by Arthur Waley
In the first month of 996, less than a year after his father’s death, Korechika gave his enemies the opportunity for which they had been waiting.† He had for some while been in love with one of Kiminobu’s sisters. He got it into his head that the ex-Emperor Kwazan was cutting him out. He stationed himself, along with his brother Taka-iye, outside Kiminobu’s palace, and when a muffled figure crept out in the darkness, shot at it with his bow. Kwazan was wounded in the leg, but managed to crawl back to his monastery. The story leaked out, and both brothers were accused of sacrilege against the Church and the Imperial Family. It was no very reputable specimen either of royalty or priesthood who had been thus assaulted; but popular feeling, as regards the sanctity both of the Throne and the Church, was at that time passionate, and amid universal reprobation Korechika was banished to Kyūshū, his brother to Izumo. The Empress Sadako seems to have shared to some extent in her brothers’ disgrace. In the third month of 996 she left the Court and moved into her own house, the “Small Palace in the Second Ward.” There was, however, an adequate reason for this removal. She was going to have a baby, and pregnant women were not allowed to remain in the Palace.
Only when all these commotions were over did Korechika discover that Kwazan’s visits to the First Ward had been paid not, as rumor (which commonly makes light of such details) had informed him, to the Third Sister but to the Fourth, a lady in whom Korechika took no interest whatever.
The banishment of the young lords and the retirement from the Palace of the Empress Sadako were events that would in any case have moved Sei Shōnagon very deeply. It so happened, however, that she herself became unexpectedly involved. She had for years past carried on a desultory love-affair with Kiminobu’s brother, Tadanobu. He was naturally furious at the scandal of his sister’s connexion with the ex-Emperor becoming known, and openly sided with Korechika’s prosecutors. It is likely enough that on some occasion, at a time when everyone’s nerves were on edge, Shōnagon flared up on behalf of her lover.
In any case, she was regarded as being “on the other side,” and after the Empress’s move to the Second Ward, was allowed to remain in miserable suspense at her brother’s house.
This went on for about four months. But in the autumn of 996 a certain captain of the Bodyguard of the Left told Shōnagon that he had been talking with some of the Empress’s women, and had gathered from their conversation that her Majesty would welcome Shōnagon’s return. “At any rate go and have a look,” said the captain. “The peonies in front of the terrace give the place an amusingly Chinese air. I am sure you would be delighted by it.” “No,” she said, “I don’t like people thinking such things of me as they have thought.”
Shōnagon, however, relented, and soon afterwards we find her in the Small Palace. As I came from my room, she writes, I passed a group of ladies who were whispering together. I caught something about “being in with Michinaga’s party;” but when they saw me coming, they stopped talking, and edged away from me in so hostile a manner that I made up my mind I would not enter the Presence. This went on for several weeks, and though I was constantly asked to return, I would not do so; for I was sure that those about the Empress were all the while telling her I was on the other side, and every sort of other lie. For a long while her Majesty seemed completely to have forgotten me.
At last, Shōnagon tells us, a messenger arrived with a letter from the Small Palace. On opening it she found a single petal of the mountain-azalea, wrapped up in a sheet of paper. On the paper nothing was written, but on the petal were the words: “My love, long silent...”*
Then to Shōnagon in her excitement the strangest thing happened. When she sat down to write her reply she could not remember the first words of the poem to which she knew the Empress was alluding. Not to make some reference to these words would place her under a suspicion hardly less grave than that from which she seemed just to be emerging. To side with Michinaga was indiscreet; but to misunderstand a literary allusion was disgraceful. Fortunately a small boy who happened to be in the room heard Shōnagon fumbling for the elusive words and piped out: “Like a river that has dived....”
When I arrived, continues Shōnagon, describing her meeting with the Empress, I felt very nervous. . . . Her Majesty pretended not to know me and asked whether I was a new lady-in-waiting. Then turning to me she said: “It was a bad poem that I made use of. But for a long time I had been feeling that something of the kind must be said. I am wretched all the time, when you are not here.” I could see at once that everything was right again. Presently I confessed that I had been in difficulties about the beginning of the poem, till a little boy told me how it went. She was very much amused. “That is just what happens,” she said. “It is always those old tags that slip one’s memory. One grows careless about them. . . .”
