VOLUME 1: BORDERS
2018

Published by

National Institute of Japanese LiteratureTokyo

Editorial Board
Chief Editor
Imanishi Yūichirō
今西祐一郎

Professor Emeritus of the National Institute of Japanese
Literature; Representative Researcher

Editors
Kobayashi Kenji

Professor at the National Institute of Japanese Literature

Saitō Maori

Professor at the National Institute of Japanese Literature

Unno Keisuke

Associate Professor at the National Institute of Japanese
Literature

Koida Tomoko

Associate Professor at the National Institute of Japanese
Literature

Didier Davin

ディディエ・ダヴァン

Associate Professor at the National Institute of Japanese
Literature

Kristopher Reeves

Associate Professor at the National Institute of Japanese

小林

健二

齋藤真麻理
海野
恋田

圭介
知子

クリストファー・リーブズ Literature

Advisory Board
Jean-Noël Robert

Professor at Collège de France

X. Jie Yang

Professor at University of Calgary

Shimazaki Satoko

Associate Professor at University of Southern California

Michael Watson

Professor at Meiji Gakuin University

Araki Hiroshi

Professor at International Research Center for JapaneseStudies

ジャン＝ノエル・ロベール
楊

嶋崎

暁捷
聡子

マイケル・ワトソン
荒木浩

Center for Collaborative Research on Pre-modern Texts,
National Institute of Japanese Literature (NIJL)
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Copyright 2018 by National Institute of Japanese Literature, all rights reserved.
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Contents
Greetings from the Chief Editor		

Imanishi YūichirōiArticleThe Topology of Boundaries
				

Kanazawa Hideyuki

Translated by Isaac Wang

ColumnBorders in the Nō Play Birds of Sorrow
Kobayashi Kenji				Translated by Kristopher Reeves

1

15

ArticleKikaigashima is Not So Far Away After All: Japan’s Southwestern
Borderland				

Murai Shōsuke

Translated by Kristopher Reeves

19

ColumnChikura Sea: A Marine Border Between Japan and Tang China
				

Koida Tomoko

Translated by Kristopher Reeves

33

ArticleThe Borders of Shindenzukuri: “Inside” and “Outside” as Staged
by Uchi’ide				

Akazawa Mari

Translated by Miriam McConnell

39

ColumnSaigyō: The Monk Who Travelled Between Two Worlds
				

Yoshino Tomomi

Translated by Kristopher Reeves

57

Article
The Space and Liminality of Folding Screens: Iconography of
the Sea and Pine Trees
Ido Misato

Translated by Kristopher Reeves

63

ArticleThe Bird of Boundaries: Beliefs and Folk Customs Surrounding
the Chicken
79

ArticlePersons, Monks, Children, and Non-Persons
Kuroda Hideo

Translated by Charles Woolley

89

ColumnYoshitsune Crossing the Ocean: The Tale of Onzōshi shimawatari
Saitō Maori

Translated by Kristopher Reeves

Contributors
Submission Guidelines121Greetings from the Chief Editor
The National Institute of Japanese Literature (NIJL) was established in 1972
with the express purpose of serving as an institution dedicated to the investigationof material relating to Japanese literature, as well as the preservation of relevant
images via microfilm. From its very inception, the mission of NIJL has been to
make this rich store of materials readily available to the public. Now, some four
decades later, NIJL continues to ardently pursue this same mission.
In recent years, a serious demand for more interdisciplinary and international
collaboration has made itself felt, not only in the field of Japanese literature, but inmany other fields of research as well. As of 2014, in accordance with suggestions
put forward by the Science Council of Japan (SCJ), NIJL launched a large-scale
research frontier project known as the “Project to Build an International
Collaborative Research Network for Pre-modern Japanese Texts (NIJL-NW
Project).” This project, not limiting itself exclusively to Japanese literature, aims
at collecting and researching a broad range of premodern texts from a variety offields, in both the humanities and the sciences. NIJL is currently endeavoring to
make available to the public a body of some 300,000 digitalized images of thismaterial.
As a means of further promoting research into Japanese literature and culture byscholars active in Japan and overseas, NIJL is engaged in a number of collaborative
research projects. In Japan, we have a number of such projects dealing withsuch varied subjects as premodern Japanese mathematics, Japanese cuisine, andtraditional medicine. In addition, several international collaborative research
projects, equally interdisciplinary, are currently underway.
Something must be said here in regards to international research. Despite theinclusion of the word international in the titles of these various projects, anddespite the active involvement of scholars from abroad, the fact remains that theactual results of these projects has hitherto been made available almost exclusively
in the Japanese language. So long as this rather sorry state of affairs persists, theprobability of these projects reaching a truly international audience is unlikely.
The present journal is an effort to remedy this problem. By focusing on themesthat are at once foundational and interdisciplinary—themes that are of deep
interest to the academic community at large—this journal makes public the findingsof specialized research, along with related images, on-line and in the English
language. In this way, it is hoped that this journal will act as a platform for theinternational exchange of research into Japanese literature and culture. A journalof this sort, rich in information and images, as well as being easily accessible to
the wider public, has yet to be attempted. Aside from its value as a companion
to researchers, this journal should prove useful in the classroom, serving as a
textbook for universities all over the world.
iInternational collaborative research at NIJL was inaugurated by two professors.
Dr. Haruo Shirane of Columbia University led a project entitled “Borders andJapanese Literature: Constructing a Platform of Knowledge,” while Dr. Peter
Kornicki of Cambridge University led another project entitled “A Comprehensive
Study of Publishing and Learning in the Early Edo Period.” Due to unavoidable
circumstances, Dr. Shirane stepped down as leader of the former project. Seeing as
how I had served as the representative of the aforementioned NIJL-NW Project—in a sense the forerunner of both Dr. Shirane’s and Dr. Kornicki’s projects—
since 2016, I was consequently invited to assume the role of leader of the “Borders
and Japanese Literature” project.
This English-language online journal, to which we have given the title Studies
in Japanese Literature and Culture (SJLC), is a means of making the fruit ofinternational collaborative research available to as wide an audience as possible,
and as such, ought to serve as a springboard for further international collaborative
research projects. All articles submitted to this journal have been reviewed by anadvisory board that consists of high-level researchers hailing both from Japanand abroad, in hopes that this journal will be worthy of serious recognition andcontinued consideration in the decades to come.

