#funerary rites

Been a little slow this week - but I’m gonna just keep going with my Vol 3 banka… This photo is quite old now (taken almost 10 years ago on Mt Lafayette in NH), but I still remember this hike vividly because I remembered how close the clouds seemed, and how they seemed to me to be rising out of, rather than hovering above, the mountains - and so naturally, this is the image that was called to mind by the following poem.

土形娘子火葬泊瀬山時柿本朝臣人麻呂作歌一首

One verse, composed by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro at the time of the cremation of Hijikata no wotome on Mt Hatsuse

隠口能 泊瀬山之 山際尓 伊佐夜歴雲者 妹鴨有牟

こもりくの初瀬の山の山の際にいさよふ雲は妹にかもあらむ

komoriku no/patuse no yama no/yama no ma ni/isayopu kumo pa/imo ni kamo aramu

Hidden away/is Mount Hatsuse – along the mountain ridge/those clouds that linger above: are they my beloved?

I apologize for the crazy syntax here (although I’m not really that apologetic), but the order of things is important here, as it is in most Japanese poetry (saving the verb to the end can make for some great twist endings!). It begins with a makura kotoba “komoriku no” meaning something along of the lines of “in an opening in a hidden spot,” i.e. hidden away, usually inferred to be among mountains - it does not only modify Hatsuse, but rather is used to set the stage for a number of place names that are fairly remote, hard to access, hidden among mountains and away from civilization/the capital. It thus serves a crucial function to set us in a particular remote locale, one that is literally “hidden away” from the rest of the world - a spot where the rituals of death and mourning can take place away from where they might pose the risk of pollution. After the introduction of Buddhism, and particularly following the cremation of Empress Jitō, who was the first royal to do so, cremation became increasingly popular as a funerary practice, and thus the mourning process was fundamentally altered – banka indeed at this point were a dying breed, being replaced by Buddhist ritual chanting appropriate to a Buddhist cremation rite. However, as we can see here, old practices didn’t just immediately give complete way to new: cremation was still taking place on mountains, far from settlement sites, where burial would have also primarily taken place (at least for the elite, whose tombs were usually positioned in some such remote locale, where the procession to the tomb site was also part of the ritual), and this would continue to generally be the case throughout the Heian period and beyond (even when done closer to the capital, the cremation was usually performed at a temple in the hills around the capital, rather than anywhere within the capital proper). Further, banka continued to be composed as part of the mourning ritual, at least through the end of the seventh and the beginning of the eighth centuries: it was perhaps re-styled as a way to process one’s feelings, as much as a ritual verse to placate the spirit itself, but the practice nevertheless persisted. And, indeed, as we can see here, cremation itself became a theme of such verses, perhaps because it was so new, and it figures more prominently into banka for such funerals than the actual burial process ever had (although there are definitely verses where the speaker proclaims his beloved to now be the mountain itself, or speaks of the tomb in some other way). In fact, here there is a touch of “elegant confusion” that seems to aestheticize the funeral pyre itself: the speaker cannot distinguish between the clouds rising above the mountain and the smoke from the pyre. 

This is a striking image, perhaps even moreso because the smoke from the pyre becomes such a prominent metaphor for the impermanence of human life in later literature; here, the clouds linger (”isayopu”), almost as if they are unable to continue on, almost as if they are reluctant to leave the site. We are presented, in the first four ku, with a long modifier, all leading up to “kumo” (clouds), and thus ultimately a single image - clouds that linger, waveringly, along the mountain ridge of Mt Hatsuse. It is only in the final ku that we are aware the speaker sees these as something other than clouds, but rather, as “imo” (beloved, referring to the “wotome”/maiden from the preface, who is probably not Hitomaro’s lover but rather just some maiden whose death he was of aware of/whose funeral he attended and was asked to compose a verse for, and thus he channeled the voice of someone who would have loved her as an “imo”). The ending is in fact a rhetorical question, wondering if the clouds could in fact be her, but the implied answer is positive–that they are. Note that they are not likened to the smoke from the pyre, but rather to her herself. She is the smoke, and she is the clouds, there is no distinction - this is strikingly reminiscent of earlier banka that saw the deceased as the tomb, making no real distinction between them (being with the tomb=being with the deceased; here, seeing smoke=seeing the deceased, not merely a sign of them, but actually them). It is possible to see this lack of distinction between sign and signifier as part of a more ritualistic consciousness present in this verse, and this is, of course, a valid interpretation; here, however, I tend to think there is a nascent awareness of the poetic value of blurring the lines between two different phenomena, all while clinging to a ritualistic worldview. In other words, there is not necessarily a need to posit a binary between ritual verse/aestheticized verse, but rather, creating the confusion, and aestheticizing the smoke of the pyre by transforming it into gently lingering clouds along the mountain ridge is a new way to integrate banka into the funerary rite, yielding the bulk of the placation of the spirit to Buddhist chants, but also creating a space where the deceased could be posited as part of the landscape (since there was no longer a permanent physical marker of their presence such a tomb), and thereby for their permanent absence to be denied/negated, a natural and important part of the mourning process for the living. Banka seemed to have filled this niche only for a short time longer, however, for the deceased’s own writings came to have a similar significance of a persistent presence even after their death, and banka mostly fell out of common practice after the age of MYS. However, in this particular moment, they were a way to bridge the gap between the old and new funerary rites, and maintain a way forward for the living to grieve even in the absence of any physical reminder of their loved one. 

It couldn’t have been easy to get used to the idea of cremation - and I think this poem shows us part of that process. There is no tomb to posit as the deceased maiden, so the clouds substitute for the smoke from her pyre - in that way, she continues to exist, and exist in a beautiful way. This was probably a comforting notion for those still bewildered by the change. In a way, it is not unlike how people handle the concept of cremation today - often they will spread the ashes of their loved ones at some spot, making them a part of the landscape, and in that way continue to feel their presence. It is a way to simultaneously acknowledge and negate the permanence of their death. Beautifully.