English translation of the prose
AI-assisted English translation of the prose; quoted poems remain in Japanese. The Japanese original remains authoritative.
Special Feature: Songs of Romanticism (3)
Narayama and the Case of Shihoko
June 15, 2020 (No. 1938)
Seishu Hamano
Narayama: A Place One Longs to Visit
Nothing, surely, has greater power than a love song to draw us to the place it evokes.
When I hear Kōjō no Tsuki (“Moon over the Ruined Castle”), I want to visit a desolate castle ruin.
Even knowing that the song recalls a distant past, I feel an irresistible urge to set foot there.
It is an impulse beyond reason: the captivity of a vision, not an abstract idea.
I, too, went to Narayama, carrying Shihoko's feelings in my heart.
Mountain paths, sloping paths, paths of earth.
1
人恋ふは悲しきものと
平城山に
もとほり来つつ
耐え難かりき
There is the commonplace expression “love is blind.” Lovesickness is troublesome precisely because the beloved seems incomparably more attractive than oneself.
Still more so when, despite having a husband, another person steals deep into one's heart: the despair of a love that cannot be fulfilled and self-loathing torment one together, leaving no escape.
That is why forbidden love so often leads to lovers' suicide. Do you know the Sakata-yama double suicide? Shihoko, though married to a distinguished tanka poet, fell in love with none other than his pupil, a man more than ten years younger than herself. A little research will readily bring up his real name, but it is better not to do so.
Driven mad by love, she wandered unsteadily into Narayama, a place with which she had no connection.
Hence the words 「もとほり来つつ…」. A woman of such strength that she had founded the Women's Tanka Society wandered unsteadily into Narayama. Even immersing herself in the feelings of Iwanohime as she thought of her husband, Emperor Nintoku, brought no healing to her heart.
2
古も夫に恋ひつつ
超へしとふ
平城山の路に
涙おとしぬ
How much peace of mind might be found by tasting an ancient sorrow of love? Ah, no: it is unbearable. I understand, I understand—and that is why this outstanding poem came into being.
Love is painful. Its end is tragic. There is sorrowful love, but no corresponding “joyful love”; sorrowful song, but no “joyful song.” Thus the song of sorrowful drink is not ongaku, music. Nor is the song Midaregami. It is onku: “sound-suffering,” in place of “sound-pleasure.” And yet it quietly seizes the heart and drags both body and spirit along—to Narayama.
How is this different from the tragic love of Romeo and Juliet?
Those two are innocent. But Shihoko herself had embarked upon a forbidden affair. Knowing it was adultery, she endured the accusing looks of all the poets who knew her and her husband. So she was alone. In her solitude she lost her way among the mountain paths. The clamor of condemnation assailed her, however much she tried to erase it from her mind. Tears held back—yet surging up. Tears, tears, great drops of tears: not flowing, but falling, drop after heavy drop. Neither Romeo nor Juliet has that. They have no such torment of their own conscience. But Shihoko's love is sinful. She keeps dropping her tears, heavily, onto Narayama's earthen path …
Let us change the cast and bring Akiko onto the stage.
What was she thinking, sending the poem beginning 「やは肌の…」 to a young monk still in training? To the future chief priest of the temple just beside Surugaya!
After coming to know Tekkan, she apologized for her love letters to 鉄南. Calling herself a “sinner,” she nevertheless came to the Tokyo Shinshisha in Shibuya, three minutes' walk from the intersection now shown on television every day, and through her forbidden love drove out Tekkan's former wife.
Is love blind? Is it violence? Well, leave that aside: listen once more, with that perspective, to the great song Narayama.
Then read Midaregami, which includes a conversation between Tetsurō Hoshino and me.
Just as there have been men drawn to the uncanny women of Yūzuru and Yuki-onna, I set out to put myself in the place of the poet Kitami Shihoko, who came to Narayama at the end of a forbidden love. Feeling that I had firmly grasped her heart, I ended that day with a poetry gathering in a tavern's back room in Naramachi.
(End of No. 1938)
Original wording, author credits, notes and source materials are preserved there.