Must Be Employed in Conjunction” 威徳宜兼行; article 5, “Being Neither Fond of Nor Neglectful of Warfare” 兵戦莫好莫怠; article 6, “Being Elevated but Receptive, Being Skeptical but Inclined to Trust” 貴兼聴嫌偏信; article 7, “The Differences between Diligence and Frugality, and Negligence and Extravagance” 勉謙懈楮之異; article 8, “Keeping Sagacity and Wisdom Close, and Riches and Baubles Distant” 親賢智遠宝飾; and article 9, “Nurturing Health in Advance, Avoiding Disorder in Advance” 予養生予防乱.



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The Early 1580s: Manase Patient–­Physician Information Network By the early 1580s the Mōri and the Manase had developed close personal relations. While we do not have a ­g reat amount of detail on direct contacts between Dōsan and Motonari’s successor, Terumoto, we do have good evidence of an ongoing medical information network that linked the families. The core of this was a long-­term program by which Manase-­trained physicians ­were placed with vari­ous Mōri leaders and then served as their attending physicians for extended periods. One example is that of the Izumo physician Mizuno Shōrinken 水野松林軒, who met Dōsan during the latter’s trip to Izumo in 1566 and who subsequently became an attending physician to Kobayakawa Takakage. In the early 1580s, Shōrinken spent some time receiving advanced medical instruction at the Manase Keiteki-in 啓廸院 medical acad­emy, and upon his return he took with him a number of Manase writings, including a copy of Dōsan’s signature medical work, the Keitekishū 啓廸集. The introductory portions of Shōrinken’s copy (preserved by the Mōri) ­were written by Dōsan in his own hand and certified with his own seal, which indicated that Shōrinken had been acknowledged as a highly trained and competent Manase school physician. In other words, it was his diploma.24 But an even more in­ter­est­ing example of the multifaceted physician network is provided by Kitamura Sōryū 北村宗龍 (1552–1644), a native of Ōmi province. Before beginning his medical studies ­under the Manase, Sōryū had studied ­under the noted waka poet Satomura Jōha 里村紹巴 (1525–1602), who himself enjoyed an acquaintance with the Mōri that spanned at least three de­cades from the 1560s through the 1590s. In 1572 Jōha edited a posthumous collection of Moto­ nari’s poetry (which can only have meant that the two regularly had exchanged poetry for some time prior to this), and on at least two occasions (the first in 1580 and the second in 1598) he presented Motonari’s eighth son, Mōri Motoyasu 毛利元康 (1560–1601), with manuals for the composition of linked-­verse poems (renga 連歌).25 At any rate, it appears that Sōryū, perhaps from the late 1570s, 24.  Kosoto Hiroshi 小曾戸洋, “Manase Dōsan jihitsu ‘Keitekishū’: Mihara shiritsu toshokan zō hon” 曲直瀬道三自筆『啓廸集』: 三原市立図書館蔵本, Kanpō no rinshō 漢方の臨床 37, no.  5 (1990): 2–4. Another example of this practice is that of Aki Dōju 安芸道受, who was an attending physician to Oda Nobunaga: see Mayanagi Makoto 真柳誠 and Yakazu Dōmei, “Shin hakken no ‘Keitekishū’ koshōhon” 新発見の『啓廸集』小鈔本, Nihon ishigaku zasshi 日本医史学雑誌 43, no. 3 (1997): 352–53. 25.  For a sample of the edited collection of Motonari’s poetry, see the 1572 “Mōri Motonari kushū” in Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan, Mōri Motonari ten, plate 266; commentary 250. For the 1580 pre­sen­ta­tion to Motoyasu, see Donald Keene, “Jōha, A Sixteenth-­Century Poet of Linked

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moved on from his poetry studies and became a Manase student at the Keiteki-in. ­Later, likely at Dōsan’s recommendation, Sōryū became Mōri Motoyasu’s attending physician. It is not clear precisely when this occurred, but it was prob­ ably no ­later than 1585, when twenty-­five-­year-­old Motoyasu succeeded his older ­brother (Motonari’s fifth son, Sugimori Motoaki) as Sugimori ­family head a­ fter the childless Motoaki died of illness at the age of thirty-­four. And as further evidence that Jōha and the Mōri maintained their connection, during Mōri Terumoto’s po­liti­cally significant sojourn in Kyoto in 1588 (discussed l­ ater), Terumoto visited Jōha at least twice, presenting some gifts and having tea and snacks, sharing some drinks, and talking (and perhaps reminiscing) about “vari­ous ­things.”26 The interest ­here, however, is how surviving letters exchanged between Sōryū, Dōsan, and Dōsan’s ­adopted son (his nephew, the son of his deceased younger ­sister) and heir, Manase Gensaku 曲直瀬玄朔 (1549–1631), illustrate the intimate knowledge that the Manase must have had about the health status of the Mōri ­family.27 Of ­those letters, one—­year unknown, but perhaps post-1585—is of par­tic­u­lar note. In it, Sōryū described the symptoms and treatment that he provided to Motoyasu’s seven-­month-­old infant, noted that the condition had not improved, and sought Dōsan’s advice. Dōsan wrote his reply on the original letter. Sōryū: This concerns the child of Motoyasu. It is an infant who was born this past second month. From about the m ­ iddle of this pre­sent month he suddenly developed a fever, which has been recurring: sometimes it goes down, and other times it breaks out again. From about the twenty-­third of this month the fever broke out, and it was particularly severe. Then on the twenty-­sixth spots and pustules broke out all over the body, though l­ater the pustules fi­nally went down. The fever continued and the affliction did not cease. Sometimes it broke out, other times it went down. As of now he occasionally vomits, and is drinking very ­little [breast] milk. His pelvis is drawn up and it is difficult to Verse,” in Warlords, Artists, and Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth ­Century, ed. George Elison and Bardwell L. Smith (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1980), 127. For a sample of the 1598 pre­ sen­ta­tion to Motoyasu, see the 1598 “Satomura Jōha renga gakusho” (Renga shikimoku), in Mōri Hakubutsukan meihin sen: Kaiga, monjo no bu 50 sen 毛利博物館名品選：絵画、文書の部50 選, ed. Mōri Hakubutsukan 毛利博物館編 (Hōfu: Mōri Hakubutsukan, 2007), 46–47. 26.  Tenshōki 天正記, in Mōri shiryō shū 毛利史料集, ed. Misaka Keiji 三坂圭治, volume 6 of Sen­ goku shiryō sōsho 戦国史料叢書 (Tokyo: Jinbutsu Ōraisha, 1966), entries for 8.16, 8.18; 426–27. 27.  For a portrait of Gensaku, see Takeda Kagaku Shinkō Zaidan, ed. 武田科学振興財団編, Kyōu shooku shozō ika shōzō shū 杏雨書屋所蔵医家肖像集 (Osaka: Takeda Kagaku Shinkō Zaidan, 2008), 338. On Gensaku, see Yakazu Dōmei, “Manase Gensaku nidai Dōsan no gyōseki” 曲直瀬玄朔二代道 三の業績, in Kinsei Kanpō igakusho shūsei 6, Manase Gensaku 近世漢方医学書集成 6, 曲直瀬玄朔, ed. Ōtsuka Keisetsu and Yakazu Dōmei (Tokyo: Meicho Shuppan, 1979), 9–48.



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stretch out, and his face is deathly pale. And his faeces are yellowish, while his urine is sometimes whitish and cloudy, other times clear and astringent. As to the pattern of the Tiger’s Mouth, it is gradually extending to the Life Pass.28 Dōsan: He is to be made awake and revived. [Compound] Hare’s ear root (a medium spoon’s amount), Cape jasmine (a medium spoon’s amount), Tuckahoe mushroom (a medium spoon’s amount), Hogfennel (a medium spoon’s amount), Licorice (a small spoon’s amount), Peony (a medium spoon’s amount), Mandarin orange peel (a small spoon’s amount), Five-­leaf akebia (a medium spoon’s amount), and Peony bark (a small spoon’s amount). If with ­these portions the fever is still severe, add Rhinoceros horn.29 It was not uncommon in this period for doctors to keep in touch with patients through correspondence.30 For example, letters written by the Kyoto physician Nakarai Zuitō 半井瑞等 (aka Nakarai Mitsunari 半井光成, 1503– 1577) to the Shikoku daimyo Kōno Michinobu 河野道宣 (1522–1581) reveal that Zuitō, having received letters from Michinobu that described his current symptoms and condition (and perhaps the course of treatment to date), compounded tonic health medicine (yōjō yaku 養生薬) and sent it along to Michinobu.31 (Zuitō had on occasion also provided treatment to Mōri Motonari.) Physicians in urban areas such as Osaka and Kyoto commonly communicated with each other in writing (and verbally, of course) about the condition of a patient being treated by both. However, examples of one physician discussing a patient with another physician who was not in direct contact with the patient, and ­doing so over long distances and the long term, are rare. Yet, such interaction seems to have been an integral component in the Manase network. ­There is, for example, even more extensive correspondence between Dōsan and one of his ­earlier pupils, Kanseiken 甘静軒, dating from 28.  The Tiger’s Mouth is the area between the thumb and the index fin­ger; the Life Pass is a section of the index fin­ger of a child. In treatment examining the superficial veins of the child’s index fin­ger, if the veins are vis­i­ble at the Life Pass, it is an indication of a serious disease. 29. See Ōtani Masahiko 大谷雅彦, “Kitamura Sōryū wo meguru Manase Dōsan kankei no shiryō” 北村宗龍をめぐる曲直瀬道三関係の資料, Kanpō no rinshō 漢方の臨床 34, no.  12 (1987): 55–56. 30.  For a discussion of patient–­physician written communications more generally in this era, see Andrew Edmund Goble, “Rhythms of Medicine and Community in Late Medieval Japan: Yamashina Tokitsune (1543–1611) and His Patients,” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 29 (2008): 23–29. 31.  “Nakarai Zuitō shojō utsushi” 半井瑞等書状寫, ca. Eiroku 8 (1565).5.1, in Ehime kenshi hensan inkai, ed. 愛媛県史編纂委員会編, Ehime kenshi, shiryō hen, kodai chūsei 愛媛県史資料編古代中世, hereafter EKS (Matsuyama: Ehime-­ken, 1983), document 1961; “Nakarai Zuitō shojō utsushi,” ca. Eiroku 8 (1565).10.28, EKS, document 1962.

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the late 1550s and early 1560s. The format of the correspondence is remarkably similar to that with Sōryū—­often noting the name of the patient, the age, the symptoms, and the medicine prescribed, followed by a reply with suggestions and comments from Dōsan. From this correspondence with Kanseiken, it is clear that Dōsan was kept well apprised of the health conditions of warrior leaders, their ­children, and in par­tic­u­lar the condition of females when pregnant and postpartum.32 In fact, that concern with w ­ omen’s and f­amily health appears to have been widespread among physicians in this era (and, of course, among ­women).33 Such ubiquitous contacts confirm, more precisely than do the more than seven hundred case rec­ords of well-­placed individuals recorded in Manase Gensaku’s Igaku Tenshōki 医学天正記 (Medical Rec­ord of the Tenshō Era), that the Manase maintained an extensive and wide-­flung in­de­pen­dent information network that paralleled what­ ever networks w ­ ere maintained by other con­ temporary figures. While scholars long have adduced the example of tea masters who had extensive networks that enabled them to serve as intermediaries and confidantes to the po­liti­cal elite, the evidence from the Manase suggests that the phenomenon of networks was more widespread. And since p­ eople literally entrusted their lives to physicians, it perhaps should not come as a g­ reat surprise that physicians, more so than ­others, might be particularly privy to all types of information germane to the survival of their patients and that they would have been regarded as crucial actors in high-­level politics and diplomacy.

Kyushu, 1587 and 1588: On Campaign In 1587 Gensaku, and in 1588 Dōsan, ­were dispatched to Kyushu by Toyotomi Hideyoshi to interact with Mōri Terumoto, Motonari’s grand­son and successor, and with Kobayakawa Takakage (Motonari’s third son, and Terumoto’s ­uncle) and other Mōri leaders as they campaigned to subjugate the island on Hideyoshi’s behalf. Whereas the Mōri had been opponents of Oda Nobunaga and had provided active military support to the Honganji 本願寺 religious organ­ization head32.  Machi Senjurō 町泉寿朗, “Manase Dōsan no rinshō to shindan ni kansuru oboegaki: Tsukete, Kanseiken mon, Dōsan tō ‘Shitei mondō’ no honkoku” 曲直瀬道三の臨床と診断に関する覚書: 附、甘静 軒問・道三答『師弟問答』の翻刻, in Takeda Kagaku Shinkō Zaidan Kyōu Shooku, Manase Dōsan to kinsei Nihon iryō shakai, 643–79. 33.  For an exploration of this topic, see Andrew Edmund Goble, “­Women and Medicine in Late 16th ­Century Japan: The Example of the Honganji Religious Community in Ōsaka and Kyoto as Recorded in the Diary of Physician Yamashina Tokitsune,” Asia Pacific Perspectives 14, no. 1 (2016): 50–74.



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quartered in Osaka in its strug­gle against Nobunaga during the 1570s, following his death in 1582 they became trusted confederates of his successor, Hideyoshi. The post-­Nobunaga po­liti­cal and military situation might have seen the Mōri and Hideyoshi recognize shared interests in any case, but the new alliance also may have benefited from the personal links between Hideyoshi and Takakage, which can be dated from at least 1569.34 As impor­tant actors in the post-­Nobunaga unification pro­cess, the Mōri, Kobayakawa, and Kikkawa ­were, from 1586 through 1588, enthusiastic (and well-­rewarded) participants in Hideyoshi’s Kyushu campaigns. As in many campaigns, health was an issue, and death from illness was as much a possibility as was death in combat. In the eleventh month of 1586 ­Kikkawa Motoharu (Mōri Motonari’s second son, and Terumoto’s u ­ ncle) contracted an illness and died, aged fifty-­seven, while in camp in Kokura in northern Kyushu. Then, a few months l­ater in early 1587, while also in camp in Kokura, the thirty-­five-­year-­old Terumoto also became seriously ill. And then some months ­after that, in the sixth month of 1587, Motoharu’s son and successor, Motonaga 元長 (1548–1587), died of illness at age forty while on campaign in Hyūga province, to be succeeded as Kikkawa head of ­house by another of Moto­ haru’s sons, twenty-­seven-­year-­old Hiroie 広家 (1561–1625).35 While we do not know how Hideyoshi responded to the Kikkawa deaths, or w ­ hether he knew of their illnesses (though likely he did), news of Terumoto’s illness prompted a quick response—he dispatched Manase Gensaku (perhaps at Dōsan’s recommendation) to Kyushu to provide medical treatment to Terumoto. Gensaku spent at least half a year as a campaign doctor, some of which experiences he rec­ords in his Igaku Tenshōki, where we learn for the first time that Terumoto suffered from an unspecified but multi symptom chronic illness: The Imperial Regent and G ­ reat Minister Lord Hideyoshi was on campaign in order to pacify the Shimazu. At that time Terumoto was in Kokura in Buzen and was prostrate with his chronic illness. He had unceasing bloody diarrhea, had a hardness below the heart, the shin of his left leg was swollen, his lower spine was painful, and he could not walk. Pursuant to the command of His Lordship [Hideyoshi] I went to 34.  On the early contact between Hideyoshi and Takakage, see Mary Elizabeth Berry, Hideyoshi (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, 1981), 72–73. 35.  See Morimoto Masahiro 盛本昌広, “Toyotomi seiken no zōto girei to yōjō” 豊臣政権の贈答 儀礼と養生, Shien 史苑 60 (2000): 31n48. For the succession of Hiroie to ­family headship, see “Masuda Genjō hoka jūyonmei rensho kishōmon” 益田元祥外十四名連署祈請文, Tenshō 15 (1587).6.5, DNK Kikkawa-ke monjo, volume 1, document 202. On Hiroie more generally, see Mitsunari Junji, ed. 光成準 治編, Kikkawa Hiroie 吉川広家 (Tokyo: Ebisu Kōshō, 2016). For a portrait of Hiroie, see Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan, Mōri Motonari ten, plate 157; commentary 238.

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Kokura and treated [Terumoto]. A ­ fter several tens of days of treatment the leg swelling had largely come down. On h ­ orse he went to Bungo and then entered Hyūga, and I accompanied him and provided treatment. ­After the Shimazu came with their submission I was granted a ­horse. Terumoto returned to Yoshida in Aki province, and by the autumn had largely recovered. I had already returned to the capital. At first [I treated him with prescriptions containing] such ­things as White atractylodes, Tuckahoe mushroom, Mandarin orange peel, Five-­ leaf akebia, Aristolochia, Myrrh, Frankincense, Corydalis, Bidentate achyranthes, Ginseng, and Licorice. L ­ ater [I treated him with prescriptions containing] such t­ hings as Ginseng, White atractylodes, Tuckahoe mushroom, Licorice, Korean mint Magnolia, Pinellia, Mandarin orange peel, Immature orange, Peony, Asshide glue, and Chinese angelica. I made vari­ ous adjustments to the formulas, and gave relief.36 Terumoto and Gensaku w ­ ere in daily contact for somewhere around six months. No doubt they built a strong rapport through their shared medical and campaign experiences. In fact, the strength and po­liti­cal importance of the links between the Mōri and Manase w ­ ere reconfirmed fairly soon thereafter, and once again in Kyushu. The 1586–1587 campaigns had been tiring. As Hideyoshi noted in a letter in the fifth month of 1587, “­After the last ­battle I feel older than I am; more and more white hairs have grown and I cannot pluck them out.”37 Nonetheless, the campaigns had ended positively, and in their wake Kobayakawa Takakage was appointed by Hideyoshi to superintend the provinces of northwestern Kyushu (adjacent to the main Mōri territories in western Japan). However, in late 1587 warriors in Higo province revolted against the new order.38 Hideyoshi directed Takakage to deal with the ­matter. Hideyoshi also dispatched reinforcements, which included Mōri Terumoto, who arrived in Kyushu no ­later than the first month of 1588, by which time Takakage had dealt with the uprising. While this Higo campaign does not figure prominently in Western studies of this seminal era, it was of ­great importance to Hideyoshi: as he noted in a letter to Takakage in the first month of 1588, success in quelling Kyushu would pave the way for 36.  Igaku Tenshōki, in Kaitei Shiseki shūran 改定史籍集覧, ed. Kondō Keizō 近藤圭造 (Tokyo: Kondō Shuppanbu, 1902), 26:425–530. The case is noted twice in Igaku Tenshōki, with slight variation between the two entries: see Kenjōkan, 11, eishaku 泄瀉, 439–40; and Konkan, shakuri 瀉痢, 485. 37.  Hideyoshi, 1587.5.29 (letter 26), in 101 Letters of Hideyoshi, ed. Adriana Boscaro (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1975), 30–31. 38.  For some studies of the Higo uprising, see Araki Eishi 荒木栄司, Kaitei zōho Higo kunishū ikki 改訂増補肥後国衆一揆 (Kumamoto: Kumamoto Shuppan Bunka Kaikan, 2012); Oyama Ryūshu 小山 龍種, Hideyoshi to Higo kunishū ikki 秀吉と肥後国衆一揆 (Fukuoka: Kaichōsha, 2003).



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his planned invasion of China (Kara iri 唐入り).39 As it happens, this is one of the earliest mentions of that plan, which was implemented four years ­later, as discussed below. Our interest in the Higo campaign comes from an entry in the Sōtan nikki 宗湛日記, the journal of the Hakata-­based merchant and tea master Kamiya Sōtan 紙屋宗湛 (1551–1635). The entry reveals that Manase Dōsan was also in Kyushu at this time and was in contact with Takakage and Terumoto. As we might anticipate, given what we know of the intersection of high-­level diplomacy, finance, and culture in this era, both the Manase and the Mōri had been tea aficionados for some de­cades. Dōsan was the owner of some noted and prized tea ceremony items, and, while no doubt representing but a fraction of his tea activities, he appears in the diaries of some noted tea masters of the era as a guest at well-­heeled tea events.40 Terumoto for his part seems to have had his own extensive tea circle and strong connections to the influential tea master Tsuda Sōkyū 津田宗及 (fl. 1530s–1591).41 Unsurprisingly, Kobayakawa Takakage was also a tea connoisseur with high-­level connections. In fact, the first reference we have to Hideyoshi’s famous “completely gold” tea room comes from 1585 when Hideyoshi showed it to Takakage and ­Kikkawa Motonaga when they visited him in Osaka ­Castle as Mōri envoys.42 Sōtan’s journal also rec­ords some of Takakage’s tea activity in Kyushu.43 With this ­family background, it is of passing interest that Mōri Hidemoto 毛利秀 元 (1579–1650), son of Motonari’s fourth son, Hoida Motokiyo 穂田元清 39.  See “Toyotomi Hideyoshi chokusho” 豊臣秀吉直書, Tenshō 16 (1588).1.5. Dai Nihon komonjo, iewake 11, Kobayakawa-ke monjo 大日本古文書, 家わけ 11, 小早川家文書, hereafter DNK Kobayakawake monjo, vol. 1, document 491 (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shiryō Hensanjo, 1927). 40.  For an overview of Dōsan and tea, see Iwama Machiko 岩間眞知子, “Manase Dōsan to cha” 曲直瀬道三と茶, in Takeda Kagaku Shinkō Zaidan Kyōu Shooku, Manase Dōsan to kinsei Nihon iryō shakai, 742–65. For a broader study of the po­liti­cal culture of tea in this era, see Takemoto Chizu 竹本千鶴, Shokuhō ki no chakai to seiji 織豊期の茶会と政治 (Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2006). 41.  Kageyama Sumio 影山純夫, “Mōri-ke to Tsuda-­ke: Momoyama ki chadō shi no ichi danmen” 毛利家と津田家: 桃山期茶道史の一断面, Kindai 近代 84 (1999): 27–43. 42.  Yabe Yoshiaki 矢部良明, Chajin Toyotomi Hideyoshi 茶人豊臣秀吉 (Tokyo: Kadokawa Sensho, 2002), 62–63. For the original document, see “Kikkawa Seirin (Tsuneyasu) shojō utsushi” 吉川盛林 (経 安) 書状寫, Tenshō 13 (1585).12.26, in Dai Nihon komonjo, iewake 9, Kikkawa-ke monjo besshū, furoku, Iwami Kikkawa-ke monjo 大日本古文書, 家わけ9, 吉川家文書別集, 附録, 石見吉川家文書, document 102 (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shiryō Hensanjo, 1931). For an En­glish translation, see Tim Cross, “Chanoyu and Kobayakawa Takakage (An annotated translation of the fourth chapter of 『茶の湯と筑前 利休らの足跡と「南方録」の系譜』by 松岡博和),” Fukuoka Daigaku jinbun ronsō 福岡大学人文論叢 51, no. 1 (2019): 300. 43.  Sōtan nikki, in Sadō koten zenshū 茶道古典全集, vol. 6, ed. Haga Kōshirō 芳賀幸四郎 (Tokyo: Tankō Shinsha, 1958), entries for Tenshō 16 (1588).3.(first entry), 3.6, 3.7, 3.21, 3.23, 3.27, 10.10; Tenshō 17 (1589).1.2, 1.5, 1.8, 2.4, 2.15, 7.19, 7.27, 9.5, 9.(final entry); Tenshō 18 (1590).1.2, 1.28, and 2.10 (245–51; 253–56).

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(1551–1597), at one point Terumoto’s designated heir and the first daimyo of the Tokugawa-­era Mōri territory of the Chōfu 長府 domain, was a key player in shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu’s 徳川家光 (1604–1651) tea diplomacy in the 1640s.44 Accordingly, it would not have been unusual for Dōsan to be attending a tea event. However, it is unlikely, despite his known fondness for tea culture, that the eighty-­two-­year-­old Dōsan traveled from Kyoto to Takakage’s campaign headquarters in Hakozaki just outside of Hakata simply to participate, along with Terumoto, in a tea ceremony hosted by Sōtan on the twenty-­third day of the third month of 1588.45 Too, while Dōsan may have provided some medical treatment to Terumoto (and o ­ thers) while in Kyushu, it is unlikely that he was sent primarily to engage in medical activity. Rather, it is more likely that he had been sent as a diplomatic envoy, thus reprising (this time for Hide­yoshi) the role that had first brought him into contact with the Mōri over a quarter of a c­ entury ­earlier. His task for Hideyoshi, it seems, was twofold: first, to convey information and consult with Takakage and with Terumoto, most urgently on the military situation in Kyushu, and second, as part of Hide­yoshi’s larger diplomatic strategy to bring warrior leaders more visibly ­under his aegis, to extend an invitation to the Mōri to visit Kyoto in the near f­uture. Thus, the trip to Hakata reflected Dōsan’s stature as a trusted intermediary and as a key contact with the Mōri. This was further confirmed by interactions in Kyoto several months ­later in the ­middle of 1588.

Kyoto 1588: Diplomacy, Along with Poetry for ­Family Health In his diary entry for the nineteenth day of the seventh month of 1588, Yama­ shina Tokitsune 山科言経 (1543–1611), an exiled aristocrat and a prominent urban physician who served the Honganji religious community in the Tenma jinai t­ emple town located directly across the Ōkawa river from Hide­ 44.  For portraits of Hidemoto and Motokiyo, see Tanaka Yōichi 田中洋一, Mōri Hidemoto shūi tan: Motonari no sairai 毛利秀元拾遺譚: 元就の再来 (Shimonoseki: Kabushiki Kaisha Miwa Insatsusha, 2016), frontispiece. On Motokiyo, see Kokuhata Masaki 石畑匡基, “Sengoku ki Mōri Motokiyo no kengen to chi’i” 戦国期毛利元清の権限と地位, Komonjo kenkyū 古文書研究 78 (2014.12): 43–62. On Tokugawa Iemitsu’s tea diplomacy, see Saitō Kazue 斎藤和江, “Iemitsu seikenka no daimyō no chanoyu: Shōgun Iemitsu to Mōri Hidemoto” 家光政権下の大名の茶の湯: 将軍家光と毛利秀元, Nihon rekishi 721 (2008): 17–33; Saitō Kazue, “Mōri Hidemoto no chanoyū: Saisho to saigo no chakai” 毛利 秀元の茶の湯: 最初と最後の茶会, Shigaku kenkyū 史学研究 270 (2011): 56–65. 45.  Sōtan nikki, entry for Tenshō 16 (1588).3.23, in Sadō koten zenshū, vol. 6, 246.



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yoshi’s newly built Osaka ­Castle, noted that “Mōri, Kobayakawa, and Kikkawa of the western provinces have come up to Osaka. On the coming twenty-­second they w ­ ill be g­ oing up to the capital. They are paying their re­ spects to the Denka (Toyotomi Hideyoshi).”46 Tokitsune makes few references to ­matters of national import (even the events surrounding the ­battle of Sekigahara of 1600 get terse treatment). Indeed, the only other comparable diary entries made by Tokitsune during his stay in Osaka between 1586 and 1591 are two entries in 1590 that note the transit through Osaka, by boat, of envoys from the Korean king who ­were proceeding to an audience with Hideyoshi in Kyoto.47 Obviously, the importance of the Mōri visit was evident to third-­party observers. Naturally, the trip—­a diplomatic mission—­was of exceptional importance to Hideyoshi and to the Mōri themselves.48 But beyond the con­ temporary significance, the Mōri w ­ ere also cognizant that the trip would be a meaningful component of their own ­family history and legacy. We know this ­because Hirasa Narikoto 平佐就言 (fl. 1580s), a high-­r anking Mōri retainer, contemporaneously compiled for posterity a fulsome and granular account of the trip, known as the Tenshōki 天正記 or Rec­ord of the Tenshō Era.49 (Recall that the Manase f­amily’s signature rec­ord of its medical activity during this period is titled the Igaku Tenshōki, or Medical Rec­ord of the Tenshō Era.) The trip was made by the entire Mōri leadership cadre of thirty-­six-­year-­ old Mōri Terumoto, his fifty-­six-­year-­old ­uncle Kobayakawa Takakage, his thirty-­seven-­year-­old ­uncle Hoida Motokiyo (not noted in Tokitsune’s diary entry above), and his twenty-­seven-­year-­old cousin Kikkawa Hiroie. Obviously, the Mōri had taken to heart, and displayed in public for all to see, Motonari’s injunction from three de­cades ­earlier to show unity and never to forget the bonds that preserved the Mōri name. The leaders w ­ ere accompanied by a huge entourage. The trip from start to finish lasted for two months (from the seventeenth day of the seventh month to the nineteenth day of the ninth month), and the stay in Kyoto itself lasted for nearly six weeks (twenty-­second day of 46.  Tokitsune kyōki 言経卿記, vol. 3, entry for Tenshō 16 (1588).7.19, 106. In Dai Nihon kokiroku 11 大日本古記録11 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1959–1991). 47.  Tokitsune kyōki, vol. 4, entries for Tenshō 18 (1590).7.19 and 8.20, 86; 99–100. In Dai Nihon kokiroku 11. 48.  For a sense of the diplomatic aspects of Terumoto’s visit, and for some of the activity of Kobayakawa Takakage and Kikkawa Hiroie, see Yabe Kentarō 矢部健太郎, Toyotomi seiken to shihai chits­ ujo to chōtei 豊臣政権と支配秩序と朝廷 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2011), 150–56; 180–92; 197–204; 246–51; 279–82. 49.  Tenshōki, 367–468. For an informative study of the trip based on the Tenshōki, see Futaki Ken’ichi 二木謙一, Hideyoshi no settai: Mōri Terumoto jōraku nikki wo yomitoku 秀吉の接待: 毛利輝元上 洛日記を読み解く (Tokyo: Gakushū Kenkyūsha, 2008).

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the seventh month to the second day of the ninth month). The ­mental pressures of the trip—­the fact that it was Terumoto’s first visit to the capital, that he was meeting large numbers of the po­liti­cal and intellectual elite for the first time, the vari­ous obligations, and the sense of responsibility for f­ amily fortunes in a still highly fluid po­liti­cal environment—­would have been considerable. However, ­those pressures would have been eased by a trusted support network, which in fact he possessed. Terumoto’s host and sponsor was none other than Manase Dōsan. (And at both the beginning and end of the trip, Terumoto gave Dōsan and his wife some money as a token of appreciation.)50 The first night of his arrival in Kyoto, Terumoto did not stay at his formal lodging in Myōkenji ­temple, but at Dōsan’s residence. While we do not have a surviving description of the residence, it was surely no smaller than the residences of the two Takeda physicians, Takeda hōin 竹田法印 and Takeda Zuichiku 竹田 瑞竹, which are depicted in the Uesugi version of the Rakuchū rakugai zu 洛 中洛外図 (Scenes within and without the Capital) compiled some four de­ cades ­earlier in 1547.51 We also know that by the mid-1570s at the latest Dōsan was a well-­placed property owner in Kyoto.52 Given Dōsan’s stature and means, it is likely, as Futaki Ken’ichi 二木謙一 has argued, that Dōsan’s residence would have been on the scale of the residences used by daimyo. Accordingly, it would have contained at least a library and study, a large kitchen, a formal room, a tea room, an appropriate garden, a bath ­house with a luxury-­ style steam bath, and a separate fire-­heated bath, and of course it would have been spacious enough to host large gatherings.53 Dōsan’s residence and its facilities w ­ ere sufficiently well-­appointed that, while Terumoto used his official lodging at Myōkenji for public and private activities, during his one-­and-­a-­half-­month stay in Kyoto he also made frequent use of Dōsan’s residence for a variety of purposes. On one occasion Terumoto 50.  On 7.22 Terumoto gave Dōsan one hundred leaves of silver and his wife thirty; on 9.2 he gave Dōsan fifty leaves of silver and his wife ten. 51.  See Kyoto Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan, ed. 京都国立博物館編, Rakuchū rakugai zu: Miyako no keishō rakuchū rakugai no sekai 洛中洛外図: 都の形象洛中洛外の世界 (Kyoto: Tankōsha, 1997), 63; or Ishida Hisatoyo 石田尚豊, Naitō Akira 内藤昌, and Moriya Katsuhisa 森谷克久, eds., Kokuhō Uesugi-ke hon rakuchū rakugai zu taikan 国宝上杉家本洛中洛外図大観 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 2001), 40–41. See too Matthew Philip McKelway, Capitalscapes: Folding Screens and Po­liti­cal Imagination in Late Medieval Kyoto (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006), 110. 52.  See “Tanba Nagahide shojō” 丹波長秀書状, Tenshō 3 (1575).4.3; “Ōta Gyūichi shojō” 大田牛 一書状, Tenshō 3 (1575).4.3, in Shiga Kenritsu Azuchijō Kōko Hakubutsukan, ed. 滋賀県立安土城考 古博物館編, Nobunaga no kashin tachi 信長の家臣たち (Shiga-­ken Ōmi Hachiman-­shi: Shiga Kenritsu Azuchijō Kōko Hakubutsukan, 2016), documents 52, 53; pages 42, 87. The documents deal with the administrative legerdemain required to ensure that Dōsan did not suffer financially in consequence of a Nobunaga tokusei “virtuous government” decree, which had the effect of nullifying a land transaction that Dōsan had previously made with Kamo Shrine. 53. Futaki, Hideyoshi no settai, 170.



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hosted a banquet for three leading warriors, Oda Nobukatsu 小田信勝 (1558– 1630), Tokugawa Ieyasu 徳川家康 (1543–1616), and Toyotomi Hidenaga 豊臣 秀長 (1540–1591).54 Another time, having visited the physician Seyakuin Hide­ taka 施薬院秀隆 (1573–1590) for a tea ceremony, Terumoto dropped by Dōsan’s for a rest and was entertained with some dancing.55 On yet another occasion when Terumoto visited, he was treated to a meal and to a per­for­ mance of noh.56 In addition to all of this, while Terumoto was provided with bathing facilities at Myōkenji, on one occasion during a very busy day of visits and outings, he dropped by Dōsan’s to have a bath before heading off to a dinner engagement, fi­nally returning to Myōkenji ­later in the eve­ning.57 In light of all t­ hese activities, Futaki has concluded that Dōsan’s residence was a place where Terumoto “could cure the tiredness of heart and mind” and was the one place where he could be most relaxed.58 In addition to providing a place for Terumoto to be at ease, Dōsan sometimes guided or accompanied Terumoto to his meetings, such as visits to vari­ous daimyo, to the royal head of the Shōgo’in ­temple, or to tea with tea master Tsuda Sōkyū.59 Terumoto spent most of his time in Kyoto maintaining a very busy schedule of ceremonial events and courtesy visits: to Hideyoshi, to the Imperial Palace, to aristocrats, to vari­ous daimyo, and to heads of religious institutions.60 For some of ­these interactions, even the seating arrangements have been recorded. Terumoto also met, no doubt at Dōsan’s suggestion and based on long-­ standing connections, with physicians such as Seyakuin Hidetaka, Nakarai Roan 半井盧庵 (1545–1638), Takeda hōin (fl. 1580s–1590s), and Seihō’in 盛方 院 (Yoshida Jōkei 吉田浄慶, 1554–1614).61 He attended tea events hosted by Hideyoshi and by leading tea masters other than Tsuda Sōkyū, such as Sen Rikyū 千利休 (1522–1591). At ­these high levels, exchange of gifts was a crucial part of interaction.62 Accordingly, Terumoto provided his contacts with a considerable number and 54.  Tenshōki, entry for 8.8; 417–18. 55.  Tenshōki, entry for 8.17; 426. 56.  Tenshōki, entry for 8.25; 436. 57.  Tenshōki, entry for 8.21; 428–29. 58. Futaki, Hideyoshi no settai, 170. 59.  Tenshōki, entry for 7.29, 395; entry for 8.4, 401; for the tea event with Tsuda Sōkyū, other guests being Kobayakawa Takakage and Kikkawa Hiroie, see entry for 7.27, 390. 60.  For lists of p­ eople with whom Terumoto interacted, see Futaki, Hideyoshi no settai, 140–41 for 7.25 through 7.29; 196–97 for 8.4 through 8.20; and 218–19 for 8.21 through 9.2. 61.  For some interactions between Manase Gensaku and vari­ous court physicians, which can be dated from at least 1578 to 1594, see Igaku Tenshōki, in Kaitei shiseki shūran, 26:426–28; 433; 438–39; 455; 462–64. 62.  See Morimoto, “Toyotomi seiken no zōtō girei to yōjō”; Lee Butler, “Gifts for the Emperor: Signposts of Continuity and Change in Japan’s Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” in Mediated by Gifts: Politics and Society in Japan, 1350–1850, ed. Martha Chaiklin (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2017), 48–81;

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a wide variety of gifts: leaves of silver (ten, thirty, fifty, or a hundred at a time), numerous swords (including gilt ones), ­horses (chestnut-­colored, fawn-­ colored), four hiki of coins (chōmoku 鳥目), a hundred bolts of cloth, sake rice wine, red thread, a hawk-­eagle, a tiger skin, and a leopard skin.63 Even for a resource-­rich ruler such as Terumoto, the expenses of the trip—­these gifts, the transportation, the lodging en route, the residences required for the entourage while in Kyoto, medicines, and food—­would have been considerable. In fact, just to cover expenses while in Kyoto, fifty carts containing gold, silver, and cash had been unloaded from the fifty ships that had transported Terumoto and his contingent from Osaka to their Kyoto disembarkation point at Yodo.64 Terumoto himself received gifts, but for our purposes the most impor­tant was the one he was given by Dōsan. This gift was the text Yōjō haikai 養生俳諧 (Poems for Health), written in Dōsan’s own hand on fine paper and handsomely bound. It was completed in the sixth month of 1588, several months a­ fter Dōsan had joined Terumoto in Kyushu, and the month prior to Terumoto’s visit to Kyoto.65 It is unclear exactly when Dōsan gave this to Terumoto, but presumably he did so while Terumoto was in Kyoto. Dōsan intended it to be a special memento, and it was no doubt an appealing gift. The Mōri interest and accomplishments in poetry ­were, as touched on ­earlier, of long standing. Terumoto himself was well known for his love of poetry and song, which dated from his youth when his u ­ ncle Kobayakawa Takakage had recommended to him that he should learn songs (particularly popu­lar ones) and poetry as part of his education. Indeed, one of ­those songs ­later became known as “the Mōri Terumoto h ­ ouse­hold instruction song” (Mori Terumoto kakunka 毛利輝元家訓歌).66 We know too that poetry was an integral part of Terumoto’s trip to Kyoto. On the way, while departing the Inland Sea port of Tomo on board a boat “with billowing sails pushed by a fair wind,” he engaged in some linked-­verse poem composition.67 And while in Kyoto he sent at least two letters to Tanamori Fusaaki 棚守房顕 (1494–1590), Morgan Pitelka, Spectacular Accumulation: Material Culture, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Samurai Sociability (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2016), esp. 65–93. For a broader discussion of gift circulation as a ubiquitous custom among all segments of the population, see Andrew Edmund Goble, “Physician Yamashina Tokitsune’s Healing Gifts,” in Chaiklin, Mediated by Gifts, 82–115. 63.  For a useful collation of details on ­these, see Futaki, Hideyoshi no settai, 97–100; 140–41; 144– 45; 196–97; 218–19. 64.  Tenshōki, entry for 7.22; 376–77. 65.  For the text, modern Japa­nese translation, and discussion of the Yōjō haikai, see Yamazaki Mitsuo 山崎光夫, Sengoku bushō no yōjōkun 戦国武将の養生訓 (Tokyo: Shinchō Shinsho, 2004). 66.  Ono Mitsuyasu 小野添靖, Sengoku jidai no ryūkō uta: Takasabu Ryūtatsu no sekai 戦国時代の流 行歌: 高三隆達の世界 (Tokyo: Chūōkōron Shinsha, 2012), 61–63. 67.  Tenshōki, entry for 7.12; 370.



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the head of Itsukushima Shrine 厳島神社, the most impor­tant religious institution in the Inland Sea region. The connections with Fusaaki w ­ ere close, and on more than one occasion both Motonari and Terumoto had sent doctors to attend to his health.68 Of more immediate relevance in 1588 was the fact that Fusaaki had been presiding over monthly linked-­verse poem meetings at the shrine for around forty years, ever since the Mōri had granted resources to the shrine in the 1540s.69 He knew poetry. Terumoto’s letters thanked Fusaaki for providing vari­ous component verses (the hokku 発句 or opening verse, waki 脇 or second verse, and daisan 第三 or third verse) for linked-­verse poem sequences.70 T ­ hese contributions from Fusaaki may have stood Terumoto in good stead, for on the fifteenth of the eighth month he, along with Takakage, Hiroie, and many other daimyo, took part in a thirty-­ verse linked-­verse poem sequence hosted by Hideyoshi.71 Returning to the Yōjō haikai, as Hata Arinori 畠有紀 has noted, writing information in poetry was an effective, easy way for p­ eople who ­were not specialists in medical lit­er­at­ ure or in medicines to be aware of the importance of caring for their health and learning good hygiene habits.72 It is easy to imagine that the verses in the Yōjō haikai ­were copied out, and recited, as regular health ditties by generations of the Mōri ­family. What information is contained in the Yōjō haikai? The one hundred twenty poems in the Yōjō haikai provide advice on a range of health and hygiene m ­ atters for females and males, and for p­ eople of all ages, so we may assume that the Yōjō haikai was intended as a health guide for all in Terumoto’s ­house­hold. Since Terumoto enjoyed his baths at Dōsan’s residence, let us first note poems dealing with bathing. Number nineteen, “Matrimony Vine Medicinal bath,” recommends that taking a bath infused with matrimony vine (Lycium chinense) ­will repel illness and lengthen one’s life; number twenty, “On Taking a Bath,” cautions that one should not wash one’s hair on a full stomach or harm one’s constitution by bathing on an empty stomach.

68.  See “Mōri Motonari dō Terumoto rensho shojō” 毛利元就同輝元連署書状, year unknown (likely between 1565 and 1570).10.28, in HKS, 2: 446; and two “Mōri shi bugyōnin shojō” 毛利氏奉行 人書状, Tenshō 天正 10 (1582).11.24, in HKS, 2: 660–61, 661–62. 69.  See Matsui Teruaki 松井輝昭, “Itsukushima jinja ni okeru tsukitsugi renga no seiritsu to sono shiteki igi” 厳島神社における月次連歌の成立とその史的意義, Kenritsu Hiroshima Daigaku Ningen Bunka Kagakubu kiyō 県立広島大学人間文化科学部紀要 9 (2014): 119–32. 70.  See “Mōri Terumoto shojō” 毛利輝元書状, year unknown (likely Tenshō 16, 1588).8.10, in HKS, 2:417; and “Mōri Terumoto senmai nado henji” 毛利輝元洗米等返事, Tenshō 16 (1588).9.6, in HKS, 2:336. 71.  Tenshōki, entry for 8.15; 423–25. 72.  Hata Arinori, “Waka keishiki de kisareta shokumotsu honzōsho no seiritsu ni tsuite” 和歌形 式で記された食物本草書の成立について, Kotoba to bunka 言葉と文化 12 (2013): 40–41.

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­There is also a poem in the Yōjō haikai dealing with hot spring bathing. As is well known, warriors from Hideyoshi on down frequented hot springs and ­were appreciative of their therapeutic qualities. As we see from a letter Hide­ yoshi wrote to one of his concubines, Ma’a 麻阿 (1572–1605), he was pleased to learn that she was better a­ fter visiting a hot spring.73 And he insisted that another concubine, Matsumaru 松丸 (d. 1634), who was suffering from a range of symptoms, go to a hot spring to get treatment.74 Hideyoshi used his own specially built steam bath at Arima hot springs to host such p­ eople as Sen Rikyū and Kobayakawa Takakage.75 So quite naturally he eagerly concurred in Takakage’s decision to visit hot springs on his way back from Kyoto on this occasion.76 And in 1594 he wrote glowingly of the benefits of the hot spring therapy that Terumoto had under­gone at Arima.77 In any event, poem number twenty-­four of the Yōjō haikai notes that hot springs are good for cuts and itching, boils and leg ailments (kakke 脚気), and warming up chilled sinews and bones. Other themes in Yōjō haikai include the importance of a peaceful realm to the health of the p­ eople (number fourteen); the need for moderation in food and drink (numbers fifteen and eighty-­two); the necessity of changing clothes that are wet or soaked with sweat (number seventeen); knowing which medicines are good for one and not to overuse them (number thirty-­four); oral hygiene (number forty-­eight); treating heatstroke (kakuran 霍乱) (numbers seventy-­two and eighty-­five); the negative effects for females of resuming intercourse too soon ­after giving birth (number ninety-­two); irregular menstruation (number ninety-­four); determining pregnancy through pulse diagnosis (number ninety-­six); and changing diapers so that babies do not get rashes (number one hundred). The Yōjō haikai also highlights the Manase interest in making knowledge of health easily available and understood by nonspecialists. In fact, Dōsan had used poems for this purpose but two years e­ arlier, in 1586, when the warrior Murakami Yoshiaki 村上義明 (d. 1604) wrote out part of his learning from 73.  Hideyoshi, 1592.12.26 (letter 44), in Boscaro, 101 Letters of Hideyoshi, 49–50. 74.  For a series of letters dealing with Matsumaru’s health, see Hideyoshi, 1594.[4].22 (letter 59); Hideyoshi, 1594.[4].24 (letter 60); Hideyoshi, 1594.[5].22 (letter 61), in Boscaro, 101 Letters of Hide­ yoshi, 64–67 (months in brackets are estimated). 75.  For a useful guide to Hideyoshi’s interest in Arima hot springs, see Usui Nobuyoshi 臼井信義, “Hideyoshi to Arima onsen” 秀吉と有馬温泉, Nihon rekishi 284 (1972): 129–48. 76.  See “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō” 豊臣秀吉朱印状, Tenshō 16 (1588).9.22, in DNK Kobaya­ kawa-ke monjo, vol. 1, document 373; “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Tenshō 16 (1588).10.5, in DNK Kobayakawa-ke monjo, vol. 1, document 381. 77.  “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Bunroku 文禄 3 (1594).5.3, in Yamaguchi kenshi, shiryō hen, chūsei 山口県史史料編中世, hereafter YKS chūsei (Yamaguchi-­ken, 1996–2008), 2:673, document 12.



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Dōsan as the Yōjō waka 養生和歌 (Poems on Health), eigh­teen of which poems are included in Yōjō haikai.78 The number of health-­related poems Dōsan composed is not known (though the minimum number is one hundred twenty-­seven), nor is how widely distributed they w ­ ere during his lifetime. Nonetheless, while Dōsan seems not to have been the only person who composed health-­related poems, during the Edo period he was credited with the popularization of the genre. Perhaps in his old age Dōsan intended his composition for Terumoto to represent a user-­friendly encapsulation of advice on health and a guide to proactive health management that was easily incorporated into an established area of quotidian cultural activity: poetry. It is also quite pos­si­ble that Dōsan, aware too of the recent spate of deaths from illness in the Mōri clan, and of Terumoto’s chronic illness, which had flared up in Kyushu, was concerned about Terumoto’s overall health. Such concern on the part of a physician who had known a patient for over two de­cades may not have been misplaced. Four years ­later in 1592, during Hideyoshi’s first invasion of ­Korea, Terumoto’s health once more became an issue.

­Korea 1592 and 1593: Health Disasters and New Knowledge The Mōri played a major role in Hideyoshi’s invasion of K ­ orea (the Bunroku and Keichō campaigns), the only Japa­nese overseas land war before the late nineteenth c­ entury. While a rare historical event, it lasted for several years, and it provides further texture for our medico-­cultural story. The main focus is on the Bunroku campaign, which commenced in the fourth month of 1592. The Mōri forces accounted for about one-­quarter of the total force of around one hundred fifty-­nine thousand. Terumoto as commanding general provided thirty thousand troops (the largest single contingent), Kobayakawa Takakage provided ten thousand troops, and Kobayakawa Hidekane 小早川秀包 (1567– 1601, Motonari’s ninth son, and ­later Takakage’s a­ dopted son and heir) provided fifteen hundred troops.79 ­Things seem to have gotten off to a good start, and the initial mood was upbeat. Early in the fifth month of 1592, while supervising the invasion from his purpose-­built Nagoya 名護屋 ­Castle in Kyushu, 78. Yagi Ichio 八木意知男, “Manase Dōsan ‘Yōjō waka’ ” 曲直瀬道三『養生和歌』, Shintō shi kenkyū 神道史研究 49, no. 2 (2001): 29–43; Miyamoto, Sengoku bushō no yōjōhō, 162–67. 79.  For a portrait of Hidekane, see Tanaka, Mōri Hidemoto shūi tan: Motonari no sairai, frontispiece. Nakano Hitoshi 中野等, Bunroku Keichō no eki 文禄慶長の役 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2006), 32–33.

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Hideyoshi wrote to his ­mother, Tenzui-in 天瑞院 (1513–1592)—­who, as it happens, died two months l­ater, in the seventh month of 1592—­that “I find myself more and more in good health and have a good appetite” and that “I am feeling better and better, and I am happy to say that yesterday, a­ fter a tea ceremony in Rikyū’s style, I enjoyed eating a meal.”80 (No doubt Rikyū, who the previous year had been forced to commit suicide by Hideyoshi, would have been gratified to know that his work was appreciated.) A letter written by Mōri Terumoto in ­Korea ­later that month, and other reports, suggest that the invasion armies had g­ reat success initially and had found it easy to obtain supplies in situ.81 But as the invasion progressed, Japa­nese forces encountered increasingly strong re­sis­tance and unfavorable conditions. Mōri forces fought in many ­battles and sustained substantial injuries. Moreover, as noted in Kikkawa Hiro­ ie’s reference to his own b­ attle injuries in his reminiscences of ser­vice during the Korean campaign (which he penned in 1618, some two de­cades a­ fter the events), Mōri leaders themselves w ­ ere at times in the thick of the fighting.82 In addition, despite the im­mense logistical preparations and ongoing provisioning efforts from Japan, the troops w ­ ere plagued by insufficient sup83 plies. That nutritional challenge, and bad weather, created significant medical prob­lems. In Japan illness was a common prob­lem for troops in the field, so we might assume that it would have been anticipated that Japa­nese troops in K ­ orea would suffer vari­ous afflictions. It is surprising, however, that in the preparations for the invasions l­ittle attention appears to have been given to the fact that the environment, climate, and weather on the Korean peninsula might be dif­fer­ent from that of Japan. Somewhat belatedly, in the tenth month of 1592, Hideyoshi, in a letter thanking Terumoto for sending him three Korean hunting hawks and their trainers, noted that “that country is heading ­towards freezing weather, and being in the field ­will be a trying hardship.”84 Indeed it was, for it seems that troops w ­ ere not provided with clothing that might have 80.  Hideyoshi, 1592.5.6. (letter 39), in Boscaro, 101 Letters of Hideyoshi, 45–46. 81. “Mōri Terumoto shojō” 毛利輝元書状, Tenshō 20 (1592).5.26, in HKS, 3:138–41; see also “Ankokuji Ekei shojō” 安国寺恵瓊書状, Tenshō 20 (1592).6.8, in HKS, 3:141–45. ­These are partly noted in Nakano, Bunroku Keichō no eki, 55–56; 50–51. 82. “Kikkawa Hiroie Chōsen eki senkō oboegaki” 吉川広家朝鮮役戦功覚書, Genna 元和 4 (1618).3.24, in DNK Kikkawa-ke monjo, vol. 1, document 726. 83.  On logistics and preparations, see for example Nakano Hitoshi 中野等, “ ‘Kara iri’ to heitan hokyū taisei” 「唐入り」と兵站補給体制, in Tenka tōitsu to Chōsen shinryaku 天下統一と朝鮮侵略, ed. Ike Susumu 池享 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2003), 195–223. 84.  “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” year not noted (but must be 1592).10.28, in YKS chūsei, 2:673, document 15. Parenthetically, two years ­later, in the twelfth month of 1594, in a letter thanking him for sending two Korean hawks and their handlers, Hideyoshi noted to Kikkawa Hiroie that now was



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helped deal with the very low temperatures or the extremely cold winds of the Korean winter, in consequence of which many troops suffered frostbite, and many lost fin­gers, toes, and ears.85 Con­temporary sources paint a uniformly grim picture. Ankokuji Ekei 安 国寺恵瓊 (fl. 1539–1600, executed a­ fter being on the losing side of the b ­ attle of Sekigahara), noted that many p­ eople had been afflicted by the cold and that uncounted numbers had died in ­battle or ­because of sickness.86 In one contingent ­under Uesugi Kagekatsu 上杉景勝 (1556–1623) perhaps as many as 15 ­percent of troops became ill, and a letter from Hideyoshi to Kikkawa Hiro­ie notes that over half of the boat captains sent to ­Korea from Kikkawa ter­ other, Date Masamune 伊達 ritory had died from illness.87 In letters to his m 政宗 (1567–1636), who two de­cades l­ater in 1613 dispatched a now-­famous diplomatic mission to Catholic Eu­rope, wrote that the w ­ ater was making ­people sick, that one Kuwaori Masanaga had died of illness in Pusan, and that nine out of ten soldiers ­were suffering from swellings (edema, haremono 腫 物).88 Night blindness, the result of vitamin deficiency, also seems to have been common.89 It is no won­der that one member of the Mōri contingent had asked that prayers be said for him while he was in K ­ orea, not, as might be expected, to keep him safe in ­battle but to ensure that he did not get sick.90 It is clear from sources that Hideyoshi was kept closely informed of the condition of the troops and of the health prob­lems of his generals. He became so alarmed by the situation that he sent additional physicians to augment t­ hose who w ­ ere already with the forces in K ­ orea. Interestingly, as far as we can tell, people from families hereditarily associated with the court and po­ ­ liti­ cal society—­such as the Nakarai, Yoshida, or Takeda—­seem not to have been dispatched to K ­ orea as physicians, although Seyakuin Zensō 施薬院全宗 (1526– 1600) did serve as one of Hideyoshi’s envoys.91 Rather, t­ hose sent seem to have the height of the freezing weather and so he should make preparations for it: “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjo,” Bunroku 3 (1594).12.4, in DNK Kikkawa-ke monjo, vol. 1, document 764. 85. Nakano, Bunroku Keichō no eki, 162–63. 86.  “Ankokuji Ekei shojō,” Bunroku 2 (1593).3.10, in HKS, 3:1490–91. 87. Morimoto, “Toyotomi seiken no zōtō girei to yōjō,” 18. See also “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Bunroku 2 (1593).2.5, in DNK Kikkawa-ke monjo, vol. 1, document 783. 88. Nakano, Bunroku Keichō no eki, 162. For the original references, see “Date Masamune shojō” 伊達政宗書状, Bunroku 2 (1593).7.21, in Dai Nihon komonjo, iewake 3, Date-ke monjo, hereafter DNK Date-ke monjo, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shiryō Hensanjo, 1909–1914), document 649; “Date Masa­ mune shojō,” Bunroku 2 (1593).7.24, in DNK Date-ke monjo, vol. 2, document 650. 89. Nakano, Bunroku Keichō no eki, 162–63. 90.  “Watanabe Nagashi kishinjō” 渡邊長寄進状, Bunroku 2 (1593).10.10, in HKS, 3:1349. 91.  See “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Tenshō 20 (1592).12.5, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 3, document 921; “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Bunroku 2 (1593).7.13, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 3, document 917; “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Bunroku 2 (1593).7.13, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 3, document 918.

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been from the ranks of a new wave of physicians, many of whom w ­ ere associated with the Manase school. Sometimes groups of doctors ­were dispatched: ­there are references to fifty physicians being sent from the Kyoto region, thirty-­ five doctors arriving at Nagoya ­Castle in Kyushu before being sent to ­Korea, and Hideyoshi sending twenty doctors to be apportioned among four generals in order to treat the lower ranks.92 Sometimes several physicians ­were sent to treat one patient, as when Toyotomi Hidetsugu 豊臣秀次 (1568–1595) sent the three Manase lineage physicians Koan 古庵, Saian 済庵, and Hongakubō 本覚坊 to treat the famous strategist Kuroda Yoshitaka 黒田孝高 (1546–1604).93 Sometimes a single physician was sent to treat a single patient, such as the noted Kyoto physician Ichiōken 一鷗軒 (Nanjō Sōko 南条宗虎), who was dispatched by Hideyoshi to treat Hideyoshi’s ­adopted son (a child of his younger ­sister Tomo 智, 1534–1623 or 1625) Toyotomi Hidekatsu 豊臣秀勝 (1569–1592), who nonetheless died of illness on Geoje Island 巨済嶋 in the tenth month of 1592 just a few weeks ­after Ichiōken’s arrival.94 And Manase Gensaku was once again sent to treat Mōri Terumoto while on campaign. Terumoto, the overall campaign commander, seems to have become afflicted very soon ­after he arrived in ­Korea. His condition did not improve or respond to treatment, and Kobayakawa Takakage was sufficiently concerned that, in the eighth month of 1592, he sent a letter to Hideyoshi informing him of the situation (Terumoto obviously had not done so). According to Gensaku, Terumoto was in camp in the area of Gaeryeong 開寧県 in Gyeongsang 慶尚道 and was afflicted with his chronic illness 宿痾, which might have included the same symptoms of diarrhea, bloody stools, and ambulatory prob­ lems as when he had been sick in Kokura in 1587.95 Most likely, ­after being apprised, Hideyoshi consulted with Dōsan and then de­cided that Gensaku would be sent to ­Korea to treat Terumoto. Hideyoshi’s concern with Terumoto’s health is noted in three letters.96 In one letter in the ninth month of 92.  On physicians sent from Kyoto, see Morimoto, “Toyotomi seiken no zōtō girei to yōjō,” 22. On Hideyoshi’s dispatch of doctors, see “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Bunroku 2 (1593).4.12, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, volume 3, document 928. 93.  Morimoto, “Toyotomi seiken no zōtō girei to yōjō,” 19; see also Suwa Masanori 諏訪勝則, Kuroda Kanbee 黒田官兵衛 (Tokyo: Chūōkōron Shinsha, 2013), 159. 94.  “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Tenshō 20 (1592).9.24, in DNK Kobayakawa-ke monjo, vol. 1, document 333. 95.  Yakazu Dōmei, “Manase Gensaku to Bunroku Chōsen no eki,” in Kinsei Kanpō igaku shi: Manase Dōsan to sono gakutō 近世漢方医学史: 曲直瀬道三とその学統 (Tokyo: Meicho Shuppan, 1982), 236, 239. 96.  “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Tenshō 20 (1592).9.24, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 3, document 890; “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Tenshō 20 (1592).9.24, in DNK Kobayakawa-ke monjo, vol. 1, document 328; “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Tenshō 20 (1592).9.24, in DNK Kobayakawa-ke monjo, vol. 1, document 333.



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1592, addressed to Kobayakawa Takakage and Ankokuji Ekei, Hideyoshi wrote Your letter of the third of last month (the eighth month) arrived ­today. I have looked at it. ­There is nothing that could cause me greater concern than to learn that Terumoto is ailing. Accordingly, it is imperative that I summon Dōsan hōin [Gensaku] and dispatch him t­here. He ­will arrive as quickly as pos­si­ble. If it is difficult for [Terumoto] to get better t­ here, then he must be told directly that he is to return to Japan, taking two or three attendants to accompany him. Treatment is to be given to him. He has been afflicted since the spring, and the situation is particularly alarming during this time of very cold weather. If it is not attended to and if t­ here is no improvement then t­ here w ­ ill need to be some frank speaking. Please make him clearly aware of what I say. Since I w ­ ill be ­going down to Nagoya on the first day of next month, you ­shall speak further to me on how he is faring. Moreover, Kinoshita Hansuke 木下 半介 ­will speak of this to you.97 And in a letter to Terumoto dated the same day, Hideyoshi wrote I send ­these instructions. I have heard from written reports from Taka­ kage and Ankokuji [Ekei] that you are ill. ­There is nothing that could cause me greater concern. Accordingly I am sending Dōsan hōin [Gensaku]. I had not known that you have been ailing since last spring, and I am stunned. If you are incapacitated and unable to get better ­there, then I insist that you return to Japan accompanied by four to five mounted attendants. It is essential that you receive treatment and care with your mind at rest. If this long illness is neglected and ­there is no improvement in your health then I must take action. I ­will be ­going to Nagoya on the first of next month, and you s­ hall speak further to me about this. Moreover, Kinoshita Hansuke ­will speak of this to you.98 Details regarding Gensaku’s activity in K ­ orea are few, but they are of g­ reat interest. He prob­ably arrived in Pusan in the ninth month of 1592 and then made his way to Terumoto’s camp at Gaeryong in Gyeongsang. According to Gensaku, along the way he stayed at Milyang 密陽県 in southern Gyeongsang, and while ­there he obtained a copy of the Chinese physician Wang Numao’s 注汝懋 (fl. 1300s) Shanju siyao 山居四要 (The Four Essentials for Dwelling in the 97.  “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Tenshō 20 (1592).9.24, in DNK Kobayakawa-ke monjo, vol. 1, document 328. 98.  “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Tenshō 20 (1592).9.24, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 3, document 890.

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Mountains).99 Wang’s work was highly regarded, and Gensaku was also impressed: “This is an excellent work that has wondrous techniques for nutrition and for daily life, and formulas for preserving life and for treatment. It should always be by one’s side, and one should fervently read and savor it from morning to night.” He then used it when treating Terumoto. A ­ fter completing the initial course of treatments, he showed it to Terumoto, who then asked him to make a Japa­nese translation. Gensaku then selected items, translated them into Japa­nese, and late in the eleventh month of 1592 presented the finished product to Terumoto as the Sankyo shiyō bassui 山居四要拔萃 (Extracts from the Shanju siyao).100 This seems to be the first time that a medical work was translated and compiled outside of Japan by a Japa­nese physician. However, some have suggested that Gensaku may have already known of ­ orea and that his compilation of the San­ the Shanju siyao before arriving in K kyo shiyō bassui would have benefited from that. According to Endō and Naka­ mura, Manase Dōsan had access to a copy of Shanju siyao, and t­here are citations from it in several of Dōsan’s writings, from no ­later than 1567. Furthermore, the Edo-­era Manase ­family’s Tōryū igaku no gen’an 当流医学之源案 (Details on the Origins of Our School’s Medicine) refers to Dōsan’s having written an extract (bassui 拔萃) of it in 1582 (Tenshō 10). Although this work is no longer extant, their conclusion is that Gensaku drew on that extract, e­ ither directly or indirectly, when he wrote his own Sankyo shiyō bassui.101 However, while a Dōsan extract may have existed, we have no idea ­whether Gensaku would have known of it, and it is certainly unlikely that Gensaku would have happened to have it with him when he traveled to ­Korea. It is also unlikely that he would have taken Dōsan’s only copy of the Shanju siyao—­ which could only be a Ming printing—­with him. Rather, it is acknowledged that the copy of the Shanju siyao that Gensaku acquired was a Korean printing, the existence of which Gensaku would not have been previously aware, and it is this Korean copy that he showed to Mōri Terumoto.102 It is hard to believe that Gensaku misled Terumoto about his knowledge of that work. And 99.  The information appears in the postscript to Gensaku’s Sankyo shiyō bassui 山居四要拔萃 (see footnote 100). Shanju siyao, in Shouyang congshu 壽養叢書 (Beijing: Zhongyi Guji Chubanshe, 1989), 3:337–499. 100.  Sankyo shiyō bassui, holograph copy held in Tōkyō Daigaku Shiryō Hensanjo 東京大学史料 編纂所, Eishabon 影写本 3065–1. I would like to thank Professor Kondō Shigekazu 近藤成一, then of the Shiryō Hensanjo Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo, for his generosity in faci­ litating my access to this work. 101. Endō Jirō 遠藤次郎 and Nakamura Teruko 中村輝子, “Manase Gensaku no chosaku no sho mondai: ‘Sankyo shiyō bassui,’ ‘Saiminki’ ha Gensaku no chosaku ka” 曲直瀬玄朔の著作の諸問題: 『山 居四要拔萃』『済民記』は玄朔の著作か, Nihon ishigaku zasshi 50, no. 4 (2004): 549–50. 102.  Miki Sakae 三木栄, Chōsen isho shi 朝鮮医書誌 (Tokyo: Gakujutsu Tosho Kankōkai, 1973), 240, 326.

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since other members of the Mōri f­amily who w ­ ere alive at the time, such as Motonari’s fourth son, Ōe (Hoida) Motokiyo, made copies of the Sankyo shiyō bassui and could have asked ­either Terumoto or Gensaku about it at any time, one may assume that Gensaku’s assertion (noted in the work itself ) that Terumoto asked him to compile it is true.103 As to the content of the Sankyo shiyō bassui, like the original Shanju siyao, it provides a broad guide to practices and habits that promote a healthy physical and psychological environment for one’s life. It is forty pages long. Following the organ­ization of the Shanju siyao, it is divided into four chapters. Unlike the original, however, the chapters in the Sankyo shiyō bassui are roughly the same length. Chapter 1 focuses on habits relating to the daily environment that are to be recommended or avoided. Chapter 2 focuses on foods, with par­tic­u­lar attention to foods that are to be prohibited or permitted according to season and combinations of foods that are to be prohibited or permitted. Chapter 3 deals with health (yōjō 養生), that is, medical prob­lems and treatments of them. Chapter 4, on ordering one’s life, covers a miscellany of items such as appropriate times for planting flowers and bushes, necessary items in one’s study, and sayings relating to prudent conduct in daily life. Each chapter is divided into sections (respectively, six, seven, sixteen, and seven [or eight]), as in the original. Each chapter is of interest, but h ­ ere the focus is on chapter 3, “Health.” One might assume that this chapter (which includes attention to injury from freezing, a topic prob­ably rarely addressed in Japa­nese wound medicine texts) would have been of most immediate use for Terumoto and o ­ thers on campaign in ­Korea. Chapter 3 focuses on ailments and afflictions and the treatments for them. The sixteen sections in this chapter cover a range of topics: diarrhea and ague; eyes, ears, nose, and mouth; sores and swellings; treating emergency symptoms; external trauma injuries; and injuries from animals. In the sixteen sections, Gensaku lists a total of ninety-­six dif­fer­ent prob­lems. The number of prob­lems noted in each section varies considerably. For example, t­here is one item in the section on chest pain (shintsū 心痛), two items in the section on wind (kaze 風; one of the six exogenous pathogenic ­factors that can cause disease), six items in the section on face and legs, ten items in the teeth and throat section, and eigh­ teen items in the section on sores, ringworm, and poisonous swellings. A substantial number of the items in chapter 3 do not appear in the original chapter 3 of the Shanju siyao. Rather, Gensaku drew extensively from the material in the Shanju siyao’s eclectic final section on “new and increased miscellaneous formulas” and reor­ga­nized information from that as he thought appropriate ­under the relevant existing section headings. His most significant 103. Miki, Chōsen isho shi, 326.

