#yoshino river
Today is one of those happy occasions where I actually have a photo of the place mentioned in the poem(s) I am going to translate/discuss… and even with a somewhat appropriate natural phenomenon (fog trailing across the peak) - although no river in sight. Regardless, this is in the Yoshino Mountains in early April 2007, when I took a day trip down to see the famous cherries. Those cherries are not quite as famous yet in the period of MYS, so there’s nothing about them in these poems, which really only feature Yoshino due to it being the site of the cremation of the maiden for whom these elegies were composed. Nevertheless the cherry blossoms trees scattered throughout the mountain are what make Yoshino still a part of the cultural imaginary in Japan, and that was the inspiration for my trip (well that and Heian literature), but next time I’ll have to remember to think of the poor drowned Izumo no otome while I’m there (hopefully later this year!).
溺死出雲娘子火葬吉野時柿本朝臣人麻呂作歌二首
Two verses by Kakinomoto no Asomi Hitomaro, upon the cremation in Yoshino of Izumo no wotome, who had drowned
山際従 出雲兒等者 霧有哉 吉野山 嶺霏(雨＋微)
山の際ゆ出雲の子らは霧なれや吉野の山の嶺にたなびく
yama no ma yu/idumo no kora pa/kiri nare ya/yosino no yama no/mine ni tanabiku
From amongst the mountains/the girl from Izumo/is she now the mist?/that now on Mt Yoshino/trails across the peak?
八雲刺 出雲子等 黒髪者 吉野川 奥名豆颯
八雲さす出雲の子らが黒髪は吉野の川の沖になづさふ
yakumo sasu/idumo no kora ga/kurokami pa/yosino no kapa no/oki ni nadusapu
Myriad clouds thrust into the sky/the girl from Izumo/her black tresses/now float about in the pools/of the Yoshino river.
This is the first drowned maiden verse that I know of in MYS, although it doesn’t give much of a story other than to tell us that Hitomaro is composing at the funeral of a girl who drowned. But elegies for drowned maidens, and the tales of drowned maidens, are a persistent theme throughout the collection, and there seems to have been a certain aesthetic appeal to them, for they persist into Heian literature, albeit in different forms and generally more fleshed out (Unai no otome reappears in Yamato monogatari, and then you have Ukihime of the Genji Uji chapters, who is perhaps the most famous - although she survives). Women who cast themselves into the river, at the mercy of the tide, when faced with no other options, seem to have been a literary trope, but probably more than that - this was probably the “elegant”/”appropriate” way for a woman to die, when she needed to. Usually, this is portrayed as her choice - she chooses to seize control of her own fate and cast herself into the water; the fact that her death is later aestheticized by poets is a separate matter. She certainly doesn’t do it for them. In most cases that I know of where female suicide is aestheticized, however, it is because she is faced with an impossible situation in life, one which usually involves having to choose between two men and being unable to do so (not because she is conflicted, necessarily, but moreso because choosing one over the other or vice versa will result in negative repercussions beyond merely a scorned suitor - such as causing conflict within one’s group/village, or with another family/group/village). Her choice to sacrifice herself to avoid the negative ripples that might result from acting in life, is seen as beautiful - and being swept away by the waves, helpless, is somehow a method of death befitting that sort of sacrifice - admittedly, of course, this is all in the view of the male poets of the age. I am in no way endorsing this, mind you - simply noting this is a literary trope common from this time.
Here we don’t really get any background on Izumo no otome, other than that the manner in which she died was drowning, and she did so in the Yoshino River (information which we can garner from the second poem). We know she is then cremated on Mt. Yoshino, where Hitomaro imagines that the mist trailing over the peak is the smoke from her pyre (and therefore her, herself - a very similar notion with poem #428 in my previous post - girl = smoke from her fire = mist, with no real distinction or leaps of logic in between necessary). The fact that the drowned maiden was already a trope at this time, however, allows us to extrapolate and guess her story in some way mirrors the others (indeed, there is actually no direct mention of her having taken her own life here - we might think it was an accidental death, if it were not for the whole literary matrix that had already formed around the figure of the drowned maiden).
The first banka for this poor girl from Izumo (modern Shimane), who drowns so far away from home in Yoshino (near Fujiwara/Nara), begins with an epithet for Izumo (as does the second), “yama no ma yu.” Both “Yama no ma yu” and “Yakumo sasu” play on the name “Izumo” itself, which means “emerging clouds” - so in the first case, the clouds are emerging from between the peaks, and in the second, myriad clouds are being thrust up into the sky. This leads into the girl’s name, Izumo no otome (”The Izumo Maiden”), as we are not actually in Izumo here, but this use of makura kotoba, while decorating her name and honoring her home, also contrasts sharply with the “Yoshino” that appears in the fourth ku in both poems - and reminds us that the maiden was in a foreign land, far from home, when she died. Like the corpse that Hitomaro encounters by the wayside in poem #426, who had “forgotten his home” and died alone, far away, we get the sense that Izumo no otome died a lonely death. She’s just a young girl (”kora”) but tragically meets her end alone in a foreign land (politically, by this time, Izumo had been integrated into Yamato’s sphere of influence, but was likely still somewhat culturally distinct - as the Izumo no kuni fudoki would suggest - and her presence in the Nara area may have in fact been a political one, to cement ties been the Yamato center and Izumo - this would certainly explain a court poet such as Hitomaro’s presence at her funeral). Neither poem really seems to have a sense for who she is, either - Hitomaro certainly grieves for her death, but not really for her - it’s clear he probably didn’t know her personally, and there seems to be a good amount of distance as he’s viewing her (as smoke, and then as her hair floating in the river [good old synecdoche allowing him to talk about her corpse without actually talking about it]). He views her in much the same way he views the corpse from 426 - a body that has suffered a tragic end, but not necessarily anything more than that.
These two poems are very similar in terms of both structure and content - they mourn the maiden from a detached, even aestheticized point of view. The makura kotoba they use for Izumo is different, but the second ku is identical between the two; the first sees her in the scenery, the smoke from her pyre becoming the mist trailing over the mountains - the second sees her as part of the scenery, and brings us back to the moment and circumstances of her death in a way quite unsettling for a funeral, but perhaps important, to remind those present of the circumstances of the tragedy, and probably perhaps to ensure that her death is seen as a beautiful one, despite the pathos of her end, so young and in a foreign, far off place.
There are certainly more interesting banka out there - these are not the most exciting or emotive of even those I’ve looked at in volume 3 so far, but I think they are important for how they touch upon the drowned maiden motif and for how we begin to see death being aestheticized, rather than merely mourned, something which continues into Heian literature. Older banka focus on the biting pain of grief and the process of mourning - #427 is all about denial, for instance - but the step to making death beautiful, to making death some literary, is interesting. Perhaps this comes out of not knowing the girl in life, and merely composing as part of the ritual, as Hitomaro is doing here - it is hard to say - but there is certainly something beginning here. In any case, this poor girl of Izumo who died at one of the most picturesque places in Yamato… now I’ll think of her when I see the mist at Yoshino, for sure…
I may need to take a break from banka for my next post… too much death, too much pathos…