The banishment of the Empress’s brothers was not a very serious affair. Korechika paid a secret visit to the Capital in the late autumn of 996, and in the spring of 997 both brothers were officially recalled, in consequence of the general amnesty which celebrated the birth of the Empress Sadako’s child.
In the summer of that year Sadako and her ladies returned to the Emperor’s Palace, bringing with them the little princess Osako.
The following extract dates from 998:
While the western side-room was being got ready for the Continual Service, there were, of course, a lot of priests about, hanging up Buddhas and so on. Two days after this we heard a strange voice out on the veranda saying: “There’ll be some scraps left from the offerings, I suppose,” and one of the priests replied that it was too early yet to say. We wondered who it could be, and looking out saw an old nun, wearing an extraordinarily grimy pair of hunting-trousers, very narrow and short, and something in the nature of a cloak, that hardly came more than five inches below her belt and was as dirty as the trousers—the sort of garment, indeed, that is put on to a performing monkey. “What is she saying?” I asked, and the old woman herself in a strange, affected voice croaked that she was a disciple of Buddha. “I am only asking for the Lord Buddha’s leavings,” she said. “But these monks are stingy and won’t give me any.” Her voice was refined and her speech that of someone who had moved in good society. I could not help feeling very sorry that a gentlewoman should have sunk to so miserable a plight. I said I supposed she never ate anything but Buddha’s holy leavings, and said it was an edifying diet. She saw that I was laughing at her and cried out at once: “Not eat anything else! I don’t eat scraps from the altar, I can tell you, when I can get anything better!” We then put some fruit and some broad-cakes into a basket and sent them out to her. When she was feeling thoroughly comforted inside, she became very talkative. The young girls teased her with questions, asking whether she had a lover, and where her house was. Her replies were very lively, not to say scurrilous. Someone asked her whether she could sing and dance, which set her offon a long ballad about “With whom shall I sleep tonight? With the sheriff of Hitachi will I sleep; for his skin is the best to touch.” There was a great deal more of it. Th is was followed by “Many as the red leaves on the peak of Mount Otoko are the tongues that whisper my shame.” While she was singing, she rolled her head from side to side in the most extraordinary manner. We were now all getting rather tired of her. . . . Some said we ought to give her a present before we drove her away. The Empress heard this. “I can’t think what possessed you to let her make such a painful exhibition of herself,” her Majesty exclaimed. “Her singing was really more than I could endure. I was obliged to stop up my ears. Here, take this cloak and send her off with it as quickly as you can.”
“Her Majesty sends you this cloak,” we told her. “Your own is rather soiled; it would be nice if you were to put on something fresh.” We tossed it to her, and she received it with a profound bow; then threw it across her shoulders and executed a sort of dance. But we could not stand her a moment longer, and went indoors.
After this she got into the habit of coming, and was always trying in one
way or another to call attention to herself. We used to call her “the sheriff of Hitachi.” She still wore the same filthy cloak, and we wondered how she had disposed of the one we gave her. She had, indeed, long ceased to amuse us when one day Ukon, the Emperor’s waiting-woman, came over to her Majesty’s apartments and the Empress began telling her that we had taken up with this extraordinary old creature, who was always coming to the Palace. Then she made Kohyōye do her imitation of “the sheriffof Hitachi.” “Do show her to me one day,” cried Ukon; “I long to see her. Don’t think I shall run offwith her. I quite realize that she is your perquisite.”
However, soon after this another nun, crippled but very well behaved and respectable, called us out on to the veranda and begged for assistance. She seemed so ashamed of having to beg, that we were sorry for her. When we gave her some clothes, she did indeed prostrate herself profoundly, but in how different a manner from the other! Just as she was going off, with tears of gratitude in her eyes, “Hitachi” turned up. She saw her, and was so jealous that she did not come near us again for ever so long afterwards.