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reor­ga­ni­za­tion, and perhaps a clear indication of prob­lems of most concern to Terumoto and Japa­nese troops in ­Korea, occurs in two sections: the section on teeth and throat and the section on sores, ringworms, and poisonous swellings. (Gensaku also incorporated new material on sores into the section dealing with eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.) A sense of how much attention Gensaku gave to reor­ga­niz­ing chapter 3 can be gleaned from the following: of the eigh­teen items in the section on sores, ringworm, and poisonous swellings, only three of the seven items that appear in the equivalent section in the original are listed; at least eight items are from the “new and increased miscellaneous formulas” section; at least one item is from the “miscellaneous ailments” section; and for another six items the source has not been identified. In addition, Gensaku added alternative formulas to some items already listed and added new ones to items that he was newly listing. As for Terumoto, no details on the course of treatment provided by Gensaku are available. However, treatment seems to have lasted for about three months and appears to have had some effect. As Hideyoshi noted in a letter of 1592.12.5, I have been informed about your condition. I previously dispatched Dōsan hōin [Gensaku] and I am delighted that since then you have taken medicines and your ailment has improved somewhat. Dōsan should stay ­there for some time, and without any negligence should attend exclusively to restoring your health. It is my hope that you ­will recover quickly. A long illness is debilitating and that is unwanted. You must attend assiduously to your health. This coming spring you are to return to Japan, and you ­shall inform me when you do so.104 In the m ­ iddle of the third month of 1593 Gensaku returned from ­Korea, and very soon thereafter he proceeded to Atami hot springs to give treatment to Toyotomi Hidetsugu, who apparently had gone t­here to seek relief from a stressful po­liti­cal environment (the denouement of which was his suicide in 1595 ordered by Hideyoshi).105 But before g­ oing to Atami, Gensaku must have informed Hideyoshi of Terumoto’s state of health and conveyed the sense that Terumoto still required close medical attention. On the nineteenth of the third month Hideyoshi de­cided to send Mōri Hidemoto 毛利秀元 (1579–1650), the 104.  “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Tenshō 20 (1592).12.5, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 3, document 921. 105.  On Gensaku’s return from ­Korea, see Jikeiki 時慶記, ed. Jikeiki Kenkyūkai 時慶記研究会編 (Kyoto: Honganji Shuppansha and Rinsen Shoten, 2001), entry for Bunroku 2 (1593).3.15 (1:175). On his treatment of Toyotomi Hidetsugu, see Igaku Tenshōki, Zenkyūmon 喘急門, in Kaitei shiseki shūran, 26:444; Fujita Tsuneharu 藤田恒春, Toyotomi Hidetsugu 豊臣秀次 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2015), 141–43.



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eldest son of Motonari’s fourth son, Hoida Motokiyo, and now the ­adopted son and successor to the still-­childless forty-­one-­year-­old Terumoto, to K ­ orea; Terumoto was ordered to leave camp and stay in Pusan. The next month Hideyoshi sent twenty more doctors to his generals. He also ordered that Takakage, Motoyasu (Motonari’s eighth son), and Hiroie stay in the field and that Terumoto go to Pusan. In a letter to Terumoto he again expressed concern for his health and emphasized that Terumoto was to return to Nagoya in Kyushu if his health did not improve. Terumoto appears to have followed a regimen of taking medicines and getting hot spring therapy, but his condition seems not to have improved, and so in the intercalary ninth month Hideyoshi once more ordered him to return to Japan (though he seems to have stayed in Pusan instead).106 The Mōri health prob­lems w ­ ere not confined to Terumoto. Letters from Terumoto to Motoyasu express ­great concern for the latter’s health: Terumoto advises Motoyasu to make sure that he gets pulse diagnoses not only from Dōsan (Gensaku) but also from Koreans (Tōjin 唐人); instructs him to give priority to receiving medical treatment; tells him that moxibustion would be appropriate and to consult with Dōsan (Gensaku) about it; and admonishes him that since his recovery is impor­tant time was of the essence and he should not delay.107 And while Takakage and Hiroie had been ordered to stay in the field, they too appear to have been regularly unwell. In fact, in the second and third months of 1593 Terumoto, in letters to Motoyasu, expressed ­g reat concern over the fact that Takakage had been badly afflicted by the cold “this year” and was suffering from a cough and urged that he be given good treatment soon.108 Presumably Takakage was treated. Nevertheless, as a number of documents from the fifth through twelfth months of 1593 reveal, both Takakage and Hiroie ­were afflicted by chronic ill health while in K ­ orea. Takakage’s condition was of sufficient concern to Hideyoshi that he ordered him to return to Japan.109 However, none of ­these Mōri generals did immediately return to 106.  “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Bunroku 2 (1593).3.19, in DNK Kobayakawa-ke monjo, vol. 1, document 298; “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Bunroku 2 (1593).4.12, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 3, document 928; “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Bunroku 2 (1593).4.22, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, 3:892; “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Bunroku 2 (1593).4.28, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 3, document 893; “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Bunroku 2 (1593).i9.9, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 3, document 920. 107. “Mōri Terumoto shojō,” undated, in YKS chūsei, 3:756, document 31; “Mōri Terumoto shojō,” undated, in YKS chūsei, 3: 756, document 33. While t­hese documents are undated, they can only be from the period when Dōsan was in ­Korea in late 1592 and early 1593. 108. “Mōri Terumoto shojō,” Bunroku 2 (1593).2.11, in YKS chūsei, 3:748, document 10; “Mōri Terumoto shojō,” Bunroku 2 (1593).3.6, in YKS chūsei, 3:747, document 8. 109.  “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Bunroku 2 (1593).5.21, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 3, document 897; “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Bunroku 2 (1593).7.27, in DNK Mōri-ke monjo, vol. 3,

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Japan (except perhaps for a brief meeting with Hideyoshi at campaign headquarters at Nagoya C ­ astle in Kyushu, where Takakage, like so many generals, maintained an encampment) but remained in ­Korea for some time continuing to expend their resources and to harm their health in the quagmire of a floundering military campaign. However, while the Korean expedition resulted in large numbers of dead and wounded and was unquestionably a health disaster for Japa­nese troops, the Manase for their part derived some positive benefits. Doubtless, new clinical knowledge was acquired, by both Manase-­trained physicians and by Gensaku, although it is difficult to know specifically what that might have been. Of a more enduring nature, the Manase acquired a considerable number of medical texts, including works previously unknown and newer Korean printed editions of ones already known. In fact, medical texts ­were part of the knowledge transfer (ceramic production and printing technology are other examples) that was one legacy of the invasions. It is highly probable that Gensaku’s acquisition of the Shanju siyao, as noted e­ arlier, was not random or serendipitous. W ­ hether the work was presented to him ­because as a famous doctor he might be expected to have an interest in it, or w ­ hether he had expressed an interest in examining medical books discovered in Korean libraries and collections, ­there is ­little doubt that Gensaku made a point of acquiring medical works during his stay in K ­ orea. A con­temporary reference previously overlooked by scholars confirms this. Just ­after Gensaku’s return from ­Korea in the third month of 1593, the Kyoto resident, aristocrat, and physician Nishinotōin Tokiyoshi 西洞院時慶 (1552–1640) noted in his diary that “I went to Gensaku’s to meet him. I listened to his stories and tales about K ­ orea. Together we looked at books.”110 Tokiyoshi does not inform us of any of the titles of the books, or how many t­ here ­were, but in context they would only have been books that Gensaku brought back from ­Korea. And since Tokiyoshi as a physician would have been especially interested in m ­ atters medical, we can readily infer that the books must have included medical works. Other members of the Manase ­family also acquired medical works of Korean provenance, even though they had not gone ­there. For example, one of Kobayakawa Takakage’s retainers, Kōno Michiyuki 河野通幸, brought back from K ­ orea a Southern Song printed edition of the Sanyin fang 三因方 (Treadocument 919. Also see, for example, “Toyotomi Hideyoshi shuinjō,” Bunroku 2 (1593).i9.25, in DNK Kobayakawa-ke monjo, vol. 1, document 350, sent to Takakage; and “Nagatsuka Masaie hoka nimei rensho soejō” 長束正家外二名連署添状, Bunroku 2 (1593).i9.9, in DNK Kikkawa-ke monjo, vol. 1, document 756, sent to Hiroie. 110.  Jikeiki, entry for Bunroku 2 (1593).3.20, 1:177.



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tise on the Three Categories of Pathogenic ­Factors of Disease).111 Michiyuki surely brought back other items. We might assume that ­because of his experiences in ­Korea—of general illness, knowing the importance with which Takakage regarded medicine, and perhaps ­because he had had some contact with Gensaku—he acquired an interest in medical books that he would not have had in Japan. At the very minimum he seems to have known that they ­were prized objects. The mere fact that he managed to get hold of a Song edition of a valuable and highly regarded medical work leaves l­ittle doubt about the ­matter. ­Later, ­because of marriage relations between the Kōno and the Manase families, this book passed to the Yōan’in 養安院 branch of the Manase ­family. In fact, the Yōan’in branch acquired a considerable number of Korean-­ origin texts for their library.112 In another example of the eagerness with which Mōri-­related p­ eople obtained medical works, we note Takakage’s attending physician, Mizuno Shōrinken (to recall, a recipient of direct instruction from Dōsan as early as 1566). He accompanied Takakage on campaign and, perhaps having renewed his acquaintance with Gensaku and ­others in the Manase network, appears to have returned to Japan not only in good health but as the proud owner of an exceptional war prize: a Korean typeset printing of the classic Chinese work Huangdi neijing suwen 黄帝内経素門 (Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor Basic Questions).113 This chapter has explored the medical culture that the Mōri and the Manase embraced and developed up u ­ ntil the early 1590s. But in passing, some of the dynamics that unfolded very soon afterward should be noted. In 1595, following the forced suicide of Hidetsugu, Gensaku, as an intimate of Hidetsugu’s, was sent into internal exile, which only ended with Hideyoshi’s death in 1598. ­ nder Hideyoshi, and both Terumoto and The Mōri by contrast flourished u Takakage ­were members of Hideyoshi’s five-­person advisory council. Taka­ kage, with immaculate timing, died peacefully in 1597, his reputation intact. Terumoto, though the commander of rec­ord for the losing side at the ­battle of Sekigahara in 1600, emerged relatively unscathed due to the creative military and po­liti­cal maneuvering of the larger Mōri clan, which was still guided by the ethos that the Mōri name must never be extinguished. Gensaku, 111.  Mayanagi Makoto, “Beijing toshokan shozō no Nihon kyūzō ‘Sanyin fang’ ei Sō shahon” 北京図書館所蔵の日本旧蔵『三因方』影宋写本, Kanpō no rinshō 46, no. 8 (1999): 2.

112.  See Machi Senjurō, “Manase Yōan’in ke to Chōsen-­bon isho wo megutte” 曲直瀬養安院家と 朝鮮本医書をめぐって, in Takeda Kagaku Shinkō Zaidan Kyōu Shooku, Manase Dōsan to kinsei Nihon iryō shakai, 417–44. 113.  Kosoto Hiroshi, “Chōsen ko katsujiban ‘Huangdi neijing suwen’ hoka: Mihara shiritsu toshokan zō hon” 朝鮮古活字版『黄帝内経素門』ほか: 三原市立図書館蔵本, Kanpō no rinshō 37, no. 6 (1990): 2–4.

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however, enjoyed the ­favor of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the Sekigahara victor, and Gensaku’s heirs flourished for well over a c­ entury as the leading attending physicians of the Tokugawa shogunate. It appears that contacts between the Mōri and the Manase did not cease, but they became more infrequent. In the sixteenth ­century, an age in which the presence rather than the absence of illness was the more common life experience, and untimely death not rare, it seems that more Mōri died from illness than they did of traumatic ­battle injury or of old age. While military and po­liti­cal ­factors are usually given greatest attention when addressing issues of ­family success and longevity (or failure and brevity), the Mōri ­were acutely aware that f­amily survival was most fundamentally embodied in their own ­actual persons. Their response to ­these circumstances was to develop a new interest in ­matters of medicine and illness, and if not to guarantee “health,” to at least proactively minimize the impact of illness. And given that the Mōri preserved so much that related to their engagement with medicine, it is evident that attention to health was understood by them to be a central part of their cultural and f­ amily identity, and as such it became an integral part of their heritage. The interest in health ­matters was encouraged and facilitated by the Manase. The relationship between the Mōri and the Manase went well beyond that of patient and doctor. The Manase as physicians ­were of course aware of the health challenges faced by individuals, and they w ­ ere aware of the continuous impact of death from illness on the composition of the Mōri clan. Unusual for physicians of their social stature, they spent extended periods of time on campaign with the Mōri, sharing sometimes severe environments and aspects of life that ­were quintessentially associated with warrior families. Too, the Manase supported the Mōri in social and po­liti­cal environments, such as ­those of Kyoto, where Manase social and po­liti­cal capital was another contribution to their shared experiences. And while the Mōri are described as warriors and the Manase as physicians, t­ hese descriptions apply only to a primary area of endeavor and do not convey the full range of their interests or accomplishments. The Mōri ­were active participants in the unfolding of a new medico-­cultural nexus in Japa­nese society. As such, they helped build a legacy beyond their ­family, and in an area not commonly associated with samurai activity. The pursuit and intimate connections between health, the study of medicine, and the longevity of the clan came just as the warfare of the sixteenth ­century gave way to an era of peace. The medical knowledge and texts that resulted from the late sixteenth c­ entury Mōri–­Manase relationships ­were to secure a lasting influence through networks of association that spread their significance, practical knowledge, and availability, offering a testament to the strength and



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durability of t­ hese fighting men and the strong dedication to clan perpetuation that formed the basis of their activities. The men discussed h ­ ere understood that the health of the lineage was essential to preserving its long-­term viability. The intellectual and physical efforts they put into ensuring the health of all ­family members went a long way t­ oward establishing their position, as well as new versions of samurai identity overall, in the Tokugawa age of peace and prosperity.

C ha p te r   2

Hideyoshi and Okuni’s Kabuki Memories Preserved in a Screen Painting Marimi Tateno

In the spring of 1603, the capital city of Kyoto was charged with intense excitement. Having been proclaimed shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu 徳川家康 (1543–1616) made a ­grand parade from his newly built Nijō ­Castle to the Imperial Palace to attend the ceremony celebrating his investiture. Soon ­after this, another event made the capital residents even more excited. A self-­proclaimed shrine maiden of the G ­ rand Izumo Shrine named Okuni お国 and her troupe of entertainers caused a ­g reat sensation by performing a new style of dance and skit. The excitement was captured in an entry from the sixteenth day of the fourth month of 1603 in the well-­known rec­ord Tōdaiki 当代記 (Rec­ord of Current Times):1 Around then, kabuki dancing was performed. This originated with a maiden of the Izumo Shrine. [She] came up to the capital. [She] imitated an eccentric man by wearing outlandish swords and costume. [She] performed the character of the man flirting with a mistress of a tea ­house very well. ­People of both the upper and lower classes in the 1.  Tōdaiki is a chronicle established during the Kan’ei 寛永 era (1624–1644). The compiler is said to have been Matsudaira Tadaaki 松平忠明, the lord of Himeji domain, but this is not certain. Principally stating Tokugawa Ieyasu’s accomplishments, it rec­ords po­liti­cal, social, cultural, and historical events from the Azuchi Momoyama 安土桃山 period to the early Edo period. Reprint is available in the National Diet Library Digital Collection: https://­dl​.­ndl​.­go​.­jp​/­info:ndljp​/­pid​/­1912983​/­7. 52



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capital enjoyed it very much. . . . ​Soon ­after, many kabuki troupes copying Okuni’s style appeared and spread throughout the country.2 The screen painting Okuni Performing Kabuki (Okuni kabukizu 阿国歌舞 伎図; hereafter, KNM [Kyoto National Museum] Okuni Performing Kabuki), one of the earliest and best-­known portrayals of a per­for­mance of Okuni’s kabuki, captures this epochal and complex moment at which peace was displacing war and when kabuki—an art that would, over the next 250 years, prominently include portrayals of the warrior class—­was first emerging (figure 2.1).3 An early repre­sen­ta­tion of the spectacle of kabuki performed before both elite and ordinary dwellers of the capital, it offers a win­dow into how kabuki, and the viewing of kabuki, was envisioned as a period of intense warfare gave way to the Pax Tokugawa and the bureaucratization of the samurai class. One remarkable feature of the screen can be found in the third panel, where among the audience in the viewing stand a man sits wearing a black cap (figure 2.2). He is thought to be Toyotomi Hideyoshi 豊臣秀吉 (1537–1598). This interpretation raises a number of impor­tant questions about Hideyoshi, the man who appears to be the lead audience member but who was dead by the time of Okuni’s famous 1603 appearance styled as a kabukimono. Why is he so prominently depicted at a per­for­mance that, without question, came a­ fter his death? Who are the p­ eople with him in his viewing box, especially the ­little girl with peculiar gingko-­leaf-­shaped bangs sitting next to him? What might have been the impetus for the artist’s conceptualization of this scene? Who commissioned this work of art, and why? This chapter attempts to answer t­ hese questions by exploring the portrayal of the warrior hegemon in this painting within a context that positions Hide­ yoshi in relation to the imperial f­ amily and also as a patron of new and emerging arts. My goals are twofold. First, by elucidating the pro­cess of producing the work, including the intended viewer, the purpose, the commissioner, the date, and the artist, I aim to clarify that the true function of this screen painting was memorialization and that the image of Hideyoshi was inserted consciously to activate this par­tic­ul­ar function. The key to solving t­hese prob­lems lies, I believe, in the painting itself and can be discerned through analy­sis of depiction, pre­sen­ta­tion, comparison with other con­temporary works, and examination of historical documents. Second, I reinforce the identification of Hideyoshi 2.  Cited and translated from the reprint version of Tōdaiki, ed. Kokusho Kankōkai 国書刊行会 (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 1911), 81. 3.  Okuni kabukizu is an Impor­tant Cultural Property held in the Kyoto National Museum. The dimensions of this screen are 88 × 268 cm.

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Figure 2.1.  Okuni Performing Kabuki, six-­panel single screen, color and gold on paper. Collection of Kyoto National Museum.

with additional analy­sis and seek to identify, with as much certainty as pos­si­ble, the figures seated with Hideyoshi, a task that has never been undertaken before. In so d­ oing, I reveal the irony of Hideyoshi’s presence overseeing a world he helped create, but from which his f­ amily was erased, in this work commemorating the warrior hegemon at the start of a peaceful age.

Okuni’s Kabuki and Kabukimono The turn of the seventeenth ­century was a heady time. By the 1590s, following nearly a c­ entury and a half of po­liti­cal instability, the realm was moving ­toward peace u ­ nder first Oda Nobunaga 織田信長 (1534–1582) and then his successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi’s death in 1598 while his son and heir Hideyori was only six years old led to a jockeying for power among Hide­ yori’s regents, resulting in the b­ attle of Sekigahara in 1600. Tokugawa Ieyasu



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won that ­battle and was appointed shogun in 1603; by 1615, the Toyotomi had been destroyed. A more than 250-­year period of stability and peace—­albeit reliant on strict suppression and control—­ensued. Young samurai men in the early seventeenth ­century, feeling superfluous as their martial purpose became obsolete, dressed in outlandish clothing, wore impractically long swords, and behaved with l­ ittle regard for social norms. Referred to as kabukimono かぶき者, a term etymologically derived from the verb kabuku 傾く(to lean or deviate from the straight) and mono 者 (man or men), ­these men deviated from accepted standards in their appearance and be­hav­ior, tending to be outlandish in both; in short, they w ­ ere the “eccentric men” (ifūnaru otoko 異風ナル男) described in Tōdaiki. Eccentricity, articulated again as deviating from social norms, is in fact also an aspect of the way the early Portuguese visitors characterized ka­ bukimono, as evidenced in a con­temporary Japanese-­Portuguese dictionary compiled by Jesuit missionaries in 1603. ­There, “cabuqimono” are described

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Figure 2.2. ­People in the left viewing stand, detail from KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki. Collection of Kyoto National Museum.

as “­people who stray significantly from the norm, or ­those who do as they please beyond the bounds of social acceptability.”4 Kabukimono had missed the opportunity to stake their lives on battlefields as their ­fathers and grand­fathers had previously done and roamed the streets of the capital getting into fights. Their desperate wish to return to the former times of warrior glory was well exemplified in the phrase “age twenty-­three, lived too long” carved on the sheath of a long sword worn by a kabukimono in the m ­ iddle of a fight appearing on the screens of Hōkokusaireizu 豊国祭礼図 and attributed to Iwasa Matabē 岩佐又兵衛 (1578–1650).5 4.  The original dictionary in Portuguese is Vocabulario da Lingoa de Iapam com adeclaração em Portu­ gues (Vocabulary of the Language of Japan, with Explanations in Portuguese), available in Gallica, the digital library of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France: https://­gallica​.­bnf​.­fr​/­ark:​/­12148​/­bpt6k852354j​ /­f9​.­item. The definition provided in Japa­nese is 傾いた人。ひどく常軌を逸した人、または、自分に許され た程度以上の勝手気ままをする人, Hōyaku Nippo-­jisho 邦訳日葡辞書, trans. Doi Tadao 土居忠生 and Mo­rita Takeshi 森田武 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1980), 71. 5.  This image of fighting kabukimono appears on the screens of Hōkokusairei-­zu (Tokugawa Art Museum) and is available at the following URL: https://­images​.­dnpartcom​.­jp​/­ia​/­workDetail​?­id​ =­TAM000416; and in Okudaira Shunroku 奥平俊六, Byōbu wo hirakutoki 屏風をひらくとき (Osaka: Ōsaka Daigaku Shuppankai, 2014), 253.



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Figure 2.3.  Kabukimono and chaya no kaka playing Chaya asobi, detail from KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki. Collection of Kyoto National Museum.

Okuni’s per­for­mance was called kabuki ­because she “imitated an eccentric man wearing outlandish swords and costume,” reflecting that she must have had an interest in kabukimono’s distinctive customs, dress, and be­hav­ior. In modeling her characters on kabukimono, Okuni concentrated on portraying their be­hav­ior in the plea­sure district, rather than simply imitating their fierce appearance and actions. She created her own flamboyant kabukimono flirting ­ ouse, a place providing with a chaya no kaka 茶屋のかか, a mistress of a tea h not only tea but also entertainment and prostitution. The KNM Okuni Perform­ ing Kabuki’s fourth panel depicts Okuni on stage playing a kabukimono, carry­ ing a sword on her shoulder and striking a pose. Sitting to her right is a chaya no kaka, holding a fan in front of her face and looking up at her, the scene known as Chaya asobi 茶屋あそび (Plea­sure in the Tea House; figure 2.3).

Repre­sen­ta­tion and Placement of Figures Outside and Inside the Kabukigoya The par­tic­ul­ar method of repre­sen­ta­tion and placement of figures employed in KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki makes it unusual among con­temporary paintings

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Figure 2.4.  Chaya, detail from KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki. Collection of Kyoto National Museum.

of scenes of kabuki per­for­mance, as discussed below. One impor­tant characteristic is the full depiction of a lively scene outside and inside the kabuki play­house (kabukigoya 歌舞伎小屋). The roofless kabukigoya is enclosed by a fence constructed of bamboo and woven straw, known as kirimogari 切虎落. The first panel shows a tea vendor, chaya 茶屋, outside the kabukigoya (figure  2.4). An aged man and ­woman, prob­ably a ­couple, sell tea and toasted dumplings in front of a large red parasol and a folding screen depicting a flock of flying geese in ink. The ­woman puts dumplings on skewers while the man uses a black fan embellished with a crescent moon to fan the roasting dumplings. A w ­ oman and two young boys, who may be her sons, and a w ­ oman with her hair bound in a bun, who may be their servant, are the customers. The ­woman with the two boys wears a red and white striped dangawari 段替 design garment, a kosode 小袖, fastened u ­ nder a narrow gold obi, and covers her head with another kosode like a veil, the style which is known as kazuki 被き (also called katsugi), favored by upper-­class w ­ omen. The l­ittle boy on her right looks happy holding a skewer of dumplings in his hand while the boy on her left, who appears to be a l­ittle older, stretches out his hand with the palm upward in a gesture suggesting he is asking for one for himself. At the bottom of the first panel, an old kengyō 検校, a blind itinerant musician, with a cane in each hand walks in front of the tea vendor and is followed by his blind pupil carry­ing a koto 箏 zither. They are both portrayed with protruding noses as if they are smelling the delicious dumplings.



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Figure 2.5.  Man and guards at the entrance, detail from KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki. Collection of Kyoto National Museum.

In the second panel, a bearded man wearing a straw hat stands at the entrance gate of the kabukigoya (figure 2.5). The man seems to be negotiating admission with the guards, whose ­faces are half covered with cloths. While one of the guards gestures for payment with his left palm facing upward, the bearded man pats the boy next to him on the head. Prob­ably the bearded man is claiming that the boy carry­ing a container of sake and a viewing mat is his servant and asks for ­free admission for him. In the third panel, entering the kabukigoya through the gate, the viewer encounters a young man standing and wearing a black sleeveless short coat (dōgi 胴着, also called dōfuku 胴服) over a white kosode with a peculiar braided headgear and mask covering every­thing but his eyes (menuki-­amigasa 目抜編笠) (figure 2.6). This man is dressed in the eccentric attire typical of kabukimono fashion. With kosode sleeves tucked up inside his dōgi exposing his arms and

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Figure 2.6.  Man wearing menuki-­amigasa, detail from KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki. Collection of Kyoto National Museum.

his left hand on his sword, he is depicted in a way that accentuates his rough mannerisms. In contrast, the young man standing next to him appears less threatening, although he wears two swords. Covering his head with white cloth like a nun’s hood and holding a fan in front of his face, he stands in an S-­shaped posture and puts one arm in his sleeve, like ­women often do, so that his long sleeve pouch (tamoto 袂) rolls over his arm. Two men squat ­behind ­these two contrasting kabukimono. The one on the left, with all but a forelock of his head



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shaved, wears what appears to be a tiger-­fur cape. The other figure holds a long spear, an item not at all necessary when viewing a play. Though they may also be regarded as kabukimono due to their eccentric costume, with their droopy eyes and doll-­like small hands, ­these men do not appear fearsome, but rather humorous and charming. To the left of the kabukimono, in an S-­shaped posture, a man and a ­woman who appear to be a ­couple sit together on the same viewing mat. It is very rare for paintings of the early seventeenth ­century to depict a ­couple enjoying themselves outside, so this motif must have been deliberately chosen to attract the viewer’s attention. Directly in front of the stage, three separate groups, one of samurai-­class men, another of merchant-­class men, and fi­nally a young child flanked by two monks, are seated on their respective viewing mats (figure 2.7). From his hairstyle with gingko-­leaf-­shaped bangs, the child can be identified as a kasshiki 喝食, a child raised in a monastery before entering the priesthood. The gender of kasshiki ­children cannot be distinguished by their appearance alone in paintings. However, from con­temporary rakuchū rakugaizu 洛中洛 外図, screen paintings depicting scenes in and around the capital, we can tell that boy kasshiki are usually depicted next to monks while girl kasshiki attended nuns.6 Hence, the child between the two monks must be a boy kasshiki. In the fifth panel, two men sit near the left corner of the stage, but they seem to enjoy chatting with one another more than watching Okuni’s per­for­mance (figure 2.8). They do not even face the stage. Rather, the bald man on the right puts his hand on his head and laughs happily with his companion. Though they appear a l­ ittle ill-­mannered as audience members, the artist chose them as motifs of happy, innocent ­people enjoying the atmosphere of kabukigoya. To the left of t­ hese men, a group of three w ­ omen in luxurious attire covering themselves with kazuki veils sit with their female servants (figure 2.9). Only ­these three wealthy w ­ omen use both a tatami mat (painted in green) and a red viewing mat. No other individuals are depicted using both mats (see figure 2.1); with this detail, the artist seems to imply their high social status. Black-­lacquered bentō boxes, one decorated with gold autumn plant motifs and another with gold fan and plant motifs, are in the kōdaiji-­makie 高台寺蒔絵 style—­a mode of lacquerware that was favored by Hideyoshi’s principal wife, Nene ねね (1542/49– 1624), also known by her title, Kitanomandokoro. T ­ hese expensive lacquerwares also indicate the ­women’s high social status. With their hands raised 6. For kasshiki and their gingko-­leaf-­shaped bangs, see Kawashima Masao 川嶋将生, “Kasshiki no hitaigami: ‘Ichō-­no-ha’ gatahitaigami no imi wo megutte” 喝食の額髪: 「銀杏の葉」型額髪の意味をめ ぐって, in Fūzokukaiga no bunkagaku II 風俗絵画の文化学Ⅱ, ed. Matsumoto Ikuyo 松本育代, Idemitsu Sachiko 出光佐千子, and Princess Akiko 彬子女王 (Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2012), 163–80.

Figure 2.7.  Group of a kasshiki and two monks, detail from KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki. Collection of Kyoto National Museum.

Figure 2.8.  Two men chatting in front of the stage, detail from KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki. Collection of Kyoto National Museum.

Figure 2.9.  Group of three ­women, detail from KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki. Collection of Kyoto National Museum.

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t­ oward their forehead, two of the three ­women gaze upward ­toward the viewing stand. The other w ­ oman turns her head to the left and looks at the face of the w ­ oman clad in a red and white dangawari kosode. B ­ ehind them, a young man smokes a large pipe while holding the cord that lit the tobacco in his right hand. Around the beginning of the seventeenth c­ entury, the kōhone 河骨 style pipe, a long pipe with a curved neck like the one used by this young smoker in the painting, became fash­ion­able. Other accoutrements, such as a tobacco pouch, are placed on the ground in a way that is vis­i­ble to the viewer. In the sixth and final panel, a carriage ­bearer dozes off next to a carriage as he waits for his master (figure 2.10). The last panel also includes a motif of two young men trying to pick up a young ­woman (figure 2.11). Although they hide their f­aces with fans, the men are bold enough to touch the w ­ oman’s shoulder. She looks embarrassed. This is, as far as I know, the earliest and most explicit example of a “pickup” scene depicted in a painting. In the m ­ iddle of the sixth panel, a part of the hashigakari 橋掛, a bridgeway leading to the main acting area of the stage from the offstage dressing area, runs diagonally. The hashigakari was (and is) a part of the structure of a noh stage, a stage structure ­adopted by early kabuki. While a set of three equally spaced pine trees is supposed to be located alongside a hashigakari as is the case in noh, ­there is only one pine tree and a grove of blossoming cherry trees, barely vis­i­ble through silver clouds, at the edge of the bridge. The kirimogari fence dis­appears in the lower front panel and is replaced by rooftops of h ­ ouses (see figure 2.1). By placing a grove of cherry trees in the upper space of the sixth panel and rooftops of h ­ ouses in the lower half, the artist indicates that this is space exterior to the kabukigoya. One can assume that scenes of a dozing carriage b­ earer and men picking up a w ­ oman ­were common sights and occurrences outside the kabukigoya, and therefore the artist included them as typical motifs found outside t­ hese per­for­mances. The figures depicted inside and outside the kabukigoya are everyday ­people who could be observed in a­ ctual sites of amusement during the early seventeenth c­ entury. When we pay close attention to the variety and the placement of ­these figures, it is apparent that the same types are never repeated, nor do they overlap with one another. This becomes more evident when comparing KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki with contemporaneous works on the same subject. For example, in the Idemitsu Museum of Arts’ six-­paneled single screen painting Okuni Performing Kabuki (ca. 1620–1624; hereafter, IM Single Okuni Performing Kabuki), ­there is ­little space between spectators, and most of the audience members are facing the stage and away from the viewers, which gives the viewers an impression that they are fervently engaged in watching Okuni’s per­for­mance (figure  2.12). Consequently, we, the viewers, cannot make out their ­faces or gestures.



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Figure 2.10.  Carriage ­bearer, detail from KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki. Collection of Kyoto National Museum.

In KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki, in contrast, t­ here is ample space between the audience members, and their ­faces are vis­i­ble for the screen’s viewers. The facial expressions and gestures of each person are depicted in a way that draws the viewer’s attention and enjoyment. By organ­izing the figures in a catalog-­ like manner across the painting, the artist devised a composition that would highlight the distinguishing features of each audience member. In addition, the painting is so eloquently detailed that the viewer can even imagine the sounds of laughter, delicious smells of food, and ­people’s movement in and around the kabukigoya. The artist thus conveys an immediacy of experience through the painstaking depiction of ­these details. This kind of repre­sen­ta­ tional method, if considered from another viewpoint, provides clues for KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki’s intended viewer and what that viewer sought.

Okuni’s Kabukimono in the Style of Furoagari no manabi If we pay close attention to the hairstyles and arrangements of head coverings of the kabukimono characters played by Okuni in Chaya asobi scenes in paintings

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Figure 2.11.  Two men picking up a young ­woman, detail from KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki. Collection of Kyoto National Museum.

from the early seventeenth c­ entury, we find a telling detail. In the left screen of the Idemitsu Museum of Arts’ paired screen of Okuni Performing Kabuki, Okuni is depicted as a kabukimono clad in black dōgi and wearing two swords at her waist (figure 2.13). She stands next to a chaya no kaka in a red kosode costume who is sitting and holding a fan in front of her face. Okuni has her face half covered with a piece of cloth and her hair tied up and wrapped inside another cloth. In Yamato Bunkakan’s 大和文華館 Okuni kabuki zōshi 阿国歌舞伎草子, from roughly the same period, a chaya no kaka sits in front, while a kabu­



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Figure 2.12.  Okuni’s kabuki and audience, detail from IM single screen Okuni Performing Kabuki. Collection of Idemitsu Museum of Arts.

kimono played by Okuni sits b­ ehind her in a chair (figure 2.14).7 In this painting, Okuni has her face half covered and her hair wrapped in cloth with only the topknot of her hair left uncovered. Okuni’s appearance as a kabukimono in IM Single Okuni Performing Kabuki (see figure  2.12), however, completely differs from t­hese examples. She rests a long sword across her shoulders and wears a headband; her hair is loosened, neither tied up nor wrapped in cloth. She also does not wear a piece of cloth to cover her face. In the second panel of the six-­ paneled single screen Scenes in and around the Capital (Rakuchū rakugai zu 洛中 洛外図; Kyoto National Museum), Okuni is again depicted in per­for­mance as a 7.  A mustache is slightly vis­i­ble just below the nose of the chaya no kaka, thus revealing that a gender reversal has taken place on stage: the male character is played by a ­woman (Okuni) and the female character, by a male actor.

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Figure 2.13.  Kabukimono and chaya no kaka playing Chaya asobi, detail from Okuni Performing Kabuki, paired screen. Collection of Idemitsu Museum of Arts.

kabukimono, resting a sword on her shoulder, holding a fan in front of her uncovered face, and leaning against a stage pillar (figure 2.15). As in KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki, her hair is loosened and she wears a headband. In t­ hese numerous, roughly contemporaneous examples of Okuni performing her kabukimono role, we find depicted two types of costuming based on her hairstyle and the arrangement of her head and face covering: one type illustrates Okuni with her hair tied up and wrapped in cloth and her face covered with a piece of cloth, while the other depicts Okuni with her hair loosened ­under a headband and her face uncovered. Another feature of the latter type is that she is shouldering a longer sword.8 Okuni’s costuming in KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki corresponds to the second type. In Kabuki no sōshi かぶきのそうし, an early Edo illustrated text on Okuni’s kabuki, this second type is referred to as Furoagari no manabi 風呂上がりのまなび (Imitating the After-­Bath Mode): “Al8.  Samurai typically wear a pair of long and short swords. Okuni shoulders a longer one while keeping a shorter one at her waist.



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Figure 2.14.  Kabukimono and chaya no kaka playing Chaya asobi, detail from Okuni kabuki zōshi. Collection of The Museum Yamato Bunkakan.

though the kabuki dance had ended, [we] never tired of watching Okuni’s per­ for­mance. . . . ​Okuni had the stage curtain pulled up [and appeared once again on stage]. . . . ​[She] played Furoagari no manabi by shaking her head to loosen her hair while putting on a headband. . . . ​Clad in a brilliant sleeveless coat and wearing a pair of swords, [Okuni] walked along with chaya no kaka . . . ​, which provided a feast for ­people’s eyes.”9 The “Origins of Public Bath­houses in Edo” section of Kottōshū 骨董集, a book introducing fashion of the city of Edo, includes illustrations showing the after-­bath clothing that was popu­lar among young ­people during the Kan’ei 寛永 era (1624–1644) in Edo (figure 2.16).10 A few young men and ­women are depicted walking with their hair loosened and wearing headbands a­ fter visiting 9.  Kabuki no sōshi かふきのさうし, an illustrated text on Okuni’s kabuki, published in the seventeenth ­century, is kept in Shōchiku Ōtani Library. Reprint of the text, published by Beisandō in 1935, is available in the National Diet Library Digital Collection: https://­dl​.­ndl​.­go​.­jp​/­info:ndljp​/­pid​/­1118464​ ?­itemId​=i­nfo%3Andljp%2Fpid%2F1118464&​_­​_­lang​=­en. 10. Santō Kyōden 山東京伝, Kottōshū 骨董集 (1814–1815), in volume 15 of Nihon zuihitsu taisei 日 本随筆大成第1, ed. Nihon Zuihitsu Taisei Henshūbu 日本随筆大成編集部 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1976), 361.

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Figure 2.15.  Kabukimono and chaya no kaka playing Chaya asobi, detail from Scenes in and around the Capital. Collection of Kyoto National Museum.

a bath­house. In one illustration, a man shoulders a long sword, as we find in Okuni’s second type of costuming. Another Scenes in and around the Capital (Yonezawa City Uesugi Museum), also known as the Uesugi screen, produced ca.1565, includes very dif­fer­ent after-­bath fashion (figure 2.17). Before the seventeenth ­century, it was common for p­ eople to tie up their hair a­ fter taking a bath like the men leaving a bath­house gate in the Uesugi screen. However, young p­ eople in the early seventeenth c­ entury diverged from this conventional style and started a new after-­bath fashion of leaving their hair loosened ­under a headband and shouldering their swords like the ones illustrated in Kottōshū. As the previously quoted part of Kabuki no sōshi shows, Okuni performed the Furoagari no manabi ­after reappearing on stage, so scholars have agreed that Okuni added Furoagari no manabi as an encore for her per­for­mances.11 Okuni initially 11.  For example, Ogasawara Kyōko 小笠原恭子 agrees with this in her book, Okuni kabuki zengo 阿国かぶき前後 (Tokyo: Iwata Shoin, 2006), 108.

Figure 2.16.  Illustration from the section “Origins of Public Bath­houses in Edo,” in Kottōshū.

Figure 2.17.  Bath­house, detail from Scenes in and around the Capital. Collection of Yonezawa City Uesugi Museum.

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played the kabukimono in the costume from the first category (see figures 2.13 and 2.14), and then she added the kabukimono in the style of a Furoagari no manabi (see figures 2.3, 2.12, and 2.15) l­ater. So far, when and why Okuni added the latter version of a kabukimono has remained unanswered. Okuni and her troupe played not only in Kyoto, but also throughout Japan. A per­for­mance in Edo is recorded in the entry of the second month of 1607 in Tōdaiki. Ogasawara Kyōko 小笠原恭子 argues that “Okuni may have added Furoagari no manabi in her per­for­mances as a memento of her visit to Edo, but it is uncertain and difficult to judge ­whether she added this detail before or a­ fter her time in Edo.”12 Was the new after-­bath fashion born in Edo? I think it unlikely ­because public bath­houses in Kyoto appeared already in medieval Japan, and Kyoto was always the center of new modes of fashion.13 I assume that Furoagari no manabi was neither created nor added a­ fter Okuni came back from Edo in 1607; rather, she must have imitated the new after-­bath mode popu­lar among the young kabukimono in Kyoto at that time. Two texts provide pos­si­ble rationales for this hypothesis. Tōdaiki mentions that many troupes began to copy Okuni’s kabuki. ­These imitators ­were mainly courtesans (yūjo 遊女), and their kabuki per­for­ mances w ­ ere called yūjo kabuki. Yūjo kabuki became even more popu­lar than Okuni’s per­for ­mances ­because yūjo kabuki included a new style of grand-­circle dance performed by a large group of young yūjo, which seemed to be quite alluring. Girls, whom the moon and flowers would be envious of, are uniformly costumed. [They are] about the age of sixteen, their appearance too beautiful to be depicted with a brush. Flapping their flowery long sleeves, their pretty skirts aligned, ­these fifty to sixty girls looked so erotic. Delicate flowery-­toned costumes w ­ ere perfumed with manaban, kokyara, or kōbaikyara.14 [Therefore, when they] dance, with a flap of the sleeves and a wave of fans, the fragrance is spread in all directions. . . . ​As the ­music for the dance is nearing the final climax, [their] dance steps come together with the rhythms of drums and flutes, and capture men’s hearts. [For men], this world is like a dream, a floating world. All rich

12. Ogasawara, Okuni kabuki zengo, 115. 13.  For information concerning public bath­houses in medieval Japan, see Takahashi Yasuo 高橋康夫, “ ‘Chōdō’ to ‘sentō’ to hitobito: Sengokujidai no Kyoto no machi-­moyō” 「町堂」と「銭湯」と人々: 戦 国時代の京都の町模様, in Miyako no rekisihi to bunka 京の歴史と文化, ed. Murai Yasuhiko 村井康彦 (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1994), 4: 17–56. 14.  Manaban, kokyara, and kōbaikyara are names of aromatic incenses.



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and poor, young and old never regret spending their life and fortune [on yūjo kabuki].15 One novelty a­ dopted in yūjo kabuki was the shamisen, a newly introduced three-­stringed musical instrument that entered Japan around the end of the sixteenth c­ entury, which Okuni did not seem to adopt.16 Okuni is likely to have felt threatened by the yūjo kabuki performed by young courtesans.17 The second document discussing Okuni’s play is a memorandum written by Ōta Kissei 太田吉清, the head of a power­f ul ­family in the city of Kuwana in Ise province, which was ­later titled Keichōjiki 慶長自記 by his grand­son. The entry from the tenth month in 1604 says: In the beginning of the tenth month, a kabuki headed by Kuni titled Tsushima no kami was performed at Kiyosu.18 On the way up [to Kyoto], [Okuni] arrived in Kuwana on the twenty-­third day of the tenth month. On the twenty-­seventh day of the same month, [she] held kabuki per­ for­mances for five days. . . . ​Though [Okuni is] a founder of kabuki and is thought to have been granted the title Tenka-­ichi, ­people got bored ­after one or two days of viewing her per­for­mances.19 It was natu­ral that ­people got tired of seeing her ­because [she] played the same ­things ­every day.20 As the Tōdaiki reports, in the spring of 1603 Okuni’s kabuki play Chaya asobi enjoyed popularity in the capital. However, in the fall of 1604 in Kuwana, one hundred kilo­meters or so away from the capital, her play was already criticized as “boring” ­because she was repeating the same ­thing e­ very day. If Okuni felt threatened by the new competitors—­yūjo kabuki—­and she sensed that her audience was getting bored of her Chaya asobi play, she would not have continued her play as it was. She would have done something to prevent her play from losing popularity. If so, 1607, the year she returned from Edo, would be 15.  Cited from Keichō kenmon shū 慶長見聞集, a collection of essays about life in the city of Edo, written by Miura Jōshin 三浦浄心, published ca. 1614. Reprint is available in Keichō kenmon shū, Edo shiryō sōsho 慶長見聞集, 江戸史料叢書, ed. Nakamaru Kazunori 中丸和伯 (Tokyo: Shinjinbutsuōraisha 1969), 199. 16.  Ogasawara thinks that Okuni did not bother to adopt shamisen. Okuni kabuki zengo, 32. 17.  Ogasawara Kyōko, Izumo no Okuni 出雲のおくに (Tokyo: Chūkō Shinsho, 1984), 140–47. 18.  In many historical sources, Okuni was often referred to as Kuni as well. 19.  Tenka-­ichi 天下一 means “the best in the country.” 20.  Keichōjiki includes, for example, the prices for gold and silver at that time and rec­ords events that occurred at that time, not afterward, so it is a valuable source. Reprinted in Harada Tomohiko 原田伴彦, Nihon toshi seikatsu shiryō shūsei 日本都市生活資料集成 (Tokyo: Gakushū Kenkyūsha, 1976), 588–99.

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too late. I propose the likelihood that Okuni added Furoagari no manabi to her play around the end of 1604.

The Figures Depicted in the Two Viewing Stands The kabukigoya depicted in KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki includes two viewing stands (sajiki 桟敷). It has been proposed that the figures in the viewing stands are Hideyoshi and his circle, hence the screen represents a viewing of Okuni’s kabuki by elite members of the ruling class. Is t­ here other evidence to support this attribution? Who are the other figures with him, and what can it tell us about why the screen might have been painted? Six figures are illustrated in the left sajiki on the third panel (including another man with a shaved head who does not appear in this cropped image; see figure 2.2). The man wearing a black cap and the l­ittle girl sitting next to him are the most prominent figures. In front of this viewing stand, a curtain known as a mizuhiki-­maku 水引幕 depicting a ­family crest of paulownia leaves and flowers is hung. Since the most eminent f­ amily holding a paulownia crest at this time was the ruling Toyotomi clan, the man wearing the black cap is believed to be Toyotomi Hideyoshi. So far, the identification has been dependent only on this crest. Hideyoshi was deified ­after his death in 1598 and became Hōkoku Daimyōjin 豊国大明神, ­Great Luminous Deity of Our Bountiful Country. In the many portraits produced to venerate him ­after his death, Hideyoshi often wears a tōkan 唐冠, a Chinese high-­ranking civil officer’s cap that in Japan was mistaken for a Chinese emperor’s crown. The most typical one can be found in the por­ emple (figure 2.18). Hideyoshi launched trait of Hideyoshi owned by Kōdaiji T the invasions of K ­ orea with the aim of conquering the Korean Peninsula first and fi­nally Ming China.21 He wished to be the ruler of Japan, ­Korea, and China. Perhaps ­because he enjoyed imagining himself as the emperor of China and actually loved wearing a tōkan, he was portrayed with a tōkan.22 In KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki, however, Hideyoshi, dressed in a black coat with red collar in the nanban 南蛮 style,23 is not wearing a tōkan, but rather a cap very similar to 21.  Hideyoshi launched invasions twice, in 1592 and in 1597. 22.  Iriguchi Atsushi 入口敦志, in “Tōkan-­jinbutsu no raireki: Wakokubon ni okeru Chūgokuzō no zōkei” 唐冠人物の来歴: 和刻本における中国像の造型, Nihon bungaku kenkyū jānaru 日本文学研究 ジャーナル 3 (March 2009): 59–78, makes the argument that Hideyoshi seemed to enjoy wearing a tōkan gifted to him by the Ming envoy at Osaka ­Castle on the first day of the ninth month in 1596. 23.  Nanban (lit., southern barbarians) refers to the Eu­ro­pe­ans who approached Japan from the south.

Figure 2.18.  Portrait of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Collection of Kōdaiji ­Temple.

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what is called a 帽子 (Ch. màozi) found in Sancai Tuhui 三才図会, an illustrated encyclopedia published in Ming China (figure 2.19).24 One explanation is that ­because the KNM Okuni Portraying Kabuki is not a formal portrait of a deified sitter but rather a screen painting depicting him enjoying a performing art, it is more appropriate to depict Hideyoshi in casual clothing rather than formal attire. It is likely that Hideyoshi, who was very interested in nanban and Chinese clothing, enjoyed wearing Chinese headgear like the hat depicted in KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki on an informal occasion. This is evidence I propose to support e­ arlier scholars’ identification of the man in the left sajiki as Hideyoshi. Rec­ords indicating that Hideyoshi actually viewed Okuni’s kabuki, however, have not been discovered. The earliest extant rec­ord of Okuni’s per­for­mances appears in Oyudono no ue no nikki お湯殿の上の日記, a series of diaries written by ladies-­in-­waiting at the Imperial Court, which states that around the age of eight to ten, Okuni performed Yayako odori ややこ踊 at the Chrysanthemum Festival of the Imperial Court on the ninth day of the ninth month in 1581.25 Ogasawara Kyōko analyzed this rec­ord and noted that Oda Nobunaga, whom Hideyoshi was then serving, must have seen Okuni’s art before ­ astle of this occasion.26 In 1585, Okuni was invited to perform at the Sumpu C Tokugawa Ieyasu, the greatest rival of Hideyoshi. In addition, in 1588, Yama­ shina Tokitsune 山科言経 (1543–1611), a court noble, wrote in his diary that he saw Okuni’s dances when he was invited to breakfast by one of Hide­ yoshi’s advisers, Ōmura Yūko 大村由己 (1536–1596), which means Yūko invited Okuni to play for the occasion. ­Because ­these rec­ords indicate that Okuni’s art was favored by the court nobles, Nobunaga, Ieyasu, and Hideyoshi’s adviser, it is highly probable that Hideyoshi, who enjoyed the most current cultural trends, also viewed Okuni’s art. Two other impor­tant patrons of Okuni’s art ­were Kajūji Haruko 勧修寺 晴子 (1553–1620) and Konoe Sakiko 近衛前子 (1575–1630), both of whom had close relationships to Hideyoshi. Okuni was invited to the Imperial Court from an early age ­because Kajūji Haruko, the ­mother of Emperor Goyōzei 後陽成天皇 (1571–1617), was a big fan of Okuni’s art. A d ­ aughter of the court noble ­family Kajūji, Haruko became a consort of the prince Sanehito 誠仁親 王 (1552–1586), the first son of Emperor Ōgimachi. When Sanehito died before enthronement, his son with Haruko became Emperor Goyōzei. Haruko 24.  Sancai Tuhui compiled by Wang Qi 王圻 and Wang Siyi 王思義, published in 1609. Reprint available at http://­www​.­library​.­yonezawa​.­yamagata​.­jp​/­dg​/­AA065​.­html. 25.  In the term Yayako odori, yayako means a young child/children and odori, dance; hence, young child’s dance. Oyudono no ue no nikki 7 お湯殿の上の日記 七巻, in Zokugunshoruijūhoi 3 続群書類従補 遺三, ed. Hanawa Hokiichi 塙保己一 (Tokyo: Zokugunshoruijū Kanseikai, 1958), 406. 26. Ogasawara, Okuni kabuki zengo, 11.



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Figure 2.19.  Hat known as 帽子 (Ch. màozi), as illustrated in Sancai Tuhui.

was then treated as “the ­mother of the realm” and ­later, in 1600, received the respectful title nyōin 女院 (empress dowager). ­After this event, she was called Shinjōtōmon-in 新上東門院. Konoe Sakiko was a d­ aughter of the Konoe ­family, the most power­ful of the five highest-­ranking noble families. Sakiko entered the court as a consort to Emperor Goyōzei and was given the title nyōgo 女御 (consort). According to the diary of Nishinotōin Tokiyoshi 西洞院時慶 (1552–1640), a court noble, Sakiko was also a fan of Okuni’s art, and she enjoyed viewing Okuni’s per­for­ mances with her mother-­in-­law, Haruko. An entry in Nishinotōin Tokiyoshi’s diary notes, “[performers of] Yayako odori ­were invited to the nyōin’s palace by

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the nyōgo.”27 Furthermore, rec­ords indicating that Haruko and Sakiko enjoyed seasonal parties and appreciated attending vari­ous kinds of performing arts in the Imperial Palace together are found frequently in Oyudono no ue no nikki. When Sakiko entered the court in 1586 to become a consort to the emperor, Hideyoshi became her adoptive ­father (yūfu 猶父). Hideyoshi revived the custom of nyōgo, which had been abandoned since the Nanbokuchō 南北朝 period (1336–1392) in order to be able to appoint Sakiko as empress.28 In the previous year (1585), Hideyoshi himself had become an adoptive child (yūshi 猶子) of Konoe Sakihisa 近衛前久 (1536–1612), who was Sakiko’s biological f­ather and the head of the Konoe ­family ­until 1582, when he took the tonsure and transferred the headship of the f­ amily to his son, Konoe Nobusuke 近衛信輔 (1565– 1614, l­ater changing his name to Nobutada). Hideyoshi purposely became Konoe’s adoptive child so that he could claim the name of this most noble of families in order to assume the position of kanpaku 関白 (regent), a supreme role that allowed him to execute po­liti­cal ­matters in place of the emperor—­a role only noblemen from high-­ranking families could attain. The kanpaku’s position was then disputed between two noblemen, above-­mentioned Konoe Nobu­ suke and Nijō Akizane 二条昭実, an incident known as Kanpaku Sōron 関白 相論, dispute over the kanpaku position. This event provided Hideyoshi with the opportunity to lay claim to the kanpaku title for himself. Figure 2.20 provides a genealogical chart of t­ hese relationships. In sum, Hideyoshi aimed to forge a strong bond with the court through the Konoe ­family. Oyudono no ue no nikki rec­ords that Hideyoshi frequently visited the court and showered lavish gifts on the emperor, the nyōin, the nyōgo, the nobles, and even low-­ranking ­people serving the court as a method of winning their ­favor and establishing his position ­there. His wife, Nene, was in charge of arranging frequent greetings and visits with the court and imperial Buddhist convents (monzeki 門跡) to retain good relations with the courtiers.29 Another sajiki is located in the upper right from Hideyoshi’s sajiki. The central figure sitting in this sajiki is a lady clad in a nun’s hood who is attended by ladies-­in-­waiting. Her sajiki is depicted next to the entrance tower (yagura 櫓) in the second panel of the screen (see figure 2.1). In ancient times, both yagura and sajiki adjacent to it functioned as spaces to invoke and invite the deities, but by 27.  Nishinotoin Tokiyoshi 西洞院時慶, Tokiyoshi-­ki, vol. 3 時慶記 第3 巻 (Tokyo: Honganji Shuppansha, 2008), entry from the sixth day of the fifth month in 1603. 28.  Usually, when ­women from noble families entered the court as ladies-­in-­waiting, they ­were given ranks such as naishi no suke or naishi. However, ­those ranks ­were too low for Sakiko, who was from a top noble ­family, the Konoe. Therefore, the rank nyōgo, Empress-­to-be, was revived for her by Hideyoshi ­after almost two hundred years. 29.  As for Nene’s role, see Tabata Yasuko 田端泰子, Kitanomandokoro One 北政所おね (Kyoto: Mineruba Shobō, 2007), 111–12.



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Figure 2.20.  Brief genealogical chart. Created by author.

the medieval period, sajiki had become the seating area for the highest-­ranking ­people, who ­were considered equivalent to deities, while yagura remained the seat for deities.30 This demonstrates that the central figure seated in this sajiki was supposed to be of higher rank than every­one in Hideyoshi’s sajiki. The lady clad in a nun’s hood appears to be enjoying Okuni’s kabuki (figure 2.21). With a slight smile, she is depicted with a raised hand as if she is about to wave. I posit that this lady in nun’s clothing is Haruko, the m ­ other of the emperor, who took the tonsure and became Shinjōtōmon-in in 1600. First of all, she is portrayed in the higher sajiki (as would be appropriate for the “­mother of the realm”), and second, according to historical rec­ords, she greatly favored Okuni’s art and might well have attended per­for­mances, especially one with such audience members as ­those in Hideyoshi’s box. When we return to Hideyoshi’s sajiki, we see a young girl sitting in ­between Hideyoshi and another w ­ oman in nun’s hood on her left (see ­figure 2.2). Who is this girl? Since she is placed so close to both of them, we can assume that she had a close relation to them both. She can be identified as a kasshiki ­because of her gingko-­leaf-­shaped bangs. Her identification as a kasshiki and probable close relationship to Hideyoshi provide a clue to the question. The most logical candidate is the second child of Emperor Goyōzei 30.  Concerning the role of yagura, see Hattori Yukio 服部幸雄, Ōinaru Koya kinseitoshi no shukusai kūkan 大いなる小屋近世都市の祝祭空間 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1986), 124–30; Abe Ayako 阿部彩子, “Fūzokuga ni egakareta shoki-­kabuki no yagura” 風俗画に描かれた初期歌舞伎の櫓, Firokaria 18 (February 2001): 45–79, Ōsaka Daigaku Daigakuin Bungaku Kenkyūka.

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Figure 2.21.  Lady clad in nun’s hood, detail from KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki. Collection of Kyoto National Museum.

and his consort, Sakiko, Princess Ryūtōin-­no-­miya 龍登院宮, who was born in 1592.31 Resident abbesses of imperial Buddhist convents ­were traditionally succeeded by princesses of the imperial h ­ ouse. A princess entering the convent at her young age would go through the ritual of becoming a kasshiki and spend the training period as a novice preceding the time of her tonsure.32 An entry from the twenty-­sixth day of the sixth month of 1599 in Oyudono no ue no nikki rec­ords that the princess entered Daishōji 大聖寺 Imperial Convent: The second princess left for Daishōji. ­Today was an auspicious day. [The princess] left from the carriage porch. One lady-­in-­waiting (Shinōsuke 新大典侍) accompanied her into the carriage. Another lady-­in-­ waiting (Shin-­naishi 新内侍) attended. Four imperial guards came to escort the carriage of the second princess. ­There was a celebratory meal. . . . ​Her hair was done with a comb and scissors.33

31.  Princess Shōkō, the first child of Emperor Goyōzei and his consort Sakiko, was born in 1590 but died at the age of only five in 1594. 32.  For the history of Japan’s Imperial Buddhist convents and the abbesses of the convents, see the exhibition cata­logue Amamonzeki: A Hidden Heritage—­Treasures of the Japa­nese Imperial Convents, ed. Institute for Medieval Japa­nese Studies, University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts (Tokyo: Sankei Shinbun, 2009). 33.  Oyudono no ue no nikki 9 お湯殿の上の日記 巻九, in Zokugunshoruijū hoi 3, 103.



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We can understand that the princess’s entry into the convent was treated as a very impor­tant occasion, ­because she was attended by ladies-­in-­waiting and escorted by imperial guards. The last part of the rec­ord stating “her hair was done with a comb and scissors” must refer to the accoutrements used to cut and arrange the princess’s bangs in the shape of a gingko leaf and thus to mark her new position as a kasshiki. About five months before this auspicious event, t­ here was already discussion about the princess’s entry into the convent. The entry from the tenth day of the second month of 1599 in Oyudono no ue no nikki reads as follows: “Tokuzen’in delivered the message [of Hideyoshi] to the tensō for the second princess’s entry into Daishōji. [The Emperor] said it would be considered.”34 Tokuzen’in 徳善院 was another name used by Maeda Gen’i 前田玄以 (1539–1602), one of the Five Magistrates appointed to his ser­vice by Hide­ yoshi. Tensō 伝奏 was an imperial official in charge of communication between the military government and the court. At that time, Kajūji Harutoyo, an older ­brother of Shinjōtōmon-in, served as tensō. What we learn from this account is that the Toyotomi government, in fact, advocated to the emperor for Princess Ryūtōin-­no-­miya’s entry into Daishōji. Although Hideyoshi died before her entry into the convent, it is pos­si­ble that this proposal was initially made while he was alive, since Hideyoshi had known the princess well. Thus, by considering evidence from the above-­mentioned rec­ords, I argue that the young girl sitting next to Hideyoshi is the second princess, Ryūtōin-­no-­miya, an “adoptive grand­daughter” of Hideyoshi and Nene, and the one who entered Daishōji in 1599 at the age of eight to become a ­kasshiki. Unfortunately, the princess died the following year, at the age of only nine. In Daishōji, t­ here is a portrait said to be of Ryūtōin-­no-­miya that depicts her with gingko-­leaf-­shaped bangs (figure  2.22). The sitter must be Ryūtōin-­no-­miya, who died very young, as she is still depicted as a kasshiki—­a sign that she had not yet taken the tonsure. Sitting on the left side of Princess Ryūtōin-­no-­miya in the viewing stand is a ­woman clad in nun’s attire, whom I believe is Nene (see figure 2.2). The diary Oyudono no ue no nikki frequently mentions Nene, indicating that she was on very good terms with the consorts Sakiko and Shinjōtōmon-in. For example, two days ­after the b­ attle of Sekigahara broke out, Nene was offered shelter at the palace of the nyōin (Shinjōtōmon-in) and assistance from both the nyōin and the nyōgo (Sakiko). Nene sent luxurious gifts at the end of the year to express her gratitude.35 34.  Oyudono no ue no nikki 9, 86. 35.  See entries for the ninth month and twelfth month of 1600 in Oyudono no ue no nikki 9, 171–87.

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Figure 2.22.  Portrait of Ryūtōin-­no-­miya. Collection of Daishōji ­Temple.

In summary, I propose that the ­people seated in the two sajiki are Shinjōtōmon-in and her ladies-­in-­waiting on the right, and Hideyoshi, Ryūtōin-­ no-­miya, Nene, and an attendant girl on the left.36 Haruko received the tonsure in the twelfth month of 1600 and received the name Shinjōtōmon-in as a title of re­spect through imperial order. Thus, the tonsured image of Shinjōtōmon-in could only be depicted ­after 1601. Since Nene received the tonsure in 1603, this image of the two ­women in nun’s costume could appear no ­earlier than 1603.37 ­Because Hideyoshi died in 1598 and Ryūtōin-­no-­miya in 1600, this image was likely painted ­after their deaths. Meanwhile, Sakiko 36.  The girl on the left must be an attendant girl for Ryūtōin-­no-­miya since a ­daughter from a noble ­family customarily accompanied a princess when she entered an imperial convent. 37. ­There is another theory that Nene took the tonsure right ­after Hideyoshi’s death in 1598.



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received the tonsure in 1623, ­after Emperor Goyōzei’s death in 1617. By 1623, the Tokugawa reign had stabilized, and it would have been unlikely to include an image of tonsured Sakiko alongside an image of Hideyoshi, a former rival whom Ieyasu wished to erase from ­people’s minds.38 Thus, it seems improbable that Sakiko could be depicted as ­either one of t­hese nuns. But why is Sakiko not included in t­hese two sajiki at all? The other four figures—­ Shinjōtōmon-in, Hideyoshi, Nene, and Ryūtōin-­no-­miya—­were all closely related to her, and it is strange that the biological m ­ other of Ryūtōin-­no-­miya is not included. One pos­si­ble explanation would focus on the artist’s contrivance of the screen’s composition and medium. When the pre­sent folding screen lies completely flat, like an image often seen in cata­logs, the stage depicted in the painting appears in the shape of a trapezoid, which is an abnormal shape for a traditional Japa­nese stage (figure  2.23a). However, when the screen stands in an accordion fold, which is the conventional way a screen is viewed and used, the shape of the stage changes into a square, a typical shape for a stage (figure 2.23b).39 The artist, who must have been keenly aware that the folding screen would be folded like an accordion when viewed, took advantage of the structure of this medium. The artist must have intended the viewer to sit in the center between the third and fourth panels while viewing this screen standing in an accordion fold, ­because this vantage point allows the viewer to directly face Hideyoshi’s viewing stand. I believe it was Sakiko who was expected to sit at this position. The intention seems to be that the perspective that Sakiko would have had as the viewer looking at the painting would match that of t­ hose close to her (Ryūtōin-­no-­ miya, Hideyoshi, Nene, and Shinjōtōmon-in), depicted in the painting, to create the sense that all w ­ ere watching Okuni’s kabuki. From that position, she could remember enjoying Okuni’s kabuki per­for­mances once again with her deceased young ­daughter Ryūtōin-­no-­miya, her deceased adoptive ­father, Hideyoshi, her adoptive ­mother, Nene, and her mother-­in-­law, Shinjōtōmon-in. The unique repre­sen­ta­tion and placement of figures in this screen, as discussed ­earlier, makes sense if Sakiko was the intended viewer. Living in the Imperial Palace as the nyōgo, Sakiko would not have had the chance to visit 38.  Ieyasu, who aimed to establish a power­f ul and stable regime ­under the rule of his own clan, the Tokugawa, defeated the Toyotomi clan through the campaigns in 1614 and 1615, ending in the Toyotomi’s complete destruction. It is generally believed that a­ fter Ieyasu destroyed the Toyotomi, he wished to eliminate any good memories of Hideyoshi from ­people’s minds. 39.  The lines framing the stage w ­ ere manipulated in t­ hese images for better visibility.

Figure 2.23a.  Stage appearing in the shape of a trapezoid, detail from KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki. Collection of Kyoto National Museum.

Figure 2.23b.  Stage appearing in a square shape, detail from KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki. Collection of Kyoto National Museum.



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amusement areas like the one depicted in KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki very often. However, we know she was fond of the performing arts. Then, it is pos­si­ble to speculate that she may have secretly visited kabukigoya with her mother-­in-­law, Shinjōtōmon-in, and her adoptive ­mother, Nene. Whenever Sakiko sat in front of this screen, she could recall t­hose happy and exciting moments of seeing ordinary ­people in a variety of styles of clothing that must have appeared odd and amusing to her imperial eyes. In this screen, the artist carefully depicted each figure in a detailed manner to accentuate the dif­fer­ent clothing styles, gestures, and manners of each audience member so that the intended viewer, Sakiko, could remember ­those happy moments of viewing Okuni’s kabuki together with the ­people close to her as vividly and realistically as pos­si­ble.

The Commissioner of the Work and the Artist Might someone have commissioned such a painting for Sakiko as the ­intended viewer? As mentioned previously, Sakiko, Shinjōtōmon-in, and Nene ­were very close to one another, and this may be reflected in the patronage of this screen. For the time being, let us suppose that this screen painting was produced directly ­after both Shinjōtōmon-in and Nene received the tonsure in 1603. By that year, among the four main figures depicted in the two viewing stands, Hideyoshi and Ryūtōin-­no-­miya ­were already dead. Shinjōtōmin-in, Nene, and Sakiko w ­ ere all closely related to the two deceased figures biologically or through adoption or marriage. In ­ ere dear and beloved figures for all short, Hideyoshi and Ryūtōin-­no-­miya w three ­women. Within the screen, we remember the grouping of three ­women seated on the ground (see figure 2.9), looking upward to Hideyoshi’s viewing stand. One is a ­woman in the foreground veiling herself with brown and white dangawari ­ omen, the color is more kosode. Compared to the garments of the other two w subdued and thus more suitable for an el­derly w ­ oman at that time. If we look more closely at the details of her garment, we notice a patternized design of paulownia flowers and leaves, which was also used as the crest of the Toyo­ oman may possibly tomi clan (figure 2.24).40 While this is speculative, this w 40.  In March 2019, an uchishiki 打敷 (Buddhist altar cloth) at Kōdaiji ­Temple with a patternized design of paulownia crest was found to have been made of a garment worn by Nene herself. Kōdaiji was founded by Nene ­after tonsure. A photo­g raph of this uchishiki is available at https://­www​.­asahi​ .­com​/­articles​/­ASM3F3129M3FPLZB001​.­html.