Imanishi Yūichirō
Professor Emeritus at the National Institute ofJapanese Literature
Representative ResearcheriiStudies in Japanese Literature and Culture 1 (July 2018) 1–14
© 2018 National Institute of Japanese Literature

The Topology of Boundaries
kanazawa Hideyuki
Translated by Isaac Wang

Introduction
When two different territories exist, a boundary comes into being. We are always on one side of two territories, while the other side of the boundary is theterritory of those who differ from us, a world which differs from this side. Let
us call the former “the present world” and the latter “the other world.” This
contrast between the present world and other world sometimes overlaps withthe contrast between one’s own land and a foreign land, and may also overlap
with the contrast between the living and the dead, the ordinary and the extraordinary. Based on how distinctions are drawn, the boundary’s position shifts, andeven if one of the sides exists at a particular level, based on the era and the perspective of the one who perceives the boundary, various types of boundaries
may exist simultaneously. Thus, what is important is not just the specificationand mapping of where the boundaries exist—that is, the topography of boundaries—but the illumination of the relationship between the various elementsthat form boundaries, which are preserved though their positions mightchange—in other words, the topology of boundaries.
What then is it that supersedes time and genre and characterizes the topology
of boundaries? To consider this question, let us start by going back in time to theancient myths in Kojiki 古事記 (Record of Ancient Matters, 712).
1. Boundaries in Myth and Legend
The myths in Kojiki tell of how this earthly world originated from a state ofincompletion to arrive at a state of completion. During this process, there
emerges for the first time an other world that is separate from the sky and earth,which exist from the very beginning. This other world is known as Yomi 黄泉,
the Land of Death. Under the order of the heavenly deity, the husband andwife deities Izanaki 伊耶那岐 and Izanami 伊耶那美 give birth to the islands thatform the nation, along with the earth’s various elements such as the seas, rivers,
mountains, and plains. The female god Izanami is burned upon giving birth tothe fire god, and she departs from the earth. Pursuing her, the male god Izanaki
reaches Yomi. There, he looks upon his wife, whose appearance has utterly1kanazawa

2changed. He then flees back to earth and uses a boulder to block off Yomotsu
Hirasaka 黄泉ひら坂, the slope leading to Yomi which forms a boundary between the two worlds. When Izanami, who has run after him, vows to kill a thousand people a day, Izanaki responds by saying that he will bring to life 1,500 people a day, and thus completes their separation.
Upon reaching Yomotsu Hirasaka, Izanaki repels his pursuers by hurlingpeaches at them. Consider what he then says to the peaches: “In the same waythat you have helped me, please help all the people of this world, those who
dwell in the Central Land of Reed Plains (ashihara no nakatsukuni 葦原中国),
when they encounter difficulty and are suffering and troubled.” This myth-likename for the earthly world—“The Central Land of Reed Plains”—appears here
for the first time. Prior, the earthly world was called only kuni 国, or “the land,”and was an incomplete world “that drifted about like a jellyfish.” The fact thatthe earthly world now possesses a name means that its nature as a world has
been determined. At this juncture, with its border blocked and being cut off
from Yomi—the fringe world on the other side of the slope, the antitheticalworld of death—the earthly world takes on the contours of a central world(“Central Land”) covered by an expanse (“Plain”) of vitality symbolized by reeds(“Reed”).1
This myth reveals that while the other world is portrayed as a world that is thereverse of the present world, the present world is stipulated as a world that isprecisely not that sort of other world. It is here that the relationship between thetwo worlds exists—as mirror images separated by a boundary, and as inverse,
inverted images. The myth also tells of the world of death at the heart of theimage of such an other world. “Weeping Blood in Lamentation” is a late 7th century poem by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro 柿本人麻呂, which was collected in
Man’yōshū 万葉集 (A Collection of Myriad Leaves), a poetry anthology completed
after 759. In the manner of the male god Izanaki in Kojiki, this poem speaks ofthe sorrows of a man who wails upon losing his wife. One of the two envoys
appended to the end of the chōka 長歌 (Man’yōshū 2: 207) reads:
The autumn mountains are thick with red leaves,
Concealing the mountain path that leads to my lost beloved.

The poet is aware that his wife has died and already no longer exists in thisworld. However, the thought that she might be living in a world of which he has
no knowledge compels him to search for her. This intuition lays at the heart ofthe image of the other world, and serves as a primordial trigger for imagining aworld other than this one.
The next other world to make an appearance in Kojiki is Nenokatasu-kuni 根之堅州国, “Land of the Roots,” to which the deity Ōnamuchi 大穴牟遅 flees toKōnoshi Takamitsu 神野志隆光, Kojiki no sekaikan 古事記の世界観. Tokyo: Yoshikawa
Kōbunkan, 1986.
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3