A great friend of Sei Shōnagon’s was Fujiwara no Yukinari, a first cousin of her chief lover, Tadanobu.
One day* when my lord Yukinari came to see us, he stayed for an immense while talking to someone outside. “Who was it?” I asked, when he at last appeared. “Ben no Naishi” (one of the Empress’s gentlewomen), he replied. “What can you have found to talk about with her, that took so long?” I asked, very much surprised. “If the Clerk of the Grand Secretariat* had come along, you would soon have found yourself left in the lurch.” “Now who, I should like to know, has told you about that business,” he said, laughing. “As a matter of fact, that was what she was talking to me of just now. She was trying to persuade me not to tell anyone about it.”
Yukinari has no particular talents,† or indeed any characteristic likely to recommend him on a superficial acquaintance, and everyone else is content to take him as he seems. But I have had opportunities of seeing the deeper parts of his nature, and I know that he is far from being so ordinary as he appears. I have often said so to the Empress; and as a matter of fact, she knows it quite well herself. . . . But the young girls are always abusing him and openly repeating the most disagreeable stories about him. “What a wretched sight he is!” they say. “And why can’t he recite the Scriptures and make poems like other prople? He is really very tiresome.”
The truth is, these ladies do not interest him and he never addresses a word to them. He always says: “I wouldn’t mind if a woman’s eyes stood upright in her head, nor if her eyebrows spread all over her forehead and her nose were crooked, pro vided she had a good mouth and a fine chin and neck. A bad voice I couldn’t, of course, stand.” “But come to think of it,” he would add, “faces are rather important. It is unpleasant when people are ugly.” This has added to the number of his enemies all ladies who believe themselves to have narrow chins or mouths that are lacking in charm, and it is they who have tried to prejudice her Majesty against him.
As it was I whom he first employed to carry messages to the Empress, he seems unable to communicate with her in any other way. If I am in my room he sends for me to the front of the house, or else comes right into our quarters. When I am not at the Palace but in my home, he follows me there and even if he has written a note* he brings it in himself, saying that if anything prevents my going back to Court immediately, he will be obliged if I will send a messenger to her Majesty “with instructions to report what he is now about to tell me,” and so forth. It is useless for me to point out that there are plenty of people in the Palace who would gladly give a message. He rejects one after another. Once, with the best intentions, I suggested that it is often a good thing to act according to circumstances, instead of making for oneself these hard-and-fast rules. But he said it came natural to him to live according to rule, and “one can’t change one’s nature.” “Don’t stand on ceremony,” I answered. He did not see the allusion,† and laughing in a puzzled way, he said, “I am afraid there has been a good deal of talk lately about our being so friendly. Well, suppose we are! I don’t see anything to be ashamed of. I think, by this time, you might uncover your face, and so on.” “I daren’t,” I answered. “I have heard how particular you are about the shape of people’s chins, and mine is very ugly.” “Is it really?” he asked seriously; “I had no idea of that. Perhaps after all you had better not let me see you.” After this I always covered my face on any occasion when he could possibly have seen me; but I noticed that he never looked my way, and it seemed clear that he had taken what I said about my own ugliness quite seriously.
One morning Shikibu no Omoto [one of the Empress’s ladies] and I lay in the side-room (where we had slept that night) till the sun was well up. Suddenly we heard someone sliding back the door that leads into the main building, and there before us stood the Emperor and Empress! We were so much surprised that we simply lay helpless, while their Majesties stood by, laughing immoderately at our confusion. Presently they came across and stood half hidden behind the pile of rugs and cloaks (for we had buried ourselves head and all under our bedding), to watch the people going to and fro between the Palace and the guard-room. Several courtiers (not, of course, having the least idea who was inside the room) came to the window and saluted us. The Emperor was much amused and begged me not to give him away.