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Figure 2.24. ­Woman in kosode with paulownia design, detail from KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki. Collection of Kyoto National Museum.

represent Nene before she received the tonsure. If that is the case, then, the younger ­woman on her left, clad in a red and white dangawari kosode, could be Sakiko, while the ­woman in a white kosode across from the el­derly ­woman could be Shinjōtōmon-in before taking the tonsure. If so, Shinjōtōmon-in and Nene would be pre­sent in the screen twice, before and a­ fter receiving the tonsure. With this screen painting, the artist intended Sakiko to cast not only her living eyes from outside the screen but also her virtual eyes from inside the screen t­oward Hideyoshi’s viewing stand. Thus, this screen is a truly innovative work with a complex and original composition. And the absence of



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Sakiko’s double within the screen could indeed place her as its a­ ctual intended viewer. With t­ hese possibilities in mind, I would like to briefly discuss the artist of this work. Scholars have previously identified the painter as a member of the Hasegawa school b­ ecause of the method and style of painting pine trees. I would point out that the ­faces of male middle-­aged and older commoners in KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki are painted in a similar style, characteristic of the works of Hasegawa Tōhaku 長谷川等伯 (1539–1610), the founder of the school. The similarities include pudgy noses with vis­i­ble nostrils, tightly pursed, frowning lips, ragged hair and beards, and contour lines for the face that emphasize the figure’s cheekbones, chin, and square jaw (figure 2.25).41 In par­tic­ u­lar, it has been noted that this three-­part face contour (cheekbones, chin, and jaw) is a consistent feature of Tōhaku’s work even from his early years when he went by the name Shinshun.42 While further comparative analy­sis may be necessary, it is evident that the artist, if not Tōhaku himself, was familiar with and learned much from Tōhaku’s style of painting. Since the artist depicted ­people of high rank such as Hideyoshi, Shinjōtōmon-in, the nyōgo Sakiko, Nene, and Ryūtōin-­ no-­miya, he must have been well connected to Tōhaku, whom Hideyoshi patronized and from whom he ordered works.43 Many genre paintings—­ especially, merrymaking scenes—­which are thought to have been created by Hasegawa School artists in and ­after the Kan’ei era are extant. This is thought to be ­because the school’s decision to develop genre subject paintings must have been determined while Tōhaku was still alive.44 This painting may possibly be one of the earliest examples of the Hasegawa School’s 41.  For an analy­sis and further discussion on this topic, see Tateno Marimi 舘野まりみ, “Kyoto kokuritsu hakubutsukan zō ‘Okuni kabuki-zu byōbu’ ni egakareta hitobito” 京都国立博物館蔵「阿国 歌舞伎図屏風」に描かれた人々, Bijutsushi 美術史 179 (October 2015): 28–29. 42. Tazawa Hiroyoshi 田沢裕賀, “Shinshun to Tōhaku no shōzōga” 信春と等伯の肖像画, in Hasegawa Tōhaku ten 長谷川等伯展 (Tokyo: Tokyo National Museum, 2010), 20–27. For example, the typical three-­part face contour feature can be found in one of Tōhaku’s paintings titled Horses at Pas­ ture, held in the Tokyo National Museum. The image of this work is available in the e-­Museum: http://­www​.­emuseum​.­jp​/­top​?­d​_­lang​=­en. 43.  Some of the most famous works that Hideyoshi ordered from Tōhaku w ­ ere the wall paintings of Shōunji, the ­temple created by Hideyoshi to pray for his deceased young son, Tsurumatsu. The works are now preserved in Chishakuin ­Temple in Kyoto. 44.  As Kuroda Taizō has noted, “the [Hasegawa] school’s decision to develop genre subject paintings must have been determined while Tōhaku was still alive. Thus, the production of genre paintings by Hasegawa paint­ers became more concentrated ­after his death.” Kuroda thinks that ­after the death of Hideyoshi, who was the patron of Tōhaku and his school, Tōhaku, as the head of the school, must have sought out new patrons and a new type of genre subject that would gain popularity so that his school would survive. See Kuroda Taizō 黒田泰三, “Hasegawa Tōhaku kenkyū ni okeru

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Figure 2.25.  Face of a man, detail from KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki. Collection of Kyoto National Museum.

genre subject painting and supports the argument that the policy to produce ­these paintings within the Hasegawa School was likely made during Tōhaku’s lifetime.45 I believe that KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki functioned as a pictorial memorial for Sakiko of her deceased ­daughter, Princess Ryūtōin-­no-­miya, and her deceased adoptive f­ ather, Hideyoshi. Nene may have commissioned the screen as a gift and a source of comfort for Sakiko to remind her of the happy occasions on which they viewed Okuni’s kabuki with Princess Ryūtōin-­ no-­miya, Hideyoshi, and Shinjōtōmon-in. ­Because it appears that Okuni began the Furoagari no manabi in 1604, the production date for this screen shomondai wo megutte” 長谷川等伯研究における諸問題をめぐって, Idemitsu Bijutsukan kenkyū kiyō 15 出光美術館研究紀要十五 ( January, 2010): 103. 45.  I believe the production date of KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki is between 1606 and 1608, the years when Hasegawa Tōhaku was still alive.



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painting should be ­after 1604 and before 1615, when the hegemony shifted to the Tokugawa ­f amily. Furthermore, I believe that Princess Ryūtōin-­no-­ miya is meant to be the focus of this painting ­because she is placed in the center of the viewing stand. If indeed she is the focal point, it is very pos­si­ ble that the screen was commissioned at the time of her seventh memorial anniversary, which should have fallen between 1606 and 1608.46 An abiding love for deceased f­amily members as its theme, KNM Okuni Performing Ka­ buki has a similar function as portraiture posthumously created to pray for the deceased. By identifying the ­people depicted in it, I conclude this screen was not simply created to show the early kabuki performed by Okuni and the audience’s reaction to her per­for­mance, but it had a crucial and specific function for an intended viewer. The image of Hideyoshi was consciously included as a central figure to activate this par­tic­u­lar function. The unconscious irony created by inserting Hideyoshi into a scene where he would have wanted to find himself, but where he could not actually have been pre­sent, celebrates the power of this warrior, portrayed ­here as successful social climber and novel leader (dressed in his foreign finery). While Hideyoshi never aspired to the status of shogun, the head of a military government, he rather forcibly obtained the title of kanpaku, assisting and ­representing the emperor, whose sovereignty was nominal, as his agent. Hide­ yoshi became the tenka-­bito 天下人, the ruler of the country. By obtaining the position of kanpaku—­the title he aimed to bequeath to subsequent heirs of the Toyotomi clan—­rather than shogun, and by granting official ranks in court that had previously been confined to aristocrats and to warrior lords as well, Hideyoshi aimed to consolidate the diarchic po­liti­cal system that had continued since the Kamakura period and thus become the ruler of the country. The screen characterizes Hideyoshi, the warrior hegemon, as he was remembered shortly ­after his death. We see him portrayed as a man solidly ensconced as a member of the ruling elite, a companion to members of the imperial ­family as they all enjoy (and patronize) the fledgling art of kabuki, which would go on to become an iconic repre­sen­ta­tion of the culture of Tokugawa-­era townsmen. The screen portrays an ­imagined—­yet in many ways very real—­moment when the most power­ful man in the country, ­Hideyoshi, overlooks the spectacle of a kabuki per­for­mance, himself also a 46.  In Japan one of many Buddhist memorial ser­vices is held on the seventh anniversary of a person’s death. So far, no rec­ord of Ryūtōin-­no-­miya’s seventh-­anniversary memorial ser­vice has been found.

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spectacle both for audience members and for the screen’s viewers. Embodying at once warrior and aristocrat, patron and consumer, avant-­garde upstart and aspirant to conventional aristocratic power, he sits as though overlooking the early years of the Tokugawa peace, an era and condition he was instrumental in shaping.

C ha p te r   3

Finding Origins and Meaning in the Warring States Luke S. Roberts

The b­ attles between the Yamana and Hosokawa warlords in Kyoto beginning in the m ­ iddle of the fifteenth c­ entury fomented disorder and strife throughout Japan, in a time retrospectively known as the Warring States era. The widespread warfare and vio­lence became especially intense in the latter half of the sixteenth c­ entury and included the wars of unification.1 Toyotomi Hideyoshi 豊臣秀吉 (1537–1598) tentatively consolidated power and created a nationwide hierarchy of lords in 1590, but he then took war to ­Korea. Not many years ­after Hideyoshi’s death in 1598 Tokugawa Ieyasu 徳川家康 (1543–1616) usurped leadership of the realm in the b­ attle of Sekigahara in 1600. The Tokugawa era (1600–1868) saw two intense local wars early on, the siege of Osaka in 1615–1616 and the villager-­led Shimabara-­ Amakusa Rebellion in 1637–1638, but thereafter a remarkable two-­century era of stable rule and no ­battles inspired ­people to give the era the name the Tokugawa ­Great Peace. However, the unification wars ruined many lives and left much displacement and trauma in their wake. The peaceful Tokugawa era became replete with p­ eople who produced memories of t­hese wars, which they deployed for a range of purposes. Early on, the needs of t­ hose directly affected by the wars strongly influenced the stories produced. In time the 1.  Mary Elizabeth Berry, “Samurai Trou­ble: Thoughts on War and Liberty,” The Journal of Asian Studies 64, no. 4 (November 2005): 831–47. 91

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narratives ­were created by p­ eople who had no direct experience, but they became invested in par­tic­ul­ ar configurations of memory that w ­ ere politicized and set agenda for their times. Ultimately t­ hese new memories influenced the wars that ended the Tokugawa regime two and a half centuries l­ater. This chapter explores two interrelated aspects of how the warfare of the Warring States era was remembered in the Tokugawa era. One is how the outcome of the ­battle of Sekigahara authorized a centuries-­long latent conflict in the Tokugawa period between p­ eople who identified with the winning and losing sides of this last g­ reat b­ attle of the Warring States period. This is analogous to how the American Civil War continues to function within the politics of the United States more than a ­century and a half ­after its end. Both ­were unforgettable events subject to constant reinterpretation in po­liti­cal and social contexts that w ­ ere variously national and regional.2 The other aspect is related to the “­Great Peace” itself: the memory of the war­time activities of ancestors became impor­tant in the status politics of peacetime samurai ­because it served to supplement their l­egal identity as warriors. This was particularly true in the late Tokugawa period when many samurai w ­ ere increasingly anxious about their place in a society where social organ­ization and values became increasingly commercialized. T ­ hese two dif­fer­ent threads of memory ­were interrelated and framed a productive tension that came to have heightened meaning in the mid-­nineteenth-­century moment of Tokugawa regime collapse. ­These memories had par­tic­u­lar relevance in the daimyo domains that played a leading role in the war to overthrow the Tokugawa regime in 1867 and install the Meiji emperor as the head of the new government, a war that inaugurated the nation-­state of imperial Japan. The two most impor­tant of ­these ­were Satsuma domain 薩摩藩, ruled by the Shimazu clan 島津氏, and Chōshū ­ ouses domain 長州藩, ruled by the Mōri clan 毛利氏. Both of t­ hese daimyo h had been enemies of Tokugawa Ieyasu when his side triumphed at the ­battle of Sekigahara in 1600. Ieyasu allowed t­hese two ­houses to survive their defeat. He allowed the Shimazu to keep control of their territory, but he reduced the Mōri clan’s lands by more than half. Chōshū domain, especially, cosseted resentment against the Tokugawa. Albert Craig has given us a power­f ul illustration of the strength of this history in his description of an annual ceremony of the Mōri clan in which leading officials would gather at the palace at the crack of dawn on New Year’s Day to ask the daimyo w ­ hether the time had yet come for them to subjugate the Tokugawa. Presumably, the defeated lord 2.  Stuart McConnell, “The Civil War and Historical Memory: A Historiographical Survey,” OAH Magazine of History 8, no. 1 (Fall 1993): 3–6.



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Mōri Terumoto 毛利輝元 (1553–1625) and the succession of thirteen generations of heirs had replied for more than 260 ceremonies, “Not yet.”3 Two other domains that helped overthrow the Tokugawa government in 1867 are Hizen 肥前藩 and Tosa 土佐藩, and their relationship to the history of Sekigahara is more complex. The Nabeshima clan 鍋島氏 of Hizen had switched sides in the very midst of the Sekigahara conflict to ally with Tokugawa Ieyasu and thereby narrowly saved their h ­ ouse and domain.4 The founder of the Yamauchi clan 山内氏 who came to rule Tosa, Yamauchi Katsu­ toyo 山内一豊 (1545–1605), had been a young masterless samurai near ­Nagoya in the 1560s. He became a retainer of Oda Nobunaga 織田信長 (1534–1582) in 1568 and was assigned to the general who became the hegemon Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Katsutoyo quickly moved up in income and rank and was created as a daimyo in 1585 by Hideyoshi. He thus owed fealty to Hideyoshi’s son and heir, but nevertheless chose just before the ­battle of Sekigahara to ally with Tokugawa Ieyasu. T ­ here w ­ ere other Toyotomi-­created daimyo like him who w ­ ere based in eastern Japan and who emulated his choice. Katsutoyo was very richly rewarded by Ieyasu with a transfer from Kakegawa ­Castle on Honshū to become lord of the province of Tosa on Shikoku island. Tosa was three or four times more valuable than Kakegawa, so the Yamauchi clan felt they owed the Tokugawa a large debt. The previous lord of Tosa had fought against Ieyasu and lost his domain. His bereft retainers regarded the Yama­ uchi as foreign occupiers, meaning that pre-1600 identities influenced the Yamauchi clan and the retainers of Tosa throughout the Tokugawa period. The way that this played out at the time of the downfall of the Tokugawa in the 1860s has been ably explored by Marius Jansen, but the paths of memory that stretched from 1600 to the 1860s have not yet been outlined.5 Tracing ­these paths reveals how the Unification-­era strug­gles continued to have rhetorical power through some fifteen generations down to the mid-­nineteenth ­century. The Yamauchi clan moved in 1600 to Tosa to take over what had been the domain of Chōsogabe Morichika 長宗我部盛親 (1575–1615). The retainers of the defeated Chōsogabe daimyo initially resisted, refusing to hand over the ­castle. Subterfuge among their ranks enabled a bloody transfer that ended with hundreds of them killed and beheaded. Katsutoyo also caught dozens of 3.  Albert Craig, Chōshū in the Meiji Restoration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), 21–22. 4.  Noell Wilson, Defensive Positions: The Politics of Maritime Security in Tokugawa Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 30. Wilson details how the Nabeshima provided impor­ tant military ser­vice and expertise to the Tokugawa throughout the Tokugawa period, and yet in the end this was a domain that contributed forces to overthrow the Tokugawa. 5.  Marius Jansen, Sakamoto Ryōma and the Meiji Restoration (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961).

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surviving resisters at a party intended to celebrate his entry into the domain and had them crucified on the beach facing the ­g reat Pacific. In 1615 the former daimyo Chōsogabe Morichika escaped from his retirement residence in Kyoto and joined the Toyotomi side during Ieyasu’s siege of Osaka C ­ astle. At this time many Tosa locals variously joined him in Osaka ­Castle or carried out small, fruitless rebellions within Tosa.6 Such events ensured that the Yama­ uchi would continue to be seen as invaders, and relations between the locals and the Yamauchi would be tense for many years. The discourse of Yamauchi invaders survives even to this day in Tosa. The staying power of such memories is related to their function as a trope deployed by threatened local elites to assert and maintain their place in the face of change by stigmatizing the Yamauchi as foreign, much as the image and memory of “Yankees” has functioned in the US South. The tensions led to real separation within the domain. The se­nior Chōsogabe retainers left Tosa in order to find employment in the h ­ ouses of more fortunate daimyo elsewhere. The Yamauchi needed to enlarge their military and government quickly, but they ­were suspicious of locals and hired only outsider warriors into the higher ranks of their retainer band. However, in the last analy­ sis they needed local knowledge and cooperation to rule, and many local Tosa ­people ­were employed as retainers to staff the ground-­level administration of government and serve in the lower ranks of military. The domain statesman Nonaka Kenzan 野中兼山 (1615–1664) began a policy of reconciliation ­toward the ­middle of the seventeenth c­entury, and he incorporated many members of the old military who had remained in Tosa living as farmers into the Yamauchi clan in the status of rural samurai (gōshi 郷士), and they contributed to agricultural development and government administration. Tosa became in time a domain whose administration could be compared quite well with ­others that, like Tosa, existed in eco­nom­ically peripheral regions of Japan.7 Yet the memory of war left an imprint in Tosa that had a life of its own throughout the long era of the Tokugawa ­Great Peace. Based on surviving documentation, war memory in Tosa can be said to have developed through three stages. The first was an era in which primarily the losers of the unification wars wrote of their experiences. Their narratives w ­ ere influenced to greater or lesser degrees by the tradition of gunki monogatari 軍 記物語, or war tales, works generally written to preserve memory of the exploits of deceased warriors. They grew from gunki 軍記 or senki 戦記 (accounts 6.  Marius Jansen, “Tosa in the Seventeenth C ­ entury: The Establishment of Yamauchi Rule,” in Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modern Japan, ed. John Hall and Marius B. Jansen (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1968), 117. 7.  Jansen, “Tosa in the Seventeenth ­Century,” 129.



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of ­battle), often written by eyewitnesses or friends of participants, but also ­under the influence of the broader narrative practice of monogatari 物語 (tales), which could serve the cultural role of placating the spirits of the dead. The goal of spirit appeasement is, as with the gunki, part of many war-­themed monogatari.8 ­These narrative traditions certainly influenced the early histories produced by the Tosa ­people who had lived through the unification wars. In the late seventeenth c­ entury in Tosa, new generations of ­people who had not experienced the wars began writing war tales and collecting documents. This second era also largely focused on the Chōsogabe clan and retainers, and ­there was very ­little activity regarding the ruling Yamauchi clan. ­There was a latent anti-­Yamauchi dimension to the memory formation of this era that was tied not only to the memory of loss but also to class-­and status-­ related tensions and resentments b­ ecause locals w ­ ere held out of the centers of Yamauchi power. The third era started in the 1780s when, within a very active scholarly environment, Yamauchi retainers began ­wholeheartedly researching their own histories, and general scholarship in the domain began treating Yamauchi and Chōsogabe stories with equal interest as part of Tosa history. In the end, however, status conflicts continued to be narrated in terms reflecting distinct Chōsogabe and Yamauchi identities formed by the effects of the wars of unification, which in turn s­ haped be­hav­iors and identities in the Restoration era.

The Early Period Early written accounts ­were related to the needs of ­people who had experienced the wars. B ­ ecause samurai ­were rewarded individually for ser­vice and feats of valor on the battlefield, they had a tradition of producing oral and written reports of battlefield activities that became the basis for official requests for reward. The reward letters generally tied the oral and written reports of activity to the earned prize, such as in the chilling letter of award from daimyo Chōsogabe Motochika 長宗我部元親 (1538–1599) to one samurai captain: “It is indeed just as we had discussed. You have killed every­one in the port of Tosadomari. As you have delivered faithful ser­vice equal to that of Yasutomi, I ­will give you Miki county and one county in a neighboring province. Let t­ here

8.  Elizabeth Oyler, Swords, Oaths, and Prophetic Visions: Authoring Warrior Rule in Medieval Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006), 4–5; 18–24. The Tosa-­related documents cited in this chapter have titles that do not necessarily agree with the abovementioned distinguishing genre characteristics, suggesting naturally promiscuous networks of influence and no rigid regard for genre.

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be no objections to you ruling ­these in fief.”9 This pattern of ser­vice and reward has left us many rec­ords of battlefield activity and has also strongly influenced the way that war itself was remembered in writing—­largely as a collection of individual exploits. Many warriors also quite naturally told stories about their war experience to each other and to their retainers and c­ hildren as a way of teaching them the ways of war. Some of ­these stories ­were ­later written down by the listeners. The last generation of such warriors w ­ ere also the first generation to live in the Tokugawa era, and some left written rec­ords of their memories or of what their friends and relatives had told them of the experience of war. One early account was by the former Chōsogabe warrior Tateishi Masayoshi 立石正賀 (1565–1659), who wrote the following in his 1659 Chōgen monogatari 長元物語 (also known as Chōgenki 長元記): “When you hear the tales of men who have had many experiences of war and who excel at it, they say that being a warrior is learned as a child by hearing tales from brave warriors. T ­ hose ­children whose ­faces become infused with excitement w ­ ill not fail to become warriors when they are older.”10 This suggests that one of the early functions of b­ attle narration was raising military consciousness and building community. Many early stories also focused on the sadness and loss of war and even the senseless nature of the vio­lence. Another early war tale from Tosa is called the Motochikaki 元親記 and was written by the samurai Takashima Magoemon 高嶋孫右衛門 (fl. 1590s–1630s), who had been one of Chōsogabe Motochika’s pages. Magoemon wrote this in 1631 on the thirty-­third anniversary of the death of his lord as an offering to Motochika’s memory and spirit. This was de­cades ­after the Chōsogabe clan had been destroyed, but Takashima was still moved to create a good image of Motochika for posterity. The Motochikaki also inherited the tradition in war tales ever since the Tale of the Heike of placating the spirits of the defeated and t­ hose who had died frustrated in their aims. Takashima described Motochika as at one point a contender for the domination of Japan, the kind of phrase that would inform Motochika’s spirit that he was indeed recognized for his glory. It has a share of hagiographic praise of Motochika’s finer personal and military qualities but is still written with a fresh directness of someone who saw much of what he wrote about. Takashima describes how Motochika’s heir Nobuchika 信親 was cut down and killed at the b­ attle of Hetsugigawa when their army, fighting on behalf of Hideyoshi in Kyūshū, was defeated by the Shimazu clan. He portrays Motochika as a virtuous 9. Mutō Munekazu 武藤致和, Nanroshi 南路志, ed. Yorimitsu Kanji 依光貫之, Akizawa Shigeru 秋沢繁 et al. (Kōchi: Kōchi Kenritsu Toshokan, 1990–1998), 9:261. 10.  Kōchi kenshi: Kinsei hen 高知県史 近世編 (Kōchi: Kōchi-­ken, 1968), 463.



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samurai lord, responding to Hideyoshi’s condolences with the statement, “I was unable to render distinguished ser­vice at the ­battle. It mortifies me that my name is disgraced and I have lost the re­spect of the world. It does not trou­ble me that Nobuchika was killed. He gave his life in your ser­vice and that is the way of the bow and arrow.” Yet Takashima also reveals Motochika’s deep personal pain at the loss in a story of the occasion when a Shimazu retainer brought Nobuchika’s sword some years l­ater as a memento to give to Motochika. It was when Motochika first went to Kyoto. I think it was a Shimazu retainer. He brought this sword fastened to a flat mea­sur­ing board to the inn where the lord was staying in Sakai, saying, “I thought I should bring as a memento the sword that Nobuchika was using when he died.” We attendants of the lord thought what a strange ­thing for this person to do and gathered to look at it. Indeed, the writing on the blade was just as his blade, and, my! T ­ here w ­ ere nicks and cuts on the blade from the guard all the way to the tip with scarcely a clean inch to be seen. “He was said to have fought incomparably, but this shows all the more that t­here is no doubt of it,” they said to each other. When they went to tell this to lord Motochika, he ordered quickly, “Give it back!” and did not even look at the sword once. His eyes w ­ ere filled with tears.11 One fascinating story told by a samurai ­woman who lived in a besieged ­castle recounts the ­women’s duties and their getting used to the vio­lence but also the sadness and tragedy of war. This is Oan hanashi おあん話, written down by a man who heard her tell him and other c­ hildren the story so often when he was young that he narrated it in her voice. She told how one of the w ­ omen’s jobs was to cast lead bullets, but when the cannons w ­ ere fired the c­ astle shook so much that “timid w ­ omen would go dizzy with fear. [. . .] At first you did not feel alive. It was just terrifying!” Yet a­ fter a while the cannon became nothing to them. Likewise, they ­were terrified of sleeping in rooms stinking of blood and piled with the heads of ­enemy warriors brought back from sallies, but their men would ask them to blacken the teeth of the heads of enemies so that they could take credit for the high status of their victims. One day the cannon fire from outside ceased and a man came into their room saying “the e­ nemy have all left!” Just at that moment a musket ball flew in and hit her fourteen-­year-­old b­ rother. “He just shook and died. I have seen such awful t­hings!” When she and her ­family fled the ­castle just before it was taken, her ­mother had to stop and give birth. A servant washed the baby with ­water collected from a rice field and then 11.  As noted in Kōchi kenshi, 462, and found in Akizawa Shigeru 秋沢繁 et al., eds., Tosa no kuni gunsho ruijū 土佐国群書類従 (Kōchi: Kōchi Kenritsu Toshokan, 2001), 4:202.

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carried the baby in his clothes, and the f­ather shouldered the m ­ other as they continued to flee to safety. “It was terrifying! Amida have mercy! Amida have mercy!”12 She would then tell the gathered c­ hildren that their peacetime concerns about what to wear and eat w ­ ere nothing compared to the old days. Another writer, Fukutomi Han’emon 福富半右衛門 (1576–1656), tells of a time his residence was attacked by an overpowering force of samurai. His wife had just given birth and was d­ oing poorly. Following his father-­in-­law’s directions, he set fire to the h ­ ouse, killed his wife, and fled in the confusion.13 Such raw and painful accounts of how the vio­lence of war went against normal attachment and meaning w ­ ere common in the early tales. Han’emon’s account of the horrendous situations of war dwells on neither emotions nor ethical judgment. In a matter-­of-­fact manner he tells of his ­father and all four ­uncles ­dying in vari­ous b­ attles in their twenties and thirties. He himself began fighting for the Chōsogabe lord at age seventeen during the invasion of ­Korea. They ravaged the countryside, and when p­ eople fled and hid, he chased them down and cut off their heads and noses, sharing among members of his unit ­these tokens, which would be recorded in the military account books as symbols of martial ­labor. ­After their return from ­Korea his lord praised his bravery and guaranteed his inheritance. Less than a de­cade ­later he fought on the losing side in the ­battle of Sekigahara. They fled back to Tosa only to learn that their lord would forfeit his ­castle and rule of Tosa. At this point the common samurai of Tosa would not hand over the c­ astle to Ieyasu’s emissary, but more elite samurai such as Han’emon wished to cooperate with their erstwhile ­enemy. He and ­others secretly opened the c­ astle for the emissary’s troops and also fought against one of the leaders of the re­sis­tance, Kitaoka Rokubei 北岡六兵衛 (d. 1600), at his residence. Han’emon cut down the man’s son with one stroke and then ran at Rokubei, who was already wounded and cut him down too. Showing ­little attachment to the members of their defunct h ­ ouse­hold or to the land of Tosa, Han’emon and other high-­ranking samurai went to look for work in other provinces. Some of them like Han’emon found themselves fighting ­under new employers against their former lord in the siege of Osaka ­Castle in 1615–1616. Han’emon became a lay monk not long a­ fter this. One might imagine this was associated with regret for all of the killing, but the reason was more prosaic: “I became ill and lost all of the hair on my head. I thought I was ugly and became without hope for employment.” He fi­nally 12. Akizawa, Tosa no kuni, 4:353–55. A full En­glish translation of this document can be found in Basil Hall Chamberlain, “Mistress An’s Tale,” in Early Japanology: Aston, Satow, Chamberlain, comp. George A. Sioris (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 107–13. 13. Akizawa, Tosa no kuni, 4:344.



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found employment in Nagoya, writing, “I live as a lay monk, but the lord granted me the right to wear formal samurai dress and I have since worked in this odd fashion.” War as an activity imbued with lessons in morality was left mostly for a ­later generation.14

The ­Middle Period The historian Yokogawa Suekichi 横川末吉 (1906–1981) argued that such early war tales written before the 1680s did not spend much time on ethical issues or idealizing be­hav­ior. Tateishi’s Chōgen monogatari, cited e­ arlier, included many statements by other warriors that are very frank about the experience of ­battle, such as one by Higuchi Zenbei 樋口善兵衛 (fl. late sixteenth ­century), who told him, “When you run [from a losing b­ attle] ­people come ­after you amazingly quick. You throw down your helmet. Then you throw off your armor. You toss your swords and get down to your skin. You toss your clothes, get naked and flee. It is very dif­fer­ent than what you thought it would be like beforehand. I tell you, ­until you have had to flee t­here is no way of knowing what it is like. ­There is no one who acts the way they think without having experienced this.”15 Tales composed from the last quarter of the seventeenth ­century are more literary and include more ethical commentary, and the judgments become more Confucian. One transitional gunki is Kira monogatari 吉良物語, which is based on a now-­lost older work heavi­ly rewritten and embellished by the scholar Ōdakasa Shizan 大高坂芝山 (1647–1713) in the 1680s. In his preface to the work he explic­itly resets the tale to become a didactic piece: “From ancient times in the many countries of China, history has been written to leave to ­later ages examples that promote what is good and suppress what is evil.” He then laments how this has not been done well in Japan and argues that without the knowledge gained from books one cannot see when the country is ­going to flourish or is at danger. Then he begins the ­actual tale with the words, “When the ­people forget what is crucial and are lazy about the deep meanings of ­things, then they neglect duty and filial piety.”16 14. Akizawa, Tosa no kuni, 4:340–52. The document is “Fukutomi Han’emon Chikamasa hōmyō Jōan oboegaki” 福富半右衛門親正法名浄安覚書, written around 1624 when he came to be employed in Nagoya domain. 15.  As quoted by Yokoyama in Kōchi kenshi, 462. This version is slightly dif­fer­ent from that in the Chōgenki, found in Akizawa, Tosa no kuni, 4:220. The original no longer exists and the vari­ous surviving versions differ slightly. 16. Akizawa, Tosa no kuni, 4:1, 11.

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­Later well-­known works ­were also composed or rewritten by scholars in a similar vein, such as the Tosa monogatari by Yoshida Takayo 吉田孝世 (1645– 1713), completed around 1710, or the Chōsogabe jōsuiki 長曽我部盛衰記 by Tanaka Kōken 田中好賢 (fl. eigh­teenth c­ entury) in 1774. Tanaka was a student of the domain scholar Tani Mashio 谷真潮 (1727–1797), who wrote the preface, promising that this was a text filled with edifying lessons. ­These certainly included historical research but also much commentary explaining that certain warriors w ­ ere defeated b­ ecause of their poor governmental and moral character, and occasionally they w ­ ere enhanced with added episodes and events adapted from ancient Chinese tales. By this time the Warring States era had become something with which scholars could prove the governmental and social value of history writing.17 One curious fact is that almost all of the war tales written in seventeenth and eighteenth-­century Tosa are by and about the Chōsogabe clan and other defeated local families. A few early memoranda of war­time experience survive about the Warring States ­battles and exploits of the incoming Yamauchi daimyo and their retainers, who came from Honshu, but no gunki war tales ­were made early on. One such memorandum, a history of Yamauchi Katsutoyo’s ser­vice to the Tokugawa h ­ ouse, was written down by a Yamauchi retainer at the request of the second daimyo, Yamauchi Tadayoshi 山内忠義 (1592–1665), just ­after he retired. This and other memoranda may not have been compiled into a volume of stories about Katsutoyo’s military exploits ­until as late as the ­middle of the eigh­teenth ­century.18 Why was this? It might be b­ ecause, following Ivan Morris, t­ here was a tradition of literary attraction to writing a war tale about someone who lost.19 Also, t­ here might have been an aspect of spirit appeasement (chinkon 鎮魂 or warei 和霊) for the defeated involved, such as is evident in the samurai Taka­ shima Magoemon’s Motochikaki. Reward the losers with fame and their spirit ­will cease to desire revenge and lose their attachment to this world. 17.  This argument is that of Yokoyama Suekichi in Kōchi kenshi, 473–74. 18.  Some single-­sheet memoranda relating to Warring States–­era activities of Yamauchi Katsutoyo and his ­father dated between 1671 and 1687 survive in the collection of the ­family of a Tosa domain ­house elder. This collection, called Gotō-ke monjo 五藤家文書, is located in the Aki Shiritsu Rekishi Minzoku Shiryōkan 安芸市立歴史民俗資料館. The memoranda are numbers 4480 through 4485. Number 4482, “Katsutoyo-­kō gobukō no koto” 一豊公御武功之事, is prob­ably the earliest form of the narrative Katsutoyo-­kō gobukōki 一豊公御武功記, which became a standard account of his life. The oldest extant versions of this are one in the Kōchi ­Castle Museum of History dated 1748 (#G386) and another dated 1751 (#4486) in the above-­noted Gotō collection. No scholar has yet compared versions to create a history of composition and transition. Thanks to Watanabe Jun, director of the Kōchi ­Castle Museum of History for much of this information. 19.  Ivan Morris, The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975).



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Another reason might have been that b­ ecause the Yamauchi w ­ ere in power and their retainers w ­ ere jostling for recognition and promotion, narrative-­ making about themselves was potentially dangerous. A story might rub power­f ul ­people the wrong way, and factual ­mistakes might be seen as trying to influence preferment in a world where ancestral contributions ­were not to be forgotten. It was much safer to tell stories about regimes that no longer had power. At any rate, ­until the last quarter of the eigh­teenth c­ entury the local Yamauchi samurai mostly shared and read the war tales about the Chōsogabe and outside warrior ­houses throughout Japan rather than the exploits of their own lord and ancestors. Yet when one thinks that the Mikawa monogatari 三河物語 was written about the Tokugawa clan by one of Ieyasu’s retainers in the 1630s, at a time when ­there was still much jockeying for relative status and rank in the victor’s order of ­things, it does seem a ­little strange that the Yamauchi clan did not have its own bard. Many samurai and the Yamauchi themselves had f­ amily rec­ ords concerning their ancestors, but ­until the end of the eigh­teenth ­century ­these ­were only minimally accessed and not woven into war tales. When at last they became interested in weaving tales of the Warring States era, they had to face a dearth of information caused by nearly two centuries of natu­ral disasters and neglect, and much information was lost. Another reason was surely the local tension caused by the Yamauchi clan being an occupying army in the Tosa land. The idea of the Yamauchi as “occupiers” is so strong that even in the twenty-­first c­ entury it regularly raises emotions in local identity politics. This is the result of the shape of reworked memories that connect that time to the pre­sent. Four centuries ­after the event it remains preferable for a local to assert Chōsogabe-­era roots than to say one’s ancestors came in with the Yamauchi, the latter an admission that makes oneself an outsider despite some twenty generations of local residence. The violent start of the occupation with the b­ attle for the ­castle, the execution of other resisters, and the initial failure to incorporate local samurai into the ranking portions of the retainer band, as well as the putting down of local rebellions at the time of the siege of Osaka ­Castle, created memories of mistreatment, loss, and re­sis­tance that echoed into f­ uture generations. The domain began working on improving relations with local power holders a few de­cades into the seventeenth ­century. It was possibly a time when ­these divisions might have been overcome, but it ended abruptly with the fall of the person in power, Nonaka Kenzan, the chief administrator of the domain from the 1640s to the 1660s. He was certainly a Tosa outsider and a close relative of the daimyo Tadayoshi, but when he began promoting the economic development of the domain, he created new policies that incorporated a large

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number of Tosa p­ eople into the operations of government. Former Chōsogabe warriors who had become farmers in 1600 w ­ ere given the opportunity to become gōshi, rural samurai who did not have the right of audience with the lord but who ­were valued for their land reclamation work and staffing the second tier of many government offices. By the 1660s t­ here w ­ ere more than six hundred gōshi ­house­holds. Numerous other locals ­were hired into the ­house­hold at lesser ranks, such as musketeers, scribes, and tax officials, many of whom ­were active in cultural production and scholarship.20 Kenzan pursued neo-­Confucian learning himself u ­ nder the tutelage of local scholars and a tradition of Tosa scholarship known as Nangaku 南学 became influential locally and even more broadly in Japan. However, Kenzan fell from po­liti­cal ­favor and power in 1663. He was arrested and his enfeoffment was revoked, and his relatives ­were punished with ­house arrest u ­ ntil they died. Many of his allies and locals for whom he was patron lost position and influence, and some even left the domain at the time.21 A more stable pattern of government dominated by a council of elders made up of se­nior Yamauchi retainers took shape, but it ­limited opportunities for locals. Soon retainers had to submit histories of their ancestors’ employment in the Yamauchi h ­ ouse, and this was compiled into a register of samurai retainers.22 The following few de­cades saw the hereditary hierarchies of the retainer band become more fixed, with a strong preferment and protection for ­those retainers whose ancestors had become retainers of Katsutoyo before 1600. Indeed, even ­those who joined before 1600 ­were themselves rigidly ranked by how early their ancestors had come into Katsutoyo’s ser­vice. ­Those who joined l­ater ­were “newcomers” to the house—­a standard that necessarily put all Tosa locals at a disadvantage. This practice not only created a per­ sis­tent divide between “upper retainers” and “lower retainers” but became tied to an identity as locals and outsiders. The upper-­level retainers naturally had the po­liti­cal advantage, and ­every incident of perceived injustice and abuse of power became an occasion of resentment against the effects of immigrant “outsiders” in the post-­Chōsogabe era. Only a very few local h ­ ouses became hired as samurai with the right of audience. One of ­these, the Tani f­amily, became employed in the eigh­teenth ­century as a lineage of scholars who taught for the domain. Initially it was a position of low pay and rank, but by the late eigh­teenth c­ entury scholars and 20.  Jansen, “Tosa in the Seventeenth ­Century,” 122–27. 21.  Kōchi kenshi, 413–26. 22.  The oldest such register of retainers that narrates the history of their ancestors’ employment is the “Kanbun hachinen bugenchō” 寛文八年分限牒, dated 1668 and held in the Kōchi ­Castle Museum of History.



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scholarship in general came to play a stronger role in domain government. The Tani and their disciples came to dominate the production of history writing in Tosa. The shift at the end of the seventeenth c­ entury from the writing down of personal memories of warfare to more literary and scholarly accounts of the wars was also accompanied by an increase in the collection and compilation of historical documents. This collecting of historical documents began in earnest in Tosa in the early 1700s and focused on the Warring States and ­earlier times but paid no attention to the Warring States experiences of the Yamauchi or their retainers outside of Tosa. The first g­ reat collection of documents was the ten-­volume Tosa no kuni tokanshū 土佐国蠹簡集 (Worm-­eaten Letters of the Province of Tosa) by the local Okunomiya Masaaki 奥宮正明 (1648–1726) with help from the chief domain scholar, Tani Shigetō 谷重遠 (1663–1718), also of local lineage, compiled between 1711 and 1726. Most of the documents ­were ­those by or concerning Chōsogabe retainers, and the compilation includes occasional comments by Okunomiya lamenting the sad fate of ­those dispossessed by the defeat of 1600.23 Four subsequent collections, such as the seven-­volume Tosa no kuni tokanshū shūi 土佐国蠹簡集拾遺 (Gleanings of Worm-­eaten Letters of the Province of Tosa), compiled by Shigetō’s son Tani Kakimori 谷垣守 (1698–1752) before 1752, and the eight-­volume Tosa no kuni tokanshū bokusetsu 土佐国蠹簡集木屑 (The Sawdust of Worm-­eaten Letters of the Province of Tosa) by Yanase Sadashige 柳瀬貞重 (fl. eigh­teenth c­ entury), completed in 1794, had a similar frame and goal that eschewed Yamauchi history. The compilers even collected documents from the descendants of former Chōsogabe retainers living around Japan if they w ­ ere relevant to the story of Tosa before 1600 and the fates of retainers a­ fter the defeat. The central compilers w ­ ere descendants of such retainers. In par­tic­u­lar, the case of the Tani ­family is special b­ ecause they ­were leaders of intellectual and cultural circles of Tosa, and they became ranking retainers of Tosa domain in the m ­ iddle of the eigh­teenth ­century. This scholarly circle strengthened greatly when Tani Mashio was appointed head of the domain school, the Kōjukan 教授館, which was created as part of a 1759 domain reform addressing the severe fiscal and social prob­lems that had developed.24 Half a c­ entury of growing government debt and official corruption and an increase in unruly commoner protests was creating a crisis of confidence among the ruling samurai, who themselves ­were faced with the difficulties and 23.  Kōchi kenshi, 431. 24.  Details of the mid-­eighteenth-­century crisis and reforms in the domain can be found in chapters 3 through 6 of Luke Roberts, Mercantilism in a Japa­nese Domain: The Merchant Origins of Economic Nationalism in 18th-­Century Tosa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

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temptations of their ruling status in peacetime. The school was part of an attempt to make samurai become more knowledgeable and responsible bureaucrats through improved education in po­liti­cal philosophy and history. Thanks to the legitimacy of Tani Mashio’s position, the scholarly circles came to include many se­nior samurai retainers of the Yamauchi clan and led to the growth of active scholarship among t­ hese retainers. Yet, u ­ ntil the last quarter of the eigh­teenth ­century they seem not to have shown much interest in creating a Yamauchi-­centered history of the h ­ ouse­hold, instead learning more generally about Japa­nese history and the Chōsogabe history when their attention turned to Tosa. This brief era of reform increased scholarship among the samurai but did not produce a Yamauchi-­centered historical discourse.

The Latter Period Following the 1759 fiscal and social reform and increased interest in Yama­ uchi history, an even stronger focus on Yamauchi and local history by upper-­ ranking samurai emerged two de­cades ­later when a particularly impor­tant reform begun in 1787 included a concerted interest in widely sharing the Warring States–­era history of the Yamauchi and their retainers. The years leading up to this reform had been even more dire in fiscal failure, economic hardship, and protests than that which preceded the 1759 reform. The new leadership included many upper-­ranking samurai who w ­ ere students of Tani Mashio, and indeed the aged Mashio himself. One of their tasks was to combat the deep loss of confidence in government operation through reforming its character and policies. The promotion of economic development, new commercial and taxation policies, a reduction of costly ser­vice to the Tokugawa government, and many other policies expressed a more sincere interest in careful domain management. Many policies put the interests of the domain over per­for­mance of duty to the distant Tokugawa and in vari­ous subtle ways promoted a form of nascent domain nationalism. This involved an attempt to foster devotion to the Yamauchi clan itself through praising and eventually even worshiping its sixteenth-­century found­ers as kami deities. Such devotion required writing up histories of key figures such as Yamauchi Katsutoyo. To this end, in 1788, the daimyo Yamauchi Toyochika 山内豊雍 (1750–1789) sent some retainers to the province of Owari, where Katsutoyo had been born, to research his f­ amily origins, about which much information was already lost. The chief of t­hese retainers was one of the leaders of the reform, the scholar and lord’s assistant Umazume Motone 馬詰親音 (1748–1807). Another was a promising page of the daimyo, the nineteen-­year-­old Mori Yoshiki 森芳材



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(1768–1807). Both ­were students of Tani Mashio and deeply interested in history writing. Yoshiki recorded in his miscellany the exchange of letters with priests of Hōrenji t­ emple, where Katsutoyo’s f­ather was first buried, including the l­ittle information the t­ emple priests knew about the Yamauchi.25 The next year Umazume Motone was sent to Kameyama in Tanba province, where Katsu­ toyo’s ­father had been born, to further research the origins of the Yamauchi clan. In 1790 Motone produced Katsutoyo-­kun iji 一豊君遺事, a biography of Yamauchi Katsutoyo that incorporated the new research.26 The domain also de­cided at this time to deify the found­ers of the ­house­hold as kami. This signaled an impor­tant shift in attitude ­toward history production. Indeed, it sanctified Yamauchi clan history and made it worthy of devoted attention. Although the pro­cess took more than a de­cade to be completed, Yama­ uchi Katsutoyo became deified as Fujinami Myōjin 藤並明神; his wife, ­ ere deiKenshōin 見性院 (1557–1617), and their heir, Yamauchi Tadayoshi, w fied as reijin 霊神. They ­were emplaced in Fujinami shrine, created in 1807 inside the grounds of Kōchi ­Castle. The key holy item in the shrine was a wooden rice mea­sure (masu 升) used upside down by Kenshōin to double as a cutting board. This symbolized the hardships and economizing of Kenshōin and Katsutoyo in their days of poverty, and the stories of Katsutoyo’s war­time exploits served to remind all of the g­ reat debt that they owed the Yamauchi ­house. Retainers and even commoners ­were invited into the ­castle grounds to see the inauguration ceremonies, which included such military displays as ­horse­back archery. Thereafter the domain held an annual festival with displays and a parade that involved the participation of Kōchi townspeople and villa­ gers from throughout Tosa. This was a ritual to naturalize Yamauchi rule at the center of a new domainal type of nationalism formed around a curious combination of samurai rectitude and promotion of commercial economic development. This approach embodied a tension between re­spect for samurai status and an ele­ment of “domain nationalist” egalitarian sentiment that was growing as a result of commercialization and expanding education in Tosa.27 By the time of the enshrinement, Mori Yoshiki had matured and advanced into the top councils of domain government, and his documents survive in abundance. He was deeply interested in history and played an impor­tant role 25.  Mori Yoshiki, “Yoshiki-­kō zuihitsu” 芳材公随筆, manuscript in Kōchi Prefecture Library, 53–68. 26.  Matsuyama Hidemi 松山秀美, Kajin gunzō 歌人郡像 (Kōchi: Kōchi Shimin Toshokan, 1956), 123. 27.  I explore the creation and use of this shrine in chapter 5 of Luke Roberts, Performing the G ­ reat Peace: Po­liti­cal Space and Open Secrets in Tokugawa Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013).

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in history production. His life coincided with a miniature golden age of scholarship in Tosa. Although t­ here ­were numerous scholars in his circle who are of greater note, a focus on Yoshiki’s story is sufficient to highlight three impor­ tant issues of this era.28 One is the shift t­ oward celebrating the history of the Yamauchi clan and its retainers. The second is a link between Yoshiki’s interest in Warring States history and his belief that samurai should not lose their warrior identity despite the tendency ­toward what he and many ­others saw as peacetime laxity. The third issue is an attempt to broker a rapprochement between the Chōsogabe identity and the Yamauchi identity in the Tosa of his day. Yoshiki was a man of wide-­r anging interests with a deep-­seated anxiety about his own identity as a warrior in peacetime and w ­ hether his own daimyo and peers w ­ ere sufficiently warrior-­like. Such anx­i­eties ­were common to many Edo-­era samurai, for whom the idea of samurai becoming indolent and selfish in peacetime was a standard trope of social commentary. Episodes from his diaries and also in the stories written about him by his friends reveal his frequent attention to the issue of what it meant to be a samurai and his fear that peace led too many samurai into complacence and decline of martial character. For example, he went on one trip of inspection to the western half of the domain along with an official named Shibata Oribe Kanyō 柴田織部咸陽 (1751–1821), who was by inheritance one of the twelve se­nior ­houses of the domain, known as karō 家老, or domain elder. This elder Oribe Kanyō continually complained about the food and the lodging and the general incon­ve­ niences of the trip. Yoshiki fumed in his diary, “Oribe was extremely annoying ­today! In my heart I know that all p­ eople born into the position of h ­ ouse elders are like this. If their world goes a ­little off track they cannot sleep at night. . . . ​It is terrifying to think that such a person is the general of a large army. . . . ​Surely this is a sign of the end of the government and military fortunes of the ­house!”29 In the same year, when he inspected the armor ware­house of the lord, he saw that Katsutoyo’s armor was mostly bound together with leather, while the recent armor was each generation more lavish and gaudy. He wrote about the latter armor, “How is this armor a general of a large army would wear? . . . ​ In this one fact we can lament both the decline in armor and the decline in 28. ­These are well treated by Matsuyama Hakuyō (Hidemi) in his series of “Tosa kajin gunzō” articles in Tosa shidan between 1930 and 1934. Some of ­these ­were ­later reworked into Matsuyama Hidemi, Kajin gunzō. Many of the documents on which he based his research w ­ ere burnt and lost in the firebombing of Kōchi in World War II, making his detailed research particularly precious. 29.  Mori Yoshiki, “Nichiroku”日録 (1788, 1791, 1793, 1798–1807), 12 vols., manuscript in Kōchi Prefecture Library (K289 モリ). Quotation is from entry for 1798.9.27.



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government.”30 Yoshiki l­ater was raised to the position of the ward of the young lord-­to-be. One day when the young lord went hunting he walked instead of g­ oing by palanquin. The uncommonly out­spoken Yoshiki praised him strongly saying that this was good ­because recently daimyo tended to behave like aristocrats. “A daimyo is a warrior and nothing e­ lse. On occasions when he might use a palanquin or h ­ orse he should walk. That is the proper form of a daimyo!” The young lord was so surprised that that eve­ning he confided to the monk helping him in his bath, “No one has ever spoken to me like that!”31 As was the case with most of his peers, Yoshiki personally studied military skills, including military tactics, archery, gunnery, spearmanship, ­horse riding, and swordsmanship, ­under vari­ous teachers, and in his younger years he frequently engaged in sumo wrestling. Yet aside from once using a hip throw in a drunken argument with a friend, he had not used any of t­ hese skills outside of practice. One could say they ­were more in the realm of military arts rather than skills. His own f­ ather, Hirosada 広定 (1710–1773), had not fought in any ­battles ­either, and he died when Yoshiki was not quite five years old, leaving Yoshiki unable to learn samurai be­hav­ior and ideals directly from his f­ather. His f­ ather had, however, copied many war tales and historical rec­ords, including, for example, a map of the 1561 b­ attle of Kawanakajima fought between the Takeda and Uesugi clans.32 In 1744 Hirosada also copied the Mori f­ amily lineage, including Warring States–­era tales of participation in ­battle by his ancestors.33 Half a dozen generations had passed since the last b­ attles had been fought in Japan, yet Yoshiki’s idea of samurai identity came from reading and discussions about readings with friends. His first surviving diary is from 1791 when he was twenty-­three and shows that he pursued the classic dual way of arms and letters: alongside his study of military skills he also learned cultural arts of gagaku 雅楽 ­music and waka 和歌 poetry. Perhaps most impor­tant, he pursued scholarship as an active student of Tani Mashio and another domain scholar, Miyaji Nakae 宮地中枝 (1768–1841), who encouraged study of local history while also pursuing strong interests in Shinto and imperial history. Yoshiki clearly preferred history and spent his youth and adult life actively transcribing documents, histories, and war tales related to Japan and in par­ tic­u­lar the history of Tosa, the Chōsogabe, and the Yamauchi clans. His earliest dated miscellany was written in 1789 when he was about twenty-­one years 30.  Mori, “Nichiroku,” Kansei 寛政 1798.7.5. 31.  From “Genshin-­kō iji” 源心公遺事, a hagiography of the daimyo Yamauchi Toyooki 豊興, in Akizawa, Tosa no kuni, 2:254. 32.  Held in the Mori collection in Kōchi Prefecture Library. 33.  “Mori-­sei kafu” 森姓家譜, manuscript in Kōchi Prefecture Library.

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old. About a third of the entries in this miscellany are historical and, as mentioned, some rec­ords are from when he participated as an assistant to Umazume researching the history of the Yamauchi clan origins. It includes transcriptions of documents detailing impor­tant events in his lord’s ­house­hold from the 1690s and letters written by both Motochika and Katsutoyo. Yoshiki’s earliest copybook is undated, but the hand suggests it is from his youth. It includes quotations from many famous war chronicles, such as the Genpei jōsuiki 源平盛衰記, Azuma kagami 吾妻鏡, Heiji monogatari 平治物語, Heike monogatari 平家物語, Taikōki 太閤記, and Buke kandan 武家閑談. What he copied out ­were portions relating to Tosa, suggesting that from very early on, his primary interest was the history of his domain.34 This copybook was likely an early basis of a larger collection he wrote called Tosa koji kō 土佐古事考, which likewise compiled the Tosa-­related portions of more than ninety works dealing with all of Japan. He also bought or transcribed dozens and dozens of war tales, including all the abovementioned ones related to the Chōsogabe. The list of ­others includes Taiheiki 太平記, Yūki kassenki 結城合戦記, Uji­ satoki 氏郷記, Tōgoku taiheiki 東国太平記, Sogaki 曽我記, Yūki gyōjo 結城行状, Naniwa taiheiki 難波太平記, Saikai jiranki 西海事乱記, and Shimazu Taka­ hisa ki 島津貴久記, which shows that his interests spanned in time and region most of Japan and became part of his image of samurai battlefield be­hav­ior and values.35 This knowledge was not impor­tant practically in the world at peace but was very impor­tant socially, ­because it distinguished Yoshiki and his like-­minded friends from commoners, and justified their generalized claim to status and income. Yoshiki had a very active social life, including periodic meetings with groups of samurai friends in which they read histories and documents to build identity. One circle of friends met regularly to read the Genpei jōsuiki about the wars and samurai of the Minamoto and Taira clans half a millennium e­ arlier.36 He also participated in groups devoted to reading old ­family documents that related to the Warring States era. This was a social activity that bonded them in ­imagined war and identified them with the lineal ancestors of their h ­ ouses. One of Yoshiki’s own lineal ancestors had been a retainer of warlord Akechi Mitsuhide 明智光秀 (1528–1582), yet most of Yoshiki’s ancestral ­house documents had been lost in fires that occasionally ravaged his city, and he had ­little to research about his own f­ amily. The ancestors of his friend Asaina Eitarō 34.  Mori Yoshiki, Yoshiki-­kō oshūroku, zen 芳材公御集録全, manuscript in Kōchi Prefecture ­Library. 35.  From notations in his diary; Mori, “Nichiroku.” 36.  As noted in Mori Masana 森正名, “Sendai gyōjō” 先代行状, manuscript in Kōchi Prefectural Museum of History, folio 65.



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朝比奈栄太郎 (fl. late eigh­teenth ­century) had been retainers of the Imagawa

and ­later the Takeda clans and had so many documents from the era that Yoshi­ ki joined the group devoted to reading them. Yoshiki also read and copied the documents of many other samurai friends. For the most part the activities of ­these ancestors had de­cided their descendants’ current relative status among the samurai of the domain, and reading about them might have affirmed a sense of one’s place in the domain. ­There was also a more general interest in affirming the heritage of samurai as a class. Along with the newly memorialized “sacrifices” that Yamauchi Katsutoyo and his famous wife had made to create this domain and the peace that they all now enjoyed, the increasingly shared stories of origins among Yamauchi h ­ ouse samurai can be seen as a way of claiming legitimacy during a restless time when it would have been reasonable to ask why so many so-­called warriors ­were needed to rule in peacetime. Yoshiki used this activity to make yet another contribution to the Tosa no kuni tokanshū series. He had already made copies of the ­earlier volumes in the series and knew them well. Then he compiled a seven-­volume document collection called Tosa no kuni tokanshū zanpen 土佐国蠹簡集残編 (Remaining Worm-­eaten Letters of the Province of Tosa), the fifth installment in the Tokanshū series, before his death in 1807. Like the ­others, this collection contains documents from before or very soon a­ fter 1600, but it is made up mostly of items held in the ­houses of samurai who came to Tosa as retainers of Katsu­ toyo, and largely from the collections of close friends with whom he regularly socialized. Yoshiki provided no preface or commentary beyond noting who owned the documents that he copied. But the title of the collection is a statement that Yamauchi retainers whose ancestors came from the outside ­were equally part of Tosa’s history and that they had a Warring States–­era history as well. Many of t­ hese ancestors had been samurai serving such daimyo as Takeda Shingen 武田信玄, Hōjō Ujimasa 北条氏政, and Imagawa Yoshimoto 今川義元, had known defeat, and, like the elite Chōsogabe samurai, had left ancestral homes in search of employment during the Unification era. The final document in the collection is a memorandum of being besieged in a ­castle at the time of the ­battle of Sekigahara.37 Yoshiki was making the 37.  This collection is undated but prob­ably was completed sometime between 1800 and 1807. A useful summary can be found in Mo­rita Kōji 森田香司, “ ‘Tosa no kuni tokanshū zanpen’ no shiryōteki seikaku”「土佐国蠹簡集残編」の史料的性格, Shizuokashi kenshi kenkyū 静岡市県史研究 11 (1999): 149–66, although it mistakenly describes Yoshiki as an elder of the Yamauchi ­house. Some extant copies are noted in Kokusho sōmokuroku, and one additional very fine copy exists in the Kokugakuin University Library in the Sasaki Takayuki collection. Yoshiki’s original is held in the Kōchi Prefecture Library.

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histories of the Yamauchi retainers and the Chōsogabe retainers comparable and mutually sympathetic and unifying their stories as part of a single history of Tosa through inclusion in the Tosa no kuni tokanshū series. Yoshiki also took advantage of his rising position in government. He progressed from appointment as Magistrate of the Ports in 1793, to G ­ rand Inspector in 1797, to Ju­nior Administrator in 1798, to fi­nally Guardian of the Young Heir in 1801.38 ­These positions gave him access to the lord’s archives, and he used the opportunity to transcribe numerous documents of interest. Between 1792 and 1806 Yoshiki kept a twenty-­one-­volume miscellany entitled Kachū no ki 家中之記 (Rec­ord of the House­hold Retainers) and devoted mostly to local affairs and history. It covers a wide range of items from the con­temporary to the ancient, but a large proportion of the entries are copies of shorter documents related to the history of the Yamauchi clan and domain.39 He also copied out longer volumes of archival texts, including many key items that no longer survive elsewhere.40 Yoshiki’s document-­copying activities show that he had a strong interest in the early era of Yamauchi domain government, and especially that at the time of Nonaka Kenzan. This was similar to the activities of his community of scholars and friends and may be related to an attempt to build a historiographic unity in the domain that bridged the painful divide of 1600 in line with the goals of the 1787 reforms. This was modeled by Yoshiki’s teacher, Tani Mashio, who compiled a brief history of the first four Yamauchi daimyo as a pre­sen­ta­tion item to his lord “to edify him on virtue.”41 The other leading scholar at the domain school, Miyaji Nakae, likewise composed a history of the Yamauchi ­house, Otōke nendai ryakki 御当家年代略記, from Katsutoyo’s birth to the time of writing in 1812.42 Even more significant was the completion in 1815 of the massive 120-­volume history, gazeteer, and document collection called Nanroshi 南路志, by Mutō Munekazu 武藤致和 (1741–1813) and his heir Hiramichi 平道 (1778–1830), who in succession ran the wealthy merchant h ­ ouse Minoya 美濃屋 in Kōchi. The Mutō ancestors had been employed by the Chōsogabe and then the Yama­ uchi but ­later chose to become merchants in the early Edo period. This collection was a complete history of Tosa up to the 1780s and devoted much 38.  Luke Roberts, “Mori Yoshiki: Samurai Government Officer,” in The ­Human Tradition in Mod­ ern Japan, ed. Anne Walthall (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2002), 25–44. 39.  This is now called Hikyūroku 秘笈録 (Secret Box Rec­ords), as ­later retitled by a descendant, and now held in the Kōchi Prefecture Library ­under that name. 40. ­These total well more than a hundred volumes and now form an impor­tant part of the local history collection of the Kōchi Prefecture Library. 41. Matsuyama, Tosa kajin gunzō, 99. 42. Roberts, Performing the ­Great Peace, 182–85.



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attention to both the Chōsogabe and Yamauchi ­houses and documents related to their activities in war and government. It notably incorporated the Gobukōki 御武功記 (The Lord’s Feats of Arms), which included stories of Katsutoyo’s war exploits outside of Tosa, and Bukō mukashibanashi 武功昔話 (Old Tales of Feats of Arms), which described acts of Yamauchi retainers in such times.43 This indigenized the Yamauchi ­family by making their story part of Tosa’s history even when it included events beyond Tosa’s bound­aries, much as it did with the Chōsogabe clan exploits in other provinces as well. Nanrōshi was compiled with the assistance of high-­ranking retainers who had access to Yama­ uchi archives and clearly had the support of the domain government. It also included many documents of locals throughout Tosa whose ancestors had served the Chōsogabe daimyo, combining disparate threads of a hitherto contentious history into a single work about Tosa. Fi­nally, it included many writings by and about Nonaka Kenzan and his associates. Kenzan had died branded as a criminal, but from this era many p­ eople came to be interested in researching his legacy and restoring his reputation. In a historiographical sense, a unity was being achieved in this last era of history writing in Tosa, but how successful ­were ­these and overall efforts to bridge the Yamauchi/Chōsogabe divide? It is very difficult to judge. T ­ here was a degree of failure that had in part to do with class and status issues in the domain. It was easy to find reasons for resentment against higher-­status retainers in this world of structured in­equality. The upper samurai, who mostly descended from pre-1600 Yamauchi retainers, controlled the courts, and the courts seemed to f­ avor them. T ­ here was a law known as bureiuchi 無礼打, or “slaying for rudeness,” whereby it was ­legal for a samurai to slay low-­ranking retainers or commoners if they w ­ ere deliberately rude. In Tosa a samurai could legally cut down a gōshi u ­ nder this law even though both ­were retainers. The gōshi ­were mainly descended from former Chōsogabe retainers and saw themselves as the true locals. Such killings happened and turned into significant incidents of gōshi protest in 1797, 1821, and 1861.44 That in the first two of ­these cases the widely known real reason ­behind the murders was not deliberate rudeness but such issues as drunkenness or competition over a ­woman only further served to highlight the issue of abuse of power.45 Each event 43. Mutō, Nanroshi, 5:130–91; 225–43. 44.  Marius Jansen, “Tosa During the Last ­Century of Tokugawa Rule,” in Studies in the Institu­ tional History of Early Modern Japan, ed. John Hall and Marius  B. Jansen (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1968), 342–45. 45.  Roberts, “Mori Yoshiki,” 30–37; Kattō Isamu 甲藤勇, “ ‘Yōsha zuihitsu’ kara miru Teshima jiken no shinsō” 「湧舎随筆」から見る手島事件の真相, Tosa shidan 土佐史談 118 (November 1967): 105–11.

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became an occasion for a wide-­ranging public debate over status prerogatives that found meaning in the broader changes of society. This happened in a late Tokugawa environment in which ­there w ­ ere stronger currents of critique of hereditary privilege.46 The arrival of Commodore Perry and the Eu­ro­pean powers in the 1850s provoked a governmental crisis in Japan and intense public debate over how best to respond to the threat. As is well known, throughout Japan the imperial loyalist camp tended to urge rejection of relations and trade with the Westerners even if it meant war, and the Tokugawa governmental faction tended to urge engagement in order to avoid a war in which defeat would be inevitable. This debate played out in Tosa largely along status lines. Many retainers, mostly rural retainers, village headmen, and o ­ thers who identified with the Chōsogabe-­era roots, began acting strongly against Tokugawa interests and became active imperial loyalists in the 1860s. Many fled the domain to operate as shishi 志士 (“men of high purpose”) activists. At the same time, most of the high-­ranking members of the domain leadership w ­ ere very reluctant to work against Tokugawa interests ­until Tokugawa collapse seemed inevitable. This included the daimyo Yamauchi Yōdō 山内容堂 (1827–1872). He certainly wished to improve Japan’s response to the Western threat, but he worked hard to seek cooperation between the opposing forces of the coming civil war. As Marius Jansen has noted, when Yōdō met the representative of Satsuma domain, Saigō Takamori 西郷隆盛 (1828–1877), he said “we are a­ fter all in a very dif­fer­ent position from you, since we bear the Tokugawa a moral obligation.”47 Still, many ­people in Tosa had a well-­articulated historical memory that led them to think that they had no such obligation. Tosa domain fi­ nally became one of the four domains to create the initial imperial army that fought against the Tokugawa at Fushimi and then marched into Edo, but its participation had been initially much more reluctant than that of e­ ither Satsu­ ma or Chōshū. ­Behind this reluctance and Tosa’s complicated actions during the Restoration years was the divide created by the discourses formed around sixteenth-­ century Unification-­era history. They had been created with many dif­fer­ent purposes, beginning with personal rec­ords addressing lost lives, lost wars, and lost hopes. In Tosa the narrative of Chōsogabe loss to outsiders created a power­ful memory that could easily be turned to resentment of the victors, the incoming Yamauchi, who themselves w ­ ere originally relatively uninterested in 46. Ronald Dore, “Talent and the Social Order in Tokugawa Japan,” Past and Pre­sent 21 (April 1962): 60–72; Thomas Smith, “ ‘Merit’ as Ideology in the Tokugawa Period,” in Aspects of Social Change in Modern Japan, ed. Ronald Dore (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1967), 71–90. 47. Jansen, Sakamoto Ryōma, 22.



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creating memories of their war­time activities. However, the long peace and its attendant changes caused a slow decline in the confidence of the ruling Yama­ uchi and their retainers. From the latter half of the eigh­teenth c­ entury they began more actively creating their own historical narratives that justified their current position with reference to ancestral deeds of the Unification era. By the early nineteenth ­century ­there even developed a more regional and inclusive “Tosa” history that encouraged local unity, but the older tensions of winners and losers had been mapped out onto the social divisions of high-­ranking and low-­ranking retainers and ultimately s­haped the conflicts in the crisis of the Meiji Restoration era. That crisis, in turn, produced war and trauma, winners and losers, which participants and their descendants set to defining and deploying for their own ends in the context of an increasingly nationalist Japan.48

48.  Two impor­tant explorations of this ­matter are Hiraku Shimoda, Lost and Found: Recovering Regional Identity in Imperial Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014); and Michael Wert, Meiji Restoration Losers: Memory and Tokugawa Supporters in Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013).

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Plotting War during the ­Great Peace The Uses of Warfare in Late Edo Tales of the Strange William D. Fleming

Warfare is a near-­constant presence in Edo historical fiction. Often it is the central focus, as in the countless war tales published almost continuously throughout the period. Elsewhere it plays a key role in the plot, as it does, for example, in Kikuka no chigiri 菊花の約 (The Chrysanthemum Vow), Ueda Akinari’s 上田秋成 (1734–1809) tale of the separated lovers Samon and Sōemon in Ugetsu monogatari 雨月物語 (Tales of Moonlight and Rain, 1776). In still other cases, several of which w ­ ill be considered in this chapter, it lurks in the background as an ele­ment of unspoken uncertainty. Yet when we compare the tales of Akinari and ­others with their source texts—­for he and many of his contemporaries ­were skilled adapters who drew on a variety of antecedent texts—it is by no means obvious that warfare should feature so prominently. On the contrary, it is often an ele­ment that is introduced in the pro­cess of adaptation. But why would authors writing ­under the “­Great Peace” of the Tokugawa actively introduce military conflict into their narratives? This chapter endeavors to answer this question, shedding light on the agendas and motivations under­lying the literary depiction of war in an age of peace. The par­tic­u­lar genre that ­will occupy our attention is the kidan 奇談, or “strange tale,” that first appeared in collections in the western cities of Kyoto and Osaka in the ­middle of the eigh­teenth c­ entury. ­These stories tell of anomalous occurrences set at a temporal and geographic remove from the present-­day 11 4



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urban context in which they ­were published, and they ­were often adaptations of ­earlier, frequently Chinese, sources. In post-­Edo bibliographic studies, collections of such tales came to be lumped into the broader category of yomihon 読本 as the so-­called early yomihon (zenki yomihon 前期読本). While ­later yomihon came to reflect the increasing commercialization of the publishing industry in vari­ous ways, ­these ­earlier collections w ­ ere by and large written by intellectuals who fit the mold of the bunjin 文人 literatus. Tsuga Teishō 都賀庭鐘 (1718–ca. 1794) and Ueda Akinari are the best known, with Teishō’s Hanabusa sōshi 英草紙 (A Bouquet of Stories, 1749) conventionally seen as the progenitor of the yomihon and Akinari’s Ugetsu monogatari given pride of place as the finest and most famous work in the genre. But ­others wrote in a similar vein. In western Japan, they included lesser-­known figures such as Sōkan Sanjin 草官散人 (fl. 1770), whose name is attached to just one collection, and Itami Chin’en 伊丹椿園 (ca. 1752–1781), who was by contrast very prolific. Paralleling the shift in Japan’s literary center of gravity that occurred in the late eigh­teenth ­century, ­toward the end of the ­century Edo natives, among them Morishima Chūryō 森島中良 (1756–1810) and Shinrotei 振鷺亭 (d. ca. 1819), began to write their own collections with many of the same qualities.1 Before delving into ­these qualities, it is worth pausing to make a note of terminology. The category yomihon is itself problematic for its lack of cohesion as a genre, as well as its anachronistic nature, given that it was first used in the early nineteenth c­ entury, long ­after most of the works w ­ ere first published. Within the yomihon, the collections that are the focus of this chapter have been given further modifiers to distinguish them as a subset. Yet ­these more specific terms are themselves problematic. “Early yomihon” is often reserved for historical fiction written in western Japan and arguably does not include l­ater works by Edo authors such as Chūryō and Shinrotei; moreover, it also often includes longer-­form narratives such as the many mid-­eighteenth-­ century adaptations of the Chinese vernacular novel Shuihuzhuan 水滸傳 (The ­Water Margin, Jp. Suikoden). The term tanpen yomihon 短編読本, meaning “short-­form yomihon,” resolves this ambiguity of form but gives no

1.  Although all the authors mentioned ­here wrote ­under literary pen names, only Sōkan Sanjin and Shinrotei are identified using ­these pen names. In Sōkan Sanjin’s case, this is ­because his true identity is unknown; his one known work was long thought to be by Teishō, but for vari­ous stylistic reasons it is likely the work of another writer. See, for example, the discussion in Mizuno Minoru 水野稔, Edo bungei to tomo ni 江戸文芸とともに, ed. Koike Natsuko 小池奈都子 and Uchimura Katsushi 内村和至 (Tokyo: Perikansha, 2002), 86. Shinrotei’s identity is known (his name in real life was Ikari Teikyo 猪狩貞居), but as his pen name is more widely recognized, he is referred to by this pseudonym.