escape the persecution of his fellow deity brothers. Yanagita Kunio 柳田國男 hasread the meaning of source/foundation in the word “root,” 2 and Nenokatasu-kuni
is indeed a land controlled by the deity Susanoo 須佐之男, who is a “root,” orancestor, of Ōnamuchi. In this world, Ōnamuchi is tasked by Susanoo with suchtrials as being sent into rooms with poisonous snakes or insects, and getting
attacked by fire in a field. However, with the aid of Suseri-bime 須勢理毘売,
Susanoo’s daughter, Ōnamuchi overcomes these trials, so his marriage to Susanoo’s
daughter is recognized, and he receives Susanoo’s bow and arrows and the title“Great Land Master” (Ōkuninushi 大国主, that is, great lord of the earth).
Ōnamuchi, or the Great Land Master, returns to the earth’s surface, uses the
bow and arrow he received in the other world to drive away his hostile brothers,
and then brings the earthly world to completion.
In this myth, the other world is portrayed as a world that grants power to those
who visit it from the present world. The trials that Ōnamuchi experiences serveas an initiation for him. The guide Susanoo is a “root,” or ancestor, of Ōnamuchi,
yet ancestral spirits are also the dead. This is the origin of the special qualities
and ambiguity of the other world, which is simultaneously frightening yet benevolent, and which yields special value precisely because it differs from the present
world.
At the end of Kojiki, another other world is described: the world of the sea deity
which lies beyond Unasaka 海坂, the Sea Slope. The tale of Hohodemi-no-Mikoto’s
穂々手見命 visit to the palace of the sea deity takes on a form that is extremely
like that of the tale of Ōnamuchi’s visit to Nenokatasu-kuni. However, Hohodemi,
who becomes the ancestor of future emperors, is not made to undergo any trials. Instead, he is welcomed by the sea deity, and he marries Toyotama-bime 豊玉毘売, the daughter of a sea deity. After a three-year stay, Hohodemi receives
two jewels that can raise or lower the tide. He returns to land, subjugates his
brother, who had opposed him, and then inherits the earthly world. In such asituation as this, in which there is an absence of trial, the other world takes on
utopian hues as a place one must visit only to obtain value not found in thisworld.
It is a stone’s throw away from here to the legend of Shimako of Mizunoe no
Ura 水江の浦の嶋子, which is included in Man’yōshū and Tango no kuni fudoki 丹後国風土記, a lost text that was completed around the first half of the 8th century
and cited in Urabe no Kanekata’s 卜部兼方 Shaku Nihongi 釈日本紀, itself completed sometime before 1301. According to the version of the tale included in
Man’yōshū (9: 1940; the poem was written around the first half of the 8th century), while fishing, Shimako crosses the border called Unasaka, the Sea Slope,and reaches Tokoyo 常世, the Eternal World. There, he marries and settles downwith the daughter of a sea deity. However, after three years pass, he is driven by
Yanagita Kunio 柳田國男, “Watatsumi no miya kō” 海神宮考, in Kaijō no michi 海上の道. Tokyo:
Chikuma Shobō, 1961.
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longing for his hometown and so returns to the surface. There, he finds thatmany years have passed. Thanks to the power of the other world, Shimako has
remained young. However, he opens a box that the sea deity’s daughter gave him
upon their separation and forbade him to open, and thereby loses the power of
eternal youth and perishes. This ending speaks of the failure to acquire thepower of the other world and thus, in a sense, parodies the tale of Hohodemi’svisit to the palace of the sea deity.
The location of other worlds is not limited to the other side of horizontal
boundaries such as Yomotsu Hirasaka or Unasaka. In another legend transmitted
by the no longer extant Tango no kuni fudoki, referenced in Kitabatake Chikafusa’s
北畠親房 Gengenshū 元元集 (ca. 1337–1338), the other world comprises the vertical plane of the heavens. Moreover, in this legend, the one who crosses theboundary is not a human of this present world, but rather one from heaven—aheavenly maiden. She descends to earth and is bathing when her clothing is hidden. Unable to return, she becomes the daughter of an elderly human couple.
The heavenly maiden states, “The intentions of the people of heaven arefounded on sincerity,” to which the old man responds, “An abundance of doubt
and lack of trust are the way of this world.” This conversation straightforwardly
presents the state of the other world as the antipode of the present world.
The heavenly maiden remains on earth, but she is ultimately driven from theelderly couple’s home. As the story is told, she wanders the land until she finallyreaches a place where she is worshiped as a deity. If becoming a deity is regarded
as returning to the other world from this present world, then we have a beingfrom an other world coming to the present world and then going off to theother world, which is the opposite of the examples we have seen until now.3
Though the form reverses, the topological elements do not change. Thanks tothe saké made by the heavenly maiden, which can cure all manner of diseases,
the elderly couple acquires tremendous wealth. Here, too, the difference between the present world and the other world yields value for the former.
2. Boundaries in Vernacular Tales (monogatari)
Taketori monogatari 竹取物語 (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, first half of the 10th
century), which is regarded as the “first ancestor of the monogatari” (see The Taleof Genji 源氏物語 [Ch. 17, “The Picture Contest”], early 11th century), was created by imagining this sort of boundary. Kaguya-hime かぐや姫 leaves the otherworld of the moon, where “wonderfully beautiful, ageless and carefree” beings
dwell, and comes to this world, which by comparison is a “polluted place.” She
brings wealth in the form of gold to the elderly couple who raised her, and then
Takahashi Tōru 高橋亨, “Monogatari-gaku ni mukete” 物語学にむけて, in Monogatari no hōhō
物語の方法, ed. Itoi Michihiro 糸井通浩 and Takahashi Tōru 高橋亨. Kyoto: Sekaishisōsha,
3

1992.

