式部卿藤原宇合卿被使改造難波堵之時作歌一首 Lord Fujiwara no Umakai of the Ministry Ceremonial, one verse composed on the occasion of the re-building of the Naniwa capital
昔者社 難波居中跡 所言奚米 今者京引 都備仁鷄里 昔こそ難波田舎と言はれけめ今は都引き都びにけり mukasi koso/nanipa yinaka to/iparekeme/ima miyako piki/miyabinikeri In the past, Naniwa may have been called a country outpost–but now, moving the capital here, it truly has the air of a capital! (MYS 3-312)
The translation does not do this justice. It is truly a brilliant poem, and I had quite a few giggles when I first discovered how perfect it was for expressing my feelings upon visiting the Naniwa capital site located in modern day Osaka. Naniwa, briefly the capital in the mid-seventh century under Kōtoku, was kept up as a “detached”/secondary capital/palace located close to the sea from the age of Tenmu (r. 673-686) through that of Shōmu, Tenmu’s great-grandson (r.724-749), when it briefly became the full-on capital again for most of 744. It was ultimately dismantled for materials for the building of Kanmu (r.781-806)’s new capital at Nagaoka. Amidst all this, this poem’s poignancy could have been felt at various points, but is contextualized by MYS as coming from Fujiwara no Umakai, an official who was involved in the rebuilding efforts of the Naniwa “capital” (miyako/miya slippage is dificult to convey in English - this was a “capital” in the sense that there was a palace there for the ruler to reside in/“rule” from). He was appointed to such a role in 726, a full 18 years before the capital was ultimately moved to Naniwa. Thus, seeing Naniwa assuming an air of the cosmopolitan as a new capital would have been quite a personally moving experience for him. To see this distant outpost, an appointment to which would have amounted to effectively banishment for him (for any appointment away from the capital generally meant you had somehow fallen out of favor and no one wanted you around for the foreseeable future), now become the capital, would have been absolutely breathtaking. The collapsing of distance between center and periphery meant the collapsing of distance from Umakai to the center of power and culture, and that he was being welcomed back in. But this verse is striking because it can be understood as a narrative of the history of the Naniwa palace as a whole, which is why I bothered to outline it above. Naniwa, despite being a major port of entry for trade goods and foreign emissaries, was usually considered a distant country outpost, far from the cosmopolitan center that was the courtly capital. There were a few moments where it managed to rise to center stage (under Kōtoku and Shōmu), but these moments were always fleeting. But since the waning of the power of the aristocratic bureaucracy in the medieval period, and the gradual “capitalization” of the economy that occurred in the Early Modern Period (17th-19th centuries), modern day Osaka has been, for all intents and purposes, much more of a “capital” than Kyoto, or Nara, for that matter, had ever been. Of course this is an entirely different sense of capital - that of an economic center, rather than a political/courtly one, but reading the poem with a looser understanding of “capital” allows its import to carry through the ages, such that it is just as poignant uttered in the center of modern day Osaka, particularly at this Naniwa palace site that is now a vast park amidst an otherwise heavily urbanized landscape, where the sense of “this place was once scorned as country, it was once this abandoned, sprawling former palace site, but look how this cosmopolitan city has arisen about it!” echoes throughout. I just love the ending: Miyabinikeri - How “capital-like” it has become! Not just because it’s one of my favorite ways to end a poem– -nikeri being a great way to convey exclamation, surprise, resignation… a whole range of things. But because I love the verb miyabu, which is what it is here. Later its linking form “miyabi” would become a noun meaning something like “refinement” - basically of the city, rather than of the country, something that is a very prominent theme in Heian literature, particularly Ise monogatari. But here, it is still a verb, the -bu suffix being a way of conveying “become x-ish” “become like x” “take on an air of x.” It’s just such a wonderful suffix. And I think it encapsulates the type of transformation that Umakai is taken aback over, that is, the becoming ALMOST capital-like, but not quite. It may be the site of the capital now, in Umakai’s present, but it is still Naniwa, and that is important. And we know that it may be capital-like now, but that come the following year, when the capital was relocated yet again to Shigaraki, and then later when it was dismantled for the building of Nagaoka, that it will return to being merely “Naniwa,” it will return to being “inaka” - its miyabi is impermanent, in other words. This makes the experience of its fleeting transformation into something capital-like the epitome of pathos, for we, although perhaps not Umakai, are aware of what’s to follow. But even in the poetic present - the law of rise and fall, the reality of the frantic capital hopping that Shōmu was engaged in at the time - were all possible reasons to believe that the Naniwa capital was not here to stay. And so Naniwa would continue to negotiate the boundary between “miyabi” and “inaka” - something that, in many ways, perhaps it still does.