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sense of the unique qualities of ­these works and is of even more recent origin than the term yomihon itself. The subtitles (tsunogaki 角書き) of the collections point to an arguably more suitable term. Teishō’s Hanabusa sōshi and his ­later collection Shigeshige yawa 繁野話 (A Thicket of Tales, 1766) are both subtitled “strange tales old and new” (kokon kidan 古今奇談), while Akinari’s Ugetsu monogatari features nearly the same: “strange tales recent and old” (kinko kidan 近古奇談). Chin’en’s Miyamagusa 深山草 (Tales from the Deep Mountains, 1782) has several variant subtitles, depending on where one looks: “strange stories new and old” (konko kitan 今古奇譚 on the title slip and konko kaidan 今古怪談 in the internal title, or naidai 内題), or simply “strange tales” (kidan 奇談, as given in the ­table of contents). Morishima Chūryō’s Kogarashi zōshi 凩草紙 (Tales from the Withering Wind, 1792) is a self-­described collection of “strange tales to make you clap your hands [in amazement]” (hakushō kidan 拍掌奇談), while Shinrotei’s Hitofutagusa 一二草 (A Handful of Tales, 1795) is composed of “strange tales for all seasons” (kan’on kidan 寒温奇談). In contrast to the word yomihon, which is problematic for its imprecision, overinclusion, and anachronism, the label kidan, which I have translated as “strange tales” in the preceding examples, was not only the most common way authors themselves described the sorts of collections discussed in this chapter but also points to a key generic feature—­strangeness—in a way the term yomihon, which means simply “books for reading,” does not. The choice of kidan as generic descriptor also resolves some of the limitations of even a more specific category, such as “early yomihon.” Kidan includes the early yomihon, but given its absence of geographic or temporal associations, it also includes similar works from Edo as well as ­those from a somewhat ­later era. Of course, kidan is itself an imperfect category if we take con­temporary use or authorial self-­description as the sole criterion for inclusion. The word appeared as a category in a bookseller’s cata­log as early as 1754, and although this was less than a de­cade ­after Teishō’s first collection, already some fifty-­seven titles w ­ ere included u ­ nder the heading.2 It is not the case, however, that dozens of yomihon-­style collections had been written in that short interval, nor ­were many works yet describing themselves as kidan. In fact, on the evidence of titles included in the National Institute of Japa­nese Lit­er­a­ture’s comprehensive database of premodern Japa­nese books, Nihon kotenseki sōgō mokuroku 日本古典籍 総合目録 (Union Cata­logue of Early Japa­nese Books), it was not ­until 1766, the 2.  The cata­log, titled Shinzō shojaku mokuroku 新増書籍目録, was published by the Kyoto bookseller Nagata Chōbei 永田調兵衛. See Iikura Yōichi 飯倉洋一, “ ‘Kidan’ no ba” 「奇談」の場, Gobun 語文 78 (May 2002): 22.



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year of Shigeshige yawa, that the word again appeared in ­either the title or subtitle of a published work. Rather, perhaps u ­ nder the influence of Teishō’s initial use of the term, kidan had emerged among publishers, as Iikura Yōichi 飯倉洋一 argues, as a new conceptual framework that comprised material as diverse as seventeenth-­century kana fiction (kanazōshi 仮名草子), mock-­didactic and satiric “sermons” (dangibon 談義本), and the tales of the floating world (ukiyozōshi 浮世草子) of Saikaku 西鶴 and o ­ thers—­and in which the emphasis was more on the dan 談, or “telling,” part of kidan than on the ki 奇, or “strange.”3 When the term did begin to jump from cata­logs to book covers l­ater in the eigh­teenth ­century, it was, moreover, not only in the sorts of examples enumerated in the preceding paragraph but also in works such as Yūkokushi’s 遊谷子 fantastic and satirical travel narrative Wasōbei 和荘兵衛 (Wasōbei, 1774) or Tachibana Nankei’s 橘南谿 travelogue-­miscellanies Tōyūki 東遊記 ( Journey to the East, 1795) and Saiyūki 西遊記 ( Journey to the West, 1795).4 For the purposes of the pre­sent chapter, then, kidan is used in the narrower sense to refer to the mid-­to late-­eighteenth-­century collections of Teishō and his successors. ­These texts delineate a relatively coherent genre of fiction. Like other genres, they ­were granted their own characteristic physical presence, likely with an eye to the marketplace, and ­were almost always printed as five fascicles in the relatively large hanshibon 半紙本 format (around fifteen by twenty-­two centimeters). Following the model of Hanabusa sōshi, the number of stories was commonly nine, but with some variance, as seen with the seven tales in Hitofutagusa or the thirteen in Sōkan Sanjin’s Kakinegusa 垣根草 (Fence-­side Tales, 1770). Certain diffuse large-­scale structures can be discerned in the ordering of tales within the collections, but the individual stories are other­wise in­de­pen­dent and self-­contained, with settings scattered far and wide across the Japa­nese archipelago. The scholarly erudition of the authors is seldom far from sight, particularly in e­ arlier kidan. ­There are learned discussions of subjects ranging from history, medicine, and natu­ral phenomena to pursuits both elegant and other­wise—­music, poetry, and the arts, but also drinking and cockfighting. Kidan are also densely intertextual. Many are adapted from one or more primary sources but interweave their material and transform or impart new meanings through allusions to a wide range of additional texts. The basic plots are often Chinese in origin—­these too are diverse, deriving from anomaly accounts (zhiguai 志怪), classical tales of the strange (chuanqi 傳奇), and vernacular fiction—­although Japa­nese setsuwa 3.  On the rise of the term kidan, see Iikura, “ ‘Kidan’ no ba,” 22–32. 4.  Wasōbei bears the subtitle “strange tales from distant lands” (ikoku kidan 異国奇談), while Nankei’s miscellanies are “strange tales from the vari­ous provinces” (shokoku kidan 諸国奇談).

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説話 narratives also provide material.5 Following t­ hese sources, as the term

kidan itself suggests, the stories deal in m ­ atters strange or marvelous, especially the uncanny realms of ghosts and spirits, foxes and demons, and kar­ma and destiny. In comparing kidan with the Chinese tales from which many are adapted, one difference often apparent from the very start is that many of the Chinese narratives are set against an indeterminate historical backdrop. Certainly this is true of Feng Menglong’s 馮夢龍 three collections of vernacular stories known collectively as the San’yan 三言, which invariably establish their geographic settings with ­g reat precision, but more often than not are devoid of specific historical markers. Readers are left with the vague impression that events happened in ordinary times in the not-­too-­distant past. A similar effect is seen in Pu Songling’s 蒲松齡 Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋誌異 (Strange Tales from Liaozhai Studio). Many stories are presented with the conceit of having been shared with the author by a friend or acquaintance, and in some cases a specific in­for­mant is mentioned, imbuing both a sense of recentness and a layer of “authenticity,” as Allan Barr puts it.6 At the same time, the striking absence of overt historical markers gives a feeling of timelessness. Tales alluding even in passing to rebellions, unrest, or other datable historical incidents are the exception rather than the norm. Kidan, by contrast, are mostly set in the distant past, almost always with the specificity of a given reign period, and with this setting typically established within the opening lines of the story. The historical context is not always one of unrest, but this is often the case given the sweep of Japa­nese history before the Tokugawa peace. The Genpei War, the Ōnin War, and the ­battles of the Warring States period are common settings, while other tales are set during the ­Earlier Nine Years’ War, the L ­ ater Three Years’ War, and Hideyoshi’s K ­ orea campaigns, to give just a few examples. Five of the nine tales in Ugetsu monogatari are set unequivocally in times of unrest, as are four of the seven in Hitofutagusa. In Kogarashi zōshi only four of the nine tales are unambiguous, but that figure rises 5.  My focus is primarily on tales with Chinese sources, but the boundary can be obscure. Still, although many of the formal structures are other­wise the same, some scholars attempt to distinguish between setsuwa-­derived collections (of which Hitofutagusa is an example) and Chinese-­derived collections. See, for example, ­Inoue Keiji 井上啓治, “ ‘Morokoshi no Yoshino’ joron, fu honkoku: Zenki gesaku kenkyū (2)” 『唐土の吉野』序論・附翻刻: 前期戯作研究(二), Shūjitsu ronsō 就実論叢 16 (February 1987): 85–134; Makiyama Masayuki 槙山雅之, “ ‘Setsuwa-­kei kidan’ no isō josetsu: Shinrotei ‘Kan’on kidan hitofutagusa’ no hōhō” 「説話系奇談」の位相 序説: 振鷺亭『寒温奇談一二草』の 方法, Kokusai bunka kenkyūka ronshū 国際文化研究科論集 5 (Tōhoku Daigaku, December  1997): 23–29. 6.  Allan Hepburn Barr, “Pu Songling and Liaozhai Zhiyi: A Study of Textual Transmission, Biographical Background, and Literary Antecedents” (PhD diss., University of Oxford, 1983), 252.



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to six if we include a tale featuring vengeful spirits slain in an ancient ­battle and another recounting a succession strug­gle and ensuing vendetta; even the other­ wise celebratory final story is set against the backdrop of the Hideyoshi invasions and features an encounter with the Heike dead near the Straits of Shimonoseki. Conflict features less prominently in the tales of Teishō, who, perhaps not coincidentally, hews relatively closely to his source texts. Nevertheless, war is a stronger presence in Shigeshige yawa than in the ­earlier Hanabusa sōshi, suggesting a progression in the development of the genre, while at least one setting of historical unrest—­the turmoil of the Southern and Northern Courts period—­features in all three of Teishō’s major collections (the third being his l­ater Hitsujigusa 莠句 冊, from 1786). What is the rationale for this conscious departure from the source texts? For one, as explored in the first section below, the introduction of warfare serves to impart new meanings. Conflict magnifies distances and heightens the anxiety of separation, feeding the longing and frustrated desires that are often the breeding ground for the strange. This unease is further magnified through intertextual associations within and beyond the kidan tradition. Readers, too, experience a heightened sense of distance, as is argued in the second section. Most kidan tales are set far from Edo and other urban centers, thereby holding the strange at a safe remove from the lived everyday experience of many con­temporary readers and from the vis­i­ble seats of Tokugawa power. This sense of distance is magnified by the remove in time. Readers are continually reminded that it is only in times of vio­lence and po­liti­cal unrest, which the Tokugawa have banished to the distant past, that such anomalies occur. The peace and stability of the pre­sent day is always brought into relief. And yet ­there remain occasional complications, as is seen in the final section of the chapter, which points to the possibility of a more complex, multivalent relationship between the kidan and con­temporary authority.

Warfare and the Strange The foregoing distinction drawn between kidan and their Chinese sources is not to suggest that warfare is altogether absent from ­those Chinese tales. One example is Qu You’s 瞿佑 Aiqing zhuan 愛卿傳 (The Tale of Aiqing), from the collection Jiandeng xin­hua 剪燈新話 (New Tales by Lamplight, ca. 1380), the source Akinari drew upon in the writing of the tale Asaji ga yado 浅茅が宿 (The Reed-­Choked House) in Ugetsu monogatari. The outline of Qu You’s story ­will be largely familiar even to modern readers who have only encountered Akinari’s version. The faithful wife Aiqing remains at home in Jiaxing

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while her husband, Zhao, heads north to the capital to attend to ­family business. As his return is delayed month ­after month, the chaos of the Red Turban Rebellion (1351–1368) spreads across the region, and the beautiful Aiqing hangs herself rather than succumb to the forceful advances of a lustful ­enemy commander. When at last Zhao returns, he finds his hometown ravaged almost beyond recognition. His own ­house is overgrown with weeds. With the help of an el­derly former manservant, he gives his wife a proper burial, and her ghost visits him for one final happy reunion. Freed from her lingering, unfulfilled desire, Aiqing is reborn as a baby boy in the nearby city of Wuxi, a living memento of the love she and her husband shared. Akinari makes many substantial changes at the level of plot. Notably, at the time of their joyous reunion, the husband, whom he names Katsushirō, is not yet aware that his wife, Miyagi, is dead. It is, moreover, a poem, not a child, that she leaves as keepsake. Where the broader historical context is concerned, however, a ­simple transposition is all that is necessary. In place of Zhang Shicheng’s capture of Suzhou, Akinari sets his tale against the early skirmishes of the Kyōtoku disturbances (1455–1483). As conflict envelops Japan’s eastern provinces, Miyagi anxiously awaits her husband’s return from the distant capital. She considers fleeing, but taking heart in his promise that he w ­ ill return by summer’s end, she remains at home, counting the days as they pass. When the autumn winds arrive and she has still heard nothing, she composes a poem: “I cannot convey my b­ itter sorrow—­tell him, cock of the Osaka barrier, that autumn ­will soon pass.”7 Although Akinari dwells on the wife’s anxiety and prolongs the passages devoted to her waiting—­which he extends from half a year to seven—­the uncertainty of warfare is not itself a new ele­ment in his adaptation. Yet in many kidan adaptations warfare is introduced into source texts in which it was originally absent. In part this serves a narrative function. Strange ­things often happen as the result of excessive desire, obsession, or other­wise anomalous emotions, and warfare introduces an anomalous context to match. It is also a con­ve­nient plot ele­ment in stories that frequently hinge on separation, providing a compelling external source of uncertainty that goes beyond the fickleness or unfaithfulness of the characters themselves. We see this transformation at work in Akinari’s Kikuka no chigiri and its tale ­ fter Sōemon suddenly takes ill on of the male lovers Samon and Sōemon. A the road, Samon, a stranger, nurses him back to health. The two men form a fast bond. When the day comes for Sōemon to continue onward on his jour7.  Ugetsu monogatari, in Ueda Akinari shū 上田秋成集, ed. Nakamura Yukihiko 中村幸彦, vol. 56 of Nihon koten bungaku taikei 日本古典文学大系 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1959), 61.



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ney, he promises to return to Samon’s ­house on the day of the autumn Chrysanthemum Festival. However, circumstances conspire to prevent their planned reunion. The basic plot is furnished by Feng Menglong’s 馮夢龍 Fan Juqing jishu sisheng jiao 范巨卿雞黍死生交 (A Meal for Fan Juqing, Friend in Life and Death), from the collection Gujin xiaoshuo 古今小説 (Stories Old and New, 1620–1621). At times the Japa­nese version hews very closely to the original. The opening lines, in which superficial friendship is compared to the willow that is verdant in spring but quickly succumbs to the winds of autumn (establishing the central theme of the tale), are a nearly character-­by-­character rendering of the Chinese source text into Japa­nese. Other passages are not as clear-­cut but nevertheless evoke a hybrid Sino-­Japanese character that is reminiscent of kundoku 訓読 style (the procedural reading of a Chinese text into vernacular Japa­nese) even if not directly traceable to such practices. Elsewhere, by contrast, the source text is left far ­behind. As Dennis Washburn has observed, Akinari substantially lengthens the scene depicting Samon as he awaits Sōemon’s return on the eve­ning of the Chrysanthemum Festival, thereby enhancing the sense of impatience.8 Just as significant as the change in quantity is the change in quality. Snippets of conversation from random passersby impart an eerie mundanity that increases the feeling of tension and uncertainty and heightens the contrast with the otherworldly encounter that follows. But the most fundamental difference between Akinari and Feng has to do with the reasons for Sōemon’s inability to appear in the flesh. In the latter, Sōemon’s counterpart, Fan, simply forgets. Distracted by ­family obligations and trivial business concerns, he becomes precisely the sort of fickle friend warned of in the story’s opening lines. His decision to take his own life accordingly seems at best impulsive, rooted in capriciousness, and at worst implausible. In Kikuka no chigiri the historical setting resolves this narrative weakness. Samon and Sōemon are unshakably devoted, and t­ here is never a moment’s wavering or negligence. Instead, the forces that prevent their promised reunion lie beyond their control, as Sōemon is held captive in Toda ­Castle in Izumo Province, far from Samon’s hometown in Harima Province, following the capture of the ­castle by the daimyo Amako Tsunehisa. In resituating the plot in a time of war, Akinari strengthens the bond between the two protagonists. The meanings that result from this sort of recontextualization are not always constructed anew, as in the preceding example, but are often negotiated through intertextual webs of associations, frequently within the kidan genre 8.  See discussion in Dennis Washburn, Translating Mount Fuji (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 60–61.

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itself. Sometimes this intertextuality takes the form of secondary adaptation. The final sections of one tale in Shinrotei’s Hitofutagusa, for example, closely retread parts of an ­earlier tale from Chin’en’s Karanishiki 唐錦 (Chinese Brocade, 1780). Yet as Makiyama Masayuki 槙山雅之 argues, Shinrotei was not simply trying to pass off Chin’en’s narrative as his own. Rather, given that the similarities extend even to the naming of the respective protagonists (Hagimoto in Chin’en and Hagiwara in Shinrotei), Shinrotei appears to have been intentionally conjuring the associations of a story that, as part of a well-­known collection, would have been closely familiar to his audience.9 A tale from Chūryō’s Kogarashi zōshi offers a more nuanced example of the importance of such intertextuality as it pertains to the use of warfare. Titled Muchū no kai sannin kizu o etaru koto 夢中の怪三人疵を得たる話 (How Three ­People W ­ ere Strangely Wounded in a Dream), the story tells of three ­family members—­a husband, his wife, named Shizu, and the wife’s b­ rother—­who experience an identical dream while separated by a ­great distance. Although the dream serves to re­unite the three, the circumstances are far from auspicious, reflecting the wife’s anx­ie­ ties over separation from her husband. Each of the three incurs an injury in the dream and awakens to find a real-­life wound. When at the end of the tale they are re­united in real life, their scars alert each other to their shared experience.10 The story features many broad parallels with Akinari’s Asaji ga yado, even if the plot is borrowed not from Qu You’s Aiqing zhuan but, as Tokuda Takeshi has noted, from Pu Songling’s Fengyang shiren 鳳陽士人 (The Gentleman from Fengyang).11 Both Chūryō and Akinari’s tales center around a husband who leaves home on business that takes him past the Osaka Barrier (albeit in opposite directions) and a wife who experiences intense longing during what proves to be an unexpectedly long separation. When the c­ ouples are at last momentarily re­united, the experience turns out to have been an illusion (although in Kogarashi zōshi a genuine reunion follows shortly thereafter). 9.  Makiyama, “ ‘Setsuwa-­kei kidan’ no isō josetsu,” 24–25. 10.  For the text of Kogarashi zōshi, see Ishigami Satoshi 石上敏, Morishima Chūryō shū 森島中良集, Sōsho Edo bunko 叢書江戸文庫, ed. Takada Mamoru 高田衛 and Ha­ra Michio 原道生, vol. 32 (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 1994), 143–235. A discussion of the tale in question also appears in William D. Fleming, “Strange Tales from Edo: Liaozhai zhiyi in Early Modern Japan,” Sino-­Japanese Studies 20 (2013): 89–91. 11.  Tokuda Takeshi’s 徳田武 article “ ‘Kogarashi zōshi’ to ‘Ryōsai shii [Liaozhai zhiyi]’ ” 『凩草 紙』と『聊斎志異』 (1980) was the first to explore the relationship between Chūryō’s tales and ­those of Pu Songling. Reprint in Nihon kinsei shōsetsu to Chūgoku shōsetsu 日本近世小説と中国小説, Nihon shoshigaku taikei 日本書誌学大系, vol. 51 (Musashimurayama-­shi, JP: Seishōdō Shoten, 1987), 336–70. For a discussion of parallels with Akinari in this and other tales, see Sonoda Yutaka 園田豊, “ ‘Kogarashi zōshi’ to ‘Ugetsu monogatari’ ” 『凩草紙』と『雨月物語』, Sōsho Edo bunko geppō 叢書江戸文庫 月報 32 (accompanying Morishima Chūryō shū, July 1994): 5–8.



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Both tales conclude with a wise old man of the sort frequently encountered in the kidan—­the seer figure whose privileged vision allows him to discern what the protagonists themselves cannot—­who puts events in context through reference to a legend of long ago. Chūryō’s depiction of Shizu’s mounting anxiety in her husband’s absence bears striking similarities to the corresponding section in Akinari’s tale. As summer gives way to autumn, she gazes up at the full moon one night and takes comfort in the knowledge that he must be out ­there beneath the distant sky. Perhaps, she hopes, news might be borne on the wings of the passing geese. That very moment, a young girl appears at Shizu’s bedside in flowing white robes and proceeds to whisk her off across the moonlit landscape to the Ōsaka Barrier (literally, the “slope of meeting”) for a reunion with her husband. In addition to the resonances with Akinari, the phrase “the distant sky” (sonata no sora そなたの空) conjures scenes of longing from classical poetry and other antecedent texts, such as the noh play Hanjo 班女 (Lady Han), whose forlorn protagonist passes her nights “gazing out at the distant sky where he must be,” holding out for news from a courtly lover who vowed “to return before autumn without fail.”12 ­There are echoes of Asai Ryōi 浅井了意 (ca. 1612–1691), as well. In a tale in Otogibōko 伽婢子 (Talisman Dolls, 1666) that, like Asaji ga yado, takes Aiqing zhuan as one of its principal sources, Ryōi tells the story of a young w ­ oman who dies in a distant province and whose ghost writes a letter to her parents back home. The letter begins with an account of days spent gazing off at the distant sky, hoping for tidings borne on the wings of autumn geese.13 Pu Songling’s Fengyang shiren is completely devoid of historical markers or even any reference to events outside the immediate scope of the narrative, and aside from positioning events in the Kyōroku 享禄 era (1528–1532), Chūryō’s adaptation likewise features only minimal historical contextualization. Nor is ­there any explicit reference to conflict. Nevertheless, the Kyōroku era was a turbulent time, with b­ attles raging across the land, and the intertextuality of Chūryō’s story serves not only to evoke established images of distance and separation, but to underscore this unspoken context. Ryōi’s story unfolds amidst the turmoil of the late sixteenth ­century, and the protagonist dies ­after she is taken prisoner by Oda Nobunaga’s men and separated from her ­family. Even the trope of the wild goose has its origin in a time of war; according to a legend best known in Japan from its retelling in the Tale of the Heike, the 12.  Hanjo, in Yōkyoku hyakuban 謡曲百番, ed. Nishino Haruo 西野春雄, Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei 新日本古典文学大系, vol. 57 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1998), 216. 13.  Asai Ryōi, Yūrei sho o bumo ni tsukawasu 幽霊書を父母につかはす, in Otogibōko 伽婢子, ed. Matsuda Osamu 松田修, Watanabe Morikuni 渡辺守邦, and Hanada Fujio 花田富二夫, Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei 新日本古典文学大系, vol. 75 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2001), 354.

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commander Su Wu sent word to the emperor following his defeat in b­ attle by affixing a letter to the wing of a wild goose. By alluding to ­earlier narratives overtly set against a backdrop of war, Chūryō alerts readers to the unspoken uncertainty that lurks beneath the surface of his own tale. One observes a similar recontextualization of Chinese sources even in cases where it serves a less apparent narrative function. The third story in Kogarashi zōshi, an adaptation of Pu Songling’s Jiuyou 酒友 (The Drinking Companion) titled Suichō Sanjin tanuki o sake no tomo to suru koto 水鳥山人狸を酒の友とす る話 (How Old Man Waterbird Took a Tanuki as His Drinking Companion), is unique for the ­gently comic flavor it brings to the kidan, a genre other­wise generally not known for its humor. It is a “strange” tale not in the sense that it is chilling, eerie, or gruesome but by virtue of its quirkiness—­the sort of story that w ­ ill have readers, like the protagonist himself, clapping their hands in won­der (as promised in Kogarashi zōshi’s subtitle). Yet ­here, too, warfare intrudes on the narrative in its Japa­nese version. The protagonist, Old Man Waterbird, is an enthusiastic and prolific drinker whose walls are adorned with the famous drinking poems of Du Fu and Ōtomo no Tabito 大伴旅人. Late one night, he reaches over for a drink from his bedside wine jug only to find it completely empty. ­After lighting a lantern, he discovers a stranger passed out on the floor on the far side of the folding screen. The old man suspects that the intruder is in fact a tanuki in disguise, and when at length the man comes to, he starts in alarm and, sure enough, reverts to his original tanuki form. Old Man Waterbird quickly reassures the creature that, far from being angry, he is delighted to have found a worthy drinking companion. He invites the tanuki to visit whenever he pleases. The next day, the tanuki appears at the door dressed in shabby formalwear. Old Man Waterbird ushers him in, and as the wine washes away their inhibitions, he asks his new friend to provide some entertainment using his shape-­shifting abilities. The tanuki demurs and instead provides a lively rhythm by beating his paws against his ample belly. The old man begins to dance about and gradually works himself into an excited frenzy. Their friendship cemented, the two become regular drinking companions. The tanuki ­later repays the old man’s generosity by teaching him secret growing techniques that make him a rich man. His newfound wealth allows him to continue to provide wine for their gatherings, as well as to help his less fortunate neighbors. While the basic plot as described is largely the same as that of Jiuyou, the Japa­nese adaptation is several times longer and adds a wealth of colorful detail and humor, much of it resulting from the substitution of a tanuki for the fox in the original. Yet an unexpected undercurrent runs beneath the surface. Unlike Pu Songling’s source tale, which is set in an indeterminate setting both



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spatially and temporally, the adaptation is specifically situated in the village of Mama in Katsushika. Following a brief introduction extolling the virtues of wine, the scene is set as follows: Once ­there was a man who made his home near Mama in Katsushika. As Li Bai himself was known as “the Sage amidst Wine,” the man took ­these two characters, “Wine” and “Sage,” and split them into their components, giving himself the nickname “Old Man Waterbird.”14 Though his ­family did not own much land, he was of fortunate birth and had no want for clothes or food, nor need to l­abor in the fields. Three hundred sixty days a year he drank like a fish, and he cared not a whit for t­hose who chose to abstain, treating them distantly even if they ­were his own relations. ­Those who took plea­sure in wine he would gaze upon as though his beloved kin, even if he had just met them.15 The village of Mama is of course imbued with deep literary significance as the home of Tegona, the unfortunate maiden who, as told in verse in the eighth-­century poetry anthology Man’yōshū, took her own life to escape the relentless advances of her many suitors. Akinari drew on this association in making Mama the setting of Asaji ga yado, and Chūryō in turn borrows the associations established by Akinari. Just as Chūryō’s depiction of the longing wife Shizu evokes Akinari’s depiction of Miyagi in Asaji ga yado, this initial account of Old Man Waterbird brings to mind Miyagi’s husband, Katsushirō, whom Akinari introduces as follows: Once t­ here was a man named Katsushirō who made his home in the village of Mama, in the district of Katsushika, Shimōsa Province. Though his f­amily had lived t­here in comfort since his grand­father’s day and owned many fields and paddies, Katsushirō was an unserious fellow and acquired a distaste for laboring in the fields. In the end his ­family fell into poverty.16 The relationship ­here, unlike that between the parallel figures of Shizu and Miyagi, can be seen as one of g­ ently parodic inversion by an author preparing to subject the kidan to humorous treatment. At the same time, the similarity of the two opening passages permits an associative reading wherein the b­ attle 14.  The name constitutes a visual pun dependent on the original orthography: the characters 酒 (wine) and 仙 (sage) are broken into their left-­and right-­hand components (or their equivalents) as 水 (氵, ­water), 鳥 (酉, cock), 山 (mountain), and 人 (亻, man) and recombined as “Waterbird Hermit” (Suichō sanjin 水鳥山人). 15.  Kogarashi zōshi, in Ishigami, Morishima Chūryō shū, 178. 16.  Ugetsu monogatari, 59.

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that intrudes at the end of Chūryō’s story is foreshadowed at its beginning. The historical setting is not stated at the outset, yet immediately ­after the tanuki teaches Old Man Waterbird his money-­making techniques, the narrative takes a turn that is absent in the source text, as it becomes clear that the action is situated in the late sixteenth ­century, shortly before the second ­Battle of Kōnodai (1564): Around this time in this very province, the forces of Lord Satomi Yoshihiro of Awa Province and Hōjō Ujiyasu of the Odawara Hōjō of Saga­mi Province met on the battlefield at Kōnodai. As is the way of the world in such troubled times, the soldiers took to pillaging the h ­ ouses of the wealthy, plundering their gold and silver, and raping w ­ omen who caught their eye. Words cannot describe their brutality or the atrocities they committed. Some of t­ hese very men forced their way into the old man’s ­house and ­were about to dispatch him when the tanuki appeared at the door with a ­great number of his kind. As the creatures hurled stones and kicked up dirt, snapping and biting wildly, the soldiers panicked and scattered this way and that. At the tanuki’s ­orders, his friends then gathered the ­family’s belongings on their backs and headed for the hills, while he followed on their tail with Old Man Waterbird, his wife, and ­every last one of their servants. In this way, the entire f­amily was whisked off to a quiet place deep in the mountains where they could wait out the turmoil in safety. And when the Satomi clan was destroyed and peace and stability returned to the province, the tanuki led them back down to their home. So the story is told.17

Distancing the Strange In addition to resituating the strange at a historical distance, kidan adaptations are also careful to preserve the spatial distance that is a feature of many of their Chinese sources. Akinari’s settings include the mountains of Shikoku, the shores of Lake Biwa, and a farming village to the northeast of Edo, while Chūryō’s tales range from the distant northern province of Ōshū to the outskirts of Kyoto and the northern coast of Kyushu. The collections of Teishō, Chin’en, Shinrotei, and o ­ thers likewise span the length of the Japa­nese archipelago. And yet in 17.  Kogarashi zōshi, 181–84.



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spite of this geo­graph­ic­ al diversity, t­here is one setting that is seldom encountered: the city. Given that most kidan authors ­were themselves urbanites—it was the cities, ­after all, where the publishing industry was centered—as was a large share of their readership, urban settings are con­spic­uo ­ us by their general absence. Taken together with the historical remove, this geographic distance serves to isolate the strange from the present-­day realities of Tokugawa authority. ­There is, in other words, an ele­ment of po­liti­cal conservatism to the kidan. In suggesting that strange t­hings no longer happen—­and that even when they did, in eras now long past, they did so far from the urban seats of Tokugawa power—­the kidan offers an implicit cele­bration of Tokugawa rule, as Anthony Chambers has observed with regard to the specific case of Ugetsu monogatari.18 The depiction of the past as an endless succession of unrest and po­liti­cal upheaval, and the positioning of such disorder as the very condition that gives rise to the strange, brings into relief the uniqueness, indeed anomalousness, of the Tokugawa peace. Such a reading is further supported by the delicate manner in which writers tread in t­hose few tales that do venture into more proximate historical settings. Buppōsō 仏法僧 (The Owl of the Three Jewels), for example, is the only tale in Ugetsu monogatari that is set ­under Tokugawa rule, and it features fulsome praise for the regime.19 Aside from a passing laudatory reference in the preface, this is the only place in the entire collection where Akinari explic­itly ventures into such territory. Teishō’s Unkon unjō o katatte hisashiki o chikau hanashi 雲魂雲情を語つて久しきを誓ふ話 (The Clouds Opine on Their Nature and Make an Eternal Vow), in Shigeshige yawa, offers a further example. Although the action is set at a relatively safe temporal distance, nearly a c­ entury before Tokugawa rule, Teishō still hedges his bets by incorporating effusive praise for the Tokugawa peace (although this may also have to do with the tale’s position within the collection, as l­ ater discussed). ­There is, to be sure, a mea­sure of literary convention at play in historical distancing. The established device of mitate 見立て, a sort of parodic double vision or doublespeak, not only allowed but often required (given the nature of Tokugawa edicts on publishing and the theater) the use of historical settings in works describing con­temporary concerns and realities. The technique was regularly used in pieces that challenged the status quo or depicted con­ temporary scandals. Examples such as Chūshingura 忠臣蔵 or the sharp-­edged pictorial fiction (kibyōshi 黄表紙) of the 1780s come readily to mind, but a 18.  See Anthony H. Chambers, “Introduction,” in Tales of Moonlight and Rain (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 20–21. Such po­liti­cal conservatism is not unique to Akinari but is seen broadly across the kidan genre. 19.  Chambers, “Introduction,” 21.

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similar logic is at play in the kidan. Given that con­temporary events of any sort ­were off-­limits, transposing Chinese tales of the strange directly into an indeterminate and possibly present-­day setting—in the pro­cess obscuring their constructed, fictional nature—­was a risky endeavor. Ostensibly true tales of the strange did circulate in early modern Japan, but like the real-­life accounts of rebellion and unrest known as jitsuroku 実録, they did so in manuscript form, not printed volumes, and formed a distinct genre with its own conventions that differed substantially from ­those of the kidan.20 ­There is, however, more than convention at play in the kidan’s use of historical settings, as the genre’s po­liti­cal conservatism goes well beyond the token disguise that mitate often was. This is particularly true of works postdating the Kansei Reforms of the late 1780s and early 1790s. In contrast to the historical settings of the kibyōshi and other satirical or subversive genres, ­these works used the convention not to “poke holes” in the status quo but to uphold it. Indeed, the very decision by Edo authors such as Chūryō and Shinrotei to move to the relatively “safe” literary space of narrative fiction in the wake of the reforms demonstrates as much, while their references to po­liti­cal slogans of the day such as “the twin paths of the literary and martial arts” (bunbu nidō 文武二道) suggest further complicity with the bakufu’s agenda. Beyond this, they foreground the didacticism that is already implicit in tales that center around obsession and personal shortcomings that leave characters vulnerable to harm from without. This is not to say that e­ arlier kidan did not evidence a certain moral didacticism that is at times brought to the fore. The precarious situation of the protagonist of Akinari’s Jasei no in 蛇性の淫 (The Serpent’s Lust), for example, prompts an explicit moral lesson as he reflects on the lack of virtue that allowed him to be seduced by a demon in disguise.21 Another quality pointing to the po­liti­cal complicity of the kidan is the frequently anomalous nature of the opening stories within the context of the collections as a ­whole. Several opening tales begin with passages that recount the sweep of vio­lence in Japa­nese history but are not themselves set directly against a backdrop of war.22 The contrast serves to bring the Tokugawa peace into sharp relief. Other opening tales stand out for having very l­ ittle that is “strange” 20.  For a se­lection of t­hese sorts of tales, see Tsutsumi Kunihiko 堤邦彦 and Sugimoto Yoshinobu 杉本好伸, eds., Kinsei minkan ibun kaidan shūsei 近世民間異聞怪談集成 (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 2003). 21.  Ugetsu monogatari, 115. 22.  For example, in Akinari’s Shiramine 白峯 (Shiramine), the ghost of the exiled emperor Sutoku appears before the poet Saigyō in the form of a fearsome tengu 天狗 and recounts his role in the Hōgen and Heiji Rebellions and the Genpei War. The first story of Shinrotei’s Hitofutagusa shows the influence of Shiramine and likewise features an extended disquisition on military history. See Gotō Tanji 後藤丹治, Senki monogatari no kenkyū 戦記物語の研究 (Tokyo: Tsukuba Shoten, 1936), 453.



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about them. In Kogarashi zōshi, for example, the exemplary filial piety recounted in the first tale may be considered a sort of strange marvel in its own right, but ­there is no other obvious gesture to the strange or super­natural aside from an ele­ment of mystery imparted by the narrative’s noh-­like framing. The story tells of the extraordinary devotion of a young girl named Manju, whose ­mother, a lady-­in-­waiting ­under Minamoto no Yoritomo 源頼朝, is imprisoned a­ fter her failed attempt on Yoritomo’s life. Manju journeys hundreds of miles to Kama­ kura to tend to her m ­ other in captivity but finds the hillside jail cell so tightly secured that she can only gaze at the site from a distance.23 As the months pass, Yoritomo extends his rule across the realm, and a cele­ bration is held at Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine. Seizing the opportunity, Manju secures a place as one of the entertainers and offers two imayō 今様 songs in his honor. Yoritomo is delighted and summons her for a personal audience, whereupon she reveals her identity and pleads for her ­mother’s freedom. Her request is granted. Not only are virtue and a realm at peace shown to go hand in hand, but Manju’s per­for­mance can be seen as a paean to shogunal rule. The lyr­ics to her two songs read as follows: (1)  May a thousand years pass ­here upon the Hill of Cranes, and in the Valley of the Turtle let us rejoice at the promise of myriad upon myriad reigns; in the Valley of Pines ten times blooming and the Valley of Plums to match ­those of Dayu Ridge, ­here in this land at the height of splendor, our lord ever flourishing. (2)  At Kamakura Mountain, where the firewood is cut, the realm basks in your radiance, the sky above bright with stars.24 The place-­names may be specific to Kamakura, but the cele­bration of a realm at the height of its glory, together with the references to cranes, turtles, pines, and other conventional symbols of permanence and longevity, suggest an author not so subtly extolling the splendor of Tokugawa rule. A further example of the auspicious opening tale is Teishō’s Unkon unjō o katatte hisashiki o chikau hanashi, mentioned e­ arlier in passing. While t­ here is 23.  Manju ga shīkō haha no kingoku o manukareshimuru koto 満珠が至孝母の禁獄を遁れしむる話 (How Manju’s Exemplary Filial Piety Rescued Her ­Mother from Captivity). The story is one of two in the collection not based to any extent on Pu Songling, its source lying instead in a medieval “companion-­booklet,” or otogizōshi 御伽草子. 24.  Kogarashi zōshi, 159.

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no hint of warfare, the narrative does conclude with an extended paean to the Tokugawa peace. The action is set in the early sixteenth ­century at Shitennō ­Temple in Naniwa (modern-­day Osaka), where a strange confluence of winds brings together clouds from all four directions. An itinerant monk who is passing the night atop the statue of the Bud­dha, the highest point on the t­ emple grounds, listens raptly as the clouds regale him with a lengthy disquisition on the true nature of clouds. (This sort of learned discussion of a tale’s central theme or subject ­matter is not uncommon in the kidan—­in addition to clouds, the stories treated in this chapter include discourses on dreams, wine, foxes, and tanuki, among other topics—­but Teishō’s tale is somewhat unusual in that the discussion consumes virtually the entirety of the story.) Natu­ral phenomena w ­ ere long seen as reflections of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of rule in East Asia, and the clouds’ lecture culminates in a prediction of the marvelous clouds that w ­ ill fill the heavens with the dawn of Tokugawa rule a c­ entury in the ­f uture: “One hundred years hence, an age of enduring peace w ­ ill be upon us, and auspicious clouds ­will drift unceasingly through the heavens. Prosperity ­will fill the land, civilization ­will sprout thick, and the blessings of the east wind ­will be ever abundant. Even drifting clouds such as ourselves w ­ ill flap our sleeves with joy as we forever float across the sky in marvelous formations, a fitting sight for a realm at peace. Do not forget this!” With this felicitous proclamation they slowly scattered in the four directions.25 Teishō’s praise for Tokugawa rule helps avoid the risk that the strange tales that follow might in any way be perceived as subversive or other­wise critical of the regime. His language may be especially fulsome, but other opening tales likewise seek to remind readers of the uniqueness of the G ­ reat Peace as viewed through the broad lens of history. Surely it is not coincidence that many of ­these tales distance themselves from the strange Chinese “other” by relying primarily on Japa­nese source material. Akinari begins his collection with a tale that relies heavi­ly on Japa­nese martial epics and other native sources, while Chūryō’s tale of the filial ­daughter Manju draws on the medieval companion-­ booklet Karaito sōshi 唐糸草紙 (The Tale of Karaito). The noh-­like framing of the latter—in which a mysterious el­derly man appears before a visitor to the cavern where Manju’s m ­ other was imprisoned and recounts the events that 25.  Shigeshige yawa, in Shigeshige yawa, Kyokutei denki hanakanzashi, Saibara kidan, Toribeyama ­shirabeno itomichi 繁野話、曲亭伝奇花釵児、催馬楽奇談、鳥辺山調綫, ed. Tokuda Takeshi and Yoko­ yama Kuniharu 横山邦治, vol. 80 of Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei 新日本古典文学大系 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1992), 13–14.



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happened t­ here centuries ago—­reminds us, too, that the technique of the “auspicious opening” is not exclusive to such narratives but is a feature of noh and other Japa­nese theatrical traditions. The phenomenon is taken to the extreme in the kidan, where opening tales regularly celebrate Japan in general and, more particularly, as a realm at peace. In the context of the collections in which they appear, the laudatory tone and implicit contrast with the tales that follow offer readers reassurance that in their world strange ­things do not happen.

Complicating the Status Quo If the preceding discussion emphasizes the kidan’s complicity with con­ temporary po­liti­cal authority, we must nevertheless be careful not to see the genre’s relationship with power as monolithic and unwavering. By way of conclusion, let us consider one final example that points to the possibility for such tales, in spite of the many restrictions placed on authors and publishers alike, to offer re­sis­tance to the status quo. The story, from Chūryō’s Kogarashi zōshi, is an adaptation of Pu Songling’s Cuzhi 促織 (The Cricket) in which a gamecock takes the place of the fighting cricket of the original.26 The setting is a realm nominally at peace: the narrative takes place in the early ­fourteenth c­ entury, near the end of the Kamakura period. Tellingly, however, the bakufu is in its final days, on the verge of the strug­gles and vio­lence narrated in the Taiheiki 太平記—­a text that serves as an impor­tant source for the story and provides its historical “world”—­and the narrative itself depicts the tyrannical rule of the regent Hōjō no Takatoki 北条高時 and the peasant hardship that ensues. Following the logic laid out in the preceding section, this depiction might be read as praising the Tokugawa regime by way of implicit contrast, and indeed this may well be the intended surface reading. Yet the text also contains specific clues that support an interpretation of the story as a targeted critique of con­temporary rule.27 The narrative opens with a substantial exposition detailing Takatoki’s preoccupation with the sport of cockfighting and, through reference to numerous pre­ce­dents in Chinese and Japa­nese antiquity, the ill it bodes for the state. The story then hones in on the effects of Takatoki’s obsession on a small domain outside Kamakura. With birds being sent from across the land to satisfy Takatoki’s demands, the domain’s governor, Jōen, grows increasingly frustrated as 26. Chūryō titles the story Kōshi no konpaku niwatori to narite chichihaha ni saiwai o ataetaru koto 孝 子の魂魄鶏と成て父母に福を与へたる話 (How a Filial Son’s Spirit Entered a Gamecock and Brought Fortune to His Parents). 27. For a more detailed discussion of this story and its satirical undercurrent, see Fleming, “Strange Tales from Edo,” 97–100.

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all of his submissions are defeated in b­ attle. Determined to restore his honor, he redoubles his efforts and ­orders his retainer Agata Tannai to secure one bird from e­ very ­house­hold in the domain. Tannai, knowing full well that the countryside has already been thoroughly scoured, spreads word that he is willing to overlook inferior contributions in exchange for a bribe. When a virtuous peasant named Yoji chooses to report empty-­handed rather than disrespect Jōen by ­going along with Tannai’s racket, he earns a severe beating that ends only when his wife rushes in and slips a bribe into Tannai’s sleeve. Tannai, however, soon gets his comeuppance. When the next competition is held and the latest entries are all roundly defeated, the scheme is discovered and Jōen, in a fit of rage, has Tannai executed. Jōen then proceeds with a second round of requisitions, warning that any bribery this time around w ­ ill result in severe punishment. Some commenters have discerned subversive intent h ­ ere and ­there in 28 ­Kogarashi zōshi, including the pre­sent story. In the absence of specific links between the world of the story and the late eighteenth-­century context in which it was written, such readings convince only that the tale is a general critique of corruption and misrule, not a targeted satire directed against the current regime. Indeed, without specific evidence of satirical intent, Tokugawa authorities likely would have been sympathetic to a work pointing to the merits of benevolent rule. And yet ­there are clues in the text itself that, while unnoted by e­ arlier commenters, offer strong evidence of satirical intent. If any kidan tale can be read as targeted po­liti­cal satire, it is this one. While Chūryō’s depiction of Takatoki as a debauched, unvirtuous tyrant draws heavi­ly on the Taiheiki, con­temporary readers would also have been aware of the pre­ce­dent of using Takatoki as a stand-in for the shogun, the most famous (and unambiguous) example being Chikamatsu’s satirical puppet play Sagami nyūdō senbiki no inu 相模入道千疋犬 (The Sagami Lay Monk and the Thousand Dogs, premiered 1714).29 Viewing Takatoki as a stand-in for the shogun Ienari 家斉 helps account for an other­wise peculiar discrepancy in Chūryō’s choice of character names. In the Taiheiki, Takatoki’s adviser and successor as regent, Kanezawa Sadaaki 金沢貞顕, is referred to as “the lay monk Kanazawa no Taifu Sōken.” Chūryō’s tale features instead “the lay monk Kanazawa no Taifu Jōen.” What accounts for this slight, seemingly arbitrary, change? The answer emerges when we consider Jōen’s relationship to Takatoki. If Takatoki stands in for Ienari, then Tannai and Jōen, as Takatoki’s agents and 28.  See Tokuda, “ ‘Kogarashi zōshi’ to ‘Ryōsai shii,’ ” 352; and Ishigami Satoshi 石上敏, “ ‘Kogarashi zōshi’ ron: Morishima Chūryō no taisei hihan” 『凩草紙』論: 森島中良の体制批判, Okadai kokubun ronkō 岡大国文論稿 27 (1999): 10–20. 29.  On Chikamatsu’s play, see Donald  H. Shively, “Chikamatsu’s Satire on the Dog Shogun,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 18, no. 1/2 (1955): 159–80.



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the effective wielders of power, can be seen to represent Ienari’s se­nior councilors. Tannai, a heartless and corrupt administrator, evokes se­nior councilor Tanuma Okitsugu 田沼意次 in both name and deed, while Jōen, who relieves Tannai of his duties, corresponds to Tanuma’s successor, Matsudaira Sadanobu: equally ruthless, but tough on corruption. Surely it is no coincidence that the “Jō” of Jōen 定円—­Chūryō’s sole alteration of the character’s name and title as they appear in the Taiheiki—­is also the “Sada” of Sadanobu 定信. This final example thus illustrates the flipside of the literary convention of setting kidan in the historical past. The historical setting is established not as an act of submission to Tokugawa authority, but as a form of mitate that at once disguises and enables critical commentary on the con­temporary world. And yet this story is the exception, a rare complication to the tacit complicity that other­wise pervades the genre. Satire was too dangerous an undertaking to have enjoyed greater prominence, ­whether in terms of quality or of quantity. The trend in the kidan was overwhelmingly in the direction of caution, and the past, with its never-­ending parade of warfare and calamity, almost always pre­sents itself as a foil to the peace and prosperity of the pre­sent.

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Ghosts along the Road War Memory and Landscape in Medieval Narratives Elizabeth Oyler

The poetic trope of the East Country, “Azuma” (吾妻 or 東), stretches back to earliest Japa­nese rec­ords. Throughout the classical period, it figured as a place some distance from the capital at Kyoto and was made famous in poems about, in par­tic­ul­ar, travel by exiles.1 The medieval period saw a significant change, however, with the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate in the East Country, a move that raised Azuma to a position of po­liti­cal and cultural relevance. This chapter focuses on the repre­ sen­ta­tion of Azuma in two medieval texts: the idiosyncratic travelogue Kaidōki 海道記 (Rec­ord of a Journey along the Eastern Sea Route, 1223), written in the early years of the Kamakura era (ca. 1192–1333), and the monumental war tale Heike monogatari 平家物語 (Tale of the Heike, ca. f­ourteenth c­ entury), which developed over the following ­century and a half. Both narratives are concerned with poeticizing the final journeys of prisoners-­ of-­ war traveling ­toward judgment at that formerly peripheral and empty, but now potent, site. In both accounts, Azuma as a literary topos becomes a locus for addressing 1.  Although this was the prevailing ethos in much Japa­nese lit­er­a­ture and poetry throughout the Heian 平安 period (794–1185), ­there are counternarratives about the shape of the realm in historical, religious, and literary documents as well. See, for example, Mikael Adolphson, Edward Kamens, and Stacie Matsumoto, eds., Heian Japan: Centers and Peripheries (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007), which addresses the issue of alternative centers and conceptualizations of the shape of the realm in the classical age. 13 4

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larger questions associated with the upheaval represented by the violent emergence of the first shogunate, a new po­liti­cal entity that would remain profoundly impor­tant throughout the medieval and early modern periods considered in this volume. In concentrating on t­ hese two works, I draw attention to the shifting meanings of Azuma within the poetic tradition and the ways they reflect changes in cultural understanding of the East Country broadly speaking. Kamakura became a meaningful destination in its own right when it emerged as a center of power. As a tourist or pilgrimage site, the new warrior capital boasted several impor­tant ­temples and the Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine, as well as the sho­ gunal headquarters. As the seat of shogunal authority, however, it was also the site for the adjudication of disputes and ­legal ­matters, starting from the clean-up ­after the Genpei War (1180–1185), the focus of the Heike monogatari narrative considered h ­ ere. Such l­egal proceedings often involved deciding and meting out death sentences. Narrative accounts of travel to Azuma starting at the end of the twelfth c­ entury thus exhibit a seemingly contradictory convolution of impulses: they at once allude to e­ arlier poetic renderings of travel to the East Country (often taken by exiles, but ones for whom a return to the capital remained a possibility) while also acknowledging the journeys by ­those being taken along the route in full knowledge that Kamakura represented the place where they would be sentenced to die. Focusing on Kaidōki, written in 1223 in the shadow of the Jōkyū no ran 承久の乱 ( Jōkyū Disturbance, 1221), a travelogue whose irregular form is considered l­ater in this chapter, and Heike mono­ gatari, which reached its final form at the end of the ­fourteenth c­ entury, we can observe the pro­cess of knitting together ­these impulses in ways that fully incorporate the change of meaning of Azuma as the medieval period progressed.2 The chronology of events and direction of influence considered below is complicated. Kaidōki was written before Heike monogatari but ­after the events narrated in Heike monogatari took place. In recounting t­ hose events, the narrator of Heike monogatari is influenced by Kaidōki and other works and events transpiring between the 1180s and the late 1300s.3 This chronology is particularly impor­tant for this chapter, which draws attention to a story digressing from the main Heike monogatari narrative, the “Jijū setsuwa” 侍従説話 (Episode about Jijū), and its allusive relationship to the Kaidōki. Both works take as one theme journeys of prisoners-­of-­war condemned to death, and lines 2.  The Jōkyū no ran was a brief and unsuccessful attempt by the retired emperor Gotoba to wrest power from the shogunate; it was put down immediately and Gotoba was exiled to Oki, where he eventually died. 3.  The role of oral performative ele­ments as part of this development is discussed ­later in this chapter.

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from Kaidōki, including a poem about the landscape of Azuma, ­later appear in the “Jijū setsuwa.”4 As discussed below, this is accomplished through the foregrounding in Heike of a romantic encounter on the road, which brings additional layers to an already complex narrative situation. The traditional pattern of an exiled nobleman encountering a sympathetic w ­ oman on his travels in the hinterlands was well established by the medieval period, and with it the inherent gendering of spaces and the idea of movement through them. The male was associated with the center and its cultural and po­liti­cal power. That an expulsion from the center represented grave punishment underlined the center’s power. The female inhabited the wilds outside the capital, and t­ hose spaces, like the w ­ oman herself, ­were subject to discovery by the wandering male. Even though she resided on the periphery, she was nonetheless conversant in the cultured ways of the capital, and the poignancy of a romantic encounter between her and the wandering male rests on a shared understanding of the cultural centrality of the capital. ­ ere takes advantage of the liminality of The Heike narrative considered h the site of encounter (a way station along the route) to call into question conventional ideas about space, power, travel, and poetry. I argue that the intertextual relationship between Kaidōki and this portion of the Heike reflects a fundamental incorporation of thematic paradigms reaching beyond allusion to specific well-­known poems and descriptions of the landscape found in the ­earlier work. This more complicated intertextual relationship is related to what Esperanza Ramirez-­Christensen terms the “meta­phorical revision” of a constellation of thematic and linguistic concerns, ­here centered on Azuma, to address the changing significance of Kamakura and the east. The horrific story being told is “displaced from the surface of the narrative and subordinated to the demands of a highly rhetorical, unified, and moving structure of allusive images.”5 But at the same time, the meta­phorical meaning of Azuma shifts, creating new poetic terrain. How is the emergence of a warrior center at Kama­ kura incorporated into narrative practices that conventionally viewed Azuma as the hinterlands? How is historical memory constituted in the piecing together of a revered past, from which t­ here has been a traumatic rupture leading to a new pre­sent? 4.  Allusion to Kaidōki and other works in this segment of Heike is discussed in Tomikura Tokujirō 富倉徳次郎, ed., Heike monogatari zenchūshaku 平家物語全注釈 (Tokyo: Kadokawa, 1966), 3: 273–75.

In general, the influence of the travelogue Tōkan kikō is particularly strong. 5.  Esperanza Ramirez-­Christensen, in Heart’s Flower: The Life and Poetry of Shinkei (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 91–92, describes a similar pro­cess in her discussion of Shinkei’s poetics. Shinkei wrote during the Onin no ran, another period marked by military strife and shifts in cultural paradigms.

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The Azuma kudari Topos The “Jijū setsuwa” is embedded within the symbolically rich Heike monogatari episode “Kaidō kudari” 海道下 (Descent along the Eastern Sea Route), describing the journey in captivity of prisoner-­of-­war Taira no Shigehira 平重衡 (1158–1185).6 As the title implies, it depicts travel outward from the capital along the Tōkaidō 東海道, the well-­established route to the east. Shigehira was captured in the ­Battle of Ichinotani (along the coast of modern-­day Kobe City) by his clan’s rivals, the Minamoto, who would go on to defeat the Taira. He was first taken to the capital, Heian-­kyō (modern-­day Kyoto), where he began his journey to Kamakura, some three hundred miles to the east. The “Kaidō kudari” episode recounts a night spent in nostalgic reverie with the entertainer Jijū when his party lodges at the post station at Ikeda 池田 en route to Kamakura.7 Conventionally referred to as “Azuma kudari” 吾妻下 (descent to the East Country), travel to the eastern provinces via the coastal route was an ­actual and poetic commonplace by Shigehira’s day. Historically, provincial governors and their entourages followed the route to and from their postings, as did early itinerants and transporters of tax goods.8 In lit­er­at­ure and poetry, journeys like t­ hese had been the staple of journals, tales, and poetry collections. Aristocratic writers memorialized this kind of travel or i­magined what such a journey might entail with a centered realm in mind: the capital was the point of departure and the ideal final destination. The hinterlands w ­ ere novel (and thus worthy of poetic or narrative rec­ord), but not a place an aristocrat wanted to end his days or tarry too long. Thus, the topos of travel to the east, while encompassing delight in the newness of unknown scenery, was also fraught with emotions ranging from fear to longing for home. Earliest versions of this topos can be found in descriptions from the Kojiki 古事記 (712) and Nihon shoki 日本書紀 (720) of Yamato-­takeru’s 日本武 subjugation of the eastern barbarians. It takes its most familiar form in Ise monogatari 伊勢物語 (ca. ninth c­ entury), where the 6.  Taira (平) is an alternate reading of the character “Hei” in “Heike” (平家), meaning “Taira house.” The Taira w ­ ere the defeated side in the Genpei War, and Shigehira was one of their scions. Their enemies in the conflict w ­ ere the Minamoto (源), also referred to as the Genji (源氏), meaning “Minamoto clan.” Thus, the Genpei 源平 War is the war between the Genji and the Heike. Both sets of terms (Heike and Genji; Taira and Minamoto) are used in this chapter. 7.  Ikeda post station lay on one bank of the Tenryū River, in modern-­day Hamamatsu City. In one set of variants (discussed ­later in this chapter), the prisoner is his elder ­brother, Taira no Mune­ mori 平宗盛 (1147–1185). 8.  A brief outline of the history of the Tōkaidō can be found in Nihonshi daijiten 日本史大事典 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1992–1994), 5:24–25.

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protagonist, generally interpreted to be the aristocrat Ariwara no Narihira 在 原業平 (825–880), withdraws from the capital to escape censure and travels as far as the Kantō 関東 (the area around modern-­day Tokyo).9 Although the route along the Tōkaidō would be celebrated in narrative, song, and, in the Edo period, also in prints and travel guides, before the Genpei War it was mainly conceptualized as a road leading away from the capital to the eastern provinces.10 This general pattern is also imprinted on exilic itineraries, including Kaidōki and the Heike’s “Kaidō kudari” episode. It is in fact so vis­i­ble in early Japa­nese works that folklorist Orikuchi Shinobu 折口信夫 (1887–1953) labeled it the ki­ shu ryūritan 貴種流離譚, or “exile of the young nobleman” narrative trope.11 An encounter between an exile and a ­woman in a remote location is one of the defining features or, in structuralist terms, invariants of this pattern. It is found in both Ise and also Genji monogatari, and it serves as the frame for the “Jijū setsu­wa” in the Heike travel sequences. The establishment of Kamakura as the place where lawsuits w ­ ere tried and punishments meted out represented a po­liti­cal topography unfathomable before the war. Both Heike and Kaidōki address precisely the newness of this situation with varying degrees of narrative cohesiveness, and the “Jijū setsuwa” is a compelling example of how just such concerns raised first in texts like Kaidōki are worked through within the Heike repertoire. This short narrative clearly operates within the context of older tropes and narrative modes, which it employs even as it transforms their meta­phoric associations in its repre­sen­ ta­tion of a new order. The fundamental narrative situation is familiar: a banished male has a brief romantic affair with a w ­ oman on the road a­ fter he leaves 9.  The “Azuma kudari” sequence of Ise monogatari includes episodes seven through nine. Kawase Osamu 河地修, Ise monogatari ronshu: Seiritsu ron, sakuhin ron 伊勢物語論集: 成立論・作品論 (Tokyo: Chikurinsha, 2003), 237–50, addresses the role of this narrative sequence in juxtaposing Azuma with the capital (miyako). See also Sasaki Kōichi 佐々木巧一, “Kaidō kudari no michiyukibun: Biwa hōshi no shishō” 海道下の道行文：琵琶法師の詞章, in Nihon bungaku no dentō to rekishi 日本文学の伝統と歴 史, ed. Usuda Jingorō 臼田甚五郎 (Tokyo: Ōfūsha, 1975), 573, for a description of the Ise’s “Kaidō kudari” as “romance” (ローマン) for the capital dwellers who comprised its audience. 10.  See Jilly Traganou, The Tōkaidō Road: Travelling and Repre­sen­ta­tion in Edo and Meiji Japan (London: Routledge, 2004). 11.  The Kakuichi-­bon is the text chosen to represent the Heike corpus in most collections of Japa­ nese lit­er­a­ture. For a discussion of the “exile of the young noble” motif, see Orikuchi Hakase Kinen Kodai Kenkyūjo 折口博士記念古代研究所, ed., Orikuchi Shinobu zenshū 折口信夫全集 (Tokyo: Chūō Koronsha, 1976), 1:242–46. The prototype for the wandering noble takes shape with mythological exiles like Susano-­o and Yamato-­takeru. Scholars note the transformation of the mythic hero into the amorous one in Heian works, in par­tic­u­lar Ise monogatari and Genji monogatari; see, for example, Norma Field, The Splendor of Longing in The Tale of Genji (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1987), 33–39; and Haruo Shirane, The Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of “The Tale of Genji” (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), 3–4.

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the capital in disgrace. However, with the rise of Kamakura as a locus of po­ liti­cal power, the conventional spatial conceptualization of the realm on which this pattern depends did not quite fit. Before, travel to the east was framed as departing from a space, the imperial capital, that centuries of cultural and po­ liti­cal practice had laden with meaning, at least in the parlance of the poetic and monogatari traditions constituting the referential canon. But now, the east was becoming a rival cultural and po­liti­cal center, a place at which one might purposefully arrive.12

Travel along the Tōkaidō in Heike monogatari Early medieval writers w ­ ere confronted with the need to find ways to incorporate the altered po­liti­cal and cultural landscape, and many of them embraced the challenge. We witness their responses in the abundance of travel narratives written about the Tōkaidō beginning in the thirteenth c­ entury and continuing throughout the medieval period, including the travelogues Kaidōki and Tōkan kikō 東関紀行 (A Journey to the East, ca. 1242); Nun Abutsu’s 阿仏尼 Isayoi nikki 十六夜日記 ( Journey of the Sixteenth-­Night Moon, ca. 1279); and the final chapter of Lady Nijō’s Towazugatari とわずがたり (Confessions of Lady Nijō, ca. 1313).13 ­Later works from the enkyoku 宴曲 (banquet songs) repertoire are also among the most salient examples.14 The Heike was s­ haped against the backdrop of t­ hese ­earlier works, and their general influence is evident at vari­ous places within the narratives discussed in this chapter. In par­tic­u­lar, passages from Tōkan kikō and Kaidōki make their 12.  This discussion is taken from the point of view of canonical lit­er­a­ture written in the capital; much recent scholarship has underscored the economic and po­liti­cal vitality of other locations. See Adolphson, Kamens, and Matsumoto, Heian Japan. 13.  Authorship of Kaidōki and Tōkan kikō is unknown, but both describe journeys down the Tōkaidō by men around the age of fifty. See Takeda Kō 武田孝, Kaidōki zenshaku 海道記全釈 (Tokyo: Kasama Shoin, 1990), 534–38. For originals, see Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei 新日本古典文学大系 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1989–2005); Kaidōki, 51:72–127; Tōkan kikō, 51:128–37; Isayoi nikki, 51:182– 213; Towazugatari, 50:3–250. For Kaidōki, see also Takeda, Kaidōki zenshaku. Isayoi nikki and Tōkan kikō are translated in Helen McCullough, Classical Japa­nese Prose: An Anthology (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 340–76 and 421–46, respectively. Kaidōki, Tōkan kikō, and Isayoi nikki are generally considered to stand as the representative early medieval texts of kikō bungaku 紀行文学, or travelogues, and of ­these three, the first two serve as impor­tant templates and allusive referents for many l­ater medieval works. Hisamatsu Kōji 久松宏二, “Tōkan kikō: Utamakura wo tadorite Kama­ kura e” 東関紀行：歌枕を辿りて鎌倉へ, Nihon bungaku: Kaishaku to kanshō 日本文学：解釈と鑑賞 54, no. 12 (1989): 77. 14.  In per­for­mance traditions, we also encounter it in the enkyoku 宴曲 Tōgoku kudari 東国下り (The Journey Down to the Eastern Provinces) and a version in the noh Morihisa 盛久. See Sanari Kentarō 佐成健太郎, ed., Yōkyoku taikan 謡曲大観 (Tokyo: Meiji Shoin, 1937), 5:3093–3112, among ­others.

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way into two journeys to Kamakura by prisoners-­of-­war, in which the poems of famous early medieval poets are also e­ ither alluded to or borrowed. Honka­ dori 本歌取り (allusive variation on a famous poem) and other very literal borrowings have been exhaustively traced by e­ arlier scholars of Heike.15 My concern is rather with more elusive but fundamental connections between Kaidōki and the “Jijū setsuwa” in the Heike variants—­those operating primarily on the thematic level—­which ultimately give richer meaning to this brief encounter along the road and resituate the place at which it occurs. The referential connections between the two works further provide an impor­tant key for understanding the symbolic and narrative complexities that the Heike embraces as one of Japan’s most enduring and influential historical tales, and one that remained an impor­tant source for images of the warrior throughout the periods considered in this volume. The “Jijū setsuwa” appears in two basic forms in the Heike repertoire. In the more common one, Shigehira spends the night with Jijū when he lodges at Ikeda post station. In the other, it is instead his elder b­ rother Munemori who meets her while staying at Ikeda post station a year ­later, ­after he is captured in the war’s final ­battle.16 Munemori and Shigehira are the two most impor­ tant Taira prisoners; Munemori had been the Taira commander in chief, and Shigehira the only of his ­brothers who had not died on the battlefield. Like many such tangentially related narratives and digressions, the “Jijū ­setsu­wa” is most likely fictional, which is one reason for the differences found across the variants.17 Such narrative pauses seem gratuitous but in fact often create a narrative space in which the moving experiences of individuals affected by the war could be expressed. Journeys by Taira prisoners on their way to judgment at Kamakura are examples of this phenomenon. Yet ­here, as discussed below, the pathos of the prisoner’s experience is also deeply enmeshed with the articulation of newly impor­tant eastern spaces and their relationship to the old capital, a more elusive but culturally fundamental shift in meaning of the meta­phors under­lying the larger narrative. The Heike corpus consists of some eighty variants, and many of its episodes—­including the “Jijū setsuwa”—­are also constituents of other works and genres. The meanings of individual variants of the story, and of the internally contradictory body of narrative they comprise as a ­whole, is always a central concern for scholars working on texts and traditions represented in many unique versions. The following discussion is l­ imited to five variants that 15.  See, for example, Tomikura, Heike monogatari zenchūshaku, 3:262–74. 16. Tomikura, Heike monogatari zenchūshaku, 3:270–71. 17. Tomikura, Heike monogatari zenchūshaku, 3:271.