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returns to the world of the moon. The main story of Taketori monogatari concerns
the coming and going between this world and a vertical other world. Into the
middle of this framework is inserted a courtship tale involving five noblemen.
The courtship tale involves attempts at acquiring treasures from China and India,
all of which end in failure. With such an ending, the courtship tale becomes abald parody of tales involving visits to horizontally oriented other worlds. However, when the story closes, Kaguya-hime confesses that she would rather staywith the elderly couple on this polluted world than return to the pure capital ofthe moon. The emperor, who has become Kaguya-hime’s final suitor, voluntarily
relinquishes the elixir of immortality—that is, the spiritual power of the otherworld—which Kaguya-hime has left behind for him, and thus points to the existence of a higher value; namely, his love for Kaguya-hime. A move from mythand legend to monogatari is expressed by such a break from the models of thepast.
With regard to the courtship tale of the noblemen, the locations of the precious treasures, such as the Buddha’s stone pot, the jeweled branch from the island of Penglai 蓬莱, and the fire-rat’s robe, are represented not as the imaginary
other worlds seen in prior works, but rather as the real foreign lands of China
and India. In “Toshikage 俊蔭,” the first chapter of Utsuho monogatari 宇津保物語(The Tale of the Hollow Tree, latter half of the 10th century), the protagonist, who
is searching for a treasured koto, bypasses China and ends up traveling even farther west to Persia. In a similar manner, the real foreign lands in monogatari fromthe 10th century on start to take on the likeness of imaginary other worlds. Sucha shift is perhaps related to the expansion of the notion of distinguishing between
that which is inside and outside a nation’s imagined boundaries due to Japan’s
awakening to its own territory as a closed region, and the outside as a place towhich the unclean are banished, at a time when official diplomatic relations withother nations were not being conducted after Japanese missions to China werehalted in the second half of the 9th century.4
The story of Kibi no Makibi’s 吉備真備 visit to China, which is included in
Gōdanshō 江談抄, is one of the stories that was born of such a notion. Gōdanshō
was completed at the beginning of the 12th century, but the story of Kibi no
Makibi’s visit to China perhaps came into being in the 11th century. At a time
when the Japanese missions to China were flourishing, Kibi no Makibi was dispatched to China to study. However, his excellence earned him the envy of theChinese and he was confined to a tower. Attempting to create a pretext to kill
him, the Chinese court charged Kibi no Makibi with such difficult demands asreciting the Wenxuan 文選 (Selections of Refined Literature) and playing the gameof go. However, with the aid of an oni who had taken up residence in the tower(the ghost of a Japanese diplomat to China who had also been confined andMurai Shōsuke 村井章介, “Ōdo ōmin shisō to kyūseiki no tenkan” 王土王民思想と九世紀の転換, Shisō, no. 847 (January 1995), Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
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thereupon perished), Kibi no Makibi managed to overcome all of these trials.
Finally, he was commanded to decipher the esoteric poem “Yamataishi” 野馬台
詩; he prayed to the gods and buddhas, whereupon a spider on the ceiling spun
down a web and alighted on the text. By tracing the web, Kibi no Makibi worked
through the poem without a problem. Afterward, the confinement continued,
but he employed his magic to make the sun and the moon disappear, thereby
throwing the Chinese into a state of confusion. In exchange for resolving thesituation, he was allowed to return to Japan.
As a poem that existed and was transmitted prior to the creation of the storyof Kibi no Makibi’s visit to China, and that symbolically prophesied Japan’s future, this “Yamataishi” which Kibi no Makibi brought back to Japan became oneof the pillars that supported later historical accounts.5 For example, the poem isincluded at the opening of the Ōninki 応仁記 (Record of the Ōnin War, ca. 16th century). One must not overlook the point that the poem’s value and significanceare heightened because it was regarded as a prophetic poem of the other world
which was brought over a border to Japan.
Borders exist not only outside a nation’s territory, but also within it. The Tale ofGenji is a saga that portrays the protagonist Hikaru Genji’s 光源氏 flourishing inand then withdrawal from the court. The first half is about how Genji, who wasborn the child of an emperor, falls to the status of a subject and then rises to thehighest rank attainable as a subject. The turning point is the incident portrayedin chapters twelve and thirteen, “Suma 須磨” and “Akashi 明石.” Genji loses his
position in the court after his secret love affair with a woman in the service ofEmperor Suzaku 朱雀天皇, his half-brother, is discovered. He is exiled to Suma,
which is far from the capital. While passing a dreary existence in the desolate
land, Genji has a dream one stormy night in which the spirit of his deceased
father, the emperor, appears and exhorts him to quickly sail to Akashi. As revealedby the dream, the next day, a messenger from Akashi arrives, after which Genjivisits the mansion of the Akashi Novice (a kind of semi-monastic), who wasonce a governor but is now living in seclusion in Akashi. Genji is welcomed by
the Akashi Novice and takes his daughter as his wife. Three years after leaving
the capital, Genji is pardoned and returns to the court. The daughter born to
Genji and the Novice’s daughter is eventually married to the crown prince, andshe gives birth to a boy who becomes the next crown prince. The birth of thecrown prince—that is, Genji’s grandson—serves as the foundation for Genji’slater glory.
Since the time of the medieval commentary Kakaishō 河海抄 (ca. mid-14th century), it has been pointed out that the aforementioned myth of visiting the palace of the sea deity, which is included in both Kojiki and Nihon shoki 日本書紀(720), also exists at the conceptual heart of this section, which serves as the tale’s
Komine Kazuaki 小峯和明, Yamataishi no nazo 『野馬台詩』の謎. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
2003.
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turning point. When Genji returns to the capital and reunites with Emperor
Suzaku, he recites the following poem:
Like the forlorn Leech Child, who, feebly languishing in disgrace beside the sea
year after year, unable to stand on his own feet—so it was with me.6