When their Majesties went back to the main building, the Empress said, “Come along, both of you,” intending us to go on duty that minute. “Do at least give us time to make up our faces!” I answered, and we stayed where we were. Later on, when Shikibu and I were still talking about their Majesties’ visit, we became conscious of something swarthy which had suddenly loomed up close to the front door of our room, and was visible through a chink in our curtains, where one flap had got caught up upon the framework. We thought it was only Noritaka,* but on looking more closely we saw that the face was not the least like his.
With a good deal of laughing and scuffling, we began pulling the curtain back into its place; but before we had finished doing so, we realized that it was Yukinari who had been looking at us. This was very annoying, for I had made a point of his never seeing me. Shikibu was sitting with her back to him, so she came out of it all right. Stepping forward, he now said: “This time I have really managed to see you completely.” “We thought it was only Noritaka,”† I explained, “and were careless. I must say that, for a person who is supposed to take no interest in women, you stared pretty hard.” “Someone,” he answered, “told me recently that there is a particular charm in women’s faces just at the moment they wake from sleep; so I came along here this morning hoping to get a chance of peeping into one of the bedrooms. I was already watching you when their Majesties were here, but you did not notice me.” Presently he raised the curtains ‡ and made as though to join us.
[The section that follows dates from 999, second month.]
When I was away from the Palace on holidays there were several Court gentlemen who used to come and visit us. Th is seemed to agitate the people of the house. I was, however, not at all sorry to see it put a stop to, for I had no very strong feeling about any of these visitors. But it was difficult without rudeness to be invariably “not at home” to people who were calling repeatedly at all hours of the night and day; all the more so because, precisely with those whose visits were causing most scandal, my acquaintance was in reality very slight.
So this time I made up my mind not to let my whereabouts be generally known, but only to tell Tsunefusa,* Narimasa,† and a few others.
Today Norimitsu came, and told me in the course of conversation that yesterday my lord Tadanobu had tried to find out from him where I was, saying that as I was Norimitsu’s “sister”‡ he must surely know my address. “He was very insistent,” Norimitsu said to me, “but I was determined not to give you away. He refused to believe that I didn’t know, and went on pressing me in a way that really made me feel very uncomfortable.
Moreover, Tsunefusa was sitting near by, looking perfectly innocent and unconcerned, and I was certain that if I caught his eye I should inevitably burst out laughing. In the end I was obliged to choke my laughter by seizing upon a piece of sea-cloth* that was lying on the table and stuffing it into my mouth. Everyone must have thought me very greedy, and wondered what new delicacy I had found to devour between meals. But I managed all the same to avoid telling him anything. If I had laughed, it would of course have been fatal. In the end, he really thought I did not know. It was splendid. . . .!” I begged him to go on as he had begun, and for days afterwards heard no more about it.
But very late one night there was a tremendous banging on the front gate, enough to have woken a houseful of people at twice the distance. I sent someone to see what was the matter, and was told it was an Imperial Guardsman “with a letter from the Major of the Bodyguard of the Left,” that is to say, from Norimitsu. Everyone in the house was in bed, so I took the letter close to the hall-lamp, and read: “Tomorrow is the last day of the Spring Reading in the Palace. If Tadanobu is there keeping the penance-day with their Majesties, he may easily ask me where you are, and if (in front of everyone) he insists upon my telling him, I certainly shall not be able to keep up the pretense that I do not know. May I tell him you are here? I certainly won’t unless I have your permission to do so.”
I wrote no answer, but sent him a minute piece of seaweed,† wrapped up in paper.
Next time he called, Norimitsu said: “He got me into a corner and went on at me about it all night. It is really very disagreeable to be pestered like that, and as you did not answer the letter in which I asked for your instructions. . . . But, by the way, I did receive a wrapper containing a piece of seaweed. No doubt in a moment of absent-mindedness. . . .”
As if one could conceivably do such a thing by accident! He still could not in the least understand what I had meant, and evidently thought I had merely sent him a very mean and useless present. Irritated by his stupidity, I made no reply, but seizing the inkstand wrote on a scrap of paper the poem: “If from the fishing-girl who dives beneath the waves the present of a rag you have received, surely she hints that to the world you should not tell in what sea-bed she hides.”
