玉の緒よ | tama no wo yo |
絶えなば絶えね | tanebana taene |
ながらへば | nagaraeba |
忍ることの | shinoburu koto no |
弱りもぞする | yowari mozo suru |
Imperial Princess Shokushi
Imperial Princess Shokushi (式子内親王 Shokushi naishinnō; between 1149 and 1152−1201) or Shikishi, sometimes also read as Noriko, was daughter of Emperor Goshirakawa (後白河天皇 Goshirakawa tennō; 1127−1192) and one of his palace ladies, Fujiwara no Seishi 藤原成子 (or Shigeko, also known as Takakura no Sanmi no Seishi 高倉三位局; ?-1177).
Shokushi was born sometime between 1149 and 1152 and still in her childhood, in 1159, she was selected by divination (Sato 1993, 4) to become the high priestess or saiin 斎院 of the Kamo Shrines (賀茂神社 Kamo jinja) in present-day Kyōto 京都. She served in the position for ten years, resigning in 1169 due to an illness.
Little is known of her life for a period of time after she resigned, but in the early 1180s she appears in Meigetsuki (Record of the Clear Moon) − a diary of a young poet and low-ranking imperial court official Fujiwara no Teika 藤原定家 (1162−1241; Hyakunin Isshu 97). By the time Teika was introduced to Shokushi, she was most likely already a poetry student of his father Fujiwara no Shunzei 藤原俊成 (1114−1205; Hyakunin Isshu 83) and when in 1187 Shunzei finished editing the seventh imperial anthology Senzaishū 千載集 (Collection of a Thousand Years), nine of Shokushi’s poems were also included.
Another forty-nine works of her would be included in the following imperial collection Shinkokinshū 新古今集 (New Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern; 1205), finished in the decade following Shokushi’s death in 1201 and those were the works that cemented her poetic legacy.
In Shinkokinshū, Shokushi was the fifth best-represented poet, which may well be taken as a reflection of her poetic maturity and prowess in her late years. It appears that Shokushi continued studying under Shunzei into her final years, as Shunzei wrote her a treatise known as Korai fūteishō 古来風躰抄 (Notes on Poetic Style Through the Ages) in 1197, just four years until Shokushi’s demise.
But her studies alone can hardly account for the most striking feature in her poetry that is the sensitivity to the topics of love. And striking this sensitivity is, because not only was Shokushi the saiin − a princess who “would have to forgo indefinitely any prospect not only of marriage but also the other forms of normal human intercourse, placed, as she was, in an environment that was ‘very unworldly and inviolable’” (Sato 1993, 10), − in accordance to the poetic practice of her time, she was also writing poems constrained by specified topics and highly stylized diction. And yet her love poetry is unusually vivid and moving, − so much so that "anyone who reads Shikishi's poems on love must wonder if she could have written them without the existence of someone who failed her profoundly." (Sato 1993, 13) To a modern reader, such an idea might seem distant from love poetry but love in Shokushi’s time was something that more often than not ended in separation and it was most of the time the man who somehow failed the lady.
Thus some, based on numerous entries in Teika’s Meigetsuki, where he mentions more than a few times that he stayed at Shokushi's overnight, as well as in his concern over Shokushi's health in the last year or so of her life, infer that the man who failed Shokushi must have been Fujiwara no Teika. As is often the case, whether such was the truth, we can only speculate but any relationship between the two would have been highly unusual, with Teika being a low-ranking official and Shokushi − an imperial princess and a former saiin. Nevertheless, he idea of this essentially forbidden relationship has stirred imaginations of artists and Komparu Zenchiku’s 金春禅竹 (1405−1468) nō 能 theatre play titled Teika 定家 comes to mind when thinking of the middle ages, while Sugita Kei’s 杉田圭 modern re-imagination of the romance in Chōyaku Hyakunin Isshu: Uta Koi 超訳百人一首 うた恋い。is also not to be forgotten.
We may never have concrete answers about Shokushi’s life, love, and both together, but we have a number of her surviving poems, which we can still read with curious wonder. Shokushi has 155 poems in imperial collections starting with Senzaishū, and a total of 399 works can be found in her personal collection, most definitely completed after her death and comprising of only a fragment of Shokushi’s total artistic output, to which she continued adding all the way to her death.
Shokushi’s legacy is, more than anything, a legacy of a poet. Her contemporary Minamoto no Ienaga 源家長(1170−1234) in his memoir Minamoto no Ienaga Nikki 源家長日記 (Diary of Minamoto no Ienaga) remembers her through a poem composed late in her life (for an extract of the passage, see here), a year before her demise, that reads:
ながめつるけふはむかしになりぬとものきばのむめはわれをわするな
Nagametsuru kyō wa mukashi ni narinu tomo nokiba no mume wa ware wo wasuruna
Even when my watching you today becomes the past, plum near the eaves, do not forget me.