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represent the major differences of the “Jijū setsuwa.” The Kakuichi-­bon 覚一本, Engyō-­bon 延慶本, and Genpei tōjōroku 源平闘諍錄 variants all place the encounter with Jijū in Shigehira’s journey along the Tōkaidō, referred to throughout this study as the first storyline. Within this group, I concentrate on the Kakuichi-­bon, which is not only the best-­known variant ­today but also the most carefully wrought and thematically consistent, an assertion borne out in its treatment of the “Jijū setsuwa.” The second storyline is exemplified by the Genpei jōsuiki 源平盛衰記 and Nagato-­bon 長門本 variants, which place the narrative within Munemori’s journey along the Tōkaidō. Azuma kagami 東鏡, the Kamakura bakufu’s official history, does not mention the encounter in its descriptions of e­ ither prisoner’s journey, suggesting its ­fictionality.18 Within the body of works containing the first storyline, the Kakuichi-­bon variant is a base text for the performed tradition of Heike biwa, or chanting of the Tales of the Heike by blind male performers known as biwa hōshi 琵琶法師, a term roughly translated as “biwa priests,” who used the biwa (a four-­ stringed lute) to accompany their storytelling.19 Biwa hōshi enjoyed varying degrees of connection to Buddhist institutions, a relationship reflected in the tale as it is construed in per­for­mance texts like the Kakuichi-­bon. This variant stresses the Buddhist notion of the ephemerality of all h ­ uman experience, and it is generally eulogistic in tone, focusing on the members of the losing Heike side (and ­others who similarly found themselves fighting against all odds). The Kakuichi-­bon was most likely compiled by monks at Enryakuji, on Mt. Hiei, the power­f ul Tendai complex on the northeastern edge of Kyoto. A colophon dating it to 1371 states that it represents a transcription of a per­for­mance by the master performer Kakuichi.20 The Engyō-­bon, dating from 1309, is the earliest extant Heike variant. It is a text initially intended to be read rather than heard.21 It often provides a 18. However, Azuma kagami includes a description of Shigehira’s ­later encounter with Senju-­no-­ mae, discussed ­later in this chapter. Although Azuma kagami is an official history, it was compiled in the mid-­thirteenth ­century, long ­after the events of the Genpei War. Azuma kagami borrows in places from Heike in its information about the Genpei War period; however it leaves out the “Jijū setsuwa,” which suggests that it may have been recognized as fictional in the eyes of the compilers. 19.  The Kakuichi-­bon is also the variant most commonly translated into En­glish, by Helen McCullough in 1988 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press) and Royall Tyler in 2012 (New York: Penguin Classics). Tyler’s translation is used ­here ­unless other­wise noted. 20.  For a discussion of stewardship of the Kakuichi-­bon, see Hyōdō Hiromi 兵藤裕己, Heike mono­ gatari no rekishi to geinō 平家物語の歴史と芸能 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2000), 8–31. 21.  The oldest extant text, dating from 1419 or 1420, has a colophon stating it is a copy of a text dated 1309, the second year of the Engyō period; the name “Engyō-­bon” reflects this date. See Kobayashi Yoshikazu 小林義一, “Engyō-­bon Heike monogatari no seiritsu” 延慶本平家物語の成立, in Heike monogatari no seiritsu 平家物語の成立, vol. 1 of Anata ga yomu Heike monogatari あなたが読む平

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counterpoint to the Kakuichi-­bon version ­because of its alignment with the victorious Minamoto point of view and its more traditionally annalistic style.22 It is or­ga­nized more or less as a historical rec­ord, including much more extensive dating of events and more Sinitic expressions throughout, as would be expected in a proper historical rec­ord. The Genpei tōjōroku is an incomplete text prob­ably compiled by eastern warriors (rather than the priests in the capital who oversaw the compilation of the Kakuichi-­bon), and its date is unknown, although generally it is thought to have been written soon a­ fter the war. Both of t­ hese latter texts differ from the Kakuichi-­bon in not being part of per­for­mance traditions. Scholars commonly or­ga­nize the Heike variants around this basic contrast: texts w ­ ere ­either from per­for­mance lineages or closely connected to them, or they w ­ ere originally intended to be read. The elaborate taxonomy developed from this supposition helps establish ge­ne­tic relationships between texts, but that taxonomy becomes somewhat problematic when used to make generalizations about style or content. In fact, particularly in lyrical passages like the “Kaidō kudari,” and more broadly in peripheral episodes like the “Jijū setsuwa,” the a­ ctual texts of individual Heike variants tend to confound such categories: although the telling of the “Jijū setsuwa” is very similar in the Kakuichi-­bon and Engyō-­bon, for example, the texts themselves are dif­fer­ent enough in style and content to be considered the representatives of the per­for­mance and nonper­for­mance lineages, respectively. Although the following discussion focuses on the first storyline version of the “Jijū setsuwa,” a smaller group of texts locates the “Jijū setsuwa” in the second storyline, Munemori’s “Kaidō kudari.” Of ­these, the Nagato-­bon is thought to reflect an early version of the tale, but it exists ­today only in seventeenth-­century copies. It is named for the location where it was found, near the site of the final ­battle of the war.23 The Genpei jōsuiki, the most elaborate and by far the longest version of the tale, is also extant only in more recent manuscripts. Genpei jōsuiki has a discrete title, as does Genpei tōjōroku; 家物語, ed. Tochigi Yoshitada 栃木芳忠 et al. (Tokyo: Yūseidō, 1993), 91–111, for one discussion of the

Engyō-­bon’s origins. 22.  David Bialock, Eccentric Spaces, Hidden Histories: Narrative, Ritual, and Royal Authority from the “Chronicles of Japan” to “The Tale of the Heike” (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007) provides a provocative discussion of the Engyō-­bon in relation to other variants as well as within cultural practices of historical writing in Japan. 23.  See Ozaki Isamu 尾崎勇, “Nagato-­bon Heike monogatari no seiritsuken to buntai” 長門本平 家物語の成立圏と文体, in Heike monogatari no seisei 平家物語の生成, ed. Yamashita Hiroaki 山下宏明 (Tokyo: Kyuko Shoin, 1997), 197–220. The oldest Nagato-­bon text was held at the t­emple Amidaji (now Akama jinja shrine), in modern-­day Shimonoseki city. Amidaji was established to commemorate (and placate the spirits of ) the victims of the ­battle fought on the straits of Dannoura, which lie directly in front of the ­temple precincts.

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­Table 5.1.  Heike variants and the “Jijū setsuwa” VARIANT

EXILED TAIRA MALE

UNIQUE NARRATIVE ELE­M ENTS

Kakuichi-­bon

Shigehira

Jijū longs for ailing ­mother

Genpei tōjōroku

Shigehira

Jijū praises blossoms of the east

Engyō-­bon

Shigehira

None

Genpei jōsuiki

Munemori

None

Nagato-­bon

Munemori

Yuya/Munemori/Kiyomune poetry exchange

Storyline 1

Storyline 2

the o ­ thers are more properly the Kakuichi-­bon Heike monogatari (Heike mono­ gatari, Kakuichi recension), Engyō-­bon Heike monogatari (Heike monogatari, Engyō recension), and so forth. The second storyline found in the Genpei jōsuiki and Nagato-­bon recensions provides a contrasting narrative, but one that shares thematic concerns raised in the first storyline, suggesting a general movement with regard to characterizing the east and Ikeda. Key features in the variants considered below are tabulated in t­ able 5.1. The Kakuichi-­bon pre­sents the most familiar and fullest version of the first storyline. Following his capture at the ­battle of Ichinotani, Shigehira is paraded through the streets of the capital (Kyoto) and then sent to Kamakura, where Minamoto no Yoritomo 源頼朝 (1147–1199), the general of the opposing ­Minamoto clan, had established his headquarters. Shigehira was the general responsible for the burning of Nara at the outset of the war, an event leading to devastating destruction of ­temple property and loss of life. He was thus an impor­tant prisoner. His journey from the capital follows the Tōkaidō, identifying points along the route as his party passes through them. ­After his meeting with Yoritomo in Kamakura, he is kept in nearby Izu ­until the end of the war, at which point he is sent back up the Tōkaidō for execution at Nara. Figure 5.1 provides a map of his journey. Sending a captive down the Tōkaidō for judgment somewhere outside the capital was novel and disconcerting for aristocrats in Shigehira’s time, in large part ­because it ­violated prevailing spatial conceptualizations. Still, on the surface the Heike’s rendering of Shigehira’s journey cleaves to such e­ arlier models as Ise monogatari. As he passes famous sites, he quotes or composes poems to mark his pro­gress. The poeticization of the exilic journey places him in the com­pany of his literary pre­de­ces­sors, particularly Ariwara no Narihira, but also Semimaru 蝉丸, as well as Shigehira’s contemporaries like Fujiwara no Yoshi­ tsune 藤原良経 (1169–1206) and Saigyō 西行 (1118–1190). Close to its end (and

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Figure 5.1.  Shigehira’s Journey, Tale of the Heike. Drawn by John F. Oyler.

farther from familiar poetic terrain), the narrative lifts passages verbatim from ­ ill return to below. In Heike, this is presented the travelogue Kaidōki, a topic I w as a michiyuki 道行 (travel sequence). It is in part articulated in the shichigochō 七五調 pattern (alternating lines of five and seven morae), the rhythm of waka 和歌 poetry and song, and the pulse of michiyuki in the emerging narrative and dramatic genres of the medieval and early-­modern periods, including noh, kōwakamai 幸若舞, and kojōruri 古浄瑠璃.24 Per­for­mance of this sequence in the Heike biwa 平家琵琶 (recitation of the Heike) tradition relies heavi­ly on lyrical kyokusetsu 曲節 (melodic patterns), including shojū 初重, chūon 中音, and the ageuta/sageuta 上歌/下歌 pairing. All of t­ hese patterns are generally associated with recitation of poetry and/or moments of heightened emotion.25 As Shigehira reaches Ikeda post station, he spends the night with the ­daughter of the chōja 長者—­a term Tyler translates as “the ­woman who kept the post-­station inn” and McCullough translates as “brothel-­keeper.”26 The passage is as follows: 24.  Kōwakamai is a performing art involving the recitation by two actors (supported by a chorus) of a short dramatic narrative generally drawn from the Heike or a related narrative. Kojōruri w ­ ere dramatic narratives that became one impor­tant basis for the late medieval development of the puppet theater. 25. Tomikura, Heike mongatari zenchūshaku, 269–72. A nuanced discussion of ­these melodic patterns can be found in Alison Tokita’s “Narrated and Danced Memory of War and Resignation: The Role of Musical Delivery,” chapter 6 in this volume. 26.  However, the Yashiro-­bon, another per­for­mance text, instead identifies Yuya as the ­woman with whom Shigehira spends the night. This attribution is also shared by the noh Yuya, discussed ­later in this chapter, which identifies the d­ aughter as Yuya rather than Jijū. Tomikura, Heike monogatari zenchūshaku, 3:270. For original, see Asahara Yoshiko 麻原美子, Haruta Akira 春田晃, and Matsuo

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And across Hamana Bridge: chill wind in the pines, inlet shore noisy with waves adding ­little more to the gloom of traveling through failing light and the dark thoughts of nightfall he came at long last to the inn at Ikeda. Yuya, the ­woman who kept the post-­station inn, had a d­ aughter named Jijū, and Shigehira lodged at Jijū’s that night. She said when she first saw him, “I could never have given you a poem in the past, not even through someone ­else. How extraordinary, then, to see you h ­ ere t­ oday!” And she presented him with this: ­Under traveler’s skies / in this wretched hut / how painfully / must you be longing / for home. Tabi no sora / hanifu no koya no / ibusesa ni / furusato ikani / kohishikaruramu. Shigehira replied: Home, even, / does not inspire longing / ­under traveler’s skies / since the capital ­will not be / my final dwelling. Furusato mo / kohishiku mo nashi / tabi no sora / miyako mo tsuhi no / sumika naraneba. “Her poem is so nicely done!” he exclaimed “Who on earth is she?” Kajiwara (his captor) politely replied, “My lord, do you not yet know her? When Lord Munemori, now at Yashima, governed this province, he called her into his personal ser­vice and loved her beyond all o ­ thers. Having left her old m ­ other ­here, she often asked for permission to go home, but he would never grant it. One year, early in the third month, she gave him: What to do? / Springtime in the capital / is precious to me / yet I fear the scattering / of beloved eastern blossoms. Ikani semu / miyako no haru mo / oshikeredo / nareshi azuma no / hana ya chiruran. That did the trick: he let her go. Ashie 松尾葦江, eds., Yashiro-­bon, Kōya-­bon taishō Heike monogatari 屋代本・高野本対照平家物語 (Tokyo: Shintensha, 1990–1993), 3:118.

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­ here is no other poet like her T anywhere along the Tōkaidō.”27 On the surface, this is a typical lyrical exchange. The vocabulary used to describe travel is both emotionally charged and conventional: the wind in the pines and the sound of the waves at Hamana evoke loneliness, as does the twilight that brings Shigehira to Ikeda post station. Jijū’s remarks underline the contrast between Shigehira’s past and pre­sent. Before, he would be unapproachable, but now, he is her guest in such a place. In her poem, she characterizes the inn as hanifu no koya (“this wretched hut”). Both it and tabi no sora (“traveler’s skies”) are oft-­used terms evoking travel to the hinterland, and they add texture to the motif of loneliness with which the encounter begins. The images move from the hinterland to the furusato (“home”), a concrete place that is the opposite of the hanifu no koya. Shigehira’s response clearly equates miyako (“the capital”) with sumika (“dwelling”), yet, he claims in his return poem, the furusato cannot evoke longing. This characterization at once embraces the idea of the capital as the home base and nods ­toward a negation of its stature (“does not inspire longing” [kohishiku mo nashi]; “. . . ​ ­will not be my final dwelling” [sumika ni naraneba]) that w ­ ill haunt the rest of the passage. The shape of the exchange is, of course, familiar. At a moment of heightened emotion, two ­people compress their disordered emotions into traditional language, and the second incorporates the vocabulary of the first to acknowledge their mutually shared experience.28 This exchange is then followed by the “Jijū setsuwa,” which further complicates the very idea of what “home” means.29 But as in the framing narrative, ­here the specific geographic referents are conventionally allusive—­the capital is the furusato; the eastern hinterland in which it lies renders the post station a “wretched hut.” Scholars have noted that the story of Jijū’s composition of the “scattering blossoms” poem is, at base, a waka kawa 和歌佳話, an episode of exemplary waka composition, and that its probable provenance was outside the Heike 27.  I have slightly retranslated this passage, and the poems in par­tic­u­lar, to facilitate easier comparison of vocabulary across variants and with Kaidōki; Tyler’s translations can be found in Royall Tyler, The Tale of the Heike (New York: Penguin, 2012), 539–40. The original text may be found in Kajihara Masaaki 梶原正明 and Yamashita Hiroaki, eds., Heike monogatari (ge), volume 45 of Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei, 216–17. 28. Taiyō Kazutoshi 大洋和俊, “Heike monogatari to waka” 平家物語と和歌, in Shizuoka Eiwa Jogakuin Tanki Daigaku kenkyū kiyō 静岡英和女学院短期大学研究紀要 10 (Shizuoka: Shizuoka Eiwa Daigaku, 2002), 24. 29.  The reversal of the meaning of “home” in this narrative is also noted by Terry Kawashima, Itineraries of Power: Texts and Traversals in Heian and Medieval Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard East Asia Monographs, 2016), 110–17.

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narrative. When incorporated into the Heike, it is added as a flashback, or retroversion.30 It appears in this form only in the performance-­based texts with close ties to the Kakuichi-­bon. The Genpei tōjōroku instead recounts that Jijū composed the poem upon a return to Ikeda from a sightseeing trip to the capital. It was simply an explanation for hurrying home despite the fact that the cherry blossoms ­were still in bloom t­here.31 But both texts note that “­there is no poet like her anywhere along the Tōkaidō” (Kaidō ichi no meijin 海道一名人). This characterization provides one basis for the assertion that the origins of the setsuwa may lie in narrative traditions about the Tōkaidō more generally and that it was, in vari­ous forms, altered to fit into the Heike narrative at this juncture. The Engyō-­bon does not include the retroversion at all, but rather concludes with the initial poetry exchange.32 By contrast, in the second storyline found in the Nagato-­bon and Genpei jōsuiki, Jijū appears during Munemori’s travel sequence, which occurs over a year ­after Shigehira’s. Munemori has been taken captive in the war’s final ­battle at Dannoura, where he was dragged from the ­water when he hesitated to drown himself with the rest of his clan. One explanation for his reluctance to die was his affection for his eldest son, Kiyomune, who was also captured in the ­battle. The two are taken together down the Tōkaidō for judgment. In Genpei jōsuiki and the Nagato-­bon, the story of the Jijū-­Munemori affair is transposed into a first encounter at Ikeda as the captives make their way to Kamakura: ­ here was a female performer (yūjo 遊女) named Jijū. She was a ­woman T of deep sentiment, and she spent the ­whole night consoling Munemori. ­Because he was miserable from the journey, Munemori could not even look at her, but the ­woman passed the entire night ­there before him. When the time came for her to leave, she said: On the eastern road / in this wretched hut / how painfully / must you be longing / for home. Azumaji no / hanifu no koya / ibusesa ni / furusato ikani / koishikaruran. Moved, he replied: Home / does not inspire longing / u ­ nder traveler’s skies / since the capital ­will not be / my final home. 30. Tomikura, Heike monogatari zenchūshaku, 271. 31.  Fukuda Toyohiko 福田豊彦 and Hattori Kōzō 服部幸造, eds., Genpei tōjōroku: Bandō de uma­ reta Heike monogatari 源平闘諍録: 坂東で生まれた平家物語 (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1999–2000), 2:503–9. 32.  Kitahara Yasuo 北原保雄 and Ogawa Eiichi 小川栄一, eds., Engyō-­bon Heike monogatari honbun hen 延慶本平家物語本文編 (Tokyo: Benseisha, 1990), 2:312–17.

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Furusato mo / kohishiku mo nashi / tabi no sora / miyako mo tsuhi no / sumika naraneba.33 ­ hese are almost identical to the poems exchanged by Shigehira and Jijū in T the other variants, with the exception of the substitution of the more geo­ graph­i­cally descriptive Azumaji (“the eastern road”) for tabi no sora (“traveler’s skies”) in Jijū’s poem. But again, we have an exchange in which Jijū imagines the captive’s sense of dislocation, and his response heightens the feelings of removal, sadness, and an awareness of the inevitability of his execution. The Nagato-­bon account ends at this point, but the Genpei jōsuiki ­continues: This female performer (yūjo) Jijū was the ­daughter of Yuya, the post station’s mistress (chōja). Jijū returned and told her ­mother about the eve­ning, . . . ​and Yuya, deeply moved, . . . ​wrote a letter to Kiyomune. When Kiyomune took it to his f­ ather, ­there was a poem scribbled in the margin: Thinking of you / I, too / wring it out: / this robe drenched from travel / on the Eastern road. Morotomo ni / omohiawasete / shiborurashi / Azumaji ni / tatsukoromo bakari zo. [Touched by this,] Munemori answered: Since we departed along / the Eastern road / ­there has not been a moment / when our traveler’s sleeves / ­weren’t drenched with tears. Azumaji ni / omohitachinuru / tabikoromo / namida ni sode ha / kawaku ma zo naki. Kiyomune responded: In the three years / that have worn us down /as we made the road our pillow, / has anything drenched our sleeves / like this Eastern road? Mitose heshi / kokoro sukushi no / tabine ni mo / azumaji bakari / sode ha nurawaji.34 Again, this is a conventional exchange, where poetry is motivated by strong emotion, and each poem builds on the image patterns established in the one preceding it. Note h ­ ere also the way the poems situate the speakers in the East Country: where the exchange in the first storyline did not exhibit such geographic specificity, in this account, in both the surrounding narrative and the 33.  Mizuhara Hajime 水原一, ed., Shintei Genpei jōsuiki 新定源平盛衰記 (Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ōraisha, 1991), 5: 86; Shigehira digression, 5:145–46. 34. Mizuhara, Shintei Genpei jōsuiki, 5:87.

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poems themselves, the speakers note that they are in Azuma, the east. They all characterize it as a lonely, distant place, but the context of the exchange, as we ­shall see, resonates with certain ele­ments in the embedded “Jijū setsuwa.” Further, ­here Jijū is explic­itly identified as a yūjo, or female performer; the Engyō-­bon and other texts refer to her as a yūkun 遊君 (female performer), another word suggesting a specific social status I ­will return to l­ater.35 This meeting between Munemori and Jijū is somewhat analogous to Shigehira’s more famous encounter with Senju-­no-­mae 千手前 (found in all variants), whom he meets as he awaits judgment in Kamakura. Like Jijū at Ikeda, Senju-­no-­mae is the ­daughter of a post station chōja and a sympathetic and soothing presence who does what she can to console the captive, although the account of Shigehira’s encounter with Senju-­no-­mae also exhibits complex religious dimensions absent from any version of the Jijū story. In par­tic­u­lar, her name, “Senju,” is considered a reference to the thousand-­armed Kannon (Senju Kannon 千手観音), the bo­dhi­sat­tva of mercy.36 The Senju-­no-­mae episode prob­ably provided a model for rendering the Jijū encounter in the Genpei jōsuiki and Nagato-­bon (the two texts representing the second storyline). In this alternative version, Munemori’s meeting with Jijū provides a parallel situation to Shigehira’s encounter with Senju-­no-­mae, as Munemori follows the same route for the same reasons as had the younger ­brother, Shigehira. Moreover, in place of a meeting with Jijū in the Genpei jōsuiki, Shigehira’s michiyuki includes, as a narrative digression in the travel sequence, an inserted story concerning the origin of a thousand-­armed Kannon statue at Chōkōji 長光寺 ­temple, located at the base of Kagamiyama 鏡山 (“Mirror Mountain”) just southeast of Lake Biwa. That the bo­dhi­sat­tva with whom Senju-­no-­mae is frequently associated would appear at this parallel point in the Genpei jōsuiki narrative suggests yet another connection between the Jijū and Senju-­no-­mae stories. Like many other itsuwa 逸話—­digressive, extra episodes—­from the Heike, the “Jijū setsuwa” takes on a life of its own in other genres. Most obvious in this case is the noh play Yuya 熊野, in which the plight of the ­woman (­there identified as Yuya rather than Jijū) longing to return home to her aged m ­ other 35.  Kitahara and Ogawa, Engyō-­bon Heike monogatari, 2:313. 36.  For a discussion of the placatory role played by Senju-­no-­mae, see Yamashita Hiroaki 山下宏 明, Katari to shite no Heike monogatari 語りとしての平家物語 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1994), 123–26. Steven Nelson has noted the significance of the musical pieces the two perform as further indicative of the importance of placating Shigehira: “Performing Salvation: Song in ‘Senju no Mae’ and Zen­ chiku’s Senju (-­Shigehira),” delivered at Translations and Transformations: The Heike monogatari in Nō Conference, April 29, 2005. Nelson also posits that the scene with Hōnen serves a specifically placatory role as well. The fact that two more intimates—­the lady-­in-­waiting and Shigehira’s wife, Dainagon-­no-­suke—­renounce the world to pray for him ­after he is executed only reinforces the fear with which his spirit was viewed.

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in the east is perhaps most evocatively expressed. As a stand-­alone version of the heroine’s captivity and release, it is surely the most impor­tant vehicle for securing a place for this story in the popu­lar imagination.37 Set in the capital, ­ oman’s recitation of the “scattering blossoms” the highlight of Yuya is the w poem as she dances before Munemori at Kiyomizudera. However, although the play is set in the capital, Yuya—­with the stated referent being the main character (shite シテ) of the noh play—­became commemorated in the broader cultural tradition, not in Kyoto, but rather in the environs of what once was the Ikeda post station just east of Hamana, Shizu­ oka prefecture. ­Today, one can visit graves purportedly belonging to Yuya and her m ­ other, read the poem that won her release from ser­vice, and, in the spring, enjoy the Yuya no nagafuji (“Yuya’s wisteria”) at Gyōkōji, also known as Yuyadera (“Yuya ­temple”), in nearby Iwata-­shi.38 Itasaka Yōko notes that as the medieval period wore on, such sites, and tourism associated with them, ­were crucial in altering the ways ­people conceptualized the historical events that gave shape to the realm in the wake of the Genpei War and the po­liti­cal and military strug­gles following it.39 The physical markers locating Yuya at Ikeda perform at least two functions in the wider realm of cultural and historical reception of her story that resonate with Itasaka’s assertions. First, they map that locale so as to situate the story specifically within the Heike narrative—­Ikeda is, ­after all, where Shigehira ­later met Jijū/Yuya, which amplifies the connection between her story and Shigehira’s travel to Kamakura for judgment. Secondly, they suggest a growing awareness and reification of famous historical narratives (including fictional ones) in spaces that had e­ arlier been more closely allied with the poetic and artistic imagination. What does it mean to include Jijū’s story in the exilic narrative of Shigehira, and specifically 37.  In structure, the play resembles a number of plays about other performing ­women found in the Heike tradition (specifically, Giō and Shizuka). That it is a popu­lar piece in the modern repertoires of all major noh schools suggests its salience and cultural significance. It moreover resonates with other stories from the Genpei period, including ­those of the shirabyōshi dancers Giō and Shizuka, both of whom ­were yūjo, had close ties to their ­mothers, w ­ ere held by men (one, like Yuya/Jijū as a lover, the other as a prisoner), and expressed grievances against their captors in song or poetry. 38.  Photos can be found at http://­kanko​-­iwata​.­jp​/­tanoshimu​/­tanoshimu​-­769​/­. Accessed October 23, 2020. 39.  Itasaka Yōko 板坂陽子, “Chihō no bungaku” 地方の文学, in Iwanami kōza Nihon bungakushi 岩波講座日本文学史 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1996) 10: 269–91, esp. 285–91. See also Edward Kamens, Utamakura, Allusion, and Intertextuality in Traditional Japa­nese Poetry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 225, for a discussion of how the “fetishization of waka-­related objects, and places, . . . ​[had, by the Edo period] become part of tourism, . . . ​absorbed into a burgeoning culture of commodity manufacture and exchange.” His work draws attention to the broader contexts of movement, commercialism, and the changing shape of the polity during the Edo period, of which the reification of historical sites described by Itasaka is one impor­tant, and somewhat differently significant, manifestation.

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to commemorate her as the w ­ oman of Ikeda, for whom the scattering blossoms of the old capital could not prevent her from yearning for home?

Longing for Azuma in Heike monogatari As it appears in the Kakuichi-­bon, the “Jijū setsuwa” is a mise en abyme representing both a reversal of the spatial semantics of the narrative of exile in which it is embedded and a refiguring of the meta­phorical meaning of Azuma. For while her poem aligns her emotionally with Shigehira, Jijū’s story is the inverse of his: she was captive in Kyoto, and her furusato is Ikeda. She sympathizes with him ­because they have both experienced alienation, but they have done so in juxtaposed locales. Where home can be and what it can mean are of central concern ­here. Jijū’s own story reverses the conventional direction of nostalgic desire for “home,” where home is always the old capital, thus questioning the centrality of Kyoto (and the peripheral status of places like Ikeda). That her poem represents a challenge to traditional ways of thinking about the geography of the realm is further underlined by the value it acquires ­here: the poem is remembered ­because it successfully expresses, via conventional idiom, something unexpected. She turns Ikeda into an object of refined homesickness, an emotion usually directed to the capital. In her world, it is the center. But Ikeda is also a post station, the embodiment of transitoriness for the traveler who only ever passes through it; in the frame narrative, she in fact refers to it as hanifu no koya, a “wretched hut.” It is, moreover, the kind of place at which in the past she could not imagine finding someone of Shigehira’s status. Her story thus embodies a double conundrum for e­ arlier configurations: her furusato is not only not the capital but is also a roadside stop. To complicate the issue, in all versions, Jijū is ­either the ­daughter of the chōja or a “female performer” (yūjo or yūkun), categories suggesting ephemeral plea­sure and a lack of place and emotional attachments within traditional social structures. W ­ omen like her represent challenges to conventional hierarchies and stand as markers of the instability of t­ hose hierarchies throughout medieval lit­er­a­ture in general and in Heike stories in par­tic­u­lar. Notable examples are Giō, whose story defies Kiyomori’s authority early in Genpei narrative, and Shizuka, who flouts Yoritomo’s authority a­ fter the war’s conclusion.40 Like Jijū, both ­women are at best semihistorical and more likely 40.  Roberta Strippoli, Dancer, Nun, Ghost, Goddess: The Legend of Giō and Hotoke in Traditional Japa­ nese Lit­er­a­ture, Theater, and Cultural Heritage (Leiden, Neth.: Brill, 2017), addresses ­these issues, focusing particularly on the figure of Giō.

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fictional, but they serve the impor­tant narrative and symbolic role of mirror figures, reflecting the problematic nature of the power­f ul men who strive to control them and who represent conventional ­orders. Particularly in the art of Heike biwa, they also resonate as textual mirrors of the performers of the tale, themselves often mobile, liminal figures who fulfilled the necessary but uncomfortable task of remembering, and thus placating, the angry dead. In this narrative, too, the performing w ­ oman confounds the conventional order, but in a somewhat unique way. For h ­ ere she markedly represents settledness—­the opposite of the unfettered life of a performer—­and her residence, the inn, is a “home” where she cares for her aged m ­ other. By contrast, Shigehira, ­until very recently the embodiment of the social structure, ­here implies movement and, through his status as a prisoner, a removal from the kinds of social stature and place he enjoyed before the war, as Jijū suggests. The reversal of their statuses mirrors the ambivalence of the place at which they meet. Ikeda is at once home—­point of departure and ideally also of return—­and a waypoint, precisely the sort of locale between places where one does not linger.41 In terms of the narrative structure, this juxtaposition is further highlighted in the Kakuichi-­bon (and to a lesser extent the Genpei tōjōroku) through the shift of the narrative subject from the prisoner to the ­woman, a rhetorical turn that also complicates conventional characterizations we associate with the exile of the young nobleman pattern. The exile’s story is interrupted by that of the provincial w ­ oman with whom he spends the night. Her story is elicited by his query, and it is told by his captor, Kajiwara. In this sense, her story is not her own; and she is in fact absent from the narrative space where it is told. However, this is a story about her exemplary poem, and poetry ­here as elsewhere gives voice to an individual poet. Her composition and recitation of a celebrated waka establishes her subjectivity. Quotation within the Heike validates her cultural worth. Although the digressive nature of the story-­within-­a-­story potentially contains and diminishes the embedded narrative, the very nature of the travel narrative reverses that tendency. The michiyuki by definition is a paced travel sequence, and pauses like this one (the longest in Shigehira’s michiyuki in the Kakuichi-­bon) add gravitas to specific places and persons along that route. In per­for­mance, their narrative importance is quite literally given voice in the slow, decorative recitation of the poems by the Heike biwa singer, another level of narrative framing that at once contains and liberates Jijū’s story in its reenactment of her own per­for­mance. 41.  Terry Kawashima also raises this point in Itineraries of Power, 117.

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While the very subject positions depicted ­here of Shigehira and Jijū confound conventional paradigms associated with exilic travel, the meaning of home, the tension between Heian-­kyō and the East Country, the degree to which their encounter represents a meta­phoric shift in the way such movement is conceptualized is better understood by bringing Kaidōki, a text on which the Kakuichi-­bon in par­tic­u­lar relies heavi­ly, into our discussion. Kaidōki’s influence, in fact, colors all versions of the “Jijū setsuwa,” and considering the two narratives side by side deepens our understanding of how and what the Jijū narrative means within the Heike and in terms of its role in changing notions of center and periphery in medieval society more broadly.

Kaidōki and Medieval Travel along the Tōkaidō Generally categorized by modern scholars as a travel essay (kikōbun 紀行文), Kaidōki rec­ords a journey of pilgrimage to Kamakura made in 1223—­two years ­after the Jōkyū Disturbance, thirty-­eight years ­after the Genpei War, and eighty-­ six years before the earliest Heike variant took its finished form. Kaidōki is an impor­tant text in its own right, but two of its characteristics are of par­tic­ul­ar significance for this study. First, before, during, and ­after his journey, the narrator, an aging Buddhist novice traveling to Kamakura to see the sites, worries about his aged m ­ other, whom he has left b­ ehind in Kyoto. Concern over her failing health in fact ­causes him to cut short his stay and hurry home.42 Second, embedded in the Kaidōki narrative is what some scholars characterize as a placatory rumination on the journey in captivity of (Fujiwara) Nakamikado Chūnagon Muneyuki (藤原)中御門中納言宗行 and several of his comrades.43 Muneyuki was a champion of the throne in the Jōkyū Disturbance, 42.  The meanings of the capital for the Kaidōki narrator are discussed in Kira Yumiko 吉良由美 子, “Kaidōki ni okeru ‘miyako’ no imi: Shuppatsuten ga tabi wo oyobosu eikyō” 海道記における「京 都」の意味：出発点が旅を及ぼす影響, Shirayuri Joshi Daigaku gengo bungaku ronshū 1 (2001): 18–30. Kira emphasizes the juxtaposition of Kyoto and Kamakura, as well as the layers of meaning associated with the capital as “home”: the place from which he comes, the home of his ­mother, for whom he is responsible, and the home of the Jōkyū prisoners. The capital is clearly a place for which he longs and from which he must remove himself to perform the Buddhist practice of mourning the dead that, Kira argues, lies at the heart of the work. A similar hurried return to the capital out of concern for a sick motherlike figure can also be found in Utatane, by the nun Abutsu, a work postdating Kaidōki. ­Whether or not this reflects an incorporation of a trope from Kaidōki is unclear. For Utatane, see Ishihara Shōhei 石原昭平, Tsumoto Nobuhiro 津本信博, and Nishizawa Masashi 西沢正 史, eds., Kenrei Mon’in Ukyō no Daibu shū, Utatane, Takemuki ga ki 建礼門院右京大夫集, うたたね, 竹 むきが記 (Tokyo: Benseisha, 1990); in En­glish, see John R. Wallace, “Fitful Slumbers: Nun Abutsu’s Utatane,” Monumenta Nipponica 43, no. 4 (1988): 391–98. 43.  Tonekawa Kiyoshi 利根川清, “Kaidōki no rekishisei: Chūnagon Muneyuki no kiji wo chūshin ni” 海道記の歴史生：中納言宗行の記事を中心に, in Gunki monogatari no keifu to tenkai 軍記物語の系

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Figure 5.2.  Narrator’s Journey, Kaidōki. Drawn by John F. Oyler.

the former sovereign Gotoba’s ill-­fated attempt to wrest power from the Kama­ kura shogunate in 1221. Captured by the shogunate’s forces, Muneyuki was taken down the same route Shigehira and Munemori followed t­oward Kamakura, only to be executed at Aizawa before reaching the warrior capital. So, like the “Jijū setsuwa” within the “Kaidō kudari” episode, Muneyuki’s sad end is a secondary narrative embedded within a rec­ord of someone ­else’s travel along the Tōkaidō.44 As the Kaidōki narrator travels to Kamakura, he describes events associated with Muneyuki’s journey at each significant locale he passes (see figure 5.2). In par­tic­u­lar, he recalls poems Muneyuki left ­behind and then composes his own as he imagines Muneyuki’s state of mind at each place. As he leaves Kisegawa and nears the locale of Muneyuki’s execution, the weight of that ­earlier journey becomes heavier. Arriving at Aizawa, the narrator recalls Nari­ hira’s na ni shiowaba poem—­composed as the hero reached the Sumida River—­ from Ise monogatari as he mentally conjures Muneyuki’s final day:45

譜と展開, ed. Kajihara Masaaki 梶原正昭 and Kajihara Masaaki Sensei Koki Kinen Ronbunshū Kankōkai 梶原正昭先生古稀記念論文集刊行会 (Tokyo: Kyūko Shoin, 1998), 385–402, esp. 390–99; see also Iide Atsuko 飯豊敦子, “Kaidōki to Jōkyū no ran” 海道記と承久の乱, 353–68, in the same volume. 44.  For further discussions of the Jōkyū prisoners in Kaidōki, see Kira, “Kaidōki ni okeru ‘miyako’ no imi,” esp. 20–22; Chiba Satoru 千葉覚 and Komuro Keiko 小室啓子, “Kikōbun Kaidōki ni tsuite” 紀 行文海道記について, Bunkyō Daigaku Joshi Tankidaigakubu kenkyū kiyo 50 (2007): 1–8, esp. 3. 45.  Narihira’s well-­known composition from Ise monogatari: Na ni shiowaba / izakoto towamu / miyakodori / waga omou hito ha / ari ya nashi ya to (If your name holds true, / let me ask, capital bird: / the one for whom I yearn—­/ how does she fare?). A translation of the episode can be found in Steven D. Car­ter, Traditional Japa­nese Poetry: An Anthology (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 77–78.

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We left Kisegawa and traversed a plain called Aizawa. On this plain ­were more villages than one could count. Traveling so very far: passing through ­here, the escort said, “It is time for me to beg leave of you.” Muneyuki responded, “­There is something I still must do; give me a moment.” His request was granted. How long the journey to this point! He was no dif­fer­ent from a lamb being led to the slaughter. Even on a journey made with a clear heart, the sound of the waves, the wind in the pines, and the traveler’s skies move one to recognize the mutability of t­hings. How much more for one sunk in the depths of sorrow, just like Yang Guifei as she set out for Mawei, making that final journey through that border guarded by the ox-­headed deity. Turning his heart to ­those he cared for in the capital, he must have remembered the line, “how does she fare?” How much he must have wanted to hear from home once more! But this was not the Sumida River, so t­ here was no bird to query. On this plain, he parted from the light of day and dis­ appeared along the gloom of the road leading below. In the capital / how can it be? Spring now ends / for t­hose fair blooms / that fall in this eastern land / Autumn’s leaves scatter. Miyako wo ba / ikani hanabito / haru taete / Azuma no aki no / ko no ha to wa chiru.46 The narrator’s imagining of Muneyuki’s death lyrically animates the scene, even as his temporal distance from it is marked within the text through his repeated use the conjectural auxiliary verb kemu. Although this grammatical marking creates a gap between the narrator who imagines and the a­ ctual experiences of Muneyuki, t­ here is a degree of indeterminacy of subject for the phrase “Traveling so very far . . .” that immediately obscures that temporal distance. Takeda suggests that this indeterminacy reflects the narrator’s m ­ ental turmoil, his inability to maintain his distance from Muneyuki’s plight.47 On one hand, Muneyuki’s a­ ctual experience cannot be fully known, but on the other, the narrator seems to be overtaken by the past as he tries to enfold Muneyuki’s journey within the narrative space of his own. This blurring of past and pre­sent occurs at a locale the narrator emphatically characterizes as a border associated with death. Like Yang Guifei at Mawei, Muneyuki h ­ ere met the ox-­headed guardian at the entrance to the meido 冥途, the path to the underworld. That border immediately is overlaid by the geo­g raph­i­cal boundary of the Sumida River in Narihira’s poem from Ise 46. Takeda, Kaidōki zenshaku, 338. 47. Takeda, Kaidōki zenshaku, 342.

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­monogatari. The Kaidōki narrator thus situates himself at a threshold between life and death that is also a conventional border between the capital and the east, a place imbued with meaning via poetic allusions. This rhetorical move inherently equivocates between poeticizing (and softening) the narrative of execution and adding a layer of dread to the traditional poetic exilic narrative. In Kaidōki, we further find at this border a pairing of opposites similar to that in Heike. The Kaidōki narrator bemoans the fate of the hanabito (“fair blooms”) from the capital who meet their ends far from home. The very structure of his poem sets “Miyako,” the first word in the maeku 前句 (first half of the poem), in contrast to “Azuma,” which opens the tsukeku 付句 (second half ). Miyako is linked to hana (“blooms”) and haru (“spring”); Azuma to ko no ha (“leaves,” necessarily of autumn) and aki (“autumn”).48 Implicit in t­ hese characterizations, and followed in the temporal and spatial arcs of the poem, is the movement from life to death. The specific association of death with Azuma suggests a set of meanings impor­tant for the Taira prisoners of Heike as well—­the east is where men’s fates are de­cided, a place of judgment and execution, a place far from home. Note that the Kaidōki narrator characterizes Aizawa as a border (sakai) between this world and the meido, the route all follow ­after death. Its status as a liminal site resonates with the Heike depiction of Ikeda post station and is amplified by the Sumida River poem from Ise monogatari. Thus Aizawa demarcates the frontier between Miyako and Azuma, spring and autumn, life and death. Both the temporal and spatial relationships work in concert with the framing narrative to amplify each other. Within the poem, the Kaidōki narrator imagines Kyoto from the east; in the narrative, he won­ders about the past from the perspective of the pre­sent. His sense of dislocation is heightened by his ongoing worry over the m ­ other he left b­ ehind in the capital, a concern that frequently surfaces in the frame narrative as he contemplates other deaths. He anxiously worries over her from afar, just as he tries to imagine the Jōkyū prisoners from a distant time. The conjoining of ­these two objects of contemplation is enabled by the allusion to Narihira’s famous poem. The Kaidōki narrator’s recollection of the Ise monogatari poem thus fuses the sorts of private anx­ie­ ties about a loved one expressed by Narihira to ­those having to do with the public, but still palpable, losses represented by the fallen Jōkyū partisans: the loss of aristocratic control, of a romanticized, unrecoverable past, and of a knowable po­liti­cal terrain. What does this mean for the Heike? ­There is a complicated and indirect allusion to Kaidōki in Jijū’s “scattering blossoms” poem, which shares several characteristics with that composed by the Kaidōki narrator at Aizawa. Like the 48.  Aki also implies the verb aku 飽く, to use up or exhaust.

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Kaidōki narrator’s poem, Jijū’s counterposes the old capital of Kyoto specifically with the east, Azuma. The poems share some central vocabulary: chiru, hana, and the interrogative ikani. Both also evoke death using the image of scattering blossoms or leaves, and in each case the poet speculates about the locale from which she or he has been removed. The narrative frame for both poems involves the theme of concern for an aging m ­ other (by Jijū and the Kaidōki narrator) and the context of captivity ( Jijū and the Jōkyū prisoners). And both are geo­g raph­ic­ ally situated at a frontier. In addition to the similarities between the poems, the Kaidōki narrative shares with the Heike description a body of images and tropes: the wind in the pines and the sound of the waves; the idea that even a traveler unburdened by sorrows would find the scene moving. Additionally, in the second storyline—­ that is, Munemori’s encounter with Jijū at Ikeda, found in Genpei jōsuiki—we also find a shared vocabulary for talking about home, ­family, and displacement. The frame narrative in that version further emphasizes two parent-­child pairings that are recognized elsewhere as affectionate—­Jijū and her m ­ other; and Munemori and his son, Kiyomune.49 This emphasis on the domestic realm of familial relationships heightens the characterization in the Kakuichi-­bon as well of the space of Ikeda as “home,” despite the characterization of the east as the hinterland in the poems exchanged. The Heike was taking shape in the early thirteenth ­century, and works including Kaidōki have been identified as sources for portions of the michiyuki of Shigehira and Munemori considered h ­ ere. The thematization of journeys in captivity in Kaidōki made it a natu­ral source: the Kaidōki narrator’s ruminations provide one template for describing a final journey to the warrior capital for judgment, a formerly unimaginable situation, yet one central to the symbolic refashioning of the east—­Azuma—­almost immediately a­ fter the Genpei War. Interestingly, another work borrowing heavi­ly from Kaidōki for its michiyuki to Kamakura is the noh Morihisa 盛久, describing the eponymous protagonist’s journey in captivity to Kamakura. This allusive relationship also suggests the usefulness of the e­ arlier text as a template for describing such journeys. Notably, the slightly l­ater 1242 travelogue Tōkan kikō is the more oft-­ quoted and alluded-to description of travel along the Tōkaidō in lit­er­a­ture and drama. Hisamatsu Koji suggests that this is due in part to its lyricism; although it, too, refers to the Jōkyū prisoners, its stylistic coherence and effective estab49.  Sakurai Yōko 櫻井陽子, in “Heike monogatari ni mirareru jinbutsu zōkei: Taira no Mune­ mori no baai” 平家物語に見られる人物造形：平宗盛の場合, Kokubun 国文 51 (1979): 8–20, remarks that although he is generally condemned for his cowardice in not drowning at the b­ attle of Dannoura, Munemori’s attachment to his son, Kiyomune, although sinful, makes him a sympathetic character.

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lishment of a more distanced, personal perspective reflects a more easily quotable and easy-­to-­integrate version of Tōkaidō travel.50 Unlike the Heike corpus, Kaidōki is a work of somewhat eccentric form. It is disjointed and not harmonious as a text—it halts and repeats itself, and the narrator uses hyperbolic terms borrowed from Chinese in alternation with Buddhist ruminations to articulate his uneasy m ­ ental state as he moves through unfamiliar terrain. Inasmuch as it is a contemplation of the meaning of the Jōkyū Disturbance, it does not embrace a narrative style suggesting critical distance from it or a unified perspective; rather, it implies the unsuitability of the forms it uses to articulate its meaning. Passages like the one quoted above, where the unstated subject could refer to one or more individuals, is but one example. By articulating his rumination on the Jōkyū dead through the trope of travel, the Kaidōki narrator suggests one kind of narrative practice associated with pro­cessing loss. G ­ oing over terrain, be it geo­g raph­i­cal or psychological, renders it describable. Yet it si­mul­ta­neously draws attention to the dislocation and unease that movement through an unfamiliar landscape engenders, as well as the defamiliarization of the known entailed by such movement. One approach to Kaidōki is to recognize in it ele­ments of a literary “working through” that theorists of trauma describe: in order to master dislocation, recourse to familiar narrative tradition is common, even if that tradition’s semantics are somewhat at odds with the current situation. This often results in the kinds of blurring of past and pre­sent and fear and nostalgia found in Kaidōki, as well as an apparent sifting through of signifiers in an attempt to meaningfully pin them down.51 If we acknowledge Kaidōki’s status as one of the earliest works describing travel to Kamakura, especially in the shadow of the Jōkyū Disturbance, we shed light on the ways in which its attempts to confront the new become a pivot point for the kind of meta­phorical revision Ramirez-­ Christiansen identifies: it absorbs and poeticizes new difficult realities through recourse to conventional poetic language. In so ­doing, the conventional meta­ phors are shifted to reflect the changes that ­those realities represent. In broadest terms, the ­whole Heike corpus, and the Kakuichi-­bon in par­tic­ u­lar, is a work born of similar impulses—it, too, remembers the dead, reanimating their stories in its pages and in per­for­mances, hoping to put them to 50.  See Hisamatsu, “Tōkan kikō: Utamakura wo tadorite Kamakura e.” On page 81 in par­tic­ul­ ar, Hisamatsu asserts the importance of the flowing, wakan kankōbun style of Tōkan kikō as the basis for ­later allusions to and borrowings from it, particularly in Heike monogatari. 51.  In this interpretation, I have in mind in par­tic­ul­ar Cathy Caruth’s discussion of Freud’s writing on his own exile in Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).

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rest through memorial. It describes the rise of the east and the warriors who would rule from Kamakura. And it likewise situates its characters in the complicated context of their private emotions and their public actions. By contrast, however, it is in general more thematically unified and clearly teleological, although par­tic­u­lar emphases differ from variant to variant. It is also a much ­later composition. In Shigehira’s travel sequence, a movement t­ oward felicitous synthesis of past works can be seen in the way borrowings from them are ­shaped to fit the contours of more conventional travel descriptions in the Kakuichi-­bon. In some cases, this involves citing very common forebears associated with specific locales, like Semimaru at Ōsaka and Narihira at Yatsuhashi. But more in­ ter­est­ing for this study is what occurs at a thematic level, namely, the way the Kaidōki narrator’s unintegrated sense of distance is at once naturalized and complicated in the Heike narrative’s more conventional description of the romantic encounter along the road, and specifically at the “home” of Jijū, the Ikeda post station on the road to Kamakura. The Kaidōki narrator is alienated from two objects of contemplation: his aged m ­ other in the capital, representing the personal; and the executed Jōkyū imperial partisans, who represent the public and po­liti­cal in the narrative. But his poem about Muneyuki’s execution at Aizawa is prompted by his memory of the na ni shiowaba poem from Ise monogatari, an inward-­looking composition in which the poet won­ders how a beloved in the capital fares, a concern also experienced by the Kaidōki narrator. The Kaidōki poem thus speaks on a public register (the deaths of the partisans) triggered by a private one (concern for the loved one left in the capital, the topic of Narihira’s poem). His juxtaposition of Miyako and Azuma layers public and private pains, while he pauses at an execution site that he designates as a borderland. For him, Azuma is the eastern land over which Kamakura rules, where punishments are meted out and from which the familiar home of Heian-­kyō is hard to even imagine. And Aizawa marks an impor­tant marker indicating that he has entered that new and frightening world. This same set of concerns is recapitulated as a romantic encounter in the Heike variants, to somewhat dif­fer­ent and less alarming effect. On one level, the alienation from the object of contemplation found in Kaidōki becomes the very topic of all of the poetry in the “Jijū setsuwa.” In the exchange between Shigehira and Jijū, she imagines his feelings (koishikaruran, “does not inspire longing”), but he claims that his situation is incomprehensible: t­ here is no longer even any furusato for which he can long, if the capital cannot be home. Another’s experience, in other words, is unknowable. In Jijū’s “scattering blossoms” poem, she imagines her ­mother at home in terms very similar to ­those

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the Kaidōki narrator uses in his Aizawa poem. Both are strongly conjectural, suggesting the impossibility of truly knowing, and both are framed by the poet’s anxiety. Yet, in Heike ­these points of disconnect are framed by the conventional practice of poetic exchange. The familiarity of the mode of dialogue reins in the frightfulness of the prisoner’s situation, but ultimately, incomprehensibility, fear, and loss remain the poems’ subjects. The alienation h ­ ere blends the personal (Shigehira is on his way to execution) with the public and general: the capital of Shigehira’s day no longer holds the kinds of meanings it once did, especially for this po­liti­cal man. Shigehira’s role as a minister of state and scion of an aristocratic clan is over, and a new age, with a new “home base,” has begun. We should remember that, ­after a year in captivity in Kamakura, he ­will be sent back down t­ oward but not to the capital to his execution. The very idea of a centered realm is upset by his predicament; ­there is indeed no longer a home for his homesickness. At the heart of t­hese layerings and ambivalences lies a remapping of the toponym “Azuma.” This can be seen in both the alternative Munemori-­Jijū meeting in the second storyline and, more importantly, in Jijū’s scattering blossoms poem in the first. In the Munemori-­Jijū meeting, it primarily identifies Ikeda with the east, a subtle and not unconventional recognition of Ikeda’s relationship to the center. But that exchange is framed by parent-­child pairings, one of them taking Ikeda as its home base. In the Kakuichi-­bon particularly, the bleeding together of the Kaidōki narrator’s Aizawa poem and Jijū’s on the “scattering blossoms” articulates the complexity of this characterization more fully. Certainly, for Jijū, Azuma is home, a place she could long for even from the cultural home base of Kyoto. But Azuma also encompasses, and is increasingly associated with, Kamakura, where men are sentenced to die. Clearly this meaning is in Shigehira’s mind. It echoes the Kaidōki narrator’s lament for the Jōkyū prisoners, which resonates on so many levels with Jijū’s story. Thus, the Azuma of Jijū’s “scattering blossoms” poem activates, via thematic congruities with the Kaidōki narrator’s Aizawa poem, a jump from the romantic context of her encounter with Shigehira to the more po­liti­cally charged one of war and punishment, just as Narihira’s poem activated the Kaidōki narrator’s at Aizawa. The romantic exchange is always operating on ­these two levels: it is at once domestic and profoundly po­liti­cal. This relationship is given shape precisely through the interjection of Jijū’s story into Shigehira’s. The allusive relationship to Kaidōki encourages this multiregistered reading, and the shared focus we find ­there and in both storylines of the Heike “Kaidō kudari” episode draw attention to the semantic slip in ­these works: Azuma is not what it once was, but rather both more familiar

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and more alienating. Through the literary characterization of Azuma in t­ hese terms, t­ hese intertwined narratives imbue a certain space and situation with a presence that ­will ­later be amplified in the noh and, much ­later, in the commemorative markers. Azuma and Azumaji are places with varied and sometimes contradictory meanings, and they are the sites where the geopo­liti­cal and cultural maps are being redrawn. It is precisely this new cultural geography that both motivates and is s­ haped by works like Kaidōki and l­ater Heike monogatari. Ikeda, where old and new ideas converge and contest each other, is a place where older paradigms of movement and settledness, center and peripheries, and the meaning of traditional hierarchies are called into question. Perhaps not by geographic coincidence, Ikeda post station was located on the edge of the Tenryu River. Like the Sumida riverbank where Narihira composed his poem, and like the Kaidōki narrator’s Aizawa, it is a border, one traditionally seen as a geophysical marker of separation between the home provinces and the east. It is also a liminal space between the two poles of a journey whose meanings are being reconfigured. This one night’s lodging is imbued with the generative power that w ­ ill give meaning and form to a new order that w ­ ill at once radically alter established cultural patterns while still relying on them to give shape to the warrior realm and the rise of the East Country.

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Narrated and Danced Memory of War and Resignation The Role of Musical Delivery Alison Tokita

Japa­nese war memories have been continuously pro­cessed, kept alive, and reinterpreted over a long span of time by musical narratives called katarimono 語り物. ­These performed narratives relate and reenact war memory or resignation, transmitting ­these memories to the pre­ sent day. They show remarkable thematic and formal continuity: not only was narrative content carried on from one genre to another but also the form of musical delivery has persisted and been elaborated in the pro­cess.1 This chapter focuses on two still-­performed genres originating in medieval Japan, heike narrative 平家 (also heikyoku 平曲) and kōwaka 幸若 dance narratives.2 Both narrate to musical accompaniment the ­battles between the Heike 平家 and Genji 源氏 warrior clans in the twelfth ­century. Their narrative modalities draw on a repertoire of dif­fer­ent styles of musical delivery that enhance the narrative and bring it to life in a dramatic and vivid way. Both genres w ­ ere foundational for the content and musical form that developed in the puppet theater and kabuki, which ­will also be considered.

1.  Helen S. E. Parker, Progressive Traditions: An Illustrated Study of Plot Repetition in Traditional Japa­ nese Theatre (Leiden: Brill, 2006). 2.  I refer to the musical recitation of Tale of the Heike (Heike monogatari 平家物語) as “heike narrative,” using lower case heike; only when referring to the tale or the Heike clan as a proper noun is ­upper case used. 16 2

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Heike narrative relied on musical formulae to narrate heroic, valiant, or auspicious content on the one hand and elegiac content on the other. The former applies equally to Shinto-­related, celebratory content, while the latter relates to Buddhist and pathos-­filled content. T ­ hese two kinds of musical expression can be denoted by the shorthand terms “hard” (or “valiant”) and “soft” (or “pathetic”), respectively. Surely this elaboration of the musical delivery enhanced the memorability of the narratives and their impact on listeners. This chapter explores this proposition. It w ­ ill trace the per­sis­tence of t­ hese two broad styles of musical expression even as they change over time and across dif­fer­ent genres to show how this practice of katarimono s­ haped and kept cultural memory of the wars alive in popu­lar memory.

Gunki War Tales Both heike narrative and kōwaka ­were per­for­mance traditions intimately connected with the military class.3 They are related to the content of gunki 軍記 war tales, the written chronicles of ­battles that rec­ord and celebrate the exploits and victories of heroes and rulers and mourn the defeated. In addition to chronicling events, they had the po­liti­cal function of legitimizing victors. The war tales emerged with the rise of a warrior class from the mid-­Heian period (tenth c­ entury). The first extant war tale is the Shōmonki 将門記 (or Masakadoki), a rec­ord of the rebellion by Taira no Masakado 平将門 that took place in 935–940.4 Another early gunki is Mutsuwaki 陸奥話記 (A Tale of Mutsu), a rec­ord of the Former Nine Years’ War (1051–1063).5 Although customarily seen as a literary genre (as the suffix ki or “rec­ord” attests), ­there are arguably indicators of orality in gunki chronicles. It has been suggested that Shōmonki draws on the preaching of Buddhist proselytizers (shōdō-­sō 唱道僧): it devotes more space to the devastation that b­ attles wrought on the lives of ­those in the way than to the ­battles themselves. Mutsuwaki ends with a proviso that in addition to the official reports, it relied on stories that came to the capital from the conflict site, implying reliance on input from oral accounts.6 It is also replete with vivid dialogue between characters. 3.  The performers of both heike narrative and kōwaka dance narratives gained the patronage of the warrior class right through to the nineteenth ­century. 4.  Judith N. Rabinovitch, Shōmonki: The Story of Masakado’s Rebellion (Tokyo: Monumenta Nipponica, Sophia University, 1986). 5. Helen Craig McCullough, trans., “A Tale of Mutsu,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 25 (1964): 178–211; Paul Varley, Warriors of Japan as Portrayed in the War Tales (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994), 36–40. 6.  McCullough, “A Tale of Mutsu,” 181.

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The best-­known gunki are ­those surrounding the Genji-­Heike wars of the late twelfth ­century: Hōgen monogatari 保元物語 is the account of a deposed emperor who attempted to regain the throne in 1156; Heiji monogatari 平治 物語 chronicles the clash between two contending court factions of 1160; Heike monogatari 平家物語 (Tale of the Heike) tells the story of the civil war of 1180–1185, which changed the course of Japa­nese history; and Jōkyūki 承 久記 relates the abortive attempt of the emperor to get rid of the shogunate in 1221.7 Of t­ hese, the Heike monogatari has the most widely diverging variants; the best-­known is the Kakuichi-­bon 覚一本 of 1371, in two hundred chapters, which includes ele­ments of oral narration, written chronicle, romance, and religious tales. It holds a secure place in the modern canon of Japa­nese lit­er­a­ture and yet still retains a per­for­mance tradition with biwa 琵琶 lute. Equally impor­tant warrior-­related material for ­later per­for­mance genres includes the Soga monogatari 曽我物語 and Gikeiki 義経記; they are sometimes classified as gunki monogatari 軍記物語, but they are not focused directly on war.8 They are believed to have originally circulated as oral narrative, but no such per­for­mance tradition survived beyond the medieval age. Literary versions of both w ­ ere edited and compiled by literati of the courtly or samurai classes; like the Heike monogatari, they have no single known “author.” The Tai­ heiki 太平記 is an account of the prolonged succession strug­gle between the Northern and Southern courts in the ­fourteenth ­century, to which storytelling priests (dangi-­sō 談義僧) also contributed.9 From the Muromachi 室町 (ca. 1336–1467) and Warring States (ca. 1467–1590) periods and into the Tokugawa 徳川 period, t­ here is a further proliferation of war tales, focused on par­tic­u­lar ­houses or daimyo. Several ­were created about the sixteenth-­century warlords Oda Nobunaga 織田信長 and Toyotomi Hideyoshi 豊臣秀吉, the most famous one being the seventeenth-­century Taikōki 太閤記, a chronicle of the life and exploits of Hideyoshi. T ­ hese are not generally associated with musical recitation.

7.  This quartet of chronicles have been newly translated by Royall Tyler, Before Heike and A ­ fter: Hōgen, Heiji, Jōkyūki (San Bernadino, CA: Arthur Nettleton, 2012) and The Tale of the Heike (London: Viking, 2012). 8.  See Thomas J. Cogan, trans., The Tale of the Soga B ­ rothers (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1987); Helen Craig McCullough, trans., Yoshitsune: A Fifteenth-­Century Japa­nese Chronicle (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1966). 9.  Helen Craig McCullough, trans., The Taiheiki: A Chronicle of Medieval Japan (Tokyo and Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1959) provides a partial translation.

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The Tale of the Heike The Tale of the Heike is a gunki, but it is far more than that. A hybrid of written chronicle and tale (monogatari 物語), of military encounters and courtly pathos, its impact was due to the far-­larger scale and momentous nature of the conflict, when Japa­nese history changed decisively from a court-­centered society to warrior rule. Through the influence of kōshiki shōmyō 講式声明 musical preaching and its Pure Land Buddhistic content, the Tale of the Heike has a strong Buddhist facet lacking in other gunki.10 Courtly refined content and Buddhistic content, the “soft” narrative sections, ­were ­shaped musically and thematically by kōshiki preaching. Heike as performed narrative was based in large part on the fear of vengeful spirits (goryō shinkō 御霊信仰), but it also bears a strong imprint of Buddhism (its notions of impermanence, kar­ma, and Pure Land salvation faith by “calling the Name”). It thus was seen as a ritual vital for appeasing the dead Heike and thus preventing restive souls from wreaking havoc on the living. The earliest written accounts of the wars w ­ ere created by officials who needed to tally the war dead and to chronicle the feats of warriors for the purpose of reward and by courtiers who wrote elegiacally about the cataclysmic events, adumbrating the differentiation of warrior-­related “hard” narrative from courtier-­related “soft” narrative. Written accounts interacted with t­ hose that circulated orally and came into the hands of the biwa hōshi 琵琶法師, blind bards who molded the body of tales into a requiem for the war dead, especially ­those of the defeated Heike clan. Many of its episodes originated as isolated tales (setsuwa 説話) circulated orally by biwa hōshi and other itinerants.11 10.  Although not strictly speaking narrative like katarimono, the musical form of kōshiki shōmyō, Buddhist musical preaching, is congruent with katarimono. It applies three main musical substyles (melody types), occupying dif­fer­ent pitch areas: shojū 初重 (first level, low), nijū 二重 (second level, ­middle pitch register), and sanjū 三重 (third level, high pitch register). The substyles are used in a predictable melodic progression from low to high. Both shojū and nijū can be seen as the basic substyles of delivery that can be repeated in­def­initely, but sanjū is used sparingly to emphasize significant short portions of text. See Alison Tokita, Japa­nese Singers of Tales: Ten Centuries of Performed Narrative (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2015), 25–51. 11.  The blind biwa hōshi ­were first documented in the tenth ­century; see Hyōdō Hiromi 兵藤裕 己, Biwa hōshi: “Ikai” o kataru hitobito 琵琶法師：「異界」を語る人びと (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2009), 31–36. In Chūsei katarimono bungei: Sono keifu to tenkai 中世語り物文芸：その系譜と展開 (Tokyo: Miyai Shoten, 1981), Fukuda Akira 福田晃 has speculated that they descended from the kataribe 語り部 and asobi-­be 遊部, the hereditary ritual narrators of the protohistoric period, who are depicted as performing funeral rites for the ruler in the Nihon shoki 日本書紀 (Book XXX.8, AD 688, 11th month, 11th day), in Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697, trans. W. G. Aston (Rutland, VT and Tokyo: C. E. Tuttle, 1972), 389. Their per­for­mance involved, as well as song and dance, a recitation of the deeds of previous generations of rulers, serving to legitimize the new regime. T ­ hese

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The Kakuichi version of the Tale of the Heike was recited by the biwa hōshi with biwa lute accompaniment. (­There is evidence that Hōgen and Heiji ­were also performed in this way, but if so the practice did not persist like the heike narrative.) The biwa hōshi developed a musical recitation that used several styles of delivery to bring the narrative to life in a dramatic and vivid way, including the narrative substyle of “hard” or “valiant” musical delivery called hiroi 拾, used for ­battle scenes. This narrative modality was foundational for the development of katarimono; it is imprinted on many subsequent genres, including the utai 謡 singing of noh 能 drama, the kōwaka dance in the medieval age, and the many jōruri 浄瑠璃 genres of the early modern era. This continuity of “hard” and “soft” narrative musical expression ­will provide the thread that joins ­these genres in our discussion, though they are widely separated in time and display many differences.

Musical Substyle: A Central Concept for Katarimono Musical Narratives The purpose of this chapter is not to argue the orality of the texts, but to demonstrate the formulaic nature of their musical delivery by examining con­ temporary per­for­mance practice. For this, musical substyles are the key concept. This concept can be used to demonstrate the “hard” and “soft” nature of musical narrative in heike narrative, kōwaka, and jōruri. Within the overall musical style of a genre, the narrative draws on a number of discrete styles that I call musical substyles.12 A musical substyle is a type of delivery in per­ for­mance, including the complementary instrumental part. Musical narrative genres draw on a variety of formulaic musical material, analogous with the formulaic expression of oral narrative. Oral narratives call on verbal formulas, both line-­length phrases and w ­ hole scenes or sections (what Parry and Lord referred to as “formulas” and “themes,” respectively).13 Textual features suggesting that the Heike and other gunki are “oral-­connected” pre-­Buddhist ritual specialists, blind shamans who performed funeral rites, Fukuda has argued, became attached to major ­temples ­after the advent of Buddhism and ­adopted the biwa, which had entered Japan from the continent as part of the gagaku 雅楽 court ­music ensemble. See Hyōdō Hiromi, Heike monogatari no yomikata 平家物語の読み方 (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2011), 54, on itinerant nuns and Gorai Shigeru 五来重, Kōya hijiri 高野聖 (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, [1970] 1975) on Kōya hijiri 聖. Also see Saeki Shin’ichi 佐伯真一, “Monogatari seisei e no setsuwa, denshō no sanka” 物語生成への説 話・伝承の参加, in Heike monogatari no seisei 平家物語の生成, ed. Hiroaki Yamashita (Tokyo: Kyūko Shoin, 1997), 148–56, on setsuwa in the Heike. 12.  See Tokita, Japa­nese Singers of Tales, 20–21. 13.  Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, [1960] 2000).

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lit­er­a­ture, include the regular descriptions of b­ attle armor (“dressing the hero”), articulation of warriors’ name-­announcing rituals and genealogies (na­ nori 名のり, which are in themselves oral histories of the individual warrior and his lineage), and long lists of names of warriors.14 A typical phrase-­length formula that is indicative of oral provenance is the somewhat clumsy connective saru hodo ni さる程に (in the meantime; while this was ­going on), announcing a shift of narrative focus. Analogous to verbal formulas and themes, the musical dimension of the narratives also has phrase-­length musical formulas and longer formulaic sections. ­These form the musical substyles. Heike narrative early developed a modality of several musical substyles in which each section is characterized by a par­tic­ul­ar style of musical delivery. Heike narrative is commonly explained in terms of named “melodies” (fushi 節 or kyokusetsu 曲節), such as kudoki 口説, shojū 初重, chūon 中音, sanjū 三重, hiroi, and orikoe 折声. Some writers list up to forty of ­these melodies. Actually, they are not fixed melodies at all, but are flexible realizations of a musical substyle, varying in length and in melodic contour, line by line, in response to the text in question. The named melodies are also the names of narrative sections: for example, a kudoki section is delivered throughout in kudoki substyle.15 The differentiation of musical substyles section by section that is characteristic of heike is found also in kōwaka, noh, and in all the branches of jōruri. Musical substyles may be basic (or neutral), multipurpose forms of delivery; some have a formal function, such as opening or closing a piece, or providing a climax, or just adding variety through changes in pitch register or the degree of melismatic versus syllabic delivery; and some substyles are tied to specific narrative content, characterized h ­ ere as “hard” or “soft.” T ­ hese are of par­tic­u­lar interest for this analy­sis. We ­will start with examining how “hard” and “soft” play out in heike narrative, then look at kōwaka (which may be nearly all “hard”), and then at the complexity of jōruri, which continues to offer a clear differentiation of “hard” and “soft” substyles.

Heike Musical Narrative Heike narrative is the musical recitation of the Tale of the Heike. The narrator also plays the biwa, briefly punctuating with a few strokes between narrated phrases. The Tale of the Heike consists of 200 chapters (ku 句 or shōdan 章段). 14.  On “oral-­connected” literature, see John Miles Foley, How to Read an Oral Poem (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2002). 15.  Note that the same term kudoki in heike narrative refers to the basic narrative substyle, while in jōruri it is the name of an emotional section of very specific content, as discussed below.

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Each chapter is an accumulation of narrative sections. Each section is delivered in one narrative substyle and is concluded with a cadential pattern specific to the substyle. Most are introduced by an instrumental prelude specific to the substyle. The length of sections varies greatly. The simplest and most frequently used substyle is kudoki. Meaning “explaining at g­ reat length,” kudoki repeats the same s­ imple melodic movement between two tones one-­fourth apart over a w ­ hole section of narrative. A chapter typically opens with kudoki, but it is used extensively throughout most chapters. A section of kudoki can last for just a few phrases or for several minutes of narrative. A ­whole chapter can consist almost entirely of kudoki sections. The shirakoe 白声 substyle is a kind of spoken delivery, but it is not linked specifically to dramatic dialogue nor to any par­tic­ul­ ar narrative content. Sashikoe 指声 is similar to kudoki, in a somewhat higher register. ­These are basically prosaic substyles. Another set of substyles that are elegant rather than prosaic include shojū (first level), chūon (­middle sound), and sanjū (third level), all of which are more melodic and melismatic. ­These are related to three pitch areas: low, medium, and high, respectively, through which the prototypical sung narrative can pro­ gress. They do not have a clear-­cut relation to narrative content but tend to be called on for courtly content and poetic couplets. For example, the opening chapter, “The Jetavana T ­ emple” (Gion shōja 祇園精舎), in encapsulating the Buddhist notion of impermanence and positing it as the theme of the Tale, uses only t­ hese elegant melodic substyles, apart from one kudoki section. The most in­ter­est­ing of the group is sanjū, which creates a musical highlight with its high register, its slow, drawn-­out melismatic delivery, and often a more poetic textual quality.16 The two heike melody types that relate clearly to content are orikoe, which I argue is a “soft” substyle, and hiroi, a “hard” substyle. Komoda Haruko postulates that t­ hese melody types already existed from the late f­ ourteenth ­century and that orikoe derived from sanjū, and hiroi from kudoki.17 ­Battle cries and other shouted declarations are delivered in the short melody type kō no koe 強声 (strong voice).18

16.  Suzuki Takatsune 鈴木孝庸, Heikyoku to Heike monogatari 平曲と平家物語 (Tokyo: Chisen Shokan, 2007). Suzuki focuses on sanjū in this extensive study of text-­music relations in heike. 17.  Komoda Haruko 薦田治子, “Heikyoku no ongakushiteki kenkyū ni mukete” 平曲の音楽史的 研究にむけて, in Heike monogatari: Hihyō to bunkashi 平家物語: 批評と文化史, ed. Yamashita Hiroaki 山下宏明 (Tokyo: Kyūko Shoin, 1998), 256–76. 18.  Most of the examples in the following discussion are taken from the eight pieces transmitted in the Nagoya tradition by Imai Tsutomu 今井勉. En­glish translations are from Tyler, The Tale of the Heike.

