"Taichiro hailed a taxi in front of the tea house, and Keiko got in with him. He remained silent as they drove across the city out to the Nisonin Temple in Saga.
Keiko was silent too, except for asking if she could open the window all the way. But she put her hand on his, fondling it gently with her index finger. Her smooth hand was a little damp.
The main gate of the Nisonin Temple was said to have been brought from Hideyoshi’s Fushimi Castle in the early seventeenth century. It had the imposing air of a great castle gate.
Keiko remarked that they seemed to be in for another hot day. ‘This is my first time here,’ she said.
‘I’ve done a little research on Fujiwara Teika,’ Taichiro told her. As he climbed the stone steps to the gate he looked around and saw the hem of her kimono rippling as she followed nimbly after him. ‘We know Teika had a villa on Mt Ogura called the “Pavilion of the Autumn Rain”, but people claim three different sites for it. You can’t tell which it really was. There’s one on the hill behind us, another at a temple not far from here, and then there’s the “Hermitage Away from the Hateful World”.’
‘Miss Ueno took me there once.’
‘Did she? So you’ve seen the well where they say Teika drew water for his inkstone when he was compiling his anthology of a hundred poets.’
‘I don’t remember seeing that.’
‘The water is famous − they call it “willow water”.’
‘Did he really use it?’
‘Teika was a genius, and all sorts of legends sprang up about him. He was the greatest medieval poet and man of letters.’
‘Is his tomb here too?’
‘No, it’s at Shokokuji. But there’s a little stone pagoda at the hermitage that is supposed to be a memorial of his cremation.’ Keiko said no more. Apparently she knew almost nothing of Fujiwara Teika.
Earlier, as their car passed Hirosawa Pond, the view of the beautiful pine-covered hills reflected along the opposite shore had awakened his thoughts of the millennium of history and literature associated with the Saga region. Beyond the low, gently sloping profile of Mt Ogura he could see Mt Arashi."
― Yasunari Kawabata, Beauty and Sadness
Kawabata Yasunari 川端康成 (1899−1972)
美しさと哀しみと Utsukushisa to kanashimi to
Translated by Howard S. Hibbett (1920−2019)
Thoughts
A few times in Beauty and Sadness, perhaps because he was writing The Old Capital (古都 Koto) at the same time, Kawabata briefly lapses into Kyoto’s past, and somewhat strikingly, in the very last chapter of the book, a story about Fujiwara no Teika 藤原定家 (1162−1241) and his anthology of a hundred poets, which is most certainly Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, makes a short appearance.
To a Western reader this short lapse is likely to go unnoticed or perhaps it might even seem unnecessary, but it too speaks of a sort of beauty and sadness of things.
Teika here is mentioned in the lips of literary scholar Taichiro, while a young painter Keiko knows almost nothing about him. It is both beautiful that Kawabata chooses to mention Teika and frames it in the closely-associated setting of Saga, and sad that the reality is − even geniuses like him can and often are forgotten, or remain unknown. How many readers get the reference now? How many will in the future? Will someone recall a poem of Teika, or perhaps a poem he chose among that one hundred? This short mention can raise those questions.
And the end of it too, leads to more questions. Kawabata, although subtle, in fact hits the nail in the head when implying that most stories about Teika are legends, born out of the perception of him as a genius:
‘The water is famous − they call it “willow water”.’
‘Did he really use it?’
‘Teika was a genius, and all sorts of legends sprang up about him. He was the greatest medieval poet and man of letters.’
Perhaps legends intertwining with history are what keeps the memory alive for longer. Perhaps new stories on old matters are the only way to keep the memory alive. But then, what do we do, when history and legend becomes impossible to untangle? Do we give up, forget, dismiss, or do we still continue to talk?