Within this poem, Genji’s own three years of obscurity are likened to the taleof Hiruko 蛭児, the “Leech Child,” as recounted in the myth in Nihon shoki inwhich Hiruko is set adrift in a boat because he still cannot stand up, though three
years have passed since he was born to the two deities Izanaki and Izanami. Sucha comparison assumes an association with the myth, which circulated even as it
underwent variation.7 Akashi, then, is the other world for Genji, while the
Akashi Novice is the equivalent of the sea deity, as the lord of the other world.
The child whom Genji receives through his marriage to the monk’s daughtercorresponds to the treasure from the other world that brings the protagonist
power and glory.8 Finally, between Suma and Akashi there is a literal boundarythat separates the kinai 畿内, or the territory of the capital—that is, the world towhich Genji belongs—and the kigai 畿外, or the exterior.9 Thus, the mythic
structure that is fixed at the foundation of The Tale of Genji, which at first glance
appears to be centered on relationships and romance in the court, bestows uponthis monogatari a narrative force. However, the individual here who crosses aboundary and acquires the power of the other world is not, as in myths, the sovereign, for whom legitimacy is assured, but rather Genji, who by no means ascends to the rank of the emperor. The strain born of this topological distortion
operates as the tension that draws together this monogatari.
3. Boundaries in vernacular anecdotal literature (setsuwa)
As the ancient state declined, the great temples and shrines which had received
the state’s protection faced the need for economic independence, so vigorous
kanjin 勧進, or fundraising activities, were developed. From these activities
sprouted origin tales which expounded on the benefits bestowed by the buddhas
and deities worshipped at various temples and shrines, as well as the written stories, public entertainments, and other types of art and literature that derived
from these origin tales.
Amid such circumstances, ancient myths and legends were dissected and reorganized, and they began to take on new forms. The deity who achieved theThis translation is a modified version based on Royall Tyler, trans., The Tale of Genji (NewYork: Penguin Books, 2001), p. 276.
7
Yoshimori Kanako 吉森加奈子, Kakaishō no Genji monogatari 『河海抄』の『源氏物語』.
Osaka: Izumi Shoin, 2003.
8
Ishikawa Tōru 石川徹, Heian jidai monogatari bungakuron 平安時代物語文学論. Tokyo: Kasama
Shoin, 1979.
9
Fujii Sadakazu 藤井貞和, Genji monogatari nyūmon 源氏物語入門. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1996.
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greatest transformation was perhaps the previously mentioned Hiruko. As suggested by his name, which means “Leech Child,” Hiruko does not have a solidbody. In ancient myth, no mention is made of what becomes of him after he iscast away at birth. However, in the medieval era, works telling of Hiruko’s outcome appeared in great number. For example, according to “Shintō yurai nokoto” 神道由来之事 (“On the Origins of Shinto”), the first volume of Shintōshū
神道集 (A Shintō Collection, ca. mid-14th century), the castaway Hiruko reaches the
Dragon Palace. After being raised by the Dragon King 龍王, he is bestowed withthe “Eighth Outer Sea” (daihachi no gekai 第八の外海) and returns to the surface,where he becomes Ebisu 恵比須, the deity of Nishinomiya 西宮 Shrine. Just as
the deformed child Hiruko matures into the deity Ebisu, in whom the people ofthe sea place their faith, so does the myth of Hiruko itself develop and mature
within the domain of this monogatari about boundaries.
What is the “Eighth Outer Sea” that Hiruko acquires at the other world of the
Dragon Palace? Let us consider the Buddhist image of the world that was dominant in the medieval era (Figure 1). As explained by Buddhist sutras such as
Abhidharma-kośa 俱舎論, the giant Shumisen 須弥山 (Mount Sumeru) towers at
the center of the world, surrounded by a sevenfold mountain range, while theworld itself is surrounded by a mountain range called Tecchisen 鉄囲山, the“Ring of Iron Mountains.” The eight gaps between the total ninefold mountain
range, which spans from Shumisen to Tecchisen, form seas, and the continent
on which humans live (Jambudvipa, or, in Japanese, Enbudai 閻浮提) floats on
the furthermost sea. The “Eighth Outer Sea,” then, refers to the sea that surrounds this land on which humans live.
In this way, the reorganization of ancient myths and legends according to Buddhist cosmological thought is one of the special features of medieval setsuwa 説
話. The Dragon Palace that Hiruko visits is also an other world that derives fromthe Buddhist sutras, and in the otogizōshi 御伽草子 Urashimatarō 浦嶋太郎, which
is a retelling of the ancient tale of Shimako of Mizunoe no Ura, the alteration of
the main character’s destination from Tokoyo, the Eternal World, to the Dragon
Palace is also a manifestation of such a feature. In the late-Muromachi-period
picture scroll Urashima (in the collection of the Japan Folk Crafts Association),
the world in which Princess Otohime 乙姫 lives has already become the Dragon
Palace.
Meanwhile, the twin invasions of Japan by Yuan 元 (Mongolian) and Goryeo
高麗 forces at the close of the 13th century, during the Bun’ei 文永 and Kōan 弘
安 eras (specifically the years 1274 and 1281), enhanced the view that territories
outside of one’s own country were foreign lands where frightening, demon-likecreatures dwelled. This view took the form of temple and shrine origin tales andjoined with the ancient legend of Empress Jingū’s 神功皇后 invasion of Silla 新羅 to become Hachiman gudōkun 八幡愚童訓 (early 14th century); it also joinedwith the setsuwa about Prince Zen’yū 善友太子 found in the Buddhist sutras, anddeveloped from Buddhist sermon to entertainment to become the kōwakamai 幸The Topology of Boundaries