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Hiroi The hiroi substyle forms a musical climax in “valiant” pieces (hiroimono 拾物) depicting ­battle scenes and military-­related description such as armor or lists of warriors; it is also used for Shintō invocations and for the burning of ­temples. I categorize it as a “hard” musical substyle ­because of its musical characteristics and also b­ ecause of the textual narrative it delivers: it is a forceful, emphatic, mainly syllabic style that conveys a sense of urgency and excitement, but also exultation or cele­bration. An example is the account of the po­liti­cal ascent of the Heike clan in one of the work’s opening episodes, “The Sea Bass” (Suzuki 鱸). It describes their leader Kiyomori’s rise to power: from governor of Aki province; to governor of Harima; to Dazaifu deputy; then ­after quelling the Heiji Rebellion in 1159, to “se­nior third rank, con­sul­tant, intendant of the Gate Watch, police superintendent, counselor, ­g rand counselor, and then minister. Not for him e­ ither right or left: No, he r­ ose straight to palace minister, then to chancellor at ju­nior first rank.”19 The “hard” hiroi substyle is also used in articulating lists (soroemono 揃えもの or monozukushi 物尽くし), which are a rhetorical device typical of oral narrative. A list might not seem particularly “valiant,” except that in heike narrative the lists tend to be of warriors or warrior-­related t­ hings. For example, in the chapter named for the celebrated and coveted steed Ikezuki (Ikezuki 生食), the account of Kiso no Yoshinaka’s preparations for the ­battle at the Uji River includes a g­ rand list of warriors from both sides, and the vast armies and ­horses they lead, all of which is delivered in hiroi substyle: To meet the main attack, at the Seta Bridge, [Kiso] dispatched ­there eight hundred men commanded by Imai no Shirō Kanehira. To the Uji Bridge went Nishina, Takanashi, and Yamada no Jirō at the head of five hundred ­horses. To Shida no Saburō Yoshinori, his ­uncle, Kiso assigned Imoarai to hold with a band of three hundred. The main Genji force, coming from the east, followed the ­orders of Noriyori, the flanking force ­those of Yoshitsune. 19. Tyler, The Tale of the Heike, 10. Tyler’s translation does not give the kyokusetsu “melody” names unfortunately, although he chose a layout to suggest shifts in style between song and expository narrative.

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Thirty lesser commanders led, in all, sixty thousand warriors.20 The hiroi substyle h ­ ere contributes to the building up of the expectation that this is a strong army and that it ­will perform valiantly in ­battle. Hiroi appears again, ­after sections of kudoki, kō no koe, and shirakoe, but ­here it is labeled hiroi—­jō-­on 上音. Komoda explains that this sequence is basically the same as hiroi, but it starts from the lowest pitch ryo 呂, proceeds to the low pitch ge-­on 下音, and then moves up to the highest pitch area, jō-­on.21 It thus finishes like standard hiroi but creates momentum and achieves more drama by moving from low to high. This sequence occurs at a dramatic rather than a descriptive part of the narrative, where the narrator exults in the numerical strength of the army, the handsome appearance of the warriors’ paraphernalia, and the steed Surusumi. [hiroi—­jō-­on] Each corps of men left Kamakura, . . . Each one carried a dif­fer­ent ­saddle, each a crupper in a new color. Some followed a single lead rope, some two, ­There ­were thousands and thousands of them, and among the endless pro­cession Kajiwara noted with plea­sure none to compare with the Surusumi he had received as a gift from his lord.22 The narrative takes a new turn, as a continuation of hiroi starting with ryo—­ ge-­on. It tells of Kajiwara’s shock at suddenly seeing among the throng the steed Ikezuki and goes on to describe this even more splendid ­horse: But then all at once it seemed to him that he saw before him Ikezuki: [ jō-­on] gilt-­edged ­saddle and tasseled crupper, foaming mouth and spirited prancing that defeated the constant efforts a crowd of grooms made to control him.23 20. Tyler, The Tale of the Heike, 254. 21.  Komoda Haruko, Heike monogatari. CDs and DVD with booklet (Tokyo: Kojima Rokuon, 2009), 65. 22. Tyler, The Tale of the Heike, 455. 23. Tyler, The Tale of the Heike, 455.

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However, not all narrative of this tenor is delivered with hiroi; the following section, equally martial and prickling with enmity, is delivered in the monotonous low-­impact speechlike shirakoe, proceeding to basic neutral kudoki, and the piece ends conventionally in the melodic substyle shojū. ­There is no apparent explanation for this, except that the con­spic­u­ous substyle is used somewhat sparingly so that it functions as a musical highlight against a neutral background. It is available as a narrative resource, but it is not compulsory. The next chapter, “First Across the Uji River” (Ujigawa 宇治川), depicts the ­battle scene, and again hiroi is liberally applied.24 ­After the opening kudoki section, which introduces both magnificent steeds, Ikezuki and Surusumi, repeated for the benefit of listeners who rarely if ever hear both chapters performed in succession, a hiroi section lists the warriors of the main force on the Genji side, then hiroi substyle continues in heightened manner with the variant sequence of ryo—­ge-­on—­jō-­on to list the flanking force u ­ nder Yoshitsune. Sections featuring shojū, sanjū, kudoki, shirakoe, and kudoki substyles intervene, then comes an extended section of hiroi to narrate the contest between the warrior Kajiwara mounted on Surusumi and Sasaki on Ikezuki to be first to cross the Uji River and reach the Kiso force on the other side. This long section is embellished in the ­middle with the melodic phrase called ongyoku 音曲 (on the climactic words “both stirrups”; sa-­o no abumi wo 左右の鐙を), in which one rider racing to cross the river and begin the ­battle was tricked by another contender into believing he should tighten the girth of his ­horse, and he thus lost time and the race.25 The beloved episode “Nasu no Yoichi” 那須与一 describes a feat by the superlative young archer Yoichi in which, during a lull in fighting, he hits a fan held up as a target by the ­enemy Heike forces floating in boats off the shore where he and the rest of the Genji forces stand. ­Here we have an example of the way hiroi is used in an aesthetic way to describe the warrior’s magnificent dress and armor, weaponry, and ­horse tack and accoutrements, leading up to a dramatic encounter (the “dressing the hero” motive of oral narrative). Hiroi is first used in the section describing Yoichi’s armor: Yoichi, then in his twentieth year, was wearing a dark blue hitatare 24.  Inogawa Kōji’s 井野川幸次 (1904–1985) per­for­mance of “Ujigawa” can be heard at https://­ www​.­youtube​.­com​/­watch​?­v​=­d5CDxvWo1Lw (accessed August 18, 2020). It starts with the hiroi bachi 拾撥 prelude followed by the hiroi section (0:40–2:32), listing the warriors of the first army: “Ōte no taishōgun ni wa, Kaba no Onzōshi Noriyori, aitomonou hitobito, Taketa no Tarō, Kagami no Jirō, Ichijō no Jirō . . . ​, Noji Shinowara ni zo. . . .” For complete per­for­mances of the extant Nagoya repertoire by the last blind inheritor of the tradition, Imai Tsutomu, please see Komoda, Heike monogatari. 25. Tyler, The Tale of the Heike, 458.

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trimmed, collar and sleeves, with red brocade ­under green-­laced armor. His sword hung at his side from a silver ring, and the few arrows that the day’s clashes had left him lifted their ea­gle feathers, black-­and-­white-­banded, over his head, in com­pany with a humming arrow fletched from both ea­gle and hawk, and tipped with deer horn. ­Under his arm he clasped a lacquered, rattan-­wrapped bow, and his helmet hung over his back.26 In the following kudoki section, Yoichi humbly asks to be spared from the daunting task, provoking an angry retort from Yoshitsune that commences in kō no koe substyle and continues in the spoken shirakoe. Yoichi’s appearance is further described, h ­ ere however not with hiroi, but continuing in the low-­key shirakoe delivery: “Mounting a power­f ul black ­horse with a tasseled crupper and a s­ addle inlaid with a sea-­squirt motif in mother-­of-­pearl . . . ,” as he prepares to take aim. Shirakoe is always followed by kudoki: in this kudoki section ­ ere Yoichi is watched excitedly by his fellows. The use of shirakoe and kudoki h are like the calm before the storm. In the next section the climactic sanjū, with its drawn-­out melismatic delivery in the high pitch register, shifts the action to slow motion as it details the date and time of day (dusk), and depicts the strong north wind, the dark sea, and both armies looking on with intense interest. This is followed by hiroi again, in its variant form of ryo—­ge-­on—­jō-­on, to pre­sent Yoichi’s long supplication to Hachiman, the God of War. [ryo] Iu koto nashi, Yoichi With one hand Yoichi [ge-­on] me o fusaide, “Namu Hachiman Dai Bosatsu, betsu shite wa waga kuni no Jinmei, covered his eyes and silently prayed the following prayer: “Hail Hachiman, ­Great Boddhisattva, and you, gods of my home province, [ jō-­on] Nikkō no Gongen Utsunomiya, Nasu no Yuzen Daimyōjin, negawaku wa ano ōgi no mannaka isasete tabase tamae, isonzuru hodo naraba, yumikiriori jigai 26. Tyler, The Tale of the Heike, 594–95.

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shite, hito ni futatabi omote o, mukoun bekarazu, ima ichido hongoku e kaesan to oboshimesaba, kono ya hazusase tamou na to kokoro no uchi ni kinen shite, me o mihiraitareba kaze, sukoshi fukiyowatte, ōgi mo iyoge ni koso.” Nikkō Gongen of Utsunomiya, Yuzen Daimyōjin of Nasu, I beg of you, guide my arrow to hit the center of that fan! For should the arrow miss its mark, I s­ hall break my bow and die, nor ever again face any man. If you wish me to return, let this arrow of mine strike home!”27 The drama continues with one more section of the same hiroi-­equivalent substyle, sequences of ryo—­ge-­on—­jō-­on, depicting the successful shooting down of the fan and the animated admiration of both armies, Heike and Genji. This long sequence is maintained to the end of the piece. It is embellished midway with a short phrase in the high melismatic hashiri sanjū 走リ三重 for just one word, hitomomi 一按み (“one flutter”), slowing down the narrative as the fan flutters, before falling down to the sea.28 ­These examples show how the vigorous hiroi substyle can highlight martial content through musical means and generate narrative tension, excitement, and exultation; in short, it conveys the warrior ethos. This kind of “hard” narrative substyle we ­will see is perpetuated in the jōruri narratives of the early modern period, where it retains the power to musically define “the warrior” as a cultural icon in an era of peace.

Orikoe In contrast to “hard” edgy hiroi, the “soft” melismatic substyle orikoe is applied to climactic passages of a dif­fer­ent kind. Like hiroi, passages delivered in ori­ koe substyle encompass a wide range of (sometimes unexpected) content. It is typically associated with Buddhist resignation inspired by unrequited love, with awe and gratitude for a divine miracle, and with quotations from Chinese classics on being deeply moved, or even reporting something vague but somehow ominous or at least remarkable that has been rumoured but cannot be confirmed. (The elegant shojū and chūon substyles actually often function in a very similar way to orikoe, marking a shift to elegiac content.) One prominent example of the association of orikoe with resignation can be found in the “Yokobue” 横笛 episode, in which a young man, Takiguchi, 27. Tyler, The Tale of the Heike, 596. 28.  Imai Tsutomu performs this final section of “Nasu no Yoichi”: https://­www​.­youtube​.­com​ /­watch​?­v​=­UenJQ​_­fJ4HI (accessed August  18, 2020). It starts from ge-­on (“Yoichi, kabura o totte tsugai . . .” [He took out his humming arrow])—­jō-­on (“yumi wa tsuyoshi . . .” [a strong (man’s) bow]) to the end of the piece, with the brief phrase—­hashiri sanjū—­interpolated (at “hitomomi” [one flutter]).

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denied permission from his ­father to marry his sweetheart, decides to take the tonsure. In orikoe delivery, Takiguchi expounds to his ­father the Buddhist concept of futility and vanity of attachment, yet reinforced with a quotation from Chinese classics: ­ here lived once upon a time, T a Queen ­Mother of the west, but no longer: She is gone. So, too, the wizard Dongfang Shuo: His name remains, but he does not. In this world of ours, the young too often die before the old, extinguished like a flint-­struck spark.29 Orikoe is used again when Takiguchi resolves to further remove himself to a more remote hermitage a­ fter his beloved Yokobue has tracked him down at a monastery: This is a very peaceful place where nothing hinders calling the Name, but a ­woman I regretted leaving came and discovered where I live. That first time, yes, I steeled myself, but if she ever turns up again, I know that my heart ­will go to her.30 In “The Pilgrimage to Chikubushima” (Chikubushima mōde 竹生島詣), a passage expressing awe and gratitude for a divine miracle is set to orikoe; the supplicant Taira no Tsunemasa 平経正 expounds a theological position relating to the fusion of local Japa­nese gods and the Bud­dha (shinbutsu shūgō 神仏習合): Long ago you ­were Shakyamuni, the very embodiment of the Law. Both deities, Benzai and Myōon, separate in name, share nevertheless in unison your higher nature and offer salvation to all beings.31 In the elegiac chapter “Autumn Leaves” (Kōyō 紅葉), orikoe is used twice, first when the late retired emperor Takakura is remembered as having quoted 29. Tyler, The Tale of the Heike, 548. 30. Tyler, The Tale of the Heike, 552. 31. Tyler, The Tale of the Heike, 356.

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a Chinese classic to excuse a faux pas by a servant: “­There is that Chinese line, he said: In the woods I burn fallen leaves to warm my wine.”32 Further on, orikoe delivery conveys his compassion for a poor serving girl who was robbed, again leading him to refer to a Chinese literary pre­ce­dent: ­ eople in the reign of Yao P ­were honest, for Yao at heart put honesty before all ­else: but such, in the pre­sent reign, is my own heart, that warped men roam abroad and commit crimes. Am I not to blush with shame?33 We can see through t­hese examples how the lyrical melismatic “soft” orikoe substyle is used selectively to highlight moments of pathos, Buddhist resignation, and deep emotion, often with reference to elegant Chinese antecedents, all connected to a courtly ethos, not the warrior ethic.

Kōwaka Dance Narrative Kōwaka dance narrative (or “ballad-­drama” in Araki) is a contrasting case of performed narrative.34 In per­for­mance it features straight narrative in spoken delivery, and musically delivered narrative, but also danced narrative, like noh. Although its musical delivery is much simpler than heike narrative, even its ­limited range of formulaic musical materials shows the same basic princi­ples as heike; it relies on the sequencing of specific musical substyles to deliver the narrative text. Kōwaka derives largely from the tradition of mai 舞 dance and has strong affinities with noh. Like noh, it is accompanied by the tsuzumi 鼓 hourglass drum, but it uses no melodic instrument such as flute, biwa, or shamisen. Whereas mai was originally a female performing art, kōwaka is a male form. The combination of narrative with tsuzumi drum-­accompanied movement stems from e­ arlier mai forms, including shirabyōshi 白拍子, kusemai 曲舞, mai­ ­ hese arts used the formal movements mai 舞々, and boys’ chigo mai 稚児舞. T of dance to articulate narrative and song, but the movement did not necessarily

32. Tyler, The Tale of the Heike, 311. 33. Tyler, The Tale of the Heike, 312. 34.  James T. Araki, The Ballad-­Drama of Medieval Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964).

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represent or illustrate narrated content mimetically.35 Although emerging slightly l­ater than noh, kōwaka lacked noh’s theatrical aspect; its dance is purely formal. Kōwaka was more popu­lar than noh in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but it failed to continue beyond this time; its ­simple form suggests arrested development.36 Its narrative content, however, was appropriated by jōruri and kabuki, and its texts ­were widely circulated in print in the early seventeenth ­century. T ­ hese danced narratives embodied the warrior ethic for a con­temporary audience of warriors in the era of civil war. Curiously, kōwaka continues to be performed vestigially to the pre­sent day by residents of Sedaka, a farming village in Kyushu, e­ very year on January 20 as an offering to their local shrine. In this rural context, the popularity of idealized warriors from the medieval period remains imprinted on the inherited village culture, embodied and passed down from ­father to son over generations. Only eight pieces remained in their repertoire by the twentieth c­ entury, but recently working with researcher Fujita Takanori 藤田隆則, a c­ ouple of items have been revived.37 Although current practice may not be an accurate reflection of how it was performed by professional artists in its heyday, it provides a per­for­mance model to analyze. Rather than a continuous epic saga of many chapters like the Heike, kōwaka consists of single self-­contained pieces. However, compared with their counter­ parts in noh (such as the play Ataka 安宅, the same story as the kōwaka To­ gashi 富樫), the texts of kōwaka are long and lack literary pretension, but they feature much narrative embellishment and often highly entertaining digressions.38 Of the fifty-­two extant kōwaka texts collected in the Mai no hon 舞の 本 (Book of [Kōwaka] Dances), forty-­seven derive from Heike stories (including the more apocryphal Chronicle of Yoshitsune, or Gikeiki 義経記) and the Tale of the Soga B ­ rothers.39 As a genre, kōwaka is usually seen as belonging to the gunki tradition. Even though some kōwaka are more connected with setsu­wa tales and sekkyō 説経 preaching (called “medieval myth” in Squires), they are 35. Tokita, Japa­nese Singers of Tales, 91. 36.  Noh in contrast continued to develop, including the emergence in the early Edo period of the “hard” musical substyle of tsuyogin 強吟, in distinction to the “soft” yowagin 弱吟; tsuyogin is applied to passages of warrior and Shintō-­related content. 37.  https://­rcjtm​.­kcua​.­ac​.­jp​/­publications​/­multimedia​/­dvd01​.­html (accessed August 18, 2020). A section of the revived piece (2010) can also be seen at https://­www​.­youtube​.­com​/­watch​?­v​ =­tysvTLPR2EI (accessed August 18, 2020). Fushi is followed by tsume. 38.  See Tokita, Japa­nese Singers of Tales, 107–20, for an analy­sis of the kōwaka piece Togashi, also called Ataka. 39.  Suda Etsuo 須田悦生 et al., eds., Kan’ei ban mai no hon 寛永版舞の本 (Tokyo: Miyai Shoten, 1990).

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never far from the concerns of warriors.40 Kōwaka flourished in the Warring States era, when it was patronized by the warrior class, including Oda Nobu­ naga, who famously performed a section (in tsume ツメ substyle) of the kōwaka piece Atsumori 敦盛, accompanied by his wife playing drum, the night before his decisive victory in the ­Battle of Okehazama. The three main types of delivery are kotoba コトバ (stylized speech), fushi (melodic), and tsume (vigorous, forced). None of t­hese can be clearly labeled “hard” or “soft”; they unfold routinely with ­little regard to narrative content. However, the genre as a ­whole so embodies the image of the warrior that it can be called a “hard” genre. T ­ here are some supplementary solo melodies: kakari, a short transitional phrase inserted between kotoba and fushi or tsume, and the less commonly encountered iro 色 or iro-­kakari 色かかり, longer transitional melodies that approach a musical expression of pathos that might be called “soft.” In sections of kotoba delivery, the three reciter/dancers take turns coming forward to stand and deliver the narrative solo in center stage. Both fushi and tsume sections are accompanied by the tsuzumi drum. In fushi sections, the three sing together in chorus to the rhythm of the drum. Mai dance movement occurs only in tsume sections, when all three sing while one of them dances, again accompanied by the drum with vigorous shouts (kakegoe 掛け声) from the drummer. Kōwaka’s s­ imple musical form is straightforward, even austere, and as such suits the nature of its narratives. Each section progresses from kotoba to fushi or tsume; they are not in one substyle as in heike. Although kōwaka did not develop a narrative substyle to be used exclusively for martial content, tsume sometimes functions like the “hard” hiroi in heike narrative. The plentiful musical indications in the extant handwritten Mai no hon texts from the late sixteenth ­century, though lacking consistency in name from one to another, show clearly that ­there was variety and flexibility in per­for­mance style. However, ­these books ­were not per­for­mance texts to be used by professionals, but reading texts widely circulated in print form. The musical indications w ­ ere added by scribes and editors for appreciation and imitation by amateurs. The piece Izumi’s Fortress (Izumi ga jō 泉が城), translated in full by Araki, provides a comprehensive example of how the substyles are used in practice.41 Izumi’s Fortress describes the siege of the fortress of Izumi no Saburō Tadahira 泉三郎忠衡. Izumi and his b­ rothers had promised their ­dying ­father, Hide­ hira 秀衡, to protect the Genji hero Yoshitsune 義経. Yoshitsune is being 40.  Todd Andrew Squires, Reading the Kōwaka-­Mai as Medieval Myth: Story-­Patterns, Traditional Reference and Per­for­mance in Late Medieval Japan (PhD diss., University of Ohio, 2001). 41. Araki, Ballad-­Drama, 172–95.

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pursued by forces directed by his ­brother, now-­shogun Yoritomo 頼朝, who fears a threat to his sovereignty. Lured by Yoritomo’s promise of reward, Izumi’s ­brothers decide to break the promise to their f­ather, and they pit their army against Yoshitsune sheltering in the fortress. The 1961 recording of Izumi’s Fortress, made by the Bureau of Culture and held at the Tokyo National Research Centre for Cultural Properties, lasts one hour and forty-­five minutes and consists of nineteen sections. This exceptionally long piece is now only partially transmitted in Kyushu. Araki’s translation helpfully includes the named musical substyles, revealing a consistent pattern of formulaic expression. All sections begin with kotoba substyle, followed by the transitional kakari (or iro-­kakari), and end with ­either fushi or tsume, and in the final section with fushi followed by tsume.42 Section 5 ends with a rare content-­specific substyle, tsuke ツケ, for the reciting of the oath signed by the b­ rothers to honor their f­ ather’s d­ ying wish to protect the fugitive Yoshitsune. In some sections, ­there is a tendency to express pathos by using the variant transitional phrase iro-­kakari. In section 16, the extensive text expresses the grief of the only faithful ­brother, Izumi, who must kill his two small sons before ­going into a hopeless defense himself, and his wife’s plaint as she watches and resolves to follow them in death. The section begins with a very short kotoba narrative section, followed by iro-­kakari, then fushi, and finishes with iro-­kakari.43 [iro-­kakari] Ah, how cruel, my young ones! . . . [ fushi] Hold only your u ­ ncles in vengeful malice. . . . ​They put their tender hands together, / Though their hearts w ­ ere not discerning. / And, as they repeated four or five times / Amida-­butsu . . . ​mida-­butsu / His vision dimmed and his heart quailed. . . . [iro-­kakari] The ­mother had watched the scene unfold. . . . ​She sank [to the floor] weeping, and thus did she remain.44 However, in the following section, the same kind of heart-­rending narrative continues with ­simple kotoba delivery (“Oh, the sorrow of parting, my 42.  Araki does not provide the substyle names for Atsumori (a recording of which he would not have been able to hear, but which has recently been revived and reconstructed), also translated in the same volume. His detailed musical transcriptions and generic analy­sis of kōwaka as a ­whole are clearly based on available recordings, most likely the 1961 one mentioned of Izumi ga jō. 43.  Not quoted in full. Ellipses indicate omitted text. 44. Araki, Ballad-­Drama, 190–91.

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wife! . . .”). It then changes to tsume to narrate her donning of armor to fight with her husband, which is appropriate to this content. T ­ here are many other examples of valiant and gruesome content that are not in tsume delivery. This suggests that the se­lection of melody for content is an option, but that it primarily fulfills a formal requirement for progression of musical substyle in each section from kotoba to fushi or tsume. The formal criterion overrides that of se­lection for content.

“Soft” and “Hard” in Early Modern Jōruri and Kabuki Substyle differentiation connected to content reached its fullest expression in jōruri, a term referring to a group of musical narratives accompanied by shamisen that developed in the puppet theater and via puppet theater to the live kabuki theater. The antecedents of jōruri ­were a romantic spinoff from Heike-­related legends about a Lady Jōruri, the “girlfriend” of the youthful Yoshi­ tsune. ­These formed a cycle of stories generated by itinerant w ­ omen entertainers. The stories ­were taken over by the biwa hōshi in the fifteenth ­century, who pop­u­lar­ized them by adapting them to their heike narrative style of story singing.45 Eventually, jōruri became the name of a w ­ hole new narrative genre, of which the tale of Lady Jōruri was only one story. Further development took place around the turn of the seventeenth ­century when the biwa hōshi a­ dopted the newly arrived shamisen and collaborated with puppeteers who dramatized jōruri narratives. Whereas the heike narrative performer alternated singing and biwa, playing only in between phrases and sections, in the new shamisen-­ accompanied jōruri a division of l­ abor occurred between (often blind) shamisen players and sighted story singers, which freed up the narrator for musical elaboration and the shamisen player for more active and nuanced accompaniment. Presumably it was impor­tant for the singers to be able to see the puppets (whose actions and emotions they described in their narrative), and their ability to read was also impor­tant in this era of the growth of print media and increased demand for more varied narrative content. The sighted jōruri singer started to place a handwritten text before him in per­for­mance, but the shamisen player never uses notation. 45.  Muroki Yatarō 室木弥太郎, “Jōruri hime monogatari: Katarimono-­shi o fukumete” 浄瑠璃姫 物語：語り物史を含めて, in Jōruri no tanjō to kojōruri 浄瑠璃の誕生と古浄瑠璃, ed. Torigoe Bunzō 鳥越文蔵, Uchiyama Mikiko 内山美樹子, and Watanabe Tamotsu 渡辺保 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1997), 3–26.

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The generative power of jōruri in the seventeenth-­century puppet theater saw a plethora of genres named a­ fter their initiators: gidayū-­bushi 義太夫節 from Takemoto Gidayū 竹本義太夫 (1651–1714); bungo-­bushi 豊後節 from Miyakoji ­ thers.46 Collaborating with Bungo no jō 宮古路豊後掾 (d. 1740), and many o playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon 近松門左衛門 (1653–1724), Takemoto Gidayū further developed his style of jōruri narrative into what eventually became bunraku 文楽 puppet theater, with its wide repertoire of historical plays (jidaimono 時代物) and con­temporary plays (sewamono 世話物). The historical plays of jōruri are situated in the lineage of gunki war tales and are intrinsically “hard” narratives: they exploit and embroider stories of warriors, whereas the con­temporary plays concentrated on scandals or escapades of commoners in the licensed quarters. ­These two play types correlate with the “hard” aragoto 荒事 and “soft” wagoto 和事 acting styles in kabuki.47 Jōruri shows its heritage from the medieval narrative genres of heike and kōwaka in its cumulative structure of formulaic sections, each featuring a unified substyle and concluding with a caden­ ere elabtial formula specific to that substyle. However, the substyles of jōruri w orated. Section and substyle are not neatly equivalent as in heike. Many sections consist of more than one substyle, and substyles shift fluidly in response to the text, before the sectional cadence occurs.48 ­There are a number of reasons for the elaboration of substyles in jōruri, including the formal freedom resulting from the new division of ­labor between singer and accompanist and the impact of the new commercialized print culture rapidly disseminating new narratives. It also can be attributed to the writing of plays with psychological complexity by Chikamatsu and his contemporaries, reflecting the more sophisticated culture of Edo urbanites and altogether a more modern individual sensibility. 46.  Of the many genres of jōruri that came and went in the seventeenth ­century, some, such as kinpira-­bushi 金平節, satsuma-­bushi 薩摩節, and satsuma-­bushi’s ­later offshoot ōzatsuma-­bushi 大薩摩節, are called “hard” genres, and ­others, such as itchū-­bushi 一中節, and bungo-­bushi and its offshoots tokiwazu-­bushi 常磐津節, tomimoto-­bushi 富本節, kiyomoto-­bushi 清元節, and shinnai-­bushi 新内節, are considered “soft.” As jōruri became more sophisticated, they all tended to include a variety of “hard” and “soft” ele­ments. However, the terms retain some currency. 47.  In this shift from narrative to drama, the narrative modality, far from being erased, was retained and elaborated, in both puppet and kabuki theaters. As increasingly realistic (though mute) puppets enacted the story, the storytelling duo (in full view of the audience from the mid-­eighteenth ­century) both told the story musically and realistically delivered the speech of the dramatic characters. Even when puppet plays ­were adapted for kabuki, the narrator-­musicians continued to sit on the stage and narrate the story, while the actors acted or mimed the narrative, delivering only spoken dialogue. 48.  Yamada identifies two gidayū-­bushi substyles related to content: “lament” (shūtan-­ji 愁嘆地), which includes kudoki (see below), and “urgent” for violent action (seppaku-­ji 切迫地). Yamada Chieko 山田智恵子, Gidayū-­bushi no katari ni okeru kihan to henkei: Jiai no ongakuteki kenkyū 義太夫節の語りに おける規範と変形: 地合の音楽学的研究 (Kyoto: Kyōto Shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku Nihon Dentō Ongaku Kenkyū Sentā, 2017). “Lament” is indisuputably “soft,” and “urgent” is “hard.” T ­ here are many other substyles in jōruri. ­Here I focus on the kudoki and the monogatari.

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The sewamono con­temporary jōruri plays in par­tic­ul­ar became highly expressive of emotion, with power to evoke laughter and weeping from the audience. The kudoki section of a jōruri narrative in par­tic­u­lar created a place for a female character to express poignant emotions of longing, resentment, regret, and nostalgia. As jōruri developed more interiorized narrative, it brought a new subjectivity to protagonists. Whereas heike and kōwaka consistently maintain a neutral third-­person narrative perspective, in jōruri the narrator vividly expresses the thoughts and feelings of individual characters through his highly engaged delivery. Most impor­tant, the narrative expresses emotional high points through the use of interior monologues, the kudoki and monogatari. In the mono­ gatari, war is not just a story told, it is vicariously experienced through its reenactment by a character on the stage; it is physically acted out in a scene which vividly re-­creates, for another character in the drama and for the audience, the warrior’s ethos, his ethical dilemmas, his exultation in military prowess. And this is further realized by the specific musical substyle of this section. The kudoki and monogatari sections are first-­person narratives of a character in the drama. They are musically delivered by the jōruri singer, as the puppet kinetically realizes the narrative, or in kabuki the actor mimes the monologue in the mimetic furi 振り dance style. ­These sections form the climax of a piece (act, dan 段), both musically and visually; in kabuki dance shosagoto 所作事 pieces they are an intrinsic part of the dance form. The narratorial focus shifts from the narrator to the protagonist’s first-­person narrative.

Kudoki and Monogatari Substyle In jōruri, the term kudoki derives from the verb kudoku 口説く, to woo or entreat, and should not be confused with the kudoki basic narrative substyle of heike. The kudoki section, perhaps best translated as lament rather than entreaty, is the emotional highlight of a jōruri piece or act. According to Inobe, the jōruri kudoki is a consequence of the visualization of narrative in dramatic form and is similar to the kuse section of noh. Like sanjū in heike, it is located in the high pitch register and is extremely melismatic and expressive. The narrative content is a plea or complaint, typically by a female protagonist, expressing pain at parting or rejection, reproaching a cold lover.49 Inobe suggests that the kudoki musical substyle was developed first in bungo-­ bushi and other “soft” jōruri genres that flourished in Edo kabuki, especially when they ­were allocated to poetic journey (michiyuki 道行) scenes, and then 49.  Inobe Kiyoshi 井野辺潔, Jōruri-­shi kōsetsu 浄瑠璃史考説 (Tokyo: Kazama Shobō, 1991), 137–39.

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was gradually incorporated into gidayū-­bushi from the 1730s.50 It is in the offshoots of bungo-­bushi, the genres of tokiwazu-­bushi 常磐津節, tomimoto-­bushi 富本節, shinnai-­bushi 新内節, and kiyomoto-­bushi 清元節, that the kudoki became a standard section of kabuki dance form, shared with the nonnarrative genre of nagauta 長唄. In addition to being pre­sent in ­every piece, the kudoki, compared with gidayū-­bushi, is more formalized and predictable. Inobe stresses that the textual content of the gidayū-­bushi kudoki is broader than that in the bungo-­bushi genres and nagauta, but in all cases it proj­ects a female narrative voice as an expression of love, or rather the pain of love and separation. It always involves weeping; an elaborate cadence called urei otoshi 愁イ落トシ (“weeping cadence”) is found at the end of kudoki sections and features a verb of weeping. T ­ here are other patterns in both voice and shamisen that are unique to the kudoki and constitute part of the kudoki substyle. The sung narrative is characterized by the buildup of momentum through three stages: ­middle pitch register; quiet, slow, understated f­ ree rhythm to more dynamic rhythmic style; to faster high pitch register. In heike, the hiroi sections are in the narrative pre­sent, vividly describing in third-­person narrative a scene currently being experienced by the protagonist, into which the listener can imaginatively enter. This is also the case with kōwaka narrative. In jōruri, however, the protagonist performs the monogatari section as a flashback recalling and reenacting an ­earlier event. It is not part of the ­actual play; in this, it is similar to the kuse クセ section of shura 修羅 warrior noh plays. However, although distant, the events can be crucial for understanding the pre­sent action. As a successor to the world of gunki narrative, the monogatari section is a central feature of jidaimono history plays and has a distinctive “hard” musical substyle. This section appears in both puppet theater and kabuki versions of puppet plays (that is, the jōruri plays called maruhon­ mono 丸本物 that ­were transposed to kabuki). The monogatari substyle is rhythmic and energetic, and, unusual for a narrative section, is accompanied by the offstage hayashi ensemble, including cymbals, sometimes conch horn, and taiko drum, sounds that are associated musically with ­battle scenes in kabuki offstage ­music. The dynamic nature of this section that rhythmically mimes a b­ attle narrative is reminiscent of heike hiroi. It includes sections of unaccompanied spoken delivery and phrases of iro-­kotoba 色詞 or kotoba-­nori 詞乗り, spoken very rhythmically in tandem with active, rhythmic shamisen accompaniment.51 50.  See note 46. 51. The monogatari section from the scene “Kumagai Jin’ya no dan” 熊谷陣屋の段 of the puppet play Ichinotani futaba gunki 一の谷嫩軍記 can be seen at https://­www​.­youtube​.­com​/­watch​?­v​ =­9qdodcf9qQ4 (accessed August 18, 2020). The monogatari starts at 4:25 and extends for around ten

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Jōruri narrative is also at the core of kabuki dance (shosagoto), in which the sung narrative is provided mainly by tokiwazu, kiyomoto, and nagauta.52 Kabuki dance form developed in the early eigh­teenth ­century as a confluence of nagauta lyric dance m ­ usic and the michiyuki scenes of transposed jōruri plays and is a combination of narrative and lyric sections.53 It is a fixed sequence of formulaic narrative sections into which lyric sections are interpolated. ­After the introductory oki 置き narrative comes a variable series of sections that may ­either be song and dance or narrative interspersed with dialogue. The centerpiece of the form is the kudoki section. In shosagoto the kudoki is redolent of the culture of the licensed quarters with at times an overlay of Buddhist imagery, a residue of both the ­woman’s narrative voice of original jōruri and a Buddhist worldview. It is the first-­person narrative of a female protagonist who is a professional entertainer or a girl involved in a socially impermissible love relationship and is appealing to the male partner. The kudoki substyle in kabuki dance starts with melismatic, nonmetrical narrative style and gradually ­settles into a more stable rhythm, but the tempo is still slow. It has several subsections, each marked by a kudoki-­specific cadential pattern (otoshi 落トシ). The melody moves up to the high register using the reiterative pattern kan 上. In further subsections the style becomes more syllabic and gets progressively faster. Fi­nally, it becomes urgent and may adopt syllabic “passionate” narrative substyle before finishing with a standard narrative cadence, or the previously mentioned “weeping cadence,” giving a strong sense of finality. The offstage hayashi 囃子 ensemble is ­silent throughout, leaving the singers and dancer to sinuously and sensuously dwell on the pathos of the narrative. The kudoki is customarily followed by a nonnarrative dance section (odoriji 踊り地) with active rhythmic support from the hayashi ensemble, or by more action-­oriented narrative. In the case of some historical pieces that derive from heike or other gunki material, instead of a dance section the kudoki may be followed by a monogatari mimed narrative reminiscing about and reenacting a ­battle for a listener who is a character in the play. It is musically a strong contrast to the kudoki. A good example is the tokiwazu dance drama Masakado 将 門, which, although directly based on a novel by Santō Kyōden 山東京伝, minutes with a number of subsections as Kumagai tells Atsumori’s m ­ other and his wife how he killed Atsumori at the ­battle of Ichinotani. 52.  Nagauta is not strictly narrative or jōruri, but has a lyric song genealogy. However, it imbibed many narrative features from jōruri and can be usefully grouped with the jōruri genres that accompany kabuki dance. They share the same kabuki dance form. 53.  Alison Tokita, Kiyomoto-­bushi: Narrative ­Music of the Kabuki Theatre (Kassel, DE: Bärenreiter, 1999).

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draws on material deriving from the Shōmonki war tale.54 While monogatari sections are relatively common in gidayū-­bushi, and consequently in the plays that ­were adapted for the kabuki stage, in the current kabuki dance repertoire ­there are actually very few pieces with a monogatari. Where it occurs, it can be thought of as a masculine equivalent of the female kudoki as both are first-­ person monologues reenacting a past event or state. In terms of musical substyle, the kudoki exemplifies “soft” narrative, while monogatari is “hard” narrative. Then follows the narrative chirashi チラシ finale, which like all the narrative sections, has its own specific substyle. The shared memory of the Genji-­Heike wars as the founding narrative of the shogunate was sustained by ­these per­for­mance genres. This was not merely entertainment; it was the national history of and for the common ­people. The gunki war tale was both a literary genre and a per­for­mance genre. The biwa hōshi responsible for heike per­for­mance developed their art on the streets, in ­temple grounds, and in the homes of patrons. They had to perform with persuasion, ­whether the purpose was a requiem for warriors who had died violent deaths, or simply as entertainment. We know they w ­ ere competent and versatile musicians who performed many kinds of m ­ usic as documented from the Heian and medieval periods, and particularly in the Edo period, when they developed new genres of shamisen and koto ­music (jiuta sōkyoku 地歌筝曲), but heike recitation with biwa remained their official occupation (omote gei 表芸), patronized by the samurai elite and favored as personal cultivation by literati. Whereas the regional narrative genre of the blind goze 瞽女 ­women performers was l­ imited to one basic melody throughout a long per­for­mance, the biwa hōshi worked close to the centers of power u ­ nder highly professional conditions on the musical delivery for heike narrative.55 They built on basic substyles to create a repertoire of a large number of named melodies, including the content-­tied ones of hiroi and orikoe. The musical declamation of heike has continued to be transmitted ­until the pre­sent. The original biwa style, elaborated over centuries, became a desirable pursuit of the Edo-­period leisured intelligent­sia, who instigated the creation of text scores, notably the authoritative musically notated Heike mabushi 54.  Masakado, trans. Leonard C. Pronko, in Kabuki Plays on Stage: Darkness and Desire 1804–1864, ed. James R. Brandon and Samuel L. Leiter (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002), 206–19. The w ­ hole dance drama can be viewed at https://­www​.­youtube​.­com​/­watch​?­v​=­I51eP5eN6FA (Accessed August 18, 2020). The kudoki section is 14:30–20:12; the monogatari section is 20:50–26:43. Performers are Bandō Tamasaburō and Onoe Shōroku. 55.  On the goze see Gerald Groemer, Goze: Blind W ­ omen and Musical Per­for­mance in Japan (London: Oxford University Press, 2016).

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平家正節 (1776). However, the professional per­for­mance of its two hun-

dred chapters became impossible a­ fter the abolition of the feudal class system in 1872 brought about the end of the Tōdō 当道 (guild) organ­ization of the biwa hōshi, and the repertoire rapidly shrank. Relying almost entirely on oral transmission, the number of professional blind prac­ti­tion­ers has also decreased, and the sole blind carrier of the tradition in Nagoya ­today inherited a repertoire of only eight pieces.56 However, the content of heike narrative passed over into genres that developed subsequently: noh, kōwaka, and jōruri. ­These genres built on the modus operandi of multiple melodic delivery styles developed for heike and further elaborated it. Stories that have dropped out of the current Nagoya heike repertoire, such as “Atsumori,” “Kogō” 小督, and “Dannoura,” 壇ノ浦 found new realizations in noh, kōwaka, and jōruri. Heike narrative pioneered a melodic delivery that was specific to martial narrative. Kōwaka did not develop an explicit expression for military or warrior content, but the ­whole genre can be seen as appropriate for the military tale content, and the tsume melody seems to be particularly suited to gruesome passages. The differentiation of “hard” (military) and “soft” (romantic) musical substyles continued to be elaborated in jōruri.57 The “hard” substyles of delivery in the heike-­jōruri 平家・浄瑠璃 stream of story singing effectively drew attention to the military content and strove to convey its valiant or gruesome nature to listeners. The effect was to drive home the seriousness of the events and to engage the listeners emotionally in a shared history.

56.  The tradition of heike narrative has also been perpetuated by descendants of samurai retainers of the Tsugaru domain. They are sighted and basically self-­taught using the text-­score Heike ma­ bushi. A sizable number of prac­ti­tion­ers follow this school, whose musical realization of the text diverges significantly from the professional biwa hōshi tradition of Nagoya. See Komoda Haruko, “The Musical Narrative of The Tale of the Heike,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Japa­nese ­Music, ed. Alison McQueen Tokita and David W. Hughes (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008), 81–82. See also Komoda Haruko and Alison Tokita, “The ‘Heike ­Brothers’ and the 700-­Year Transmission and Reception of Heike Musical Narrative,” in Con­temporary Traditions: Japa­nese Per­for­mance Genres ­Today, ed. Lim Beng-­choo (Singapore: National University of Singapore, forthcoming) on Komoda’s work to revive the Nagoya repertoire by training young jiuta-­sōkyoku professionals. 57.  Strangely, the newer narrative genres of kindai biwa 近代琵琶 and naniwa-­bushi 浪花節 that emerged in the Meiji period do not clearly differentiate melody types for dif­fer­ent narrative content. Kindai biwa uses instrumental interludes rather than the sung parts to portray military content. Naniwa-­bushi has a substyle called urei (pathos) and a substyle called seme, used for pursuit or violent action, but b­ attle and fighting scenes are mostly narrated in spoken delivery. However, see Hugh de Ferranti, The Last Biwa Singer: A Blind Musician in History, Imagination and Per­for­mance (Ithaca, NY: East Asia Program, Cornell University Press, 2009) for a study of regional biwa narrative that does have substyles linked to narrative content.

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Performing Trauma and Lament Gendered Scenes of Samurai Anguish on the Eighteenth-­Century Kabuki Stage Katherine Saltzman-­L i

In mid-­Edo popu­lar theater, playwrights promoted an ideal of samurai heroes as loyal, moral men of purpose and action. The power of this cultural ideal in the performing arts reached its height at a time when social change increasingly challenged its accuracy. In the mid to late eigh­teenth ­century, the ideal was especially developed through characters and plot situations in jidaimono 時代物 (period plays) adapted from the puppet theater.1 In ­these plays, samurai characters often face impossible conflicts between allegiances, leading to an inevitable choice between two unimaginable courses of action. No ­matter the personal cost, their responses typically uphold and reinforce the ideals of loyalty and order through proper action taken within the hierarchical social structure. Scenes in puppet-­derived jidaimono that highlight conflicts faced by samurai characters ­were often the most appreciated moments of plays, for the acting and for the playwriting.2 In this chapter, I highlight two kinds of such 1.  Puppet-­derived kabuki plays are called maruhonmono 丸本物. Successful puppet plays w ­ ere often adapted for the kabuki stage, as was the case with most of the plays discussed in this chapter. 2.  The playwriting of maruhonmono was two-­layered. It originated with the puppet theater playwrights, who created the text for the chanter to perform in concert with the work of puppeteers. It was then adapted by kabuki theater playwrights, rewritten for the combination of live actors and chanters. The latter typically deliver lyrical passages at highlight moments, such as during the scene types discussed in this chapter. 18 6



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scenes, monogatari 物語 (scenes of ­battle narration) and kudoki くどき (scenes of lamentation), that endorse the ideal while at the same time demonstrating its intolerable costs. The extreme situations testing samurai values in ­these plays draw attention to the growing impossibility over the course of the Edo period of living out warrior ideals. The mid to late eigh­teenth ­century, halfway through the Edo period, was a time of growing recognition that samurai purpose and opportunities no longer corresponded to t­ hose set at the period’s start, and certainly not to t­ hose in force in pre-1600 periods. Nevertheless, cultural depictions of samurai ­were based in past ideals of samurai morality and be­hav­ior that ­were in large part the creation of narrative arts and that ­were taken to extremes in mid-­Edo popu­ lar performing arts. While the plays discussed h ­ ere ­were an impor­tant tool in the construction and maintenance in popu­lar imagination of samurai heroes as moral men of purpose, they paradoxically strengthened and gained cultural currency for the ideal in proportion to its waning relation to real­ity. Thus, the plot situations faced by samurai characters ­were in many ways mirrored on the societal level with the increasingly impossible and escalating gaps between official position and social/economic real­ity for members of the samurai class. In their absolute and rigid pre­sen­ta­tion of samurai choices, t­ hese plots are testaments to a breaking point of social change, widely addressed in con­ temporary culture and intellectual inquiry. Eighteenth-­century puppet-­derived jidaimono might thus be seen as a last-­gasp cultural cling to the ideal that even in stage arts was soon to fade, with the ideal itself remaining into the nineteenth ­century mostly as grist for ironic treatment or parody. Monogatari take the form of a speech delivered and enacted by a central male samurai character, with some lines taken by a chanter/musician pair and other lines occasionally interposed by another character. For kudoki, performed by female characters or onnagata 女形 (refers to the role and female-­role specialists), the words are typically allocated to a chanter as the actor expresses their meaning physically. In this chapter, I examine several examples of ­these scenes and compare the ways in which male and female samurai characters express and perform their reactions and resolve in the face of dire situations. The monogatari examined ­here draw on memory to pull past, pre­sent, and ­future together, placing characters in a pan-­temporal anguish, while kudoki, primarily the first example I discuss, more clearly situate the character in a misery that is focused fully in the pre­sent. In both cases, however, the anguish of samurai existence is foregrounded, and personal anguish can be seen as representative of a larger breakdown of the codes under­lying expectations for samurai be­hav­ior.

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Kabuki Speech Types Relatively early in kabuki history, famous speeches (meizerifu 名ぜりふ) ­were excerpted and printed in booklets available for purchase.3 Booklets of collected speeches associated with current productions and popu­lar actors w ­ ere 4 published as early as the 1670s. The purchased booklets engaged fans with celebrated actors: reading through offered reminders of per­for­mances seen, or amateur recitation from the booklets allowed a more active home engagement through imitation of vocal delivery and acting style.5 ­These activities furthered admiration for the abilities of favorite actors who performed the speeches on stage, thereby contributing to actor ­careers through fan adoration. Booklets from around the time of the plays to which we w ­ ill turn our attention served their intended readership with vocal production descriptions and speech examples from dif­fer­ent actors.6 What kind of speeches might find their way into t­ hese booklets? Some examples ­will give an idea. First, the tsurane つらね is a self-­introduction speech delivered during the entrance scene of certain impor­tant male characters, written (or ghostwritten) by the actor himself. Its purpose is to introduce the character, the actor, and the place of the actor in his ­family acting line and to connect with the audience through a request for continued patronage. Perhaps the most representative tsurane is delivered by Kamakura Gongorō Kagemasa in the play Shibaraku 暫.7 ­After calling out from offstage and then 3.  The general term for words spoken by kabuki actors on stage is serifu せりふ. The term is most commonly written in kana (syllabary) but can also be written with the Chinese characters 台詞 (台 for 舞台, stage, and 詞 meaning words). The term is first found in Tenshō kyōgenbon 天正狂言本, the oldest extant book of kyōgen plots (狂言, a form of theater originating in the medieval period, often paired with noh), recorded in the Tenshō 天正 era, 1573–1592. As the first impor­tant dialogue drama, it is not surprising to find the term’s earliest use in a kyōgen-­related manuscript. In Tenshō kyōgenbon, the word is given as serefu せれふ (or seryō), but by the time of the early Edo treatise Waranbegusa わらんべ草 by seventeenth-­century kyōgen actor Ōkura Toraaki 大倉虎明, we find frequent use of serifu せりふ, the form in which it entered kabuki terminology. Kabuki’s early, relatively realistic dialogue (before the heavy incorporation of puppet plays) seems to have been very much in line with kyōgen-­style serifu, thus the adoption of both the kabuki term and technique was indebted to kyōgen. On the term serifu, see Hattori Yukio 服部幸雄, Kabuki kotobachō 歌舞伎ことば帖 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1999), 2–5. 4. Called serifuzukushi 台詞尽し or ōmuseki 鸚鵡石 ­later in the Edo period. 5.  Amateur chanting of passages from noh plays was also popu­lar in the Edo period, and booklets ­were produced for the purpose. See reproduced pages from the excerpt book, Terako koutai shiki no tomo 寺子小謡四季の友 (Noh Songs for the T ­ emple School: A Companion for All Seasons, 1842), in Tom Hare, Zeami: Per­for­mance Notes (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 155. 6.  For example, see the ōmuseki by Kinkoku Dōjin 近黒道人 printed in Kyoto by Hachimonjiya Hachizaemon 八文字屋八左衛門 in 1772 (チ 13 03771 in the Waseda University Library collection): https://­www​.­wul​.­waseda​.­ac​.­jp​/­kotenseki​/­search​.­php​?­cndbn​=­鸚鵡石. 7.  Shibaraku was first performed in 1697 by Ichikawa Danjūrō I 市川団十郎 (1660–1704) in Edo’s Nakamura-za 中村座 as an inserted scene in a longer drama. Kagemasa is a young brash hero whose arrival, imposing appearance, and ­g rand posturing put an end to the evil machinations of his e­ nemy.



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entering along the hanamichi 花道 runway, Shibaraku’s Kagemasa seats himself at the shichisan 七三 spotlight location of the hanamichi and recites a tsurane.8 The following is a version recited by actors in the Ichikawa Danjūrō 市川団十郎 acting line: The Genji samurai of the East have always purified and emboldened themselves in the dewdrops of the Tama River, that same river where I, Mimasu of the ninth generation, hail from. Called Kamakura no ­ ere this year in the winter-­peony Gongorō Kagemasa by most, I am h makeup, which recalls the many kaomise (顔見せ) of old. Ready to appear again in this play for which my forebears have been famous, my coat is the color of the persimmon, its puckery flavor the refinement of the technique that has been transmitted to me. I take my turn and clumsily display my skills as an aragoto (荒事) specialist. Aragoto is the height of Edo acting and the fame of my f­ amily. Permit me to show you. I speak with all due re­spect.9 This tsurane mixes attributes of the character (e.g., “Called Kamakura no Gongorō Kagemasa by most,” “my coat is the color of the persimmon”) and of the actor Danjūrō (e.g., “I, Mimasu [one of Danjūrō’s names] of the ninth generation,” “I take my turn and clumsily display my skills as an aragoto specialist”), and it draws attention to Edo kabuki and the place of the actor’s f­ amily in it (e.g., “Aragoto is the height of Edo acting and the fame of my ­family”). The line “I am h ­ ere this year in the winter-­peony makeup, which recalls the many kaomise of old” mixes all of ­these aspects: character, actor (the peony became associated with Danjūrō), and the Danjūrō acting line and its significance to Edo kabuki (always appearing in the opening productions). Overall, the speech is exciting and memorable due to who speaks it, when and where in the play, and what it accomplishes metatheatrically. While the tsurane is delivered at the shichisan and forms a kind of stop-­ action moment of focus mostly on the actor rather than the character, 8. The hanamichi is the stage entranceway ­running through the audience section of the theater. Impor­tant acting takes place at the shichisan, the “seven-­three,” so named ­because it is approximately seven-­tenths of the way down the hanamichi ­toward the stage. 9.  Shibaraku, trans. Katherine Saltzman-­Li, in Kabuki Plays on Stage: Brilliance and Bravado, 1697– 1766, ed. James Brandon and Samuel Leiter (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002), 54. The kaomise was the first production of the kabuki calendar year, which began in the eleventh lunar month. In the city of Edo, Shibaraku was always performed as part of the kaomise program. Aragoto is a male bravado style of acting associated primarily with the Ichikawa Danjūrō line of actors in Edo, as indicated in this tsurane. This translation pre­sents a typical version of the Danjūrō tsurane for ­Shibaraku; other than adjusting the generation number (“Mimasu of the ninth generation”), individual actors may add topical references.

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other self-­introduction speeches that find their way into speech collection booklets can be delivered on stage and with more focus on the character. A famous example is the nanori 名のり (name-­saying speech) that Sukeroku 助 六 gives in the play Sukeroku yukari no Edo zakura 助六由縁江戸桜 (Sukeroku: Flower of Edo) to demonstrate his prowess and popularity in Edo, particularly in the plea­sure quarters.10 Unlike Kagemasa’s tsurane at the shichisan, which occurs just following his entrance on the hanamichi, Sukeroku has already performed his famous entrance down the hanamichi and been on stage for a while when he delivers his self-­introduction in response to comical taunting by lackeys of his ­enemy Ikyū 意休: No one but an ass sets foot in Yoshiwara not knowing my name. So hear it well. [­After much bragging about how impor­tant and well-­ known he is, especially in the plea­sure quarters, he continues at a rapid rate of delivery:] A headband of purple, the pride of Edo, dyed in Edo, binds my hair, the strands of which as you look through them frame a face which, if it graced an ukiyoe print, would make that picture famous in Japan! Who does not know this dragon in the ­water, growing stronger as his enemies increase? From the carousers at the plea­sure ­houses of Golden Dragon Mountain to the grim image of the ferocious god Fudō in Meguro, all Edo’s eight-­hundred-­and-­eight districts do not hide the man who does not know this wearer of the crest of peonies, this dweller among the cherry blossoms of Yoshiwara, this youthful Sukeroku, Agemaki’s Sukeroku! Scum! Bow before this face! Worship . . . ​it!11 In contrast to Kagemasa’s tsurane, the character Sukeroku hints at Danjūrō-­ lineage attributes (association with the god Fudō, all of Edo knowing of “this wearer of the crest of peonies”), but most of this speech describes and boasts of the character’s appearance and nature in his ongoing interactions with other characters on stage. Regardless of ­these differences, both types of speeches 10.  First staged in 1713 at Edo’s Yamamura-za 山村座 with Danjūrō II (1688–1758) as Sukeroku, although a 1716 rewrite for Danjūrō is the basis for the way the play has been performed since. Sukeroku is the quin­tes­sen­tial Edo dandy and man-­about-­town, while also hiding his real identity as the revenge-­seeking Soga Gorō. The roots of nanori speeches are in gunki monogatari 軍記物語 (war narratives) and in noh. In kabuki, they are generally spoken by one samurai to another, delivered when the speaker aims to impress his attributes upon his ­enemy. This speech from Sukeroku is aty­pi­cal in several ways, and one does not always find it referred to as a nanori, but it still falls ­under the term’s umbrella. 11.  James Brandon, Kabuki: Five Classic Plays (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1992), 71– 72. I have eliminated Brandon’s stage directions, which would not be included in a speech collection booklet.



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are crystallizing moments for audience engagement with the play, the character, and the actor, and thus w ­ ere, and still are, mainstays of famous kabuki speech collections. One more speech type that is often excerpted for speech collections is the monogatari. Monogatari reveal impor­tant aspects of the character (no metatheatrical references to the actor himself ) and are performed by lead male samurai characters at moments of emotional climax, typically at the most harrowing moments of consequential realization and determination for forward action. Just as a tsurane occurs at the impor­tant shichisan spot on the hanamichi following the entrance of a main character, monogatari are also marked by acting and delivery conventions as, for example, the actor’s placement on the main stage at center or near-­center. The common structure of jidaimono plays, as developed in the eigh­teenth ­century, placed significant highlight scenes, such as monogatari, at the closing and opening scenes of acts 3 and 4, respectively (of multiact plays, often with five or six acts); that is, more or less at the center point of the plot where unresolvable conflicts find their imperfect, usually tragic conclusion.12 Playwrights clustered stock plot devices and scene ele­ ments at this structural point in jidaimono (for example, along with mono­ gatari, one might find migawari-­mono 身替りもの, substitutions of one character for another; kubi jikken 首実検, head inspection scenes; modori もどり, revelation of a character’s true loyalties and intentions), and heavy emotional emphasis is built up in part through such clustering. Although kudoki do not appear in speech collections, for reasons that w ­ ill become clear, they too can be found at ­these impor­tant temporal and structural points in the play, as we ­will see.

Monogatari The monogatari is a center point of an act in which a samurai character recalls a pivotal moment, event, or series of events in the past, usually related to b­ attle. He recounts his memory of the experience and his related emotions through mimed speech. Monogatari narrate a character’s most disturbing past encounters and their current impact. I discuss three monogatari, all from the end of act 3 of jidaimono plays. All three are based in Heike/Genji 平家・源氏 (or Genpei 源平) sekai 世界 (story lines), which are the richest source for puppet/

12.  By the mid-­Edo period, it became common with puppet-­derived plays to perform only such highlight scenes, rather than the full plays.

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kabuki samurai characters.13 All three ­were also written first for the puppets between 1730 and 1751, a period in which jidaimono written for the puppet stage had found a relatively standard structure, and if successful, w ­ ere frequently adapted for the kabuki stage. Monogatari highlight indebtedness to the narrative tradition by clearing the action for a focus on telling. The simplicity of the scene and the placement of the actor serve to highlight the mimed words of the narration itself, which is delivered with the aid of the chobo チョボ, the chanter/shamisen pair who always perform in puppet-­derived kabuki plays seated on a special platform at stage left.14 Speaking from the center of the stage, the actor sits, and at some points might kneel or briefly stand. Only the most constrained physical acting is employed: mimed gesture from a basically static placement, and typically with very few other characters as witness. The actor uses a s­ imple prop, usually a fan, to support the mimed actions accompanying the narration. Overall, his per­for­mance is physically constrained, but verbally active. The scenes I discuss h ­ ere come from the plays Ishikiri Kajiwara 石切梶原 (Kajiwara’s Stone-­Cutting; from the full play Kajiwara Heizō homare no ishikiri 梶原平三誉石切, The Stone-­Cutting Feat of Kajiwara Heizō); Sanemori mono­ gatari 実盛物語 (The Sanemori Story; from the full play Genpei Nunobiki no Taki 源平布引滝, The Genji and Heike at Nunobiki Waterfall); and Kumagai jinya 熊谷陣屋 (Kumagai’s Camp; from the full play Ichinotani futaba gunki 一谷 嫩軍記, Chronicle of the B ­ attle of Ichinotani).15 Hattori Yukio considers Kuma­ 13.  Edo-­period puppet/kabuki plays with characters and plots based in the Genpei civil war are ultimately connected to medieval narratives of the war, but medieval narratives w ­ ere not the direct source for Edo-­period playwrights. Rather, the direct sources for ­these plays w ­ ere reworkings of the medieval narratives in other performing arts, and by mid-­Edo, reworkings in Edo plays themselves. The composite of reworkings available to a playwright is what comprises a sekai. Audiences knew the events and characters associated with a sekai, thus assuring playwrights a shared understanding for the complicated plots and plot twists characteristic of many kabuki plays. Over time, new sekai developed out of existing sekai, and rather than speaking of a Genpei sekai, we should speak of the group of sekai that grew out of the stories told as a result of the Genpei War. As further explored in this chapter, per­for­mance material set within the consoling Buddhist framework of medieval narratives and other medieval performing arts is exchanged in the comparatively secular Edo period for plots that highlight the moral choices and emotional consequences of stark and terrible situations. For more on play sources, the concept of sekai for kabuki playwriting, and other aspects of kabuki playwriting methodology, see Katherine Saltzman-­Li, Creating Kabuki Plays: Context for Kezairoku, “Valu­ able Notes on Playwriting” (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2010). 14.  The complex system of ­music that is integral to monogatari and kudoki scenes is only briefly touched on in the discussions that follow. For more on the impor­tant topic of the ­music, its formulaic nature and supporting styles, see Alison Tokita’s chapter in this volume and her other published work. 15.  Ishikiri Kajiwara: the puppet play was written by chief playwrights Matsuda Bunkōdō 松田文 耕堂 and Hasegawa Senshi 長谷川千四. It premiered in 1730 in Osaka at the Takemoto-za 竹本座 and was adapted for kabuki the same year in Osaka. The first Edo production was in 1795. Sanemori mono­ gatari: the chief playwrights ­were Namiki Senryū 並木千柳 and Miyoshi Shōraku 三好松洛. It premiered in 1749 in Osaka at the Takemoto-za. The first kabuki adaptation was premiered in 1757 in



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gai jinya and Sanemori monogatari as models of the form, but I ­will first describe aspects of Ishikiri Kajiwara in order to clarify the form, its effects, and its possibilities for character depiction. Like the other two plays, Ishikiri Kajiwara is based in stories originating in Heike monogatari 平家物語 (Tales of the Heike, hereafter referred to as Heike), narratives of the civil war between the Genji and Heike clans that eventually led to the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate. The play’s focus is on Kajiwara Heizō Kagetoki 梶原平三景時 (ca. 1162–1200), a Heike warrior who switched allegiance to the Genji clan and its leader Minamoto no Yori­ tomo 源頼朝 (1147–1199). History has maligned Kajiwara for this change of allegiance, but the play gives justifiable, sympathetic cause for it. Kajiwara represents a par­tic­u­lar kind of kabuki character whose evil actions and apparent allegiances are revealed to be contrary to his true loyalties. The point of revelation pivots the character back to the “good” he always secretly harbored, the plot device called modori (return). In Ishikiri Kajiwara, the revelation of Kaji­ wara’s “return” takes place through the monogatari. Just before the start of the monogatari, Kajiwara clears the stage, dismissing his attendants so that only a c­ ouple of key listeners remain. The Takemoto 竹本 chanter describes how the attendants “get up and / prepare to leave. Kajiwara looks around / and lowers his voice,” and then he draws in his listeners, “Come closer.”16 Thus begins his monogatari speech, with only two small interposed lines from the chanter: ­ ere routing the last of Kajiwara: Recently at Sugiyama in Doi, while we w the Genji forces, I caught sight of Lord Yoritomo, the head of the Genji clan, hiding in a hollow tree. I gave chase, thinking how fortunate I was to have spotted such a prize. Without any trou­ble, I caught him and, holding him down with one knee, was g­ oing to strike off his head. And then—­and how strange it was—­suddenly my w ­ hole body froze and I could not move. When I looked upon him I was struck by his noble appearance, which defied even the accounts I had heard. ­Here, I thought, was a personage of unsurpassed character, one blessed by nature with the qualities of a g­ reat samurai leader and endowed with the three virtues of wisdom, benevolence, and valor. I could see by the Osaka at the Kado no shibai 角の芝居, soon ­after in Kyoto, and in 1793 in Edo at the Nakamura-za. Kumagai jinya: the chief playwright was Namiki Sōsuke 並木宗輔 for acts 1–3; the play was completed ­after his death (he died a few months before the premiere). It premiered in Osaka in 1751 at the Toyo­ take-za 豊竹座. It was adapted for kabuki in 1752, with productions in Osaka’s Naka no Shibai 中の 芝居 and Edo’s Morita-za 森田座. 16. Takemoto is the narrative style, named for its originator, Takemoto Gidayū 竹本義太夫 (1651–1714).

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brilliance in his eyes that this was a man destined to lead Japan into a new era of samurai glory. For a h ­ umble soldier like me to strike him, I thought, would be sacrilegious. Takemoto: How awe-­inspiring his tale. Kajiwara: When I think about that moment, I am reminded that my ­family formerly served the Genji. At the time of the ­battle, I was fighting on the side of the Heike, but what held me back was a sense of loyalty to my ancestors’ former lords. I thought it best to bide my time and wait for Lord Yoritomo’s fortunes to rise. I therefore spared his life and steered Lord Ōba away from him. Now outwardly I serve the Heike, but in my heart I am a samurai whose life is devoted to the protection of Lord Yoritomo. And I am ready to throw my life away for his sake. Such is the sense of loyalty and devotion I feel. The world may shun me and label me a traitor or slanderer, and ­after my death my reputation may be defamed, but I d­ on’t mind. Now that I have told my story, I hope that you at least w ­ ill understand what ­really lies in my heart. Takemoto: Leaving nothing unsaid, / he has told his tale.17 During delivery, the actor is highlighted in his raised center-­stage position, and he rarely moves outside the close radius of that position, even as his delivery becomes most animated. Shamisen accompanies throughout, but with pauses at Kajiwara’s moments of most intense verbal delivery. The chobo picks up in intensity when the actor becomes most physically active and/or delivers key lines. For example, the technique known as chobo ni noru チョボにのる (with the chobo; also called ito ni noru 糸にのる, with the [shamisen] strings), usually indicated simply with nori ノリ, coordinates the actor’s narration and miming in time to the rhythm of the shamisen. An example is found above when Kajiwara narrates how he found Yoritomo and was about to behead him but his body froze and he could not go through with it: nori is performed when Kajiwara says, “I could see by the brilliance in his eyes that this was a man destined to lead Japan into a new era of samurai glory.”18 ­There are also many examples of nori in the monogatari from Kumagai jinya, as indicated in the translation below. 17.  Ishikiri Kajiwara, trans. William Lee, in Kabuki Plays on Stage: Brilliance and Bravado, 134–35. My discussion of this monogatari also relies on a 2007 per­for­mance recording starring Nakamura Kichi­ emon 中村吉右衛門 as Kajiwara: Kajiwara Heizō homare no ishikiri, DVD, Shochiku/NHK Home Video, 2007. 18.  Translated for the recording by Ronald Cavaye as “As I hesitated, I could see in [Yoritomo’s] eyes that he was destined to lead the Genji to prosperity.” Kajiwara Heizō homare no ishikiri, DVD, 1:13:14–1:13:20.