(trans. Sato 1993, 76)
Today, like in the centuries before us, Shokushi is seen and re-imagined through her works, most famous of which is one poem selected by Fujiwara no Teika and included in Ogura Hyakunin Isshu. And considering this selection, as well as Teika’s diary, we can be left wondering, what sentiment could have been flowing between the poets. And only by reading their poems and collections over and over can we try finding answers to this curiosity.
The jewelled string of life, if you break...
Perhaps the occasion for Shokushi’s poem in the Hyakunin Isshu was less romantic than one might initially hope for. According to the headnote in Shinkokinshū, the poem was written for a hundred poem sequence, on hidden love (百首歌の中に、忍ぶる恋を hyakushu-uta no naka ni, shinoburu koi wo), hence we have a strong suggestion of the poem being composed for a sequence, which was a rather formal format.
Topic of the poem, however, is a complex and layered matter, as shinoburu koi, while usually rendered as hidden love, contains the verb shinobu 忍ぶ, which also carries the meaning “to endure”, hence the hidden love of shinoburu koi has an undertone of love that has to be endured.
Shokushi is able to present both meanings of the topic in a fashion so dramatic and impactful that she makes the reader wonder, if the occasion was truly such, if the poem is nothing more than an impressive example of linguistic art. When we look at the poem, in the opening two lines, which carry the meanings of both string of beads breaking and life ending, we encounter the unimaginable difficulty of enduring the love; then, from the third line, the overwhelming worry of hidden love showing through settles in and by the end of this short poem the reader is left wondering, if someone could write a piece of this excellence without ever experiencing such feelings.
In the first two lines, tama no wo yo / taenaba taene, we encounter the vocabulary that is almost exceedingly twofold in meaning. Firstly, tama 玉, although primarily meaning “jewel”, sound-wise also carries the meaning “soul” and it was probably this association that has rendered the phrase tama no wo 玉の緒 (string of beads) into a metaphor for life.
In the second line, the verb tayu 絶ゆ, used twice (both times in ren’yōkei 連用形 or continuative form, tae 絶え) also carries double meaning that corresponds to meanings of the opening line − of the string of beads “to break, to snap”, of a soul “to die”, of life “to end”. This elaborate wordplay of the first two lines makes the poem notoriously difficult to translate and however great the translation, the original simply cannot be replicated, as essentially, the first two lines say Oh, string of beads, if you break, then break! and Oh, this life of mine, if you end, then end! at the same time.
After the second line, the poem comes to a halt, one phrase ends, another is yet to begin. This stop leads the reader into the closing phrase of the poem, which starts at the third line. Despite the fact that usually waka is divided into the upper half of 5-7-5 (kami no ku 上の句) and the lower half of 7-7 (shimo no ku 下の句), in reality, a poem can stop after any line, dividing the poem differently from upper/lower half division and this is one such case.
The closing part of the poem, in a sense, continues with the layered meaning. The poem is studded with associated words or engo 縁語 of wo 緒 (string), with which tayu (to break, but also to die), nagarae (from nagarafu ながらふ; to continue for a long time but also to live, to survive) and yowari (from yowaru 弱る; to weaken) are associated. These associations, unknown to foreign readers, are also untranslatable, threatening to leave the original largely underappreciated and misunderstood.
The poem essentially plays on the image of the string of beads but metaphorically talks of life itself, where the love that not a soul shall know of is embedded deep within, and to great fright of the poet, threatening to show through if the string of beads, if life lasts any longer.
Oh, jewelled string of life, if you break, then break, −
for if this continues, I fear my endurance may weaken.
It is a poem of love none shall know of, a love so secret, possibly forbidden, the author hides it deep within, keeps it to herself. Through the subtle yet dramatic flare of the first part, through the fear of the closing lines, Shokushi is able to present the hidden love as love to be endured, as love that is dramatically painful, perhaps even bigger than life itself.
And thinking of Shokushi − someone meant to be beyond the reach of normal human intercourse − the poem may well seem as one of love to be endured alone, without even the person the affection was directed towards knowing.
What was Teika trying to say by selecting this poem of Shokushi, whom he probably knew so well? Was he talking of her, of poetry? And was he trying to say anything at all? For now, we may well continue reading and wondering, for poetry rarely gives us definite answers.