9

若舞 Yuriwaka daijin 百合若大臣 (ca. 16th century). In the former, the west, whichlies beyond “Chikuragaoki ちくらが沖, the border where the Chinese and Japanesecurrents converge,” is portrayed as a foreign land inhabited by the Mukuri むくり (the non-human likeness of Mongolia as depicted within setsuwa). At the sametime, as trade with the northern regions expanded after the medieval era, there
was a focusing on Ezogashima 蝦夷ヶ島 (Hokkaido), which lay beyond Japan’s
northern extremity of Tsugaru Strait 津軽海峡, as a northern (or north-eastern)
foreign land.
The otogizōshi Onzōshi shimawatari 御曹子島渡 (Yoshitsune’s Island-Hopping) portrays the period when the later Minamoto hero Yoshitsune 源義経 laid low at
Hiraizumi 平泉, the capital of Ōshū 奥州, on the eve of the Genpei War 源平の戦い (1180-1185). As the tale is told, Yoshitsune is advised by Fujiwara no Hidehira
藤原秀衡, the leader of Hiraizumi, to procure a scroll about martial tactics from
Ezogashima, located at the other end of the northern sea, as a clever means ofdefeating the Heike 平家. Yoshitsune passes many mysterious islands before arriving at Ezogashima, a land inhabited by oni 鬼 and with a capital that is controlled by a giant oni who bears the title “Great King Kanehira かねひら大王.”
Yoshitsune hopes to receive instruction in the art of warfare, but the Great King
refuses to grant him permission. However, Yoshitsune receives help from theGreat King’s daughter, with whom he has fallen in love, and he acquires thescroll, flees the land of the oni, and returns to Japan. The daughter, who stays
behind, becomes a victim of her father’s wrath, but Yoshitsune defeats the
Heike through the power of his martial tactics and paves the way for the age ofthe samurai.
A variant edition includes shōgi 将棋, sumo, and other matches with oni thattake place during Yoshitsune’s acquisition of the scroll on martial skills. Here,one may perhaps detect the transmigrated form of a tale about an other-world
visit which is accompanied by trials, such as that seen in the ancient myth of thedeity Ōnamuchi. However much the Great King may possess an otherworldly
appearance, there flickers in his visage the shadow of an ancestral spirit that isfearsome yet benevolent, and which, following an initiation process, bestows
value and treasures that do not exist in this world.
4. Receding Boundaries
As we have seen, various boundary-related elements maintain a certain constant relationality even while they take on different forms and change in appearance with the times. Transformation is brought about through a change in one’s
understanding of the world, whose contours are set according to boundaries.
With the end of the medieval era and the start of the early modern period, due
to new contact with the Western world and the accompanying expansion of scientific, geographic, and other knowledge and information, the Japanese understanding of reality transformed greatly. Onzōshi shimawatari was published in the

10kanazawa

middle of the 17th century and then reprinted and distributed as the Shibukawa
edition 渋川版 at the outset of the 18th century. In the illustrations included in
the Shibukawa edition, the denizens of the location in Ezogashima where
Yoshitsune lands are portrayed as humans, as seen in the upper portion of Figure 2,
while the oni capital is postulated as being located farther beyond the outermost
sea. However, in a manuscript from the same period, Ezogashima is portrayed
as a world completely inhabited by oni from the start (see the lower portion of
Figure 2). The movement at that time of the other world boundary that lies between “this side” and the hinterland of Ezogashima can be seen in the difference between the two depictions.10
Following the medieval period, a certain region within the real Ezogashima
served as a settlement for Japanese who lived in the southeast region, near Honshu;
it then became the Matsumae 松前 domain in the early modern period. Most of
its expansive area was called Ezochi 蝦夷地, and it was a land inhabited by the
Ainu, who belonged to no nation. However, in the second half of the 18th century,
after the Russians landed on the eastern end of Ezochi and sought to conduct
commerce with the Matsumae domain, the Tokugawa Shogunate conducted surveys of Ezochi and carried out direct, methodical territorialization of the area.
In the beginning of the 19th century, in 1807, the Shogunate took control over
the whole of Ezogashima and formally incorporated it into the nation.
It goes without saying that in the ancient myths, Ezogashima is not included
as part of the nation born by the deities Izanaki and Izanami. However, Hirata
Atsutane’s 平田篤胤 Koshiden 古史伝 (1812–1825), written toward the end of theearly modern period, proposes the possibility that the castaway Hiruko may havebecome some sort of national territory, and Suzuki Shigetane 鈴木重胤 in Nihon
shokiden 日本書紀伝 (1853–1862) accepts this proposal and claims that this land
is none other than Ezogashima. He explains that the phrase “for three years thelegs [ashi 脚] did not stand” is a mistransmission of “for three years the reeds[ashi 葦] did not grow,” which indicates that Ezogashima is a wasteland where
rice does not grow. That the characters for both Ezo 蝦夷 and Hiruko 蛭子 canbe read as Ebisu is also taken as evidence. In this way, as the real world expands,
Ezogashima is brought into the interior of the native country—though mythically so—and the boundary shifts further out.
However, boundaries cannot continue to recede infinitely. Early on, Fukansai
Fabian 不干斎ハビアン in Myōtei mondō 妙貞問答 (1605) had already rejected theBuddhist Shumisen image of the earth that had dominated in the medieval era,
based on theories of the earth that had come from the West. As seen in the
Kokugaku 国学 scholar Motoori Norinaga’s 本居宣長 refutation of Buddhist
critiques of theories of the earth in Shamon Mon’nō ga kusen hakkai kaichōron noben 沙門文雄が九山八海解嘲論の弁 (1790), a new image of the world steadily
Kanazawa Hideyuki 金沢英之, Yoshitsune no bōken: eiyū to ikai wo meguru monogatari no bunkashi
義経の冒険―英雄と異界をめぐる物語の文化史. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2012.
10