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Kajiwara must keep secret his change of allegiance—­only telling the two characters who sit solidly and quietly by as witnesses and audience to his story and his past—­but this private telling ­will give impetus for his ­later d­ oings. This scene shows a basic function of monogatari: the character uses memories of the past to gather strength and set up action in the ­f uture, as we can see from the next two examples as well. Sanemori monogatari is another Genpei-­based jidaimono, with a controversial samurai character who must be made admirable through his monogatari and subsequent actions. The plot includes more than one character who, on the surface, belongs to one clan—­either the Genji or the Heike—­but who in real­ity is loyal to or belongs to the other: Sanemori fights with the Heike but is loyal to the Genji; Koman, who is loyal to the death to the Genji, turns out to be a Heike; Kaneuji is a Heike but in the end aids the cause of the Genji; Tarokichi must kill his own Heike grand­father (Kaneuji) in order to serve a Genji, with the eventual aim of revenging the death of his ­mother (Koman) at the hands of Sanemori.19 Yes, this is almost inextricably confusing, and a full narration of the plot would only add to the bewilderment. Sanemori’s monogatari paves the way to revelation, clarity, and resolution of ­these puzzling threads. It lays the groundwork for Sanemori’s modori, as he sets in motion his ­f uture death at the hands of the child whose ­mother’s death he relates. The staging of the monogatari is similar to that in Ishikiri Kajiwara: Sanemori speaks from a seated position, using a fan to gesture, sometimes opened and sometimes closed. To begin, he moves to the center of the stage and prepares to give “a summary of what happened. Listen! Lady Aoi, please listen also.” The monogatari then follows: Takemoto: They listen for his story. / The torchlight shines like stars, / the scene resembling a night ­battle formation. Sanemori: Master Munemori’s boat set out from the capital in the direction of Seta-­karasaki to visit the shrine on Chikubu Island. In the midst of banqueting, a w ­ oman in her early twenties was spotted in the w ­ ater swimming from the direction of Yabase. She held a white object between her teeth, and her hand, soon to be dismembered, was seen struggling up and down in the w ­ ater. She was quickly approaching. As soon as I saw her, I called for someone—­a boatman or a swimmer—to 19. ­Because Sanemori fights on the Heike side but is in truth loyal to the Genji, the ­g reat Meiji-­ period star Ichikawa Danjūrō IX (1838–1903) did not like the role of Sanemori, seeing Sanemori, like Kajiwara, as too morally questionable, a “double-­dealing samurai” (futamata bushi 二股武士). Toita Yasuji 戸板康二 et al., eds., Meisaku kabuki zenshū 名作歌舞伎全集 (Tokyo: Sōgensha, 1970), 4:5.

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jump in and save her, but none would. I alone was willing to help. “­Don’t kill her!” I cried, and I hurried over to the side of the boat. Takemoto: At that moment, gales blew down from the mountain. / The brushwood boat offered no support for a drowning ­woman. / Out of pity for her, he untied some netting / and, fastening it to an oar, he flung it out to her. Sanemori: “Hey, ­woman! ­Don’t let go of the oar; hold onto it tightly!” Takemoto: He carefully helped her onto the boat. Sanemori: First, I lifted her safely aboard and then tended to her. I asked her to explain fully how she ended up in the ­water, where she came from, and what her name was. “Koman,” she said. Takemoto: As he was questioning her, / pursuing voices from the shore called out. Sanemori: “She’s on the Genji side! She’s concealing their white banner! Get it from her!” Takemoto: “Get it from her!” Sanemori: Voices everywhere . . . Takemoto: Hearing the shouting voices, / Hida no Saemon, pre­sent among ­those on the boat, / pounced on Koman. / He could not get the banner from her. Sanemori: Her single-­minded heroism. Knowing that if the white banner ­were to pass to the Heike, it would be the end of the Genji, she would not save her own life only to see them pass into obscurity. And so that arm, which held so fast to the white banner, splashed into the lake. Takemoto: He cut off her arm. / As it sank to the lake floor, the boat was rowed to shore. Sanemori: I placed the body on the beach. And eventually the white banner also returned to shore. Could it be that thinking of her parents and longing for her child, her arm drifted back? Takemoto: How tragic! / A tearful tale, / each word drenching the ­couple in tears.20 The other characters pre­sent react strongly to what Sanemori reveals, and the chanter is much more interactive than what we saw with Ishikiri Kajiwara. The Takemoto chanting frames the monogatari with description, but the main role of the chanter is to help Sanemori tell his tale, taking lines at times when he turns his full energies to miming, but also sharing in and supporting the drama of the actor’s narration in a manner similar to the role of the chorus in noh. 20.  Sanemori monogatari, trans. Katherine Saltzman-­Li, in Kabuki Plays on Stage: Brilliance and Bra­ vado, 274–75.



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As with noh, the chanter can speak for Sanemori (first person) or about him (third person). The translation above has “he” when the chanter narrates for Sanemori, but a strong argument can also be made for first person. Third person underscores the assisting role of the Takemoto chanting in allowing the actor to alternate speaking with his voice and “speaking” through his body (while the chanter describes, he mimes his story); first person allows for a consistent point of view throughout, keeping clear that it is always Sanemori’s story to tell. The specific production script and transmitted kata 型 (conventional patterns and methods of performing a role type or a par­tic­ul­ ar role) also affect the understanding of the scene.21 The seventh Ichikawa Danzō 市川団蔵 (1836–1911) and the fifth Onoe Kikugorō 尾上菊五郎 (1844–1903) perfected the two main Edo acting traditions (kata) associated with the per­for­mance of Sanemori’s monogatari: “the Danzō tradition stresses the irony of the situation, while the Kikugorō acting line plays the scene in a relatively showy style.”22 Complicating this division, productions ­today might mix kata from the two traditions.23 Much as we w ­ ill see with Kumagai jinya, Sanemori is forced by fellow samurai to kill an e­ nemy he would rather let live. The act of killing Koman sets in motion his own demise, the only logical dramatic solution to the choice he faced on the boat. His monogatari narrates his memory of the experience, a ­simple sequence of actions on the surface but each one fraught with consequences and ultimately committing Sanemori to Tarokichi’s ­later revenge. The play is one of the better examples of plot complication in kabuki, not only with the several cross-­purposed characters of divided loyalties but also with super­ natural ele­ments that move it along. The allegiances of their respective principal characters as well as other characters in Ishikiri Kajiwara and Sanemori monogatari are not what they seem, and ­here too the breakdown of clarity regarding the samurai’s role is apparent. The stories of Kajiwara and Sanemori ­were told for centuries before the Edo period, but the plots and character motivations are altered in t­hese mid-­eighteenth-­century popu­lar theater versions such that the very idea of clear allegiance now seems to be called into question. Many kabuki samurai who strug­gle with conflicting loyalties are not so controversial as Kajiwara and Sanemori. One of the most famous plays in the repertoire, Kumagai jinya, pre­sents a version of a story first narrated in the Heike regarding the slaying of the young aristocrat/warrior Taira no Atsumori 平敦盛 by Kumagai Jirō Naozane 熊谷次郎直実, a warrior of the Genji clan. As 21.  The idea of kata is applied not only to acting but also to many other aspects of production. 22. Toita, Meisaku kabuki zenshū, 4:6. 23.  Sanemori monogatari, 263.

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narrated in the Heike, Kumagai is forced into taking Atsumori’s head at the decisive ­battle of Ichinotani, but in so ­doing, vows to pray for Atsumori’s soul. In Heike and other medieval renditions of the story in narrative arts and noh drama, expectations for warrior engagement and obedient action are presented within a Buddhist framework. In t­hese works, Kumagai’s Buddhist awakening is a direct result of discovering that he had slain the youthful and refined Atsumori. In the new performing arts of the Edo period, however, the focus veers in a dif­fer­ent direction. The addition of a number of complicated new plot ele­ments, and a shift from a Buddhist context to the social and personal implications of the demands of loyalty, lead Kumagai to kill his own son, Kojirō, in Atsumori’s stead, an example of the plot device migawari-­mono, the physical substitution of one character for another who is slated to die. The two youths are around the same age, and by killing Kojirō, Kumagai is able, by one and the same act, to spare a master’s child and to satisfy his Genji overlords through the deception. His turn to religious life at the end of the play does not preach a Buddhist message as in medieval versions; instead, it offers an escape and a critique of the extreme demands placed on him by the dictates of samurai loyalty. In the play, Kumagai’s monogatari must accomplish the same general function seen in the ­earlier two examples, reviewing the past to prepare for immediate actions, but his monogatari is less introspective, less about justification and more about driving the plot. He must appease and delay reactions from his two primary listeners, Lady Fuji (wife of Genji ­enemy Yoshitsune and ­mother of Atsumori, yet to whom Kumagai owes allegiance) and Sagami (his wife, ­mother of Kojirō). The switch of Atsumori for Kojirō (who himself upholds the driving ideal through his self-­sacrifice, facilitating the unthinkable and thus demonstrating an understanding of his f­ ather’s position) is unknown to both w ­ omen ­until ­after the monogatari scene, but each w ­ oman has her own severe stake in what Kumagai has to say and listens intently. Kumagai sets up the monogatari scene: “Listen to me, Lady Fuji, what happens on the battlefield is beyond ­human power. Resign yourself to it. I ­will relate to you the tale of that day, and how Prince Atsumori died in ­battle.”24 Kneeling and with a closed fan in his hand, Kumagai begins the monogatari.

24. Brandon, Five Classic Plays, 194. Brandon consulted several texts and stage directions from Kabuki-za (the chief Tokyo Kabuki Theatre) and National Theater productions in the late 1960s in preparing his translation. He marks the nori in his translation, presumably based on shared practice from all the theater archives he consulted. This is a good place to remember that discussion of ­kabuki plays should be tied to the specifics of per­for­mance or should take into account variations in practice.



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The chanter intersperses lines frequently—­sometimes in first person, sometimes in third person—­and Lady Fuji is also an impor­tant interlocutor.25 Kumagai: [strongly] Now then, it had come to pass that during the long night of the sixth, at the time clouds in the east w ­ ere beginning to brighten, among the throng of Heike warriors who assaulted our vanguard of two—­Hirayama and Kumagai—­one man stood out . . . Narrator: [continuing] “. . . ​unsurpassed in scarlet-­laced armor, forcing even Hirayama to cease fighting and flee to safety on the beach!” ­[kumagai places the fan on the floor, gestures strongly, lifts the closed fan, strikes his chest with it, and points into the distance, miming the action described in the narration.] Kumagai: [nori] What a fearless young samurai! “Come back,” I shouted, “­don’t waste yourself on a fleeing ­enemy when I, Kumagai, am ­here!” [Calling off.] “Come back! Come back!” Narrator: [continuing] Holding the fan, he motioned him to return . . . ​ [kumagai points off with the fan, flicks it open, and still on his knees poses in a mie to battari tsuke beats, the fan held against his chest.] . . . ​­until he turned his h ­ orse’s head, and blows twice, three times, struck on the wave-­struck shore. [KUMAGAI closes the fan and, to batan tsuke beats, strikes his thigh, as if whipping a ­horse.] Kumagai: [nori] “Let us grapple,” I said; “Yes,” he replied. Narrator: [continuing] Casting long swords away, they crash to the earth between their ­horses! [He moves the fan back and forth as if the two ­were grappling over it, opens it, and suddenly presses it down to the floor.] Fuji: [trembling] Ah! Then did you hold down the young warrior? Kumagai: Looking closely at his face, I saw he was some sixteen years old, the same age as my son, a court child with blackened teeth and eyebrows delicately plucked, surely still living with his parents. Thinking of their deep agony and of my own affection for a son, I lifted him to his feet. Narrator: [continuing, slowly] Brushing off the dust . . . [KUMAGAI mimes brushing the dust from his sword.] 25.  Brandon’s “Narrator” means the Takemoto chanter. The meaning of terms in the stage notes of this translation are: mie 見得 (stop-­action poses taken by one or more actors to highlight a challenging or climactic moment), battari tsuke バッタリツケ (tsuke pattern to accompany a mie; the tsuke is two wooden blocks that when struck on a wooden board, accentuate impor­tant moments or stage action), batan tsuke バタンツケ (tsuke pattern to emphasize a significant action).

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Kumagai: “Quickly! Flee!” Fuji: Did you urge him to go? Then you did not intend to slay him? Kumagai: Though I urged him, “quickly, flee,” “no,” he replied, “once thrown to the ground by the ­enemy, I am dishonored. Take my head quickly . . . ​Kumagai!” Fuji: What? Did he say, “take my head”? What a noble phrase! [She collapses, weeping loudly.] Kumagai: [straining for control] My Lady, please! When I heard this, all the more tears welled in my breast. [Forcing back tears, he presses the closed fan against his chest.] Ahh, what if my son Kojirō had been thrown to the ground by the ­enemy and was about to lose his life in this same way. The way of the samurai is not so base! Though I seized my long sword . . . Narrator: [sings in loud, melodramatic tones to shamisen accompaniment] “I hesitated! I could not draw!” [KUMAGAI seizes his long sword. Rising on his knees, he stamps one foot on the top step of the stairs and poses in an anguished mie to loud battari tsuke beats. In time to shamisen chords, several times he tries to draw. The NARRATOR strains forward and slaps the stand for emphasis; his face con­ torts as he cries out KUMAGAI’s agony.] “Then I heard! From the mountaintop b­ ehind me, routed Hira­ yama cried out!!” Kumagai: [chants powerfully, in time to the rhythm of the Takemoto shamisen] [nori] “Kumagai! You are a traitor! He is at your mercy, yet you dream of helping Atsumori,” he called out to me! Ahhhh!! [With a prolonged cry, KUMAGAI falls forward. He steadies himself by lean­ ing on the upright closed fan. Quietly, but emotionally, he continues.] “­There is nothing I can do. Have you any final words? If so, speak and I ­will . . .” [He breaks off and puts his hands to his eyes.] Narrator: [continuing] Eyes brimming with teardrops . . . Kumagai: “­Father is on the rough sea; ­mother’s welfare weighs upon my heart. In this unsettled world, yesterday’s clear skies have clouded. My single request, Kumagai, is that you help my ­mother in the difficult life to come.” ­There was nothing ­else to do but . . . ​strike off the child’s head! [Screaming.] Thus I fulfilled the custom of the battlefield! ­ omen rise on their knees in horror, then sink back weeping [The two w loudly. KUMAGAI’s face twists in agony, he rises on one knee, holds the open fan before his chest, and poses. He throws the closed fan to the floor in a gesture



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of revulsion. His chest heaves with sobs and he prostrates himself on the floor. The three weep together.]26 The relatively active and dramatic nature of this monogatari, as compared with the other two examples, is evident in this script: three nori highlights at the more dramatic narrative moments, three “speakers,” and three lines taken by Lady Fuji—two that urge on the narrative with questions about Kumagai’s exact intentions and interactions with “Atsumori” (“Ah! Then did you hold down the young warrior?”; “Did you urge him to go? Then you did not intend to slay him?”) and one that unbeknownst to Lady Fuji, praises Kojirō (she believes she is speaking of Atsumori) and thus offers some sort of validation to Kumagai. The dynamic feel of this monogatari also builds on the relatively short and frequently alternating lines, as well as the vigorous movements in the miming. Befitting Kumagai’s state of mind and the situation—­requiring Kumagai to deceive with his story and to keep his emotions in check—it feels almost frenetic. The narrator is critical to the actor’s success in conveying this mood, taking his lines (“I hesitated! I could not draw!”) and some of his physical expression (“The Narrator strains forward and slaps the stand for emphasis; his face contorts as he cries out Kumagai’s agony.”) Nonetheless, the focus remains on Kumagai. It is his story at this point, though soon to be taken over by Sagami and Lady Fuji, when they realize the truth and nontruths of Kuma­ gai’s story. In spite of variations among ­these three monogatari examples, each character views his experience retrospectively and recalls his memory of what the event felt like at the time it occurred but also performs his current emotions regarding the experience and its continuing effects. The physical constraint in the actor’s movements holds emotions in check that must obey limits, while the verbal outpouring is given full rein. Mea­sured at first, the narration gains intensity gradually as the shamisen joins in as a second voice. The shamisen both underscores the core of the painful experience/memory and, at the same time, takes on some of the pain itself, as though to alleviate the burden the character carries. The narrating character and the witnessing characters should be equally affected by the per­for­mance of the revelation, such that their previous assumptions and plans w ­ ill change as a m ­ atter of course. Through the act of narrating, performing, and exposing secret or private actions and motivations, the pause in the plot’s forward movement prepares the way for ac­cep­tance and readiness by 26. Brandon, Five Classic Plays, 194–96.

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the narrating character, who gains momentum for what he must do, while other characters find explanations for accepting ­future actions. While they sit intently watching, occasionally responding or asking for details, the per­for­mance itself must convince them of the sincerity of the narration. Thus, the per­for­mance is judged internally, within the play, and externally, by the audience. ­There are in fact two kinds of scenes in which b­ attles are described by a single character in kabuki, monogatari and gochūshin 御注進 (­battle report, referring to the scene and the character who delivers the report). The latter, also found in puppet-­derived jidaimono and also mixing the actor’s lines with a chanter/shamisen pair, are scenes in which a samurai enters hurriedly on the hanamichi to give a report to onstage characters of current battlefield conditions taking place offstage. Beginning his report with “gochūshin, gochūshin” (“­Here to report, ­Here to report,” thus the name of the scene) and ending with “hayaosaraba” 早おさらば (“In haste”) as he runs back off the hanamichi, the report is supported by vigorous movements and the wielding of a stage sword or spear, as opposed to the symbolic fan of the monogatari. In gochūshin scenes, the actor acts the ­battle rather than miming it. A famous example is from the “Daimotsu Bay” (Daimotsu no ura 大物浦) act of Yoshitsune senbon zakura 義経千本桜 (Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees), which actually has two closely spaced gochūshin scenes.27 In the first, a samurai named Sagami Gorō rushes onstage to give a midbattle report, sharing the b­ attle description with the chobo and acting out b­ attle moments before rushing back to the b­ attle. In the second, one Irie Tanzō, a fatally wounded warrior, comes down the hanamichi, pursued by an ­enemy samurai who engages him at the shichisan of the hanamichi and onto the stage. As Irie tells the disaster of the losing ­battle, the ­enemy interrupts him a few times and they perform tachi­ mawari 立ち回り (­battle choreography), during which the chobo takes over narration. Irie exits off the backstage, as the e­ nemy plunges with him into the sea. ­These gochūshin scenes begin and end offstage, and they are performed before many characters and in wide-­open circumstances, instead of the secret, huddled conditions and few participants of a monogatari. The actor reports current conditions and ongoing engagements, bringing the other characters and the audience into an awareness of the action. He pre­sents unfinished outcomes versus the finished outcomes but unfinished effects that characterize mono­ gatari. Gochūshin are active scenes of reportage during war, rather than reflective scenes of telling when ­actual war lives in memory. 27.  By playwrights Takeda Izumo II 竹田出雲, Miyoshi Shōraku, and Namiki Senryū, Yoshitsune senbon zakura premiered in 1747 for the puppet theater at the Takemoto-za. It was adapted in 1748 for kabuki, first in Ise, and then l­ater in the same year, at Edo’s Nakamura-za and Osaka’s Naka no Shibai.



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Kabuki monogatari are an inheritance from medieval performing arts through the gradually secularizing worldview of jōruri.28 In noh shuramono 修羅物 (warrior plays), warrior ghosts enact b ­ attle memories. The goal of their narratives and dances is to tell, be heard, cast off attachments, and end the relentless repetition of existential pain that follows their lives into death. However, ­these efforts are thwarted on more than one level. Per­for­mance itself demands the maintenance of the attachment: an audience is implicated in the character’s continuing attachment by supporting the return of the character to the stage. Furthermore, each retelling/reenactment re-­creates the event. The per­for­mance of memory, therefore, is a retelling that renews the event and defers repair of its psychic damage in­def­initely. In kabuki, while some characters may seek answers to their existential dilemmas from religious devotion (Kumagai), the context of prayer is gone, the world of enlightenment-­seeking ghosts is gone. The setting and focus is instead on the pre­sent and the need for action. The past suddenly erupts into the pre­sent and takes on agency. This is internal and external: the plot requires it, and the metatheatrical social setting requires it. The power of the cultural ideal of samurai as loyal, valiant men of action that animates ­these scenes provided the context for monogatari remembrance. The combination of memory embodiment and sympathetic listeners is common to both noh shuramono and kabuki monogatari. In both, characters who have suffered the trauma of war are controlled by the trauma of war memories. “We have come to term p­ eople caught in such circumstances victims of trauma, understood as men and ­women suffering from a wound which ­will not heal. In some cases—­and by no means in all cases—by performing their predicament, they move t­ owards transcending it.”29 Primary characters in ­these plays suffer “from a wound which ­will not heal,” but they attempt a cure through revisiting and enacting their wound. Again and again, noh captures the essence of the tenacious hold of certain experiences that cannot be cast off, experiences that demand the unlikely hope of full escape (enlightenment). Although the achievement of full escape is rarely assured by a play’s end, noh offers partial escape through the hope engendered in each new per­ for­mance, a point that suggests the ethical value of per­for­mance and t­hose who witness it, onstage and in the ­house. In kabuki, it is action, not prayer, 28.  Hattori Yukio writes that kabuki monogatari inherited the physical gesturing and verbal aspects of kyōgen, on the one hand, and absorbed the musical qualities of jōruri narration (katari), on the other. Hattori, Kabuki kotobachō, 64. 29.  Jay Winter, “The Per­for­mance of the Past: Memory, History, Identity,” in Performing the Past: Memory, History, and Identity in Modern Eu­rope, ed. Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree, and Jay Winter (Amsterdam, NL: Amsterdam University Press, 2010), 19.

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that ­will give the most consolation—­and yet not. Narrating the past unleashes the power of memory to give the energy and conviction for action, but the ensuing action w ­ ill also add another layer of traumatic memory to the existing wound.

Kudoki Kudoki is a kabuki scene type performed by onnagata as a kind of tour-­de-­force defining moment for both actor and character. As with monogatari, samurai-­ class characters who perform kudoki similarly express anguish over tormenting situations, but in a way that contrasts greatly with the emotional expression in monogatari. The gendering of emotion in kabuki finds its most concentrated exposition in t­ hese two similarly focused yet contrasting scene types. The miming and physical restraint, central and fixed placement among a small audience of characters, and the recounting of memory and resulting resolve that together are impor­tant features of monogatari are contrasted in kudoki with relatively unrestrained acting that breaks out of the usual physical bound­aries imposed on female-­role bodies and a pure expression of pain that is mostly physical and less restricted than usual decorum requires. An example is Sagami’s kudoki from Kumagai jinya, a scene performed very soon ­after Kumagai’s monogatari quoted and discussed above. Sagami, Kuma­ gai’s wife, has just become aware that the head Kumagai offers to Yoshitsune for verification is that of her own son, Kojirō, rather than the expected head of Lady Fuji’s son, Atsumori. (For reasons that also contribute to Kumagai and Saga­ mi’s “correct” samurai conduct, Yoshitsune certifies the head as that of Atsumori.) In the kudoki, Sagami must express and manage her extreme emotions. Kumagai places the box holding Kojirō’s head in front of her, telling her to show “Atsumori’s” head to Lady Fuji (who still believes the head to be that of her own son). Kumagai’s gesture of passing the head to Sagami is accompanied by a warning look, and Sagami “slowly raises her eyes to meet his. A look of understanding passes between them.” Kumagai moves upstage, and the kudoki begins: Narrator: [sings plaintively, melodically, to shamisen accompaniment] Saying no more than “yes,” the wife . . . [SAGAMI rises, anguished, unable to look at the head of her son. She grips the lapels of her heavy outer robe and sinks to her knees weeping.] . . . ​lifts the pitiful head in her hands . . . [Struggling against her emotions, she rises and crosses to the head. At last, she turns and looks, but cannot bring herself yet to touch it. She takes folded



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paper from her breast, bites down hard on it to gain control of herself, turns away, and stands in a grief-­stricken pose, head rhythmically bobbing up and down like a puppet to express her conflicting emotions. The audience applauds.] . . . ​with brimming eyes she gazes upon the changed face of her dead son . . . [She lifts the head from the floor and cradles it in the crook of her arm. In time to the ­music she walks forward carefully, one step at a time.] . . . ​her breast, choked with b­ itter grief, her body quaking . . . [She staggers, catches herself, then sinks to the floor. Holding the head out at arm’s length, at last she gazes at it, lovingly, as she rocks from side to side. Her head bobs in grief and she weeps bitterly.] . . . ​ahhh! . . . ​the head in her trembling hands . . . [Taking the paper from between her teeth, she cradles the head in the crook of her arm and wipes kojirō’s face. She puts the paper away. Holding the head directly before her in both hands, she rises on her knees and looks long­ ingly into kojirō’s face. Her hands and body ­tremble, the head moves rhyth­ mically up and down.] . . . ​seems to be nodding . . . [SAGAMI and NARRATOR cry in unison.] Sagami: . . . ​as he did, when turning back at the gate, he smiled upon me! When I recall his features . . . [She clutches the head to her breast and presses her cheek against kojirō’s.] Narrator: [continuing, emotionally] . . . ​how tragic . . . Sagami: . . . ​how pathetic! Narrator: Her voice stops in her throat! [Her body is wracked with sobbing so violent no sound can escape. Then gradually her despairing cries alternate with t­ hose of the NARRATOR ­until they are loudly weeping in unison to shamisen accompaniment.]30 Sagami barely speaks, only briefly to remember her son’s sweetness when they last parted, but this quick dip into memory only brings on greater despair. 30. Brandon, Five Classic Plays, 202–3. Following this quoted passage, Sagami shows the head to Lady Fuji, who realizes the truth upon seeing that it is Kojirō. Following Lady Fuji’s shocked recognition, Sagami covers and partially uncovers the head, talks to Lady Fuji about the kar­ma connecting them, tries in vain to inquire of Kumagai about their son’s last moments, carries the head back to Kumagai on the veranda, and replaces it on the base of its carry­ing case. Then, “SAGAMI falls to the floor, leans back first on one hand, then on the other. Suddenly she rises and runs to embrace KOJIRŌ’s head once more, but KUMAGAI firmly gestures for her to go back. She collapses on the floor weeping” (Brandon, Five Classic Plays, 204). While Sagami’s words and actions described in this footnote complete the scene, the heart of the kudoki ends as I have quoted it, at which point Sagami’s interior focus on private pain yields to renewed interaction and appeals to the other characters.

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It is not a recounting or an explanation, as with the monogatari examples above. Rather, the past only serves to intensify the pain and make it unbearable. No ­g rand gesture of resignation follows, such as Kumagai’s turn to the solace of Buddhist practice. ­There is no way forward: Sagami’s collapse at the end of the scene indicates full defeat and a searing critique of the “ideal” for samurai ­women. During the kudoki, Sagami removes herself from the other characters to cradle her son’s head, and the scene is often staged at a lower stage level than where Kumagai and Yoshitsune sit. This remove allows her to emote in ways disallowed in full com­pany, and ­there also seems to be a suggestion that no character onstage can console her. Her grief is therefore directed to the theater audience as opposed to the onstage characters. It is as though she knows t­here is no solution or consolation her fellow characters can offer, so she appeals to the wider society about the impossibility of her situation and thus the ideals to which she is held.31 Sagami performs the kudoki with the combination of relative verbal silence (relying fully on the Takemoto) and deeply expressive physical patterns of movement. Conversely, with monogatari, samurai characters hold back their trained fighting bodies and pause to rely on verbal expression that ­will gain them resolve and enlist understanding of opaque true motives from ­those who listen. The chobo contributes importantly to monogatari, aiding the narration as well as providing rhythm and tonality to vary the mood in accordance with narrative content.32 With kudoki, the externalizing of the verbal component through the chanter/shamisen pair is highly effective in supporting affective physical expression. When facing dire circumstances, such as in Sagami’s case, it indicates that the overwhelming nature of the situation forced on the female character cannot be explained or argued against or expressed by her other than to break physical decorum. 31.  Gunji Masakatsu addresses another significance of an onnagata’s physical separation during a kudoki scene in a discussion of the puppet-­derived jidaimono Ehon Taikōki 絵本太功記 (The Picture Book of the Taikō; the play was premiered for the puppet theater in 1799 at Osaka’s Toyotake-za, and adapted for kabuki by Nagawa Tokusuke 奈河篤助, premiering at Osaka’s Kado no Shibai in 1800). The kudoki scene is performed by the character Misao in the tenth act (only the tenth act of the original thirteen is still in the repertoire). Professor Gunji wrote, “When the onnagata performs the kudoki, he comes down from the raised platform [where the action has been taking place] to the stage floor proper, giving repre­sen­ta­tional form to female characters’ social position and behavioral expectations.” Gunji Masakatsu 郡司正勝, Kabuki no bi かぶきの美 (Tokyo: Shakai Shisōsha, 1960), 96. 32. Offstage, hayashi 囃子 (kabuki orchestra) instruments also contribute to the per­for­mance of monogatari. For example, during Sanemori’s monogatari, offstage drums sound at the point when Sanemori says, “ ‘­Don’t kill her!’ I cried, and I hurried over to the side of the boat,” followed by the Takemoto taking up the narration with, “At that moment, gales blew down from the mountain” (Sanemori monogatari, 274).



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Another puppet jidaimono play adapted for kabuki is the 1766 Honchō nijūshikō 本朝廿四孝 ( Japan’s Twenty-­Four Paragons of Filial Piety), based in the history of sixteenth-­century clan warfare. In the scene Jusshukō no ba 十種香の場 (The Ten Types of Incense), a kudoki is performed by Princess Yaegaki to entreat her betrothed Katsuyori to reveal himself to her (he is in disguise as a gardener named Minosaku, and must protect his disguise).33 When Yaegaki calls out his real name, Katsuyori/Minosaku berates her (“Why, how absurd to call me Katsuyori! I am Minosaku and have no idea at all to whom you refer. Do not talk so rashly.”). The Takemoto chanters then take over, and the kudoki begins. The actor playing Yaegaki dances and gestures to the chanted words, showing her deep emotions and demonstrating her love to Minosaku/Katsuyori: Takemoto: No more than betrothed, we had yet / a single pillow to share, / and though natu­ral / for you to conceal feelings / of conjugal love, / yet are we like a pair of birds / with wings the same hue. / Though mankind l­ittle suspects / the ties that bind them, / still is it the custom for / all living creatures / to call with affection to / their parent or spouse. (Overwhelmed with emotion, she steps back, colliding with a pillar. Somewhat embarrassed, she poses [kimari] with her arms wrapped around the pillar.)34 [During the above section Yaegaki stands near a screen painted with two birds and in some way—­depending on the specific actor’s kata traditions—­gestures to the birds to bring meaning to the chanted text.] However hard for o ­ thers / to distinguish your face, / how could I ­mistake the / appearance of one / for whom I have so longed, my / dear Katsuyori? (She looks sadly at MINOSAKU and returns to her room to look up lovingly at the painting. Coming out again, she sits beside him.) While from the world and from men / you remain hidden, / and your person is kept / carefully disguised, / what need is t­here for such reserve / with I who am your wife? / I beg you reveal clearly / your identity / and reassure my heart . . . (She lets out a sob.)35 33.  Jusshukō no ba was written by Chikamatsu Hanji 近松半二, Miyoshi Shōraku, Takeda Inaba 竹田因幡, and ­others. It premiered for the puppets at the Takemoto-za, and ­later in the same year, it was adapted and first performed for kabuki at Osaka’s Naka no Shibai. 34.  Kimari きまり refers to a “brief pose to emphasize emotion, intention, or reaction. Softer and shorter in duration than a mie, it is often performed by a female character.” James Brandon and Samuel Leiter, “Glossary,” in Kabuki Plays on Stage: Brilliance and Bravado, 359. 35.  Honchō nijūshikō, trans. Paul Griffith, in Kabuki Plays on Stage: Brilliance and Bravado, 339.

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The text reveals a mounting frustration, more than desperation. A young lady pleads with her betrothed, and although the play’s overall plot involves samurai conflict and its consequences, the stakes are greatly dif­fer­ent for Yaegaki than for Sagami. Even so, ­after the kudoki, Yaegaki is ready to kill herself for shame at having thrown herself at a man she is told is not her betrothed. This act of what is portrayed as samurai mettle is rewarded by a revelation from Nureginu (Yaegaki’s attendant) of Katsuyori’s true identity and a brief meeting of the lovers. Nureginu says, “I expected no less from the child of a warrior’s ­family [i.e., Yaegaki’s willingness to kill herself on princi­ple]. Your determination is splendid and, having witnessed your sincerity, I ­will let you meet Katsuyori a­ fter all.”36 This seems almost a parody, especially when held up against sacrifices such as Sagami’s in Kumagai jinya, which premiered only fifteen years e­ arlier. It is therefore a very difficult role, requiring the actor to make us feel sympathy for Yaegaki’s plight and admiration for her determination. Rather than unfathomable pain, Yaegaki’s kudoki features kabuki’s idea of female charm and loveliness, inflected with a slight pathos, as the goal of the actor’s per­for­mance, and this became the direction in which kudoki scenes developed subsequently. Kudoki that foreground an enchanting feminine suffering are most numerous in solo dance plays, where the focus is on a single onnagata actor/female character. Dance plays became particularly popu­lar during the first half of the nineteenth ­century.37 The principal actor’s dance skills are highlighted, and the musicians—­specialists in dif­fer­ent musical styles, including nagauta 長唄 and tokiwazu 常磐津—­appear across the back of the stage or to the sides in large numbers.38 In contrast to what is expressed by male characters in eighteenth-­century jidaimono monogatari, Sagami’s kudoki effectively enacts female response to the demands of samurai ideals. However, as with Yaegaki, the emotions expressed in kudoki gradually came to relate more to romantic love than to ­family obligation and/or maternal love. Furthermore, the actor’s patterns of movement in eighteenth-­century kudoki mimed the meaning of the Takemoto chanter’s words, but with the dance plays of the nineteenth c­ entury, a change occurred. While the lyr­ics ­were often beautifully written, the chanted ­music primarily served to enhance the display of dance skills for their own sake, with a 36.  Honchō nijūshikō, 339. 37. ­Later in the Meiji period, new dance plays w ­ ere created through adaptation of noh and kyōgen plays. T ­ hese ­later examples are part of the category of plays known as matsubamemono 松羽目 物, plays adapted from the noh. 38. The nagauta ensemble has chanters, shamisen, percussion, and flute; tokiwazu ­music is performed by chanters and shamisen players.



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stylized rather than narratively meaningful connection between movement and lyr­ics.39 Dance plays are structured by a series of sections, in more or less a consistent order, and a kudoki is one of the standard sections. In the kudoki, a maiden’s dance movements represent lamentation over a lover’s fickleness, lost love, or hoped-­for-­love. Graceful movement and mime with prop manipulation are central ele­ments of kudoki. As an example, h ­ ere is the text for the kudoki of the play Fuji musume 藤娘 (The Wisteria Maiden), 1826, with nagauta ­music: What is hateful in a man’s heart / is that, although / he promised by the gods never / to meet another ­woman, / he may be worshipping someone ­else. / Awazu and Miidera’s bells / recall promises / firm as Rock Mountain, but in truth, / empty as the shell / of a cicada that has flown. / I pine, waiting in the eve­ning, / but he is indifferent, / cold as the snows of Mount Hira, / although he melts when near. / Ah, I am so jealous! / He truly deceived me. / I have sent letters in vain. / My heart is turning to resentment.40 During the per­for­mance, the actor uses several props to underscore the text’s references and meanings. Early in the play (before the kudoki), the maiden gestures with a wisteria branch that she “briefly embraces . . . ​almost caressing it,” as if it ­were the absent lover, or she uses it to “frame her face” to lyr­ics of love as though enveloping herself within the lover’s embrace. In the kudoki, her prop is a hat. She strokes the hat and ties together its ribbons to express love, but then strikes at the ribbons to express her misery with the indifferent lover. The hat also becomes a surface for writing letters to the loved one, with the ribbons serving as the brush.41 The actor performs the mounting anger described in the lyr­ics with movement that is increasingly unreserved, but physical expression of anguish in this kind of kudoki is largely subordinated to graceful beauty of form. One more genre in the evolution of kabuki kudoki is plays combining dialogue drama with impor­tant dance scenes. Such plays are termed buyōgeki 舞踊 劇 (dance-­drama), and one representative example is the play Masakado 将門 39.  Similarly, stage sets for dance plays ­were designed as decorative backdrops to the open space of the stage cleared for dancing. Large properties showed ­little or no relation to any story ­behind the dance, as opposed to the architectural interior and courtyard space that served as stage setting for Sagami’s kudoki. 40.  Fuji musume, trans. Leonard Pronko, in Kabuki Plays on Stage: Darkness and Desire, 1804–1864, ed. James Brandon and Samuel Leiter (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002), 171. Fuji musume was first performed at the Nakamura-za by actor Seki Sanjūrō II 関三十郎 (1786–1839) as one of the roles he performed in a longer five-­part dance play. 41.  Fuji musume, 168.

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(named for the tenth-­century warrior-­rebel Taira no Masakado), 1836.42 Masa­ kado uses a tokiwazu ensemble and includes both a kudoki and a monogatari.43 The kudoki is very much in the form just discussed for dance-­based plays, with the tokiwazu ensemble singing the poetic text of lines that plead for love (“ ‘. . . ​ From daybreak to nightfall, / a ­woman’s unchanging love / has persisted to this very moment / of our happy reunion. / Please, oh, please, / cast aside your doubts,’ / she urgently repeats, / clinging to him and hiding / her blushing face ­behind / the screen of her sleeves”).44 However, the female character, Princess Takiyasha (­daughter of the slain Masakado), is in disguise as the courtesan Kisaragi, and the ultimate purpose of her kudoki is to deceive and to persuade the Genji warrior Mitsukuni not so much to love her, but to rebel against the Genji. Deceit follows deceit in Mitsukuni’s monogatari, which closely follows on the kudoki scene and in which Mitsukuni recounts Masakado’s final b­ attle and death. His real purpose with the monogatari is to discover the identity of “Kisaragi” (whom he suspects to be Princess Takiyasha), hoping that a moving narration of the final b­ attle of Princess Takiyasha’s f­ ather, Masakado, w ­ ill elicit her natu­ral responses to her f­ather’s death and thereby reveal her true identity. In this monogatari, the ­battle narration content remains, but although Mitsukuni was a participant in the ­battle described, it is not his own ­battle story that he tells. Furthermore, he uses the fan prop to help mime the narration, as is customary, but his physical per­for­mance is not restricted in the same way as with the eighteenth-­century jidaimono examples we have examined. Instead, in responding to the increasing interest in dance in nineteenth-­century plays—­ for onnagata as well as for male roles—­Mitsukuni “performs a dramatic, strongly rhythmed dance,” no longer ­limited to miming in a confined space.45 Masakado draws attention to the changes in content and acting for mono­ gatari and kudoki in the nineteenth c­ entury. All kabuki kudoki share the reliance on chanters for text and the chanter/musician pairings to support the actor’s physical expression, and formal characteristics w ­ ere also maintained for mono­ gatari. However, nineteenth-­century kudoki and monogatari moved in new 42.  Starring actors Ichimura Uzaemon XII 市村羽左衛門 (1812–1851) as Mitsukuni and Ichikawa Kuzō II 市川九蔵 (1800–1871) as Princess Takiyasha, Masakado premiered at Edo’s Ichimura-za 市村座 as part of a longer play. 43.  Monogatari are uncommon in full dance pieces. When they do occur, they serve a structural function as one of the ordered set of dance sections intended to offer variety to the viewer and the opportunity for the actor to display a range of skills. For example, Fuji musume has a monogatari; however, it “contains no narrative characteristics, but [helps] to fill out all the requisite dance segments. . . . ​ Frequently this segment is omitted [in the per­for­mance of the play]” (Fuji musume, 168). 44.  Masakado, trans. Leonard Pronko, in Kabuki Plays on Stage: Darkness and Desire, 213. 45.  Masakado, 215.



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d­ irections consistent with evolving thematic material and per­for­mance practices, indicating, in part, the breakdown of the ideals that ­were central to ­earlier plots, as well as an increasing interest in ­human weakness, deception, and evil. Nineteenth-­century kabuki plays offered a new set of depictions of samurai characters that snubbed the ideal and threw out its under­pinnings. As one observant anonymous Edo samurai wrote in the early nineteenth ­century: Formerly, theatrical per­ for­ mances used nothing but the Gidayū [Takemoto narration] style and put weight on the art of presenting sincerity, whereas ­today’s audiences dislike dramas with too much emphasis on sincerity, finding them to be boring. Thus the Gidayū style has been pushed aside as more up-­to-­date ele­ments are mixed in; or ­else it has been completely transformed so as to suit ­today’s sentiments . . . ​customs have gradually changed, and per­for­mances that once put weight on loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, and righ­teousness now center on lascivious songs and ­music and lust.46 The pillars of samurai morality, “loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, and righ­t­ eousness,” had g­ reat impact on plot and character development in jidaimono during a significant portion of the eigh­teenth ­century. ­These values, constantly tested in extremity in kabuki plays, ­were understood as cornerstones of samurai identity by a large swath of the population, largely through the popularity of kabuki and the talents of actors who performed samurai characters. Monogatari communicated the trauma of war and its aftereffects on samurai characters and presented martial action for the simplicity of its external demands but the complexity of its internal effects. Equally, a kudoki such as Saga­ mi’s presented agonizing complications of female samurai existence by portraying a character in an unbearable situation that no degree of lamentation could relieve. Since the verbal component of kudoki is delivered in the main by the chanter, not the actor, it should come as no surprise that kudoki are not found in speech collection booklets. However, the monogatari of Kajiwara or Sanemori or Kumagai can be found in the booklets, due to their dramatic power and as a means ­toward fan engagement with the actors who performed them on stage. Reading through and reciting aloud the speeches of ­these male samurai characters connected fans to favorite actors and also helped solidify understandings of samurai character identities. It is in this latter aspect that this chapter has considered examples of scene types that w ­ ere performed frequently during the time when the implications 46.  Mark Teeuwen et  al., Lust, Commerce, and Corruption: An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard, by an Edo Samurai (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 341.

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­ ere felt of a samurai-­ruled society in which many samurai had come to have w perilously ­little economic supremacy and almost no martial purpose. Personal anguish in the scenes discussed ­here is reflected against the backdrop of general anx­i­eties surrounding loss of samurai position and purpose. T ­ hese scenes held up a clear and uncompromising samurai image and tore it apart, at one and the same time. In spite of its convoluted, improbable plots with frequent fantastical ele­ments, kabuki maintained its central cultural position for the nearly three hundred years of the Edo period in large mea­sure ­because, as we have seen, it spoke to what was happening, indirectly but undeniably.

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In Memorandum Dragonflies and Drums Monica Bethe

Gold dragonflies flit within diamond lattices, casting a luminous glow over the dark green gauze garment. This describes the oldest noh costume attributed with a provenance: a happi 法被 (broad-­ sleeved jacket, see below) that the Kanze 観世 ­house­hold trea­sures as a bequest to their third head, Kanze Motoshige 観世元重 (1398–1467, also known as On’ami 音阿弥), from the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa 足利義政 (1436– 1490, r. 1449–1473).1 By tradition the costume has only been worn for the variant per­for­mance Senbō 懺法 of the noh Tomonaga 朝長, played by the head actor of the main Kanze ­family and accompanied by the head of the Kanze school stick drum (taiko 太鼓) players. In 1441, when Yoshimasa was five, his ­father, Yoshinori 足利義教 (b. 1394; r. 1429–1441), was assassinated by Akamatsu Mitsusuke 赤松満祐 (1381–1441) while watching a noh per­for­mance.2 The young Yoshimasa attended his f­ ather’s memorial ser­vice, which included the Kannon senbō 観音懺法 repentance rite, 1.  Photo­g raphs of the happi appear in Nō, Bessatsu Taiyō (Winter 1978): 39; Kitamura Tetsurō 北村哲郎, Nō shōzoku: Nihon no bijutsu 能装束: 日本の美術, vol. 46 (Tokyo: Shibundo, 1970), 58; and the stage figure appears in Kanze Kiyokazu 観世清和 et al., Fūshikaden, Kanze sōke 風姿花伝 観世宗家

(Tokyo: Kanze Bunko, 2013), 106. 2.  On’ami performed at the banquet, but it was interrupted by a planned assassination. For a dramatic description, see Donald Keene, Yoshimasa and the Silver Pavillion: The Creation of the Soul of Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), chap. 1. 213

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and for which he is said to have worn a robe made from this cloth.3 Two years ­later in 1443, when his older ­brother, the seventh Ashikaga shogun, Yoshikatsu 足利義勝 (1434–1443, r. 1442–1443), died, Yoshimasa held a similar memorial ser­vice at Shōkokuji 相国寺, a Gozan Zen ­temple in Kyoto founded by his grand­father Ashikaga Yoshimitsu 足利義満 (1358–1408, r. 1368–1394).4 In connection with the ser­vice, Yoshimasa ordered the then-­head of the Kanze school, On’ami, to perform the noh Tomonaga, which includes a Kannon senbō enactment, as a prayer for the deceased (tsuizen nō 追善能) and to wear a happi refashioned from the dark green priest’s robe (kesa 袈裟) with dragonfly design worn in the ­earlier ser­vice.5 As a garment, the happi is invaluable concrete evidence of early costuming. As a gift from a shogun patron to an outstanding performer, it reflects established methods of paying, awarding, and sustaining the troupes in the Muro­ machi period (ca. 1336–1573) and in addition symbolizes a symbiotic relationship between the shogunate and the noh troupes. As a relic associated with On’ami it carries special importance, since he left no compositions or writings for posterity. All we know of him is his reputation as an actor and data on some of his per­for­mances. As a garment with transmitted and specified use it holds a unique place among noh costumes. In addition, as a key historical textile the piece sheds light on the distinctive decorative technique known as takeyamachi 竹屋町.

The Happi Costume for Tomonaga Tomonaga, the noh performed at the memorial ser­vice for the child shogun Yoshikatsu in 1443, is a second-­category warrior play, and as with other noh in this category, the shite シテ, or primary character, appears in the second act clad in armor and recounts a ­battle scene. To represent the armor, a broad-­ sleeved outer garment is worn over wide pantaloons (ōkuchi 大口 or hangiri 半 切) and belted at the waist. The right sleeve is slipped off, rolled up and tucked into the ­belt at the back so as to give ­free room to the arm that wields a sword (see figure 8.1). ­Today, the actor has a choice of outer robe: ­either a chōken 長絹 or an unlined happi. Unfortunately, information on costuming 3.  This information comes from caption notes I took when the happi was on display April 2006 at Shōkokuji’s Jotenkaku Museum. The source of the story was not mentioned but presumably is based on documents or oral transmission within the head ­family of the Kanze school of noh actors. 4.  The cause of his death is unclear: dysentery is given the most credence, though one story has it that he fell off a ­horse. 5.  Notes from Jotenkaku Museum caption; see note 3.

Figure 8.1.  Kanze Kiyokazu wearing the green dragonfly happi for the role Tomonaga. The red underrobe (karaori) is exposed on the right side and the hangiri have a court design of undulating vertical lines (tatewaku). Photo courtesy of the Kanze Bunko. First published in Kanze Kiyokazu et al., Fūshikaden, Kanze Sōke (Tokyo: Kanze Bunko, 2013), 106.

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before the late sixteenth ­century is scanty, so it is unclear how the role was portrayed in the fifteenth ­century.6 The 1443 per­for­mance is the first appearance of the term happi, a costume devised for the noh stage. As ­will be discussed in greater detail l­ater, the green happi with dragonflies represents a formative stage of the way the garment was tailored.

Tomonaga The choice of Tomonaga as a memorial per­for­mance at the death of the child shogun was most likely inspired by the fact that this noh incorporates an extended enactment of a Buddhist ser­vice as a part of a memorial for a youthful soldier. Tomonaga recounts the fate of a young Genji soldier who met an untimely death ­after the Heiji Rebellion of 1159. Crippled in b­ attle, he finds it impossible to keep up with his f­ ather Yoshitomo 義朝 while they flee the Taira retaliation. At Ōhaka 青墓 (Green Grave) they stay at an inn. That night Tomo­ naga commits suicide (in the war-­tale Heiji monogatari 平治物語 [Tale of the Disturbance in Heiji], his f­ather beheads him).7 The mistress of the h ­ ouse, Chōja 長者, discovers his dead body, gives him burial, and tends his grave. The noh begins a year l­ater. While the mistress Chōja (maeshite 前シテ, main character in the maeba 前場, first act) is praying at his grave, Tomo­ naga’s former retainer, now turned monk, arrives. The two mourners stage a memorial ceremony chanting Tomonaga’s favorite sutra, a repentance rite (senbō) dedicated to the bodhisattva Kannon (Sans­krit: Avalokiteśvara). The chanting draws out Tomonaga’s ghost (nochijite 後ジテ, main character in the nochiba 後場, second act, played by the same actor as the maeshite), who asks the monk to preach and then recounts the fate of his f­ amily and describes conditions in the warrior’s hell.

Tomonaga Act I The long first act takes place in real time. ­Little alleviates the somber tone set by the entrance song of the shite (­here, Chōja), which is filled with images of evanescence; falling blossoms and fading foam may teach impermanence, yet Chōja cannot reconcile herself to Tomonaga’s death. For her, the inconceivable pain of another is felt as her own. As the days turn to months and the 6.  Prob­ably the best collection of early sources referring to noh costumes remains Kitamura, Nō shōzoku. 7.  The source story for the noh is translated in Royall Tyler, Before Heike and A ­ fter: Hōgen, Heiji, Jōkyūki (CreateSpace, 2012), 154–55.



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snow recedes into spring, her frozen tears might melt, but her mind remains unsettled recalling his final state. She laments his absence, even in dreams. A monk turns up at the grave, and when Chōja learns that he has risked his life to pray for his onetime lord, she warms to him. Sharing lines, praying together gives the feeling that Tomonaga might join them. (Incidentally, the first character in his name, tomo, is homonymous with words for “friend” and “together.”) Yet the gloom persists. Chorus: [second part of the ageuta 上歌, metered song in the upper register] Connected in death, meeting ­here at “Green Grave,” meeting ­here at “Green Grave”: A sign, perhaps, of him in the grassy shade? This field called “Green Meadow” is so in name alone: Only old leaves, no spring plants, in this field of autumnal husks, of silver-­g rass burnt to stubble.8 The monk then asks Chōja to relate Tomonaga’s death. She gives a long recitation (katari かたり) describing how Yoshitomo came fleeing the ­battle, how they heard Tomonaga praying and then found him ­after he had stabbed himself.9 In his last words, Tomonaga spoke of his b­ attle wound and the wish not to die at another’s hand along the road. Fi­nally, suggesting the monk say prayers for Tomonaga, Chōja leads him back to her abode at Ōhaka. Although the actor playing Chōja exits at the end of the first act (to change costume and return as Tomonaga’s ghost), Chōja’s presence is felt throughout the per­ for­mance, and she is addressed directly in the second act.

Tomonaga Act II ­After hearing the story of Tomonaga’s demise again from the aikyōgen 間狂 言 (interlude narration by a kyōgen 狂言 actor playing a local person), the monk and his companions s­ ettle down to prayer. Of the many prayers for a deceased soul, the monks decide on the Kannon senbō, since Tomonaga was particularly attached to it. A senbō rite is a confession of sins, a repentance. Typically, ­these rites are e­ ither “a confession a­ fter seeing the truth” or “confession ­after worship, sutra-­chanting, ­etc.”10 Unlike a Catholic confession 8. Itō Masayoshi 伊藤正義, ed., Yōkyokushū (chū) 謡曲集（中）(Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1986), 416 (translation by author). 9.  For a translation of this section, see chapter 9 in this volume. 10.  Nichi-­Ei Bukkyō jiten 日英佛敎辭典 (Tokyo: Daitō Shuppansha, 1965), 263.

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where one owns up to specific secular sins, the Buddhist confession involves ridding the mind/body of negative defilements (tsumi 罪, kegare 穢) accumulated during daily life and thereby purifying the mind, reviving the Bud­dha within, and preparing the devotee to face the Bud­dha or bo­dhi­sat­tva. It serves to beg ­pardon for one’s sins, give thanks, and pray for a deceased. The monks s­ ettle down to praying. Their rite fills the air with chanting of sutras, clanging of cymbals, and beating drums. ­These sounds are taken up by the noh instruments as they begin to play entrance m ­ usic (deha 出端), luring the departed soul of Tomonaga to the ser­vice. In the variant per­for­mance (kogaki 小書) known as Senbō (for which the Kanze head wears the dragonfly happi), the sounds of the Buddhist ser­vice are re-­created more intensely. A detailed discussion of this variant per­for­mance and its relation to the a­ ctual Buddhist ser­vice follows ­later. The rest of the play first establishes the identity of the ghost and then enacts his confession, thus fulfilling the purpose of a senbō rite. The ceremony is conducted by the monks (waki ワキ and wakizure ワキヅレ, secondary character and his companions), but Chōja of Ōhaka (shite in act 1) is the chief mourner, her (invisible) presence being underscored by passages where Tomo­ naga addresses her as if she is ­there, praising her virtuous devotion.11 The ghost of Tomonaga is in an ambiguous state: he seems to conduct the ritual, yet at the same time appears in g­ reat need of the monk’s prayers. This, he explains, is ­because at death, two souls are released from the body, one, the spirit (kon 魂), the other the bodily, wandering soul (haku 魄). Tomonaga assures his mourners that the former resides now in the Pure Land. The latter soul, however, has descended to warrior’s hell (shuradō 修羅道), where it must undergo purgatory reliving the horrors of b­ attle. To cleanse his ghost of t­ hese sins, he must confess his story. In this way, the enactment of the senbō repentance rite in the noh has three stages: (1) m ­ usic facilitating the appearance of the ghost; (2) narration relating the fate of his f­amily and thanking Chōja for her all-­encompassing compassion; and (3) mimed action recounting Tomonaga’s final ­battle and resolve to commit suicide. (1) When Tomonaga’s ghost appears, it is sensed more than seen. The ghost is most insistent on continuing the mass. Monk: How strange! Together we chant the Kannon senbō with voices clear. 11.  Chifumi Shimazaki, The Noh: Volume II -­­Battle Noh (Tokyo: Hinoki Shoten, 1987), 170–71. She emphasizes the role of this absent participant.



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In the dim candle light we see, we apprehend, Tomonaga’s apparition, or something like it. Is it a dream, or a vision? Tomonaga: The world itself is but a transitory dream. Forget your doubts and get on with the chanting of the sacred mass. . . . ​preach the sacred law, please.12 (2) Relating the fate of Tomonaga’s ­family (kuri クリ—­sashi サシ—­kuse クセ, a standard narrative sequence moving from melismatic poetry, to recitative, to a poetic narrative). ­Here we begin the narration with the sashi. Tomonaga: [sashi] In the past, Genji and Heike stood left and right as guardians of the palace. Chorus: Protecting the Emperor, quelling the adversaries, putting to right countless governing tasks. But with the Hōgen-­Heiji Rebellions troublesome times came upon us. Tomonaga: Unbelievable, the mounted attacks. Chorus: Our time had come! Chorus: [kuse] (Relates the fate of other members of the clan) . . . My ­father Yoshitomo escaped to Noma no Utsumi to ask for help from Osada, but this supposedly reliable tree had a rotten base: ­Father was stabbed into darkness. Why is it Osada slayed his lord without reason? Why did this inn’s owner, a ­woman, who out of pity put us up for a single night, takes on the task of tending my grave this way and praying for my remains? 12. Itō, Yōkyokushū, 423 (translation by author).

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. . . As if we ­were ­mother and child, you grieve and pray for me with true and deep intent. As recipient, I pronounce my joy: in afterlife, Tomonaga is at peace, please rest assured of this.13 The narrative ends with a direct address to Chōja, who has complained in her opening song that “the inconceivable pain of another, is felt as her own.” Tomo­ naga’s appearance (­until now denied even in dreams) and his gratitude release her from the gloom that has engulfed her. Her altruistic, ever-­giving actions, couched in terms of universal motherhood, “all ­women are ­mothers,” echo ­K annon’s vow to help all mankind. Thus, not only does she serve as a vehicle for Tomo­ naga’s soul to achieve peace, but he in turn cleanses her doubts and thereby helps revive the Bud­dha within, the under­lying purpose of the senbō rites. (3) In the final mimed action Tomonaga recounts his bodily, wandering soul’s experience in warrior’s hell (shuradō). It ends with a description of his final ­battle and resolve to commit suicide. Chorus: [­middle of noriji ノリ地, section in pulsing rhythm] Sadly, my final destiny fell upon me. I was hit by an arrow that pierced my kneecap and pinned me down, penetrating my mount’s flank. The ­horse bucked and reared. I thought, “I must get out of the stirrups and stand.” I strug­gled, vainly. I could not pull one leg loose. I was hoisted up on a fresh mount and, wearily came down the Ōmi road, enduring as far as Ōhaka. Rather than die at the hand of an unknown soldier I resolutely made up my mind: I cut my belly in one straight line through and through. Immediately I fell into Warrior’s Hell, perishing into the dirt of “Green Meadow.” 13. Itō, Yōkyokushū, 424–25 (translation by author).



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Please pray for my remains. Please pray for my remains.14 From a warrior’s perspective, suicide may have been the most honorable solution to Tomonaga’s plight, but from a Buddhist standpoint, taking any life, including one’s own, goes against the Law. Commenting on a 1997 per­for­ mance of the Tomonaga variant Senbō performed at Shōkokuji (the site of the 1443 per­for­mance) by the Kanze head wearing the green happi with dragonfly design, the noh scholar Yamanaka Reiko remarks that at Shōkokuji she felt strangely moved by the way Tomonaga narrated his decision to commit suicide, as if he w ­ ere truly repenting for his deed. The senbō entrance m ­ usic, she suggests, prepared the viewer for the sense of religious redemption.15 To understand her response, I turn now to the Senbō variant and its relationship to the Buddhist Kannon senbō rite as performed ­today at Shōkokuji.

Kannon Senbō Background The Buddhist Kannon senbō rite is performed in front of one or more images of Kannon. At pre­sent, Shōkokuji uses a painting attributed to Kitsusan Minchō 吉山明兆 (1352–1431) of a white-­robed Kannon who symbolically embodies all the other thirty-­two Kannon (figure 8.2). The rite includes a recitation of the Kannon sutra (Kannongyō 観音経; the Fumonbon 普門品 section of the Lotus Sutra) and other sutras detailing the efficacy of Kannon in saving humankind.16 It lasts about four hours and gathers intensity as it progresses. The rite begins by welcoming the Kannon’s presence with an instrumental musical passage (kanjō 灌頂). This is followed by incantations of the Daihijū 大悲呪 darani 陀羅尼 (a man­tra); dedications of incense, tea, ­etc.; confession (chinbyaku 陳白), purification by sprinkling w ­ ater with a willow branch (ryūshi jōsui 柳枝浄水); general confession (zange 懺悔); circumambulation (gyōdō 行道); speedy recitation of the Kannon sutra (zukyō 誦経); and more incanta­ usic to see the Kannon off.17 While tion of darani. It ends with instrumental m 14. Itō, Yōkyokushū, 425–26 (translation by author). 15.  Yamanaka Reiko 山中玲子, “Shōkokuji ‘Tomonaga senbō’ kannō ki” 星谷寺「朝長・懺法」 観能記, Kanze (December, 1997): 83. 16.  For a full description of the Kannon senbō rites as practiced at Shōkokuji, see Tatehata Atsuko 立畠敦子, “Shōkokuji Kanzeon senbō-­e” 相国寺観世音懺法絵, Enmyō 園明102 (Summer 2014): 12–17. Available for download at www​.­shokoku​-­ji​.­jp​/­wp​-­content​/­themes​/­shokokuji​/­assets​/­img​/­reference​ /­book​/­pdf​/­enmyo​_­102​.­pdf. For a discussion of the Kannon icon, see her “Kanzeon senbō-­e to Hakue Kannon” 観世音懺法絵と白衣観音, Enmyō 103 (New Year 2015): 56–63. Available for download at www​.­shokoku​-­ji​.­jp​/­wp​-­content​/­themes​/­shokokuji​/­assets​/­img​/­reference​/­book​/­pdf​/­enmyo​ _​103​.­pdf. 17.  Tatehata, “Shōkokuji Kanzeon senbō-­e,” 13–15.

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Figure 8.2. The Kannon senbō rites performed at Shōkokuji, June 17, 2017. The altar is hung with a painting of a White-­Robed Kannon flanked by two other bo­dhi­sat­tvas, Fugen on an elephant and Monjū riding a lion. To the right and left of the altar are low stands holding the senbō drum and cymbals. Courtesy of Shōkokuji.

the ceremony begins with the priests performing, by the end the entire congregation is drawn into the confession and purification. The four-­hour-­long Shōkokuji Kannon senbō rite uses complex melodies, exacting recitation, and call and response. Choreographed ringing of a large, cushioned bell and of small handheld cymbals punctuate the recitations. Based on practices followed in China, it was adapted to Japa­nese needs by a Chinese immigrant priest, Sekiryō Ninkyō 石梁仁恭 (1266–1334) in conjunction with Seisetsu Shōchō 清拙正澄 (1274–1339) and Musō Soseki 夢窓疎石(1275– 1351) and then passed on in Shōkokuji by Soseki’s successor, Shun’oku Myōha 春屋妙葩 (1312–1388).18 According to the Shōkokuji website, the ­music was transmitted in notation by Mokudō Jishō, the second abbot of the subtemple Jiun’in 慈雲院.19 At Shōkokuji, rec­ords indicate that the rite was performed in 1396 for Shōkokuji’s founding and in 1407 to celebrate the building of the t­ emple’s main 18. The Rokuon Nichiroku 鹿苑日録 (Rec­ords of Shōkokuji) notes that the details of the rite w ­ ere set by 1334. Tatehata Atsuko, “Kannon senbō ga dekita haikei” 観音懺法ができた背景, Enmyō 104 (Summer 2015): 20. 19. Shōkokuji website, “Kanren shiryō: Shōkokuji, Kannon senbō no iware” 関連資料：相国寺, 観音懺法の言われ, https://­www​.­shokoku​-­ji​.­jp​/­reference​/­relation​/­senbou​/­.



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gate (sanmon 山門). The fourth Ashikaga shogun, Yoshimochi 義持 (1386–1428; r. 1394–1423), a devout Zen practitioner, promoted the Kannon senbō, bringing Shōkokuji priests to the palace and expanding its practice elsewhere.20 ­Today, regular staging of the Kannon senbō at Shōkokuji takes place ­every year on June seventeenth. The instrumental passage (kanjō) that opens the Kannon senbō rite to welcome the approach of Kannon is played by the senbō taiko drum and three cymbals (hatsu 鈸) of dif­fer­ent sizes (figures 8.3 and 8.4). The sounds of the instruments are represented onomatopoetically in Japa­nese as chin, don, jaran. Chin is a high resonance produced by a cymbal with domelike center, don suggests the thud-­like beat of the drum, and jaran is a crashing metal sound made by the two flat cymbals. The priests kneeling on the floor play the instruments using large gestures. The cymbal players lift the cymbals vertically, next spread them horizontally, and then bring them together with a strong clash that is quickly deadened. The drummer holds the drum up at shoulder height resting in the palm of his upturned hand. He runs the drumstick hand around the circumference of the drum, raises the stick upward, centers the end on the drum and then draws it away (figure 8.4) and aims the tip so it hits the center of the drum almost as if to pierce it. Momentarily left on the drumskin, the stick deadens its own sound, leaving a void, potent in its emptiness. This musical prelude is the inspiration for the Senbō variant of Tomonaga. The noh drums take the roles of the Buddhist instruments. In par­tic­u­lar, the stick drum (taiko) is specially prepared to produce a deep sound evoking the atmosphere of the low thud of the senbō taiko. Normally the noh taiko produces a high pitch represented onomatopoetically as ten. In the noh senbō passage, its lowered pitch (den) produced by using overstretched skins is followed at intervals by the sharp, dry sound (chon) of the large hand drum (ōtsuzumi 大鼓) and the varied pitches and reverberations created by the small hand drum (kotsuzumi 小鼓): pu (lowest sound), po (reverberating ­middle pitch), chi (high), and ta (clack with no reverberation). The combined impact of t­hese spaced beats in differing voices is the sought effect. As in other noh renditions of dif­fer­ ent genres, such as court dance (bugaku 舞楽) and Shinto dance (kagura 神楽), the noh expression brings the m ­ usic to mind, rather than imitating it explic­itly.

Enacting the Senbō Rite within the Noh Variants (kogaki) of noh per­for­mances developed for the most part during the Edo period as a way of enhancing an aspect of the play or providing a platform 20.  Tatehata, “Kannon senbō ga dekita haikei,” 21–22.

Figure 8.3.  From left to right: The senbō drum with dragon painting on the skin, two flat cymbals, and the dome-­centered cymbal. Photo courtesy of Shōkokuji.

Figure 8.4.  Performing the opening kanjō ­music for the Kannon senbō rites at Shōkokuji. The drum has a ring at the bottom through which the drummer slips his fin­ger to anchor the drum resting on his left palm while he beats it with a stick held in the right hand. Photo courtesy of Shōkokuji.



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for displaying virtuosity. Variations in costuming, choreography, musical rendition, and text (such as eliminating sections) are typical. Some noh have numerous variants. The Senbō variant of Tomonaga highlights the religious context and immediacy of the repentance rite by converting the entrance m ­ usic in the second act, normally a relatively short deha, into a prolonged musical interlude where the noh taiko takes the lead role. For the taiko, the Senbō variant ranks as a profoundly difficult (omonarai 重習) piece and involves numerous staging details.21 The details concerning how the taiko is prepared to produce what has variously been called an acrid or unimaginably bad sound are guarded secrets of the two noh taiko schools, Kanze and Konparu 金春. In her article “Recollections of a Per­for­mance of Tomonaga Senbō at Shōkokuji,” Yamanaka Reiko compares two Senbō per­for­mances, one in the Kanze noh theater in Tokyo, the other in the main worship hall of Shōkokuji, for their six hundredth anniversary.22 Both times the pre­sent head of the Kanze school, Kanze Kiyokazu 観世清和, wore the ancient happi with gold dragonflies on a green ground. Yamanaka explains that before the per­for­mance, the taiko player has a special curtained-­off area for preparing his instrument. He does not join the o ­ thers in the offstage instrument check (oshirabe お調べ). When he first walks out on stage, he carries a substitute drum, just for show (misedaiko 見せ太鼓). ­Toward the end of the first act, a taiko assistant brings out the ­actual drum that ­will be played in a sealed bag and covered with a cloth (fukusa 袱紗). The drummer breaks the seal and sets up the taiko. During the monk’s waiting song, the taiko player shifts so he is seated at an ­angle. The flute sounds a low note. The taiko sounds its first beats: den . . . ​ den . . . ​and the curtain lifts quietly, only halfway, exposing the skirts of the ghost of Tomonaga, and is silently lowered. The taiko beats: den . . . ​ den . . . ​den. . . . ​The hand drums follow, ­after pregnant pauses, with chon and po. The taiko switches to quiet even beats (kizami 刻 pattern). The curtain is raised again. This time, Tomonaga’s ghost steps out onto the hashigakari 橋掛りbridge, walking as far as the third pine. The even beats cease mid-­pattern. The single beats den . . . ​den . . . ​begin again and Tomonaga bends his ear straining to listen. When the taiko starts quiet even beats (kizami), Tomonaga begins his ­silent pro­g ress down 21.  Yamanaka Reiko details how the Senbō variant grew up over time in Yokomichi Mario 横道萬 里雄 and Yamanaka Reiko, Nō o omoshiroku miseru kufū 能を面白く見せる工夫 (Tokyo: Hinoki Shoten, 2009), 79–83. 22.  Yamanaka, “Shōkokuji,” 48–51. The per­for­mance was on September 26, 1997.