The Topology of Boundaries

11

infiltrated Japan during the early modern period. On the surface of the earth,boats that headed west eventually made their way from the east to their point of
departure. In the same way that the reality called Russia had revealed itself fromthe other side of Ezogashima, a world was arriving whose boundaries, whichcontacted the other world, were not allowed to exist.
Such a situation is also evident in Atsutane’s Tamano mihashira 霊能真柱 (1812).
In this work, which discusses the destination of souls after death, Atsutane
makes the claim that the pollution of death, and souls after death, have different
destinations. The destination of the pollution is Yomi, the Land of Death,
which is identified as the moon (see Figure 3 ), while souls are said to remain on
the earth. Atsutane holds that the world to which souls go “exists everywhere inthis world of reality, but as a place that is faint and cannot be perceived, it is removed from this present world and cannot be seen.” It may be perceived herethat while the other world can no longer exist as a zone on this earth, it is, on theother hand, becoming invisible and internalized as something that must be believed in the heart.
Conclusion
I would like to conclude this article by touching on the location of the otherworlds and boundaries that became invisible and internalized during Japan’stransition to the modern era. In modern Japan, the author who most consciously
uses and manipulates the mythological images surrounding other world borders
is Murakami Haruki 村上春樹. That tendency is pronounced in Murakami’s
A Wild Sheep Chase 羊をめぐる冒険 (Kōdansha Bunko, 1983), which was firstpublished in 1982 and is the representative title of Murakami’s early period.
The stage is the late 1970s. The protagonist passed his college years in the 60s,
which brimmed with a countercultural enthusiasm represented by politics androck music, and then lived through the next decade with the sense that “the worldcontinues to spin without regard for me.” A Wild Sheep Chase is a tale about how
such a protagonist comes to decide to search again for a connection with a worldthat must have existed in the past. He experiences a change of heart when he isrequested to take on an investigation of a mysterious sheep. Pursuing the mystery, the protagonist unwittingly steps out of the hitherto ordinary world andultimately reaches a desolate pasture in a town in the wilds of Hokkaido (again!).
From the time when he alights from the plane in Sapporo to when he reaches
the pasture, he must experience a transition to the abnormal, as when the North
Star looks like a fake, or when a clock at the hotel goes mad. The protagonist,
who has finally reached the hinterland town that “looks like a town that has
died,” crosses a boundary that is described as an “ominous” and “extremely unpleasant curve” that leads to the top of a hill. He then chances upon an uninhabited cabin located in the middle of the pasture. Here, without any apparent reason, his young lover, the woman who had accompanied him thus far, suddenly

12kanazawa

disappears. It is shortly after this turn of events that the work’s most splendid,
symbolically imbued scene arrives. The now solitary protagonist wipes a dirty
mirror, and then, as though the final door has been opened, a dead person—theprotagonist’s close friend and an alter ego-like being—appears. After conversing
with and bidding farewell to the dead person, the protagonist gains the will tolive and returns to the present world of the ordinary. Here too, the topology ofboundaries hides its form even as it continues to live.

Figure 1. In the middle, an hourglass-like Mount Shumi is depicted, and in the lower
right, Jambudvipa, where humans dwell, may be seen. “A View of the Domain of
Mount Shumi,” published in Genji 元治 2 (1865), from Mount Shumi Atlas, Ryūkoku
University Publishing Bureau, 1925.
http://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/967364

The Topology of Boundaries

Figure 2 (Top). Illustration from Onzōshi shimawatari (Shibukawa edition), in thecollection of the Ukai bunko 鵜飼文庫 archive of the National Institute of Japanese
Literature.
https://doi.org/10.20730/200019871
Figure 2 (Bottom). Illustration from Onzōshi shimawatari (year of transcription, uncertain), in the collection of the Kuchinashi bunko 支子文庫 archive of the Kyushu
University Library.
https://doi.org/10.20730/100076634

Note: Yoshitsune (center), now in the capital of demons, performs upon a flute before Great King Kanehira (right). Illustration from the Ikenoya bunko MS of
Onzōshi shimawatari (seventeenth century).
https://kotenseki.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100257436/viewer

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Figure 3. The three worlds of the heavens, earth, and underworld are portrayed as
the sun, globe, and moon. An illustration from Hirata Atsutane’s Tamano mihashira,published in Bunka 文化10 (1813); author’s private collection.

Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture 1 (July 2018) 15–18© 2018 National Institute of Japanese Literature

Borders in the Nō Play Birds of Sorrow
kobayashi Kenji
Translated by Kristopher reevesMurai Shōsuke 村井章介, a noted scholar of Japanese history, has madea detailed investigation of the four cardinal geographical borders
which seem to have played a prominent role in the medieval Japaneseimagination. Two of this borders, in particular, are of special significance for thepresent discussion. According to Murai, medieval Japanese people considered
the archipelago to be bounded on the north by a stretch of beach known as
Sotogahama 外浜, the Outermost Shore. On the other hand, the southernmost
extremity of the archipelago was delineated by an island known as Kikaigashima
鬼界島, Ogre’s Isle.1 Murai cites a variety of literary and historical works in orderto demonstrate just how firmly fixed within the geographical imagination these
two borders had become. It is curious to note that most of the sources in whichsuch records are to be found are works of fiction and not, as one might be inclined to expect, historical or archival documents. No doubt there is a reason forthis.
In the world of performative genres, there is a nō 能 play by the name of Utō 善
知鳥 (Birds of Sorrow), which takes place in the aforementioned Sotogahama.2 Thisplay, which belongs to the Kanze School 観世 repertoire, is mentioned in an
entry from a Muromachi-period diary known as Chikamoto nikki 親元日記 (The
Diary of Ninagawa Chikamoto 蜷川親元 [1433–1488], late 15th century) dated thetwenty-eight day of the second month in the sixth year of Kanshō 寛正 (1465).
Here it is stated that this play was performed before the then acting shogun
Ashikaga Yoshimasa 足利義政 (1436–1490, shōgun 1449–1473), when the latter
paid a visit to Retired Emperor Go-Hanazono 後花園上皇 (1419–1470, r. 1428–1464) at his retirement palace. Utō opens, as so many other nō plays do, with anitinerant monk making his way to some famous place. In this case, the monk, having
found his way to Mount Tate 立山 in Ecchū 越中 (modern-day Toyama), begins
1
See Murai’s article entitled “Sotogahama to Kikaigashima: chūsei kokka no kyōkai” 外浜と鬼界島―中世国家の境界, to be found in his monograph Nihon chūsei kyōkai shiron 日本中世境界史
論. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2013.