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the bridge. As he turns and enters the stage proper, the taiko pattern ends mid-­pattern. Then, . . . ​den . . . ​den . . . ​Tomonaga listens, and fi­ nally he begins to sing in easy flowing recitative.23 In this way, the ghost of Tomonaga is drawn to the stage through the m ­ usic much the same way Kannon is welcomed in a real senbō rite. Tomonaga’s ghost gives thanks for their holding the senbō rite. Alluding to Kannon as embodying a universal Bud­dha nature, he declares it is “so heartening to hear the recitation of the excellent teachings!” He then takes up the actions of the rite. Sprinkling w ­ ater using a willow branch, just as occurs in the Shōkokuji Kannon senbō rite (see above), he purifies all pre­sent. Chorus: Now I sprinkle thrice Tomonaga: Holy ­water with willow branch and supplicate to the bo­dhi­sat­tva.24 [noriji] Cleansing the mind and listening to the splendid prayer with complete devotion: The sacred banner unfurls. Tomonaga: [norazu ノラズ, section in ­free rhythm] Ah! the divine ser­vice.25 This ends the taiko part: calling out the spirit of Tomonaga and accompanying his entrance song lauding the efficacy of the ser­vice. Yamanaka notes that in comparison with the previous per­for­mance in the noh theater, the per­ for­mance in the worship hall of Shōkokuji was “lighter” and the sound of the taiko more of a clashing than a low reverberating thud. She comments that perhaps this is appropriate, since the main focus should rightly be on Tomo­ naga, and the clashing sound mimics the a­ ctual Buddhist ceremony more accurately.26 At the end of the noh per­for­mance, the taiko has one more solo scene. A ­ fter the play is over and all have left the stage, he reenters alone. Kneeling on the bridge with his drum in front of him, he strikes it six times, producing the high 23.  Yamanaka, “Shōkokuji,” 48–51 (translation by author). 24.  In the m ­ iddle of the Kannon senbō rite at Shōkokuji, the monk takes a willow branch, dips it in sacred ­water, and sprinkles it about the space, thereby purifying the area in preparation for the heart of the ceremony. Tatehata, “Shōkokuji Kanzeon senbō-­e,” 13–14. 25. Itō, Yōkyokushū, 422 (translation by author). 26.  Yamanaka, “Shōkokuji,” 51.



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rich tone, ten, appropriate for the taiko. This short demonstration of virtuosity requires retying the unnaturally overstretched skins so they produce the original sound, a job done by the taiko assistant backstage during the last part of the per­for­mance. While all the other instruments played an instrument check before the per­for­mance, this is the taiko player’s “after-­performance instrument check” (nochi no shirabe 後ノ調べ). Effectively, it sends the spirit back, as does the final instrumental ­music of the Kannon senbō rite.

The Dragonfly Happi From beginning to end Tomonaga focuses on reenacting the ceremonial honoring of the dead. It is easy to understand why Ashikaga Yoshimasa chose to have this dirge performed ­after the funeral rites for his b­ rother. What then is the meaning of the garment he stipulated should be worn for the per­for­mance? How does it embody the memory of a warrior and the sacred power of prayer? How did its restricted use reinforce its symbolic weight bringing the past into pre­sent though reenactment?

The Dragonfly Robe The fabric allegedly once worn at Yoshinori’s funeral was refashioned into a stage costume (figure 8.5). I turn now to its peculiarities as a textile—­color, pattern, weave, and decorative technique—­and as a retailored garment. The deep green color is common for warrior jackets, but in the context of the play it adds an ironic touch to the place, Green Meadow, which we are told is green only in name. Diamond lattices encase dragonflies, facing left and right, up and down, some in pairs, some single. In style and size, they are so similar that the pattern appears to be woven. Only the dragonflies’ eyes have color: some red, some blue, some yellow, and some left gold (figure 8.6). For Japa­nese, dragonflies (kagerō, tonbō 蜉蝣) are a victory symbol, thus they are suitable for the Genji who won out in the end, though at the beginning of the Genpei strug­gles when this noh takes place, they ­were losers. Woven in a “­simple” gauze weave (sha 紗), the fabric’s gossamer structure is created by crossing and uncrossing adjacent warps (vertical threads) so holes are created between weft shots (horizontal threads). Flat gold threads made by covering strong thin paper with gold foil and cutting it into thin strips ­were worked in and out of t­ hese holes following the weave structure. Normally,

Figure 8.5. The happi with dragonflies in a diamond lattice on a green ground as displayed at Jotenkaku Museum in 2013. Photo courtesy of the Kanze Bunko.

Figure 8.6.  Detail of the dragonflies on the happi. The gold threads are worked back and forth within each pattern area. Photo courtesy of the Kanze Bunko.



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Figure 8.7.  Detail of takeyamachi embroidery technique. Private collection. Photo by author.

when weaving flat gold threads as weft, the threads are cut to the width of the fabric and pulled through the shed (warps separated into upper and lower) so that the thread does not twist and the gold surface remains facing the obverse across the entire width of the cloth. Unnecessary threads at the back are shaved off ­after the fabric is finished to create a cleaner look. The gold threads on the dragonfly happi, however, double back within each small pattern unit. This technique, which is known as takeyamachi when done on a gauze weave, can be rendered on the loom in the pro­cess of weaving, or off the loom as embroidery (figure 8.7). Sometimes, particularly with a pattern as repetitive as the dragonflies in diamond lattices, it is difficult to know which method was used. In ­either case, it is time-­consuming and requires meticulous care so that the threads do not show their reverse paper side when being doubled back on themselves. Two solutions are to place gold foil on both sides of the paper so e­ ither side can show, or to fold the strip of foil paper in half lengthwise, effectively creating a two-­sided gold strip. Unfortunately, when I saw the robe on display, I was unable to check this detail. The tailoring of the garment affords insight into early noh costumes and corroborates the tale of its origin. Noh happi (figure 8.8) ­were designed for the stage.27 Like the samurai jackets for hitatare 直垂 matched suits, noh happi have double-­width, open-­cuffed sleeves. Their narrow collar cloths run straight down the front body panels (migoro 見頃), with no lapel (okumi 衽) extensions. 27. Kitamura, Nō shōzoku, 58.

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Figure 8.8.  Sketch of the front view of a standard happi construction: straight collar with even width almost to the bottom hem. Sketch by author.

Unlike the hitatare, a strip of cloth (ran 襴) at the bottom joins the front and back body panels. This strip of cloth is similar to, but narrower than, that found on the court costumes hō 袍 and nōshi 直衣. Exactly when this hybrid noh happi developed is unclear, but extant examples date to the early Edo period. In contrast to the standard form of the happi, the green happi with dragonfly design has a squared collar and extra lapels starting at about chest level (figure 8.9). A closer look at the seams also reveals numerous small pieces patched together. T ­ hese small pieces may reflect multiple conservation jobs where new fabrics w ­ ere made to match the old. A thin gauze lining suggests at least one conservation job on what traditionally would be an unlined costume. The other reading of the patchwork construction of the green happi is that it was, indeed, retailored from a monk’s robe known as a kesa 袈裟. Kesa are large rectangular constructions made up of small square and rectangular fabrics called “fields” (den 田) placed in columns and joined by bands (gyō 行) ­running vertically and horizontally and all around the edges (figure 8.10). Although I have not had the opportunity of inspecting the happi at close quarters, photo­graphs of the front and back suggest multiple strips of cloth of three dif­fer­ent widths and several consistent lengths (figures 8.11 and 8.12).

Figure 8.9.  Front view of the green happi: extra lapels are added so the collar widens ­toward the bottom. Sketch by author.

Figure 8.10.  Diagram of a seven-­panel kesa. Sketch by author.

Figure 8.11.  The patchwork construction of the green happi with dragonflies in a diamond lattice, front. The drawing also indicates the patchwork construction of the front as discussed in the chapter. Sketch by author.

Figure 8.12.  The patchwork construction of the green happi with dragonflies in a diamond lattice, back. Sketch by author.



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Fabrics for Prayers When Bud­dha stipulated the construction of the monk’s robe as a patchwork, he added that it should be made of old rags and discarded cloth, so it would never incur envy.28 This led to the custom of donating old, unwanted, used garments to ­temples, where they ­were washed, dyed, and refashioned into monk’s robes, altar cloths, banners, and other t­ emple ornaments. The transformation of the secular into the sacred brought religious merit to the donor. In Muromachi-­period Japan, the custom of bequeathing a garment worn by a deceased to a ­temple was prevalent. The intention was that when refashioned for religious purposes, it would bring merit to the deceased in the afterlife.29 Its use served as a prayer. Costumes for t­emple per­for­mances w ­ ere often treated the same way. Many of the costumes worn for the mimed skits (nen­ butsu kyōgen 念仏狂言) performed at Mibudera 壬生寺 in Kyoto, for instance, are made from donated garments. Typically, a­ fter they w ­ ere refashioned as stage costumes, their linings ­were inscribed with large characters reading dai nenbutsu 大念仏, or “­Great Hail Bud­dha.” In donning them, the actors increase their efficacy, while the audience is reminded of their message: saying the name of the Bud­dha with full sincerity leads to salvation. The green happi refashioned from a kesa lends an in­ter­est­ing twist to the story. The fabric was returned from the sacred into the world of men. Yet it was returned expressly to reenact in dramatic narration a prayer for a deceased as a memorial per­for­mance for the youth Tomonaga. The per­for­mance recalls the historical origins of noh per­for­mances as an appeasement for the deceased. In this case, the Kanze school has preserved the original religious intention by wearing it only for per­for­mances of the Senbō variant. Descriptions of the impression it creates on the modern stage suggest the happi still transmits a fresh beauty, even though loose threads fall onto the boards. Yamanaka says, “It seems so well preserved, one might think it a replica.”30 Performing Senbō in 1997 at Shōkokuji in the worship hall wearing the green happi not only 28.  The stipulations for the construction of kesa appear in the Vinaya ( Jp. Shibunritsu 四分律), I: 287. For the meaning and history of kesa see Monica Bethe, “Textiles in the Imperial Convents,” in Amamonzeki—­A Hidden Heritage: Trea­sures of the Japa­nese Imperial Convents, ed. Institute for Medieval Japa­nese Studies; University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts (Tokyo: Sankei Shinbun, 2009), 308–11; also Kyūma Keichū 久馬慧忠, Kesa no kenkyū 袈裟の研究 (Tokyo: Daihōrin Kakuhan, 1967); and Izutsu Gafū 井筒雅風, Kesa shi 袈裟史 (Tokyo: Yūzankaku, 1967). 29.  The noh play Jinen Koji 自然居士 begins with such a scene. See also Bethe, “Textiles in the Imperial Convents,” 308–11. 30.  Yamanaka, “Shōkokuji,” 50. The Kanze school also has a child’s chōken with the same dragonfly pattern on a blue ground, prob­ably made in the last twenty years. A photo appears in Kanze, Fūshikaden, 116.

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served to celebrate the six hundredth anniversary of the founding of the t­ emple but also functioned as a memorial for the sixth, seventh, and eighth Ashikaga shoguns, as well as for the tragic death of young Tomonaga. The golden dragonflies catching the light with the swaying of the sleeves must have seemed to dance a dirge that merged ­those lives in a universal repentance.

C ha p te r   9

Representing Memory in the Warrior Plays Tom Hare

One can touch down almost anywhere in a noh play and find memory. It might be the collective memory of folklore and allusion, or the hinge of memory that provokes longing or reawakens grief; it could be the off hand comment of a wandering priest that calls forth recollection of a tragedy or an adventure in a ­humble villa­ger; it could be a prison of memory that holds in stasis the mind of a ghost. Where then to begin? I take up heuristically a modest lexicon of memory, words for remembering and for being unable to forget in order to follow them through a set of warrior noh plays, shuramono 修羅物. The method is s­ imple, but my hope is that the citations it nets w ­ ill suggest further paths of inquiry not quite so adventitious. Even in the rawest form, provided me by the index to Yōkyoku nihyaku gojūbanshū 謡曲二百五十番集, t­here ­were some useful suggestions.1 I looked first for inflections and words related to the verb omohiidzu 思ひいづ, the most obvious word for “remember.”2 The words as exemplified in usage 1.  Ōtani Tokuzō 大谷篤蔵, ed., Yōkyoku nihyaku gojūbanshū 謡曲二百五十番集 (Kyoto: Akao Shōbundō, 1978), 250–51, for words relating to omohiidzu; 1412–13 for words relating to (not) forgetting. 2.  The noh texts to which I refer are written using medieval orthography, and my policy is to reflect such spelling in transliteration. For modern Japa­nese words, place-­names, and personal names, I use standard modern transliteration, but it is better philological practice to reflect as much as pos­si­ble the way in which the original texts w ­ ere written, especially b­ ecause in some cases modern transliterations obscure meanings and literary play that are apparent in historical transliteration. 235

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throughout the repertory make a veritable conjugation chart for the verb: omo­ hiidzuru, omohiidzureba, omohiideji, omohiidetari, omohiiderarete, omohiidzu. What I found most in­ter­est­ing in this list was its grammatical extension of the ambivalent relation between memory and the w ­ ill. Most clearly, words such as omohiideji and omohiiderarete, with their contrary significations, “I w ­ ill not recall!” and “remembering (­whether you like it or not),” point to the autogenous or passive signification of remembering.3 One can of course make a conscious effort to remember, or recall or recollect something, and one can focus attention on the act of remembering in reminiscence, but more often, memory is something that happens to you without your conscious intent. Something comes to you, and the inflections in classical Japa­nese seem to make a point of this more explic­itly than the En­glish “remember,” which, in its verbal transitivity, belies the a­ ctual experience of memory.4 In Japa­nese, the verb omo(h)idasu contains the explic­itly transitive -­dasu, “take out,” “extract,” a word that perdures from classical times into modern Japa­nese, but the more common classical Japa­nese verb omo(h)iidzu does not have a verbal counterpart in modern Japa­nese, but only the nominal derivation, omoide, “(a/the) memory (of something).” In our concern with noh plays, this classical verb has a high prominence, much higher than the transitive omohidasu, and although it can be used transitively, as a combination of the verbal stem omohi-­and the intransitive -­idzu, the verb has a sense of the autogenous or “­middle” or intransitive that speaks to this m ­ atter of memory as something that happens to one without conscious intent. In some cases, the verbal affix -­idzu is not pre­sent, but the context in which omohi-­is used implies that ­middle or autogenous meaning. A good example is the word omohine, “a sleep filled with thoughts or memories of someone.” Since in sleep one does not consciously initiate actions, this noun has a strong sense of something that happens of its own accord, without conscious intent. But it is not only words relating to omohi-­and -­idzu that awaken our attention ­here. Lexical items relating to the inability to forget can also be understood within the same context. Thus, words such as wasureenu 忘れえぬ, “cannot forget,” also come into consideration. ­There are not many such occurrences in the shuramono, but they are meaningful, as ­will be discussed. 3.  It might actually be better to characterize this verbal form as “­middle” rather than passive, since the action of remembering, though not consciously motivated in this case, is nonetheless an action for which the subject remains the agent, though unintentionally so, whereas the “passive,” strictly speaking, would make that subject the one remembered, rather than the one remembering. 4.  It is worth noting that En­glish is something of a loner in not marking the ambivalence of memory. Even among relatives in Indo-­European, “remembering” is generally marked with reflexive pronouns, making remembering not something one does to an object external to the self, but rather something one does to oneself (e.g., French, je me souviens; German, ich erinnere mich).



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It is very clear that words relating to memory or the inability to forget are far more common in plays about ­women than plays about warriors. For example, in Matsukaze 松風 alone, we find at least six occurrences. The statistical paucity of such words in shuramono is made up for by the way the words are used: the structural hinges they allow and their emotional register, both what they say and what they do not say. Noh is a type of drama usually centered on the actions, memories, and emotions of a single character, often (and especially in the shuramono) the ghost of ah ­ uman being. This character is portrayed by an actor called the shite シテ; literally, “the doer,” “the one who does ­things.” Usually before this character appears on stage, a secondary actor, the waki ワキ, appears to set the context in which the shite’s per­for­mance is to be understood. The waki is typically a priest wandering from his home t­emple to some site of historical or cultural significance. He is also, in some ways, a surrogate for the audience with a place right on the stage. Some plays have a role called the tsure ツレ, the “companion,” who comes on stage with the shite or the waki. If the latter, the role is specifically termed the wakizure. Noh stages also host a chorus of eight voices, seated rather unobtrusively to the back right side of the stage (from the audience’s perspective), and three or four musicians, two or three drummers (depending on the play in question), and a flute player. T ­ hese roles are used with some variation among the five plays discussed below: Atsumori 敦盛, Yashima 屋島 or 八嶋, Kiyotsune 清経, Yorimasa 頼政, and Tomonaga 朝長. In the play Atsumori, the waki is a priest, Rensei 蓮生, who was formerly a warrior, Kumagae no Jirō, Naozane 熊谷次郎直実.5 As Rensei, he is bound for a place called Ichinotani 市谷 to comfort the ghost of the young warrior Taira no Atsumori 平敦盛, whom he killed ­there at a ­battle some time previously. Not only is he aware of his connection to the dead Atsumori, his primary motivation in taking the tonsure and in setting out for Ichinotani is closely related to their encounter in b­ attle. Only with his arrival t­here, however, does his memory come fully alive, and this is where we find an explicit reference to memory: Ichinotani ni tsukite safuro. Makoto ni mukashi no arisama, ima no yau ni omohiiderarete safuro. I have arrived at Ichinotani. A vision of times past comes into memory, just as if it ­were the pre­sent. Memory ­here relies explic­itly on vision (arisama 有様), and it comes to mind for the waki of its own accord, as we see from the verbal form omohiiderarete, 5.  In some schools, his name is read Renshō.

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in the autogenous or ­middle construction. In this case, it is not only the verb that expresses such a meaning, but with the further addition of the infix -­rar(u), the construction emphasizes the occurrence of an action without the conscious intent or agency of its subject. This visual evidence finds an aural complement in the next line, where the waki hears a flute, on which the development of the drama turns: Ueno ni atatte fue no ne no kikoe safuro, “From the fields above, I catch the sound of a flute.”6 We see, then, that even in this play, where, unusually, the waki identifies himself as someone directly implicated in the death of the shite, it is still the stimulus of vision that brings memory back without the conscious intent on his part to recall the past. Evidence of the workings of memory without conscious intent can also be found in a scene from the play Yashima.7 This play concerns the postmortem sufferings of the general Yoshitsune 義経 who, though victorious in his ­battles with the rival Heike clan, is unable to escape from the events at the site of an epochal b­ attle on land and sea at the place that gives the play its name. Even ­after a clear account of events in the ­battle in the first half of the play, the shite is unable to escape his torment. When queried about his identity, he unwillingly gives himself away in punning references to his name, only to dis­appear.8 The waki, though, unsatisfied with his first encounter with the shite, spreads out his mat to lie down and wait for dreams. In ­those dreams, the shite reappears in his true form, for another encounter with the waki. The relevant line h ­ ere reads mukashi wo ima ni omohiidzuru, “Memory calls the past into the pre­sent.”9 This line appears in the ­middle of a dialogue (a kakeai 掛合) where the shite, the ghost of Minamoto no Yoshitsune, converses in his dream with the waki and is described by him. Yoshitsune then describes the postmortem emotional state through which he comes to appear t­ here, in his account through a dream, a yume-­monogatari 夢物語. This is when we find the line quoted above, ­after which follows the narrative center of the play.10 6.  Some readers may have noticed the nonstandard romanization of the Japa­nese line ­here. In conventional romanizations, the last word would be written sōrō, but I have opted not only to use a more faithful romanization of the classical Japa­nese (which would yield safurafu) but also to reflect the vocalization used on the noh stage, in which this word is ended with a single syllable, thus: safuro. I ­will take this approach throughout this chapter. 7.  In addition to the line discussed immediately below, it is worth noting the line Omohi zo idzuru Dannoura no, sono funa-­ikusa ima ha haya (Now the sea ­battle of Dannoura comes before my memory) in the transition from the kakeri dance to the last song in the play. Yōkyokushū II 謡曲集 II, ed. Omote Akira 表章and Yokomichi Mario 横道万里雄, vol. 41, Nihon koten bungaku taikei 日本古典文学大系 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1963), 273–74. 8.  His name, Yoshitsune, contains the phrase yoshi, tsune [no ukiyo . . .], “Well then, [in this world where sadness is] a constant . . .” 9.  Yōkyokushū II, 271. 10.  In technical terms, this comes in a sequence of songs called kuri-­sashi-­(kakeai)-­sashi and kuse. The kuri-­sashi-­kuse sequence is one of the most common and most impor­tant in all noh.



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The foregrounding of memory ­here is reinforced first with a mention of unforgettability, Fune to kuga to no kasen no michi, tokorokara tote wasureenu, The course of the b­ attle, fought on both land and sea, is impossible to forget, ­because of its place in space, and reiterated then at the beginning of a song called a kuri クリ, with the line Wasurenu mono wo enbu no kokyō ni. What I cannot forget, this home of mine in the deluded world. An eponymous play about a defeated general, Yorimasa—as celebrated as the play Yashima—­provides further evidence of the autogeny of memory, as in the following lines: Ahi ni ahitaru tokoro no na mo Byōdōin no niwa no omo, omohiide­ tari, but’nzaise ni Hotoke no tokishi nori no niwa, koko zo byōdō dai-­e no kuriki ni Yorimasa ga bukka wo en zo arigataki.11 In the name of ­every place I come upon through the garden of Byōdōin, I am reminded of the garden of the Dhar­ma where Bud­dha preached when He was resident in this world; what a blessing, I tell you, that Yorimasa might rely on the egalitarian wisdom [of Bud­dha] to obtain the fruit of Buddhahood. Yorimasa is similar structurally to Yashima: in both plays, the wandering priest, the waki, encounters the shite through a joint focus on the landscape. (In the former play, that landscape is the now-­tranquil inland seacoast where once the Genji and Heike fought; in the latter, it is the more contained and “designed” garden of Byōdōin ­Temple 平等院 and its neighboring river and hills.) In both plays, the shite’s knowledge of the landscape raises suspicions in the mind of the waki, leading him to inquire as to the shite’s identity. Likewise, in both plays, the shite of the first half of the play is reluctant to reveal his identity; and again, the waki coaxes it out of him just before he dis­appears; then, in both plays, the waki resolves to pray for the shite’s repose. At this point, the emotional tenor of Yorimasa takes a dif­fer­ent turn from what we saw in Yashima. When the shite returns to the stage in his true form, it is out of a longing for the deluded world of his lifetime, and when he en11.  Yōkyokushū I 謡曲集 I, ed. Koyama Hiroshi 小山弘志, Satō Kikuo 佐藤喜久雄, and Satō Ken’ichirō 佐藤健一郎, vol. 33, Nihon koten bungaku zenshū 日本古典文学全集 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1997), 262.

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counters the waki who prays for him, he expresses his gratitude. And now, a memory is made explicit. ­Here what is remembered is something held as an article of faith: that the efficacy of Bud­dha’s preaching regarding byōdō dai-­e 平等大慧, “egalitarian wisdom,” in ancient times has been re-­effected h ­ ere in the garden of Byōdōin (which puns on the name of the building, the Byōdōin, by means of this term for “egalitarian wisdom”). The garden is then compared to the garden in which Shakyamuni preached in ancient India, and it is now, as in Yashima, that the shite owns up to his identity as Gen-­zammi Yorimasa 源三位頼政: Yorimasa, a Genji of the Third Court Rank.12 The mention of this title, with its secular (and perhaps tacitly military) associations, alongside the assertion that “Yorimasa has attained the flower of Buddhahood,” provides a metaphysical pivot for the former warrior seeking salvation, and it dovetails spatially with the previously mentioned garden where Bud­dha presaged the salvation of Yorimasa, the site of the play and by extension the site of a per­for­mance. This sets off a cascade of memories regarding Yorimasa’s flight from the capital, with the ­enemy at his heels. In the two cases cited above, the vocabulary of memory sets the context for the shite’s long narrative, a place both structurally and thematically crucial to the play. Something similar happens in yet another play by Zeami, Kiyo­ tsune, but only ­after a striking difference in the use of memory. In this case, the waki has just presented a lock of the teenage warrior Kiyotsune’s hair to the tsure, his ­widow. Her response follows: Kore ha chiujōdono no kurokami ka ya, mireba me mo kure kokoro kie, naho mo omohi no masaru zo ya, miru tabi ni kokoro-­dzukushi no kami nareba, Usa ni zo kaesu moto no yashiro ni to tamuke kaeshite yomosugara, namida to tomoni omohine no yume ni naritomo mietamae to nerarenu ni katamukuru, makura ya kohi wo shirasuran, makura ya kohi wo shirasuran.13 So this is a lock of His Honor, the Captain’s, hair, is it! Looking at it, my vision goes dark, my mind goes faint, and still, ­can’t you see, my longing just grows worse. This lock of hair saps every­thing from my mind whenever I see it, so take it back to Usa Shrine and to the god in Tsukushi where it came from; it ­will be an offering refused, for even though I’m hopeful, through my tears, that he might come to me in sleep by a dream; my thoughts are so filled with him that they keep me restless 12.  In a nanoriguri 名ノリグリ, followed by sashi サシ and kuse クセ. 13.  Yōkyokushū I, 252.



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and awake. Does my pillow give my love away? Is it my pillow, gives me away? During this song, the shite, the very “Captain” that his ­widow has been complaining about, makes his entrance while the waki unobtrusively leaves the stage. He reflects in general terms (in a sashi サシ) upon the unreliability of dreams, and how dust (a symbol of worldly delusion) induces a kind of claustrophobia, while clarity of vision banishes dreams and suffering. But in his final line, he admits that he is unable to achieve anything of the like and finds himself ineluctably drawn back to the world—­a common situation in noh plays.14 He then recites the poem to which this extended meditation on dreams has all along alluded:15 Utatane ni kohishiki hito wo miteshi yori, yume tefu mono wa tanomisometeki.16 Ever since I fell into a doze and saw my love, the single ­thing I count on is this ­thing they call a dream. What follows is the argument between Kiyotsune’s ghost and his embittered ­widow, a signal and highly unusual exchange (unique in shuramono although reminiscent of an exchange in Kinuta 砧, where the wife, now dead, rebukes her husband for abandoning her to pursue his ­legal affairs in the capital). In Kiyotsune, the lexical item which sets off the exchange is not, strictly speaking, the word “remember,” but, as we have seen, omohine, translated ­earlier as “a sleep filled with thoughts or memories of someone.” Ge ni ya katami koso nakanaka ukere, kore naku ha wasuru koto mo arinan to, omofu mo nurasu tamoto kana.17 It’s this very remembrance that grieves my memory; without it, maybe I might find some way to forget, but even that thought itself is enough to drench my sleeves in tears. The construction of memory in Kiyotsune is more complicated than in the three plays discussed previously. This quote provokes the emergence of the shite in the play and marks a point of deep ethical significance for the play, ­because the shite must determine w ­ hether it is pos­si­ble to take control of 14.  Yuku mo kaeru mo Enbu no kokyō ni, tadoru kokoro no hakanasa yo, “­Whether g­ oing off or coming back, it’s to my home in this deluded world that I return. Oh, the fecklessness of my mind!” 15.  In a section called ge no ei 下ノ詠. 16.  Yōkyokushū I, 252. The poem, by Ono no Komachi 小野小町, is #553 from the Kokin wakashū 古今和歌集, from the second book of love poems. 17.  Yōkyokushū I, 252.

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oneself, despite the captivating attraction of memory, for memory is both what is desired and what is detested. As is often the case in warrior plays, the interaction between the shite and his interlocutor (in this case, the tsure, whereas more typically it would be the waki) leads to a narrative about the circumstances of the warrior’s death, then an account of his suffering in hell before he is saved by the grace of Amida Bud­dha at the very end of the play. In that, Kiyotsune is like several other warrior plays, but in the course of this narrative, ­there is an in­ter­est­ing twist. Near the end of the play, between the account of Kiyotsune’s suicide and his suffering in hell, his w ­ idow, the tsure, interrupts him with a single, final line: Kiku ni kokoro mo kurehadori, ukine ni shizumu namida no ame no, urameshikarikeru chigiri kana.18 When I hear it my mind goes dark, I sink into a fitful sleep ­under a shower of tears; now I know how miserable is this vow between us! It is unusual in itself for the shite to be interrupted at this point, but especially in­ter­est­ing ­here, in that the tsure’s lines bear their own, quite contrasting, emotional character.19 They are, moreover, set to a conspicuously melismatic song, the kudokiguri クドキグリ.20 The play Tomonaga takes the pain of memory even further, presenting it ­ oman, an innforthrightly as trauma. In this play, the shite of the first act is a w keeper. In this exceptional case, she is a dif­fer­ent person from the shite of the second act, Tomonaga’s ghost. The play revolves around their two narratives; the one, an eyewitness account from this ­woman’s point of view; the second, that of Tomonaga’s ghost. The innkeeper quotes a rather insipid old poem as she describes her memories of Tomonaga. The poem exhibits a rather forced conceit and seems light, if not lightweight, but in a shift of emotional register that one often finds in the reuse of old poems in noh, it shifts to a very dif­fer­ent emotional tenor in the context of her narrative. First, the poem: Yuki no uchi haru ha kinikeri uguhisu no kohoreru namida ima ya tokuran.21 18.  Yōkyokushū I, 256. 19.  Although the text at this point is often shared with the chorus, the point of view expressed, even in choral lines, is generally that of the shite. 20.  The song begins at a high pitch and proceeds down through the song to end with a prominent yuri, a three-­part vocal quaver. 21.  Yōkyokushū I, 212. The poem, by Empress Takaiko to Emperor Nijō, is #4 in the first book of spring poems of the Kokin wakashū.



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Look, spring has come in the midst of snow! ­Won’t the warbler’s frozen tears melt away at last? The rhetorical artifice h ­ ere holds that the tears of the warbler (uguisu 鶯) frozen by the winter’s cold ­will at last melt, now that spring has arrived. As is often the case, the ageuta 上歌 does not quote the entire poem but turns the last line to a metrically exigent kohoreru namida ha haya, “frozen tears [should] at last [melt],” and in what follows, turns the polite and rather obtuse confusion of the Kokinshū 古今集 poem in a darker direction: Tokete mo nezareba yume ni dani, onnomokage no mie mo sede. Even if [the warbler’s tears] should melt, [it d­ oesn’t ­matter:] since I cannot sleep, I cannot see his visage, even in a dream. And she might then have added, I c­ an’t unsee it in real­ity. The original, of course, reads more elegantly: Arisama wo omohiidzuru mo asamashi ya.22 How appalling, even the memory of that scene! The scene in question is that of Tomonaga’s suicide and has prob­ably the strongest emotional force of all the examples of omohiidzu that we have seen. It is repeated, as is usually the case with the last line of such a song (an ageuta), but it is not this formal feature that lends the line its power. It is, instead, this par­tic­u­lar context. The shite now stands and notices the waki. ­There follows a passage in which the innocent passerby status of the innkeeper and the personal connection of the waki to Tomonaga come into focus. (The waki is identified ­either as the child of Tomonaga’s wet-­nurse or someone who served as his childhood guardian, depending on which school of per­for­mance one is attending.) One of the most impor­tant features of the play, an innovation, resides formally in the fact that t­here are two dif­fer­ent shite, but t­here is more to this than merely formal innovation: in addition, the positing of a character such as the innkeeper as the shite of the first act is unique, in that she is connected to the ­dying warrior by neither blood nor feudal loyalty, but nonetheless serves in the play as the intimate witness to the trauma of his death. In the conversation with the waki, the shite of the first act admits that she has been making Seventh-­Day Offerings at Tomonaga’s grave, in lieu of anyone with a kinship or other close relationship to the deceased. Her narrative is central to the play. It begins: 22.  Yōkyokushū I, 212.

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Shite katari: How painful, even to speak of it— Once night had fallen on the eighth last year, I heard a furious knocking at the gate. “Who would that be?” I asked, and since I was told it was His Lordship Kamada, I opened the gate, whereupon four or five men in armor came in. They ­were Yoshitomo and his sons Kamada and Konnōmaru and they made a request of me: The next morning they ­were to board a boat on the river from Utsumi and make their retreat on the Bay of Ise. Having set the scene by explaining the circumstances in which the warriors arrived at the lodging h ­ ouse, the innkeeper focuses her attention on Tomonaga himself: But also: Tomonaga had been shot through the knee during the fall of the Capital, and had suffered on through every­thing that happened since. ­After it grew late and the com­pany had settled into silence, I twice heard the voice of Tomonaga chant Namu Amidabu, Namu Amidabu, Then Lord Kamada arrived: What a . . . ! Tomonaga is killing himself! Yoshitomo rushed to see, and he found that Tomonaga’s under-­robes ­were already stained crimson You ­couldn’t bear to look at it.23 23.  The remarkable narrative continues as follows: At that time, Yoshitomo asked “Whyever have you killed yourself ?” to which Tomonaga responded ­under his breath, “You might well ask, but when I was shot through the knee at the fall of the Capital I already found it hard to go on, but hanging from my ­horse I managed to come this far yet I cannot go a single step further, and if I am left at the side of the road, I ­will surely die like a dog. I have no prospect what­ever of being able to proceed with you, so as to what has happened ­here, although you may regard it as a failure of resolution on my part if I should meet the ­enemy on the road and die by the hand of a common foot soldier I ­couldn’t bear it, so I am taking my leave ­here, like this,” Chorus sageuta: and ­these ­were his last words and when his speech broke off, Yoshitomo and Masakiyo grasped hold of him and wailed in such a way that



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Thus, instead of the ghost of a warrior disguised as a commoner who takes the central dramatic role in the first act of the play, we find no ghost at all, and no disguise, but rather a ­woman, unrelated to the warrior except by chance. This is a striking broadening of the social world of this play, but of course it makes impossible the use of the teasing revelation of the warrior’s identity that ­ ill appear we observed in Yashima and Yorimasa. (This thematic undercurrent w once again near the end of the play, where the shite is admonished to “think [omohe] of ­every ­woman as your ­mother.”) We ­will return to this below. First though, note how, even within this austere context, the hope of salvation for the warrior remains, connected with the play’s overall orientation ­toward repentance. In the interval between acts, a villa­ger requests that the waki say prayers for Tomonaga, as in so many other warrior plays, and the waki acquiesces, but with a unique commitment to perform the Kannon senbō 観音懺法, a ritual of confession for expiation of sins. Tomonaga’s ghost, the shite of the second act, makes his entrance with specific reference to the ritual: Ara arigata no senbō ya na, Shakuzai Ryōzen myō Hokke, Konzai saihō myō Amida, Shaba jigen Kanzeon, Sanze riyaku dōittai. Makoto naru kana, makoto naru kana. Oh, what blessings in the Rite of Penitence! “Long ago on Vulture Peak the Lotus Sutra was extolled, and in our day, in the West, the praise of Amida and Avalokiteśvara’s manifestation in our deluded world makes for three ­great benefits, all in one body”: how true, how true! In a revered kogaki 小書 (alternative per­for­mance style) for the play, the ­ usic of the Kannon senbō is evoked through the retuning of the taiko drum m (ropes holding the drumheads are loosened in order to produce a deeper, almost echoing sound in the drum) and the shite makes his entrance to this drum, rather than to the normally tuned taiko drum playing the more standard instrumental piece called a deha 出端.24 In evoking the Kannon senbō, the play refers to a three-­part Zen ritual in which praise is offered to Bud­dhas and bo­dhi­sat­tvas, followed by the recitation of the expiatory utterance, Shōbuku dokugai darani 消伏毒害陀羅尼, “the dharaṇi for the expiation of poisonous injury.” This begs the question, what is it that Tomonaga has to repent? Such answers as the play provides do not point to personal culpability, but rather much more generally, first to observations about the transience of life, even total strangers ­were moved to an unforgettable sorrow. 24.  Chapter 8 in this volume discusses the variant per­for­mance in detail.

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Sore ashita ni kōgan atte, seiro ni hokoru to ihedomo, iube ni ha hakkotsu to natte, kōgen ni kuchinu.25 Look, though with the dawn, youth’s face ­were rosy pink, held high and proud on the public road, by nightfall it be blanched white bones, crumbled with rot in a field on the margins, and then to the baffling turn of events where the expectations of sage rule ­were overturned in insurrection and war: Chorus: Mukashi ha Genpei sau ni shite, Teuka wo shugo shitate­ matsuri, miyo wo osame kokka wo shidzumete, banki no matsurigoto sunaho narishi ni, Hōgen Heiji no yo no midare, ikanaru toki ka kitariken, Shite: omohazarinishi kiuba no sahagi, Chorus: hitoe ni jisetsu, tōrai nari.26 Chorus: In days past, the Genji and the Heike protected the royal court from left and right, ensured the security of the reign and maintained peace throughout the land, and in e­ very regard the state was governed with sage acquiescence. But during the insurrections of the Hōgen and Heiji eras, such times came down upon us! Shite: The unimagined chaos of arms and ­battle steeds, Chorus: The advent of a relentless, urgent age! The picture of a state gone awry is painted without a clear indication of who was to blame, but the sense of disorder is clear, and in what follows, a more detailed account of the retreat and defeat of the Genji force, the capture and execution of Yoshitomo’s 義朝 eldest son, Yoshihira 義平, the forcible return of his son Hyōenosuke 兵衛佐 (referring to Yoritomo 頼朝) to Kyoto, Yoshitomo’s attempt to escape and his betrayal by his retainer, Osada Tadamune 長田忠致—in all this, we see a picture of the ethical order upended, personal relationships destroyed, and po­liti­cal power vitiated. The concentration on penance, explicit in the text near the beginning of the second act, and yet more explicit in the highly regarded kogaki or alternate per­for­mance style senbō, suggests an interpretive trajectory that is in some ways illuminating. What is the significance of repentance h ­ ere? Tomonaga is merely a teenaged boy, dragged into bloody tragedy by his clan and his times. It is not his fault. Yet maybe that is part of the point. The fact that he opens 25.  Yōkyokushū I, 219. 26.  Yōkyokushū I, 219–20.



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his narrative in the second act with not only references to penance but also to the po­liti­cal failures that brought about the Hōgen and Heiji Wars, is signal. We see ­there a recognition of the weakness of the governmental structures of the late Heian (with broader implications as well, perhaps), and in the failure of the state and its Genpei custodians, a dark apperception of power abused and the consequences that obtain from it. To bring the depiction to a close, this passage ends with a turn away from the politics of unreliable personal connections to the almost motherly figure of the innkeeper: Ika nareba kono yado no aruji ha shikamo nyonin no kaigaishiku mo tanomarete, ichiya no nasake nomi ka, kayau ni ato made mo, ontomurahi ni naru koto ha somosomo itsu no yo no chigiri zo ya.27 How did it come about, then, that this innkeeper, and a ­woman for all that, became our last resort and came through for us, not merely with lodging for the night, but, as you see, even hereafter, with her august prayers for our repose—­what world, what time has granted this affinity! Some of this same story is now rehearsed from Tomonaga’s point of view, including more details about the b­ attle in which he was wounded, but this time the story is couched within a more pious religious context, with descriptions of his ghost’s suffering the miseries of shura hell, first preceded by: Issai no nanshi woba, shyaujau no chichi to tanomi, yorodzu no nyonin wo shyaujau no hawa to omohe to ha, ima mi no uhe ni shiraretari. “Rely on all men as your own ­father, from birth to birth, think of ­every ­woman as your m ­ other, each, from birth to birth,” it says, and now I know this from my own experience. Tomonaga’s ghost expresses his gratitude for the prayers of both the innkeeper and the waki, his childhood companion, but he still has not been released. The chorus is puzzled, and asks why Tomonaga, in such circumstances, should still appear not only in ­battle armor but armored as well in a warrior’s rage. The shite explains that the heavenly part of his spirit, the kon 魂, would head to “a better place,” but the earthly part, the haku 魄, was to remain in the realm of warring spirits to undergo punishment. ­After this, the ghost delivers a narrative similar to that of the innkeeper from ­earlier in the play. Once he has come to the end of the narrative, where he relates his suicide, his spirit falls back to the warring spirits’ realm with a final appeal for prayers. 27.  Yōkyokushū I, 220.

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Tomonaga is tentatively attributed to Zeami’s eldest son, Motomasa 元雅, along with another few plays that remain in the repertory (some of them greatly accomplished works, such as Sumidagawa 隅田川 and Yoroboshi 弱法師). No con­temporary evidence has been identified that would justify an attribution, and in the end the attribution per se is prob­ably a secondary concern. The play itself is the t­ hing, and it is a work of extraordinary power and depth. It is worth pointing out some of its unusual features, though, and ­these may contribute to a new understanding of how it might relate to the oeuvre of Motomasa and also how it articulates the significance of memory in the warrior plays overall. The fact that Tomonaga allocates the two major narratives and dramatic peaks in its structure to two entirely dif­fer­ent p­ eople, the innkeeper in the former case and Tomonaga’s ghost in the latter, makes it nearly unique among plays in the modern repertory. The other prominent example of a noh play with a somewhat similar structure is Funa benkei 舟弁慶, but that play comes from a very dif­fer­ent context with very dif­fer­ent aesthetic aims, so the comparison does not tell us much.28 A play such as Kiyotsune, discussed e­ arlier, where the tsure assumes such an impor­tant role in the first half of the play, has a certain kinship with Tomonaga and yet departs from it too, in that in the second half of the play the tsure and shite have some impor­tant interaction for which t­ here is no counterpart in Tomonaga. In the play Kinuta as well, the shite of the first act is living and the shite of the last act is a ghost, showing some of the disjunction in identity we see in Tomonaga, but not to such a striking degree. In thematic terms the play is also extraordinary, as the previous discussion of the alternate per­for­mance style senbō illustrates, particularly with regard to Tomonaga’s repentance. That the pessimistic assessment should be followed by praise of the innkeeper’s compassion in praying for Tomonaga, by way of a quotation from the Brahmajāla sūtra (Brahma’s Net Sutra, Jp. Bonmōkyō 梵網経), reaches, I think, to a devotional commitment that is not unlike that in the play Morihisa 盛久, a play confidently attributable to Motomasa.29 It also strikes a popu­lar note, following on the disaffection with aristocratic and military bungling of government. The introduction of such a note before the recounting of Tomonaga’s ghost’s tribulations in hell is unusual, not something to be found in warrior plays confidently attributable to Zeami, where prayers find their reward 28. In Funa benkei, the two dif­fer­ent parts of the play enact dif­fer­ent and thematically disparate ele­ments of plot in the legend of the hero Yoshitsune. They do ­little to fill out Yoshitsune’s interior life (in fact, the role of Yoshitsune himself is given to a child, and his retainer, Benkei, is the real hero of the play). In Tomonaga, as we have seen, the unusual structure serves to deepen the psychological complexity of the innkeeper and Tomonaga himself. 29.  Morihisa is centered on a journey the eponymous shite takes from Kyoto to the east country, ostensibly for his execution, but b­ ecause of his devotion to Kannon, the executioner’s sword breaks and he is miraculously rescued at the end of the play.



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only at the very end of the play (in some cases rather abruptly). That the end of Tomonaga does not lead to his ultimate salvation also marks a difference from At­ sumori and Kiyotsune among Zeami’s shuramono. Although in its conclusion, To­ monaga is similar to Yorimasa and another impor­tant warrior play, Sanemori 実盛, it remains a unique warrior play ­because of the formal innovation of the two dif­ fer­ent shite roles and the thematic articulation of deep compassion for the warrior’s ghost in the heart of someone who is other­wise utterly unconnected to him. And what of memory in all this? We might note a contrast between what is remembered in Tomonaga, the appalling suicide in the inn that remains indelible in the innkeeper’s vision and which serves as motivation for her to pray for him, on the one hand, and what must be recalled to Tomonaga’s ghost, on the other, not with the verb omohiidzu, but rather with the simpler omohe, “think,” in the quotation from the sutra: “Rely on e­ very man as your own ­father, from birth to birth, think of ten thousand w ­ omen as your ­mother, each, from birth to birth.” H ­ ere the autogeny of memory is displaced with the conscious act of ­will in thinking something contrary to intuition and preconception. This contrast alone is rather modest in the context of the play, and yet it might serve to highlight a devotional propensity in the warrior plays that ­counters the effects of memory, especially of ­those unbidden and unwelcome memories that bring such horror and pain to their subjects as in Atsumori, Kiyo­ tsune, and Yashima. It is the acts of remembrance in prayer that release some of ­these subjects from their shackling to former lives and enmities. Although ­there remains uncertainty regarding the attribution of Tomonaga and even given due caution about attributing dramatic characters’ emotions to their creators, it still seems worth pointing to a difference between the Zeami plays we have considered and Tomonaga in relation to questions of memory. If many plays by Zeami, on the one hand, take generous advantage of the ambivalent relation between memory and w ­ ill as tools for the articulation of ghostly identity, Tomonaga speaks less explic­itly about memory but nonetheless points to it starkly as a site of trauma, for both the innkeeper and the warrior himself. In this doubling of its subject, the play steps a few paces away from the more unitary orientation of plays such as Yorimasa and Yashima, with their closure through the dissolution of the shite into the natu­ral landscape accompanying an implication of spiritual pro­gress or even salvation. The world of Tomonaga is heavier aesthetically and more open to doubt. As such, it seems a fitting tribute to the tragic life of its presumed author, Motomasa.30 30.  Zeami expected Motomasa to succeed him as head of the Kanze troupe, but u ­ nder the reign of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshinori both ­father and son suffered a series of professional hardships, culminating in the death of Motomosa u ­ nder mysterious circumstances and the exile of Zeami to Sado Island, far from his home and per­for­mance base.

Co n t r i b u to r s

MONICA BETHE is presently Director of the Medieval Japa­nese Studies Institute, Kyoto, ­after having taught for forty years at universities in Japan. Her fields of research have grown out of experience with noh practice and textile arts, as well as investigation of historical textiles. Publications include Nō as Per­for­mance: An Analy­sis of the Kuse Scene of Yamamba (1978) and Dance in the Noh Theater (1982), both coauthored with Karen Brazell; Noh Per­for ­mance Guides, coauthored with Richard Emmert (1992–1997); Miracles and Mischief: Noh and Kyōgen Theater in Japan, coauthored with Sharon Takeda (2002); and numerous essays and translations. WILLIAM D. FLEMING is Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses primarily on early modern Japa­nese lit­er­a­ture and theater. His articles have appeared in journals including Eighteenth-­ Century Studies and Journal of the American Oriental Society, and he is the coau­ reat Peace (2015). He is currently thor of Samurai and the Culture of Japan’s G revising a manuscript titled Strange Tales from Edo: Rewriting Chinese Fiction in Early Modern Japan. ANDREW EDMUND GOBLE is Professor of Japa­nese History and of Religious Studies and Kawasaki Fellow of Japa­nese History at the University of Oregon. A specialist on medieval Japan, his current research focuses on issues of medicine and society. He is the author of Confluences of Medicine in Medi­ eval Japan (2011). Recent articles include “­Women and Medicine in Late 16th ­Century Japan” (2016); “Physician Yamashina Tokitsune’s Healing Gifts” (2017); and “The Development of Urban Medical Culture during the Transition from the Medieval to the Early Modern Era” (2017). TOM HARE is Professor of Comparative Lit­er­a­ture at Prince­ton University. He has translated the writings of Zeami on training and per­for­mance as Zeami, Per­ for­mance Notes (2008) and written on ancient Egyptian semiotics and systems of repre­sen­ta­tion in ReMembering Osiris (1999). Current proj­ects include a book on 251

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portraiture and, in collaboration, a handbook on noh drama for En­glish readers. His most recent publications include translations from eighteenth-­century jōruri ballads in A Kamigata Anthology: Lit­er­a­ture from Japan’s Metropolitan Centers (2020) and a critical translation of the opening of The ­Great Hymn to Aten (2020). ELIZABETH OYLER is Associate Professor of Japa­nese at the University of Pittsburgh. She specializes in medieval Japa­nese narrative and performing arts. Her publications include Swords, Oaths, and Prophetic Visions: Authoring Warrior Rule in Medieval Japan (2006), a study of authority and voice in Tale of the Heike, Japan’s most prominent war tale, and articles about medieval narrative. She coedited Like Clouds or Mists (2013), a volume of translations and studies of noh plays derived from Tale of the Heike. She is involved in collaborative proj­ects on traditional Japa­nese theater and world puppet theater traditions. LUKE S. ROBERTS is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He earned his PhD in East Asian Studies at Prince­ton University in 1991. He is the author of Mercantilism in a Japa­nese Domain: The Mer­ chant Origins of Economic Nationalism in 18th ­Century Tosa (1998) and Performing the ­Great Peace: Po­liti­cal Space and Open Secrets in Tokugawa Japan (2012). KATHERINE SALTZMAN-­LI is Associate Professor of premodern Japa­nese performing arts and lit­er­a­ture at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Creating Kabuki Plays (2010) and has published essays on early modern professional texts and commercial materials related to kabuki; commercial noh and kabuki woodblock prints; and most recently, noh-­derived kabuki plays. She has co-­curated exhibitions of theater prints at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and is a director of JPARC ( Japa­nese Performing Arts Research Consortium), an international group of scholars devoted to research and the development of online resources on Japa­nese performing arts. MARIMI TATENO received a PhD in lit­er­at­ ure from Waseda University in 2020. She specializes in premodern Japa­nese genre paintings and paintings of the performing arts. She has published articles in the Tokyo National Museum journal MUSEUM on pieces from the museum collections, and other articles that examine screen paintings from the collections of the Idemitsu Museum of Arts and the Kyoto National Museum. Her articles on genre paintings have appeared in Bijutsushi and other journals. She was awarded an ARIAH (Association for Research Institutes in Art History) East Asia Fellowship in 2016, and she received the 2020 Asahi Shinbun Kokka Encouragement Award. ALISON TOKITA has written widely on Japa­nese musical narrative traditions and on ­music and modernity in East Asia and Australia. She has worked

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in Japa­nese Studies at Monash University since the 1980s, and from 2010 she held professorial appointments at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Doshisha University and was Director of the Research Centre for Japa­nese Traditional ­Music, Kyoto City University of Arts (2014–2018). She received the Tanabe Hisao Prize for her monograph Japa­nese Singers of Tales: Ten Cen­ turies of Performed Narrative (2015) and the Koizumi Fumio Prize for Ethnomusicology. Currently she is an adjunct researcher at Monash University and Guest Professor at the Kyoto City University of Arts.

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. ageuta, 144, 217, 243 Aiqing zhuan, 119–20, 122–23 Aizawa, 154–57, 159–61 allusion, 117–18, 123–24, 135–36, 139–40, 155–58 aragoto, 180, 189 Ariwara no Narihira, 137–38, 143, 154–56, 159–61 See also Ise monogatari armor, 16–17, 99, 106–7, 166–67, 169, 171–72, 179, 214, 247 Asai Ryōi, 123–24 Asaji ga yado, 119–20, 122–23, 125 Ashikaga Yoshikatsu, 214 Ashikaga Yoshimasa, 213–14 Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, 7, 214 Ashikaga Yoshimochi, 223 Ashikaga Yoshinori, 213–14 Ashikaga Yoshiteru, 20–21 Atsumori. See Taira no Atsumori Atsumori (play), 177, 237–38, 249 Azuma (East Country), 134–36, 138n9, 148, 149, 151, 153, 156–57, 159–61 Azuma kagami, 108, 141 Azuma kudari, 137–38 bath­house, 69–72, 71 ­battle of Sekigahara, 49–50, 54, 81, 91–93, 98, 109 biwa hōshi, 141, 165–66, 179, 184–85 See also heike biwa Buddhist ser­vices, 89n46, 216–18, 245 See also Kannon senbō Buddhist themes, 7, 9, 141, 153n42, 163, 165, 168, 192n13, 198, 220–21, 233, 240 resignation, 13–14, 173–75 bunbu ryōdō, 3 bungo-­bushi, 180–82

bunraku, 180 See also puppet theater Buppōsō, 127 bushi, 3 buyōgeki, 209–10 Chaya asobi, 57, 65–66, 68–70, 73–74 chaya no kaka, 57, 66–70 Chinese classics, 18, 22, 24, 173–74 Chinese tales, 100 as sources for kidan, 114–15, 117–21, 124, 128 chirashi, 184 chobo, 192–94, 202, 206 Chōgen monogatari (Chōgenki), 96, 99 chōja/Chōja, 144, 148–49, 151, 216–21 Chōshū domain, 92–93 Chōsogabe (clan), 94–96, 100–104, 106–13 Chōsogabe Morichika, 93–94 Chōsogabe Motochika, 95–97, 108 Chōsogabe jōsuiki, 100 chuanqi, 117–18 chūon, 144, 167–68, 173 collective memory, 2–3, 10, 235 cultural memory, 1–3, 11, 163 Daihijū darani, 221–22 Daimotsu no ura (Yoshitsune senbon zakura), 202 Dannoura, 147 dragonfly happi (costume), 213–16, 221, 225, 227, 233–34 construction of, 230, 231–32 weaving pro­cess, 227–29 East Country. See Azuma Edo authors, 115–16, 128 Ehon Taikōki, 206n31

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Feng Menglong, 118, 121 Fuji musume, 209–10 Fujiwara no Sumitomo, 5 Fukutomi Han’emon, 98–99 Funa benkei, 248 Furoagari no manabi, 68–72, 74, 88–89 furusato, 146, 151, 159–60 Genji (clan). See Minamoto (clan) Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji), 138 Genpei jōsuiki. See Heike monogatari variants Genpei tōjōroku. See Heike monogatari variants Genpei War, 5–6, 9, 118, 128n22, 135, 137n6, 150, 192n13 gidayū-­bushi, 180–82, 184 Gikeiki, 6, 164, 176 gochūshin, 202 Gotoba, 135n2, 153–54 See also Jōkyū Disturbance goze, 184 “­Great Peace” (Pax Tokugawa), 11, 91–92, 114, 130 gunki (war accounts), 94–95, 99–100, 163–66, 180, 184 gunki monogatari (war tales), 6, 94–95, 164–66, 190n10 Hanabusa sōshi, 115–17, 119 hanamichi, 188–91, 202 happi. See dragonfly happi Hasegawa Tōhaku, 87–88 hashigakari, 64 hayashi, 182–83, 206n32 Heian period, 4–5, 8, 134n1, 163, 184, 247 Heiji monogatari, 108, 164, 166, 216 Heiji Rebellion, 5, 169, 216, 246–47 Heike (clan). See Taira (clan) Heike biwa, 141, 144, 152, 164–67, 184–85 See also biwa hōshi, heike narrative Heike mabushi, 184–85 Heike monogatari variants Engyō-­bon, 141–43, 147, 149 Genpei jōsuiki, 108, 141–43, 147–49, 157 Genpei tōjōroku, 141–43, 147, 152 Kakuichi-­bon, 138n11, 141–43, 147, 151–53, 157–61, 164, 166 Nagato-­bon, 141–43, 147–49 heike narrative (heikyoku), 162–63, 166–67, 169, 179, 184–85 Hideyoshi. See Toyotomi Hideyoshi hiroi, 166–73, 177, 182, 184 hiroimono, 169 Hitofutagusa, 116–18, 122, 128n22

Hizen (domain), 93 Hōgen monogatari, 164, 166 Hōgen Rebellion, 5, 246–47 Honchō nijūshikō, 207–208 honkadori, 140 See also allusion Igaku Tenshōki, 28–30 Isayoi nikki, 139 Ise monogatari, 137–38, 143, 154–56, 159 See also Ariwara no Narihira Ishikiri kajiwara (Kajiwara Heizō homare no ishikiri), 192–97 Itami Chin’en, 115–16, 122, 126 Izumi ga jō (Izumi’s Fortress), 177–79 Jiandeng xin­hua, 119 jidaimono, 12, 180, 182, 186–87, 191–92, 202, 211 Jōkyū Disturbance ( Jōkyū no ran), 6, 135, 153–54, 156–60 Jōkyūki, 7, 164 jōruri, 166–67, 176, 179–83, 185, 203 Jusshukō no ba (Honchō nijūshikō), 207 Kabuki no sōshi, 68–70 kabukimono, 53, 55–57, 59–61, 65–72 Kaidōki, 134–35, 156, 158–59 Fujiwara Chunagon Muneyuki in, 153–55, 159 and Heike monogatari, 135–36, 138–40, 143–44, 156–57, 159–61 Kajūji Haruko, 76–79, 82 See also Shinjōtōmon-in Kamakura, 5–6, 129, 134–40, 143, 144, 149–50, 154, 157–61 Kamakura shogunate, 5–6, 14, 16, 134, 153–54, 193 Kannon, 149, 216, 220–23, 226, 248n9 Kannon senbō repentance rite, 13, 213–14, 216–18, 245 at Shōkokuji, 221–23, 224 Kannon sutra (Kannongyō), 221 Kanze (noh troupe/school), 13, 213–14, 221, 225, 233, 249n30 Kanze Kiyokazu, 215, 225 Kanze Motoshige, 13, 213–14 kaomise, 189 kata, 197, 207 katari, 203n28, 217 katarimono, 12, 162–63, 165n10, 166 Katsutoyo-­kun iji, 105 Keichōjiki, 73

I n d e x Keiteki-in, 25–26 Keitekishū, 25 kesa, 214, 230, 231, 233 Kikkawa Hiroie, 29, 33, 37, 40–41, 47–48 Kikkawa Motoharu, 18, 24, 29 kikōbun, 153 Kikuka no chigiri, 114, 120–21 Kira monogatari, 99 kishu ryūritan (“exile of the young nobleman”), 136, 138, 152 Kitamura Sōryū, 25–28 Kiyotsune, 237, 240–42, 248–49 kō no koe, 168, 170, 172 Kobayakawa Takakage, 16–19, 22, 25, 28–33, 36–39, 42–43, 47–49 Kogarashi zōshi, 116, 118–19, 128–29, 132–33 See also titles of individual tales Kojiki, 137 Kōjukan, 103 Kokinshū, 243 Konoe Sakiko, 76–89 Konparu, 225 Kōshi no konpaku niwatori to narite chichihaha ni saiwai o ataetaru koto, 131–33 kōshiki shōmyō, 165 Kottōshū, 69–70, 71 kōwaka/kōwakamai, 7, 12, 144, 162–63, 166–67, 175–79, 185 kubi jikken, 191 kudoki (musical substyle), 167–68, 170–72, 180n48, 181–84 kudoki (scenes of lamentation), 12, 186–87, 204–12 Kumagai jinya (Ichinotani futaba gunki), 192, 194, 197–201, 204–6, 208 kuse, 181–82 kyōgen, 188n3, 203n28, 208n37, 217 kyokusetsu, 144, 167 Liaozhai zhiyi, 118 Lotus Sutra, 221 mai, 175–77 maruhonmono, 182, 186nn1–2 Masakado, 183–84, 209–10 matsubamemono, 208n37 Matsukaze, 237 medical works, 20, 48–51 Chinese, 43–46 Japa­nese, 23, 25, 28, 37–39, 44–46 Korean, 48–49 meizerifu, 188 michiyuki, 143–44, 149, 152, 157, 181–83

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mie, 199n25, 207n34 migawari-­mono, 191, 198 Mikawa monogatari, 101 Minamoto (clan), 5–7, 137, 143, 193 Minamoto no Tomonaga, 216–21, 225–26, 233–34, 242–49 Minamoto no Yoritomo, 5–6, 129, 143, 151, 177–78, 193–94, 246 Minamoto no Yoshitomo, 216–17, 243–46 Minamoto no Yoshitsune, 177–79, 198, 204–6, 238–39, 248n28 mitate, 127–28, 133 modori, 191, 193, 195 monk’s robes, 13, 233 See also kesa monogatari (narrative substyle), 181–84 monogatari (scenes), 186–87, 191–204, 206, 210–11 monogatari (tales), 94–95, 165 Mori Yoshiki, 104–10 Morihisa, 157, 248 Morishima Chūryō, 115–16, 122–26, 128, 130–33 See also names of individual works Motochikaki, 96–97, 100 Motomasa, 247–49 Motonari ikai (Motonari’s Injunctions), 17–18 Muchū no kai sannin kizu o etaru koto, 122–24 Muneyuki ([Fujiwara] Nakamikado Chūnagon Muneyuki), 153–56, 159 Muromachi period, 6, 164, 233 Mutō Munekazu, 110–11 Mutsuwaki, 163 Nabeshima (clan), 93 nagauta, 182–83, 208–9 nanori, 166–67, 190–91 Nanroshi, 110–11 Narihira. See Ariwara no Narihira Nene (Kitanomandokoro), 61, 78, 79, 81–89 Nihon shoki, 137, 165n11 Nonaka Kenzan, 94, 101–2, 110–11 nori, 194, 198n24, 201 Oan hanashi, 97–98 Oda Nobunaga, 7, 15, 28–29, 54, 76, 93, 164, 177 Ōdakasa Shizan, 99 Ogyū Sorai, 8 Okuni kabuki zōshi, 66–67, 69 Okunomiya Masaaki, 103 Ōkura Toraaki, 188n3 ōmuseki, 188n4, 188n6

25 8 I n d e x

On’ami, 13, 213–14 onnagata, 187, 204, 206n31, 208, 210 orikoe, 167–68, 173–75, 184 Orikuchi Shinobu, 138 Osaka C ­ astle, 32–33, 94, 98, 101 Otogibōko, 123 Oyudono no ue no nikki, 76, 78, 80–81 poetry, 8, 120, 123, 125, 241–43 in Heike monogatari, 143–49, 151–52, 156–57, 159–60 in Kaidōki, 154–56, 158–59 Mōri (­family) and, 20, 22, 25–26, 36–37 See also allusion, Yōjō haikai portraiture, 19–20, 74–76, 81, 89 Pu Songling, 118, 122–25, 131 puppet theater, 12, 132, 144n24, 162, 179–82, 186–87, 191–92 Rakuchū rakugai zu. See Scenes in and around the Capital renga linked verse, 8, 25, 36–37 See also poetry Ryūtōin-­no-­miya, 79–83, 85, 87–89 samurai age, 1–5, 9–10, 13–14 samurai ideal, 4, 13–14, 107, 186–87, 197–98, 203–4, 211–12 Sanemori monogatari (Genpei Nunobiki no Taki), 192–93, 195–97, 206n32, 211 sanjū, 165n10, 167–68, 171–73 sankin kōtai, 9 Sankyo shiyō bassui, 44–46 Satomura Jōha, 25–26 Satsuma (domain), 92, 122 Scenes in and around the Capital (Rakuchū rakugai zu), 34, 61, 67–68, 70, 71 sekai, 191–92 sekkyō preaching, 176–77 Sen Rikyū, 35, 38, 40 Senbō (variant of Tomonaga), 213, 218, 221, 223, 225–27, 233–34, 246, 248 See also Kannon senbō Sengoku jidai. See Warring States era Senju-­no-­mae, 149 serifu, 188n3 serifuzukushi, 188n4 setsuwa, 7, 117–18, 165, 176–77 sewamono, 180–81 shamisen, 73, 175, 179, 182, 184, 192, 194, 201–2, 206, 208n38 Shanju siyao, 43–46, 48 Shibaraku, 188–89

shichisan, 188–91, 202 Shigeshige yawa, 116–19 See also titles of individual tales Shinjōtōmon-in, 77, 79, 81–88 See also Kajūji Haruko Shinrotei, 115–16, 122, 128 shirakoe, 168, 170–72 shojū, 144, 165n10, 167–68, 171, 173 Shōkokuji, 214, 221–27, 233–34 See also Kannon senbō Shōmonki, 163, 183–84 shosagoto, 181, 183 Shuihuzhuan (The ­Water Margin), 115 shuradō, 218, 220, 247 Soga monogatari, 6, 164, 176 Sōtan nikki, 31–32 Suichō Sanjin tanuki o sake no tomo to suru koto, 124–26 Sukeroku yukari no Edo zakura, 190–91 sutras, 216–18, 221 tachimawari, 202 Taiheiki, 7, 18, 108, 131–33, 164 taiko, 182, 213, 223–27, 245 Taikōki, 108, 164 Taira (clan), 5–6, 137n6 Taira no Atsumori, 197–98, 237 Taira no Masakado, 5, 163, 209–10 Taira no Munemori, 137n7, 140–42, 143, 147–50, 157 Taira no Shigehira, 137, 140–41, 143–46, 148–54, 159–61 Taira no Tsunemasa, 174 Takashima Magoemon, 96–97, 100 Takemoto (chanter/narrative style), 193, 197, 201, 206, 208–9, 211 See also gidayū-­bushi Takemoto Gidayū, 180, 193n16 takeyamachi, 214, 229 Tale of the Heike. See Heike monogatari Tales of Ise. See Ise monogatari Tanaka Kōken, 100 Tani (­family), 102–3 Tani Mashio, 100, 103–5, 107, 110 Tateishi Masayoshi, 96, 99 tea ceremony, 17, 22, 31–32, 35, 40 Tenshō kyōgenbon, 188n3 Tenshōki, 33 Tōdaiki, 52–53, 72–74 Tōkaidō, 137–39, 141, 143–44, 147, 153–54, 157–58 Tōkan kikō, 136n4, 139–40, 157–58 tokiwazu, 180n46, 182–84, 208–10

I n d e x Tokugawa (family/shogunate), 1, 7–9, 16, 31–32, 88–89, 92–94, 101, 104, 112–13, 127, 129–33 Tokugawa “­Great Peace.” See “­Great Peace” Tokugawa Ieyasu, 7, 34–35, 49–50, 52, 54–55, 76, 83, 91–94 Tomonaga. See Minamoto no Tomonaga Tomonaga (play), 13, 213–21, 223, 225–27, 237, 242–49 See also Senbō (variant of Tomonaga) Tosa koji kō, 108 Tosa monogatari, 100 Tosa no kuni tokanshū series, 103, 109–10 Towazugatari, 139 Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 7, 74–76, 78–79, 81, 91, 93, 164 depicted on screen KNM Okuni Performing Kabuki, 53–54, 74, 79, 81–83, 85, 88–90 invasion of ­Korea, 39–40, 74 letters, 30–31, 38–43, 46 Tsuga Teishō, 115–19, 126–27, 129–31 tsuke, 178, 199 tsurane, 188–91 Ueda Akinari, 114–15, 119–23, 125, 127, 130–31 Ugetsu monogatari, 115–16, 118, 127–28 See also titles of individual tales

Umazume Motone, 104–5 Unkon unjō o katatte hisashiki o chikau hanashi, 127, 129–30 urei otoshi, 182 wagoto, 180 waka, 25, 107, 144, 146–47, 150n39, 152 See also poetry war memory, 1–3, 11–12, 91–92, 94–95, 162–63, 184, 202 Waranbegusa, 188n3 Warring States era, 7–8, 91–92, 100–101, 103, 106–9, 164, 177 Yamauchi (clan), 11, 93–95, 100–113 Yanase Sadashige, 103 Yashima, 237–40, 245, 249 Yōjō haikai, 36–39 Yōjō waka, 38–39 yomihon, 115–17 Yorimasa, 237, 239–40, 245, 249 Yoshida Takayo, 100 yūjo, 72, 147–49, 150n37, 151 yūjo kabuki, 72–73 yūkun, 149, 151 Yuya (character), 144n26, 149–51 Yuya (noh play), 149–51 Zeami, 13, 240, 248–49 zhiguai, 117–18

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