For an English translation of this play, see Donald Keene, ed. Anthology of Japanese Literature:
From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York: Grove Press, 1955), pp. 271–285.
2

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kobayashi

Figure 1. “Utō,” by the artist Tsukioka Kōgyo 月岡耕漁 (1869–1927), being part ofa larger set of similar illustrations entitled Nōgaku zue nihyaku gojūban 能楽図絵二百五十番, currently belonging to Kokuritsu nōgakudō (item no. BK014–028).

to sing in detail regarding the visions of hell he has since witnessed throughout
his torturous mountain hike. It is at this very moment that an elderly man suddenly appears before him. This fellow promptly informs the monk that he is no
mortal, but the spirit of a hunter who passed away the previous year. The hunter
implores the monk to travel to the northern provinces of Michinoku, all the way
to Sotogahama, where his widowed wife and son still dwell, in order that themonk might hold a memorial service on behalf of his soul. Lest his wife should
doubt the veracity of this monk, the hunter tears off one of his hempen sleeves,hands it to the monk, and vanishes. As per the deceased hunter’s wishes, themonk travels northward to Sotogahama, where he pays a visit to the widowed
wife and her child, informing them of how he came to know of their whereabouts. Showing her the hempen sleeve, she is astonished to see that it matches
the one left behind by her husband. Certain now that the spirit who appeared tothe monk was indeed that of her husband, the widow prays reverently before thestraw raincoat and sedge hat once worn by her beloved. As if summoned by thisgesture, her husband’s spirit presently appears, looking bedraggled and weary(see Figure 1).
Though he longs desperately to embrace his child, he is not permitted to do so.
As karmic retribution for having once snatched away the nestling of a hornbilled
puffin (utō), thereby separating the bird forever from its mother, so, too, must theBorders in the Nō Play Birds of Sorrow

17

hunter forever be separated from his own child. He then proceeds to repent of
his reckless actions, reenacting the manner in which he captured the nestling. It
is, he laments, in virtue of this very act that he is condemned to suffer the torments of purgatory, and it is for this reason that he implores the monk’s succor.
Having thus revealed the truth of things, the spirit of the hunter once again vanishes.
Utō, masterpiece that it is, remains an anonymous work. As can be seen fromthe synopsis above, this piece belongs to that category of nō plays referred to as
obsession plays (shūshinmono 執心物), for, on top of his infernal torments, it is
the hunter’s restless desire to be reunited with his wife and child that keeps hissoul wandering between this world and the next. The anonymous playwright has
drawn upon a number of well-known sources, including, for example, a tale entitled “How the Girl Who Stumbled into Purgatory Whilst Hiking ThroughMount Tate in Ecchū was Rescued by Jizō,” found in the seventeenth fascicle ofKonjaku monogatarishū 今昔物語集 (Tales Old and New, c. 1120).3 This tale succeeds
in connecting a real geographical location, namely, Mount Tate, with a supernatural realm, that is, purgatory. It would appear the playwright has also drawn upona Kamakura-period treatise on poetics known as Shinsen utamakura nayose 新撰歌
枕名寄 (New Anthology of Poems about Famous Places), which includes a legend
about the utō bird.
In terms of plot-structure, Utō contains two acts, in accordance with the nowclassical style, first established by Zeami 世阿弥 (1363–1443), known as dream
plays (mugen nō 夢幻能). There are generally only two dramatis personae: the primary protagonist (shite シテ)—the hunter, in the case of Utō—and the auxiliary
or secondary protagonist (waki ワキ), who, as in Utō, usually takes the form of
an itinerant monk. That the secondary protagonist should take the form of amonk is in line with the otherworldly nature of the primary protagonist, who isnecessarily a wandering spirit, for which reason these dream plays are often referred to as spirit plays (yūreinō 幽霊能). These two-act dream plays commonly
unfold in a rather straightforward manner: The play begins with the monk visiting a place which is eventually revealed to be the site of some significant eventin the earthly life of the primary protagonist. The latter appears. Having appeared before the monk in the guise of, say, an old fisherman or farmer, the spiritof the deceased shares with his guest a curious tale which inevitably features
someone whose life is bound up with the place. This tale, besides laying the
groundwork upon with the play unfolds, also serves as a means of hinting to themonk that the primary protagonist is—rather was—the very fellow appearing inthat tale. Once the tale has been told, the spirit vanishes into thin air, thus ending
the first act. In the second act, the monk, moved by this tale, conducts certain
For a complete translation of this work, see Dykstra, Yoshiko, trans., The Konjaku Tales. Intercultural Research Institute Monograph Series. Osaka: Intercultural Research Institute, Kansai
University of Foreign Studies. 1986–1994.
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religious rites on behalf of its protagonist, be it reciting a sutra or intoning a simple prayer, whereupon the spirit again appears before him, only this time in thetrue likeness of his previous earthly form. The spirit reenacts his final hour, concluding this second visitation with a plea for salvation. Again, it is no accident
that the secondary protagonist is a monk: only a monk is able to effectively pray
for the condemned souls of deceased mortals.
While Utō follows this general structure, it exhibits one crucial difference. In
most two-act dream plays, the spirit appears in both acts in this same location.
The spirit of the deceased hunter, however, appears in two different places, firstin Mount Tate, second in Sotogahama—two places separated by a very great distance. Though it may seem as though these two places are mutually unrelated,
there is, in fact, something binding them together. As the tale of the girl who was
rescued from purgatory at Mount Tate cited above reveals, this mountain was
believed to contain an entranceway into the infernal underworld. In other words,
Mount Tate functioned as a gateway between this world and the next. Similarly,
Sotogahama, then imagined to mark the northernmost extremity of this mortal
world, was, as its name—the Outermost Shore—implies, a boundary between
this world and the world beyond. The monk who is able to wend his way between Mount Tate and Sotogahama is no normal monk. Utō opens with themonk saying words to the following effect: “As I have not yet engaged in meditation atop Mount Tate, it is thither I shall presently betake me. Thereafter I shallmake the long journey on foot to the very farthest reaches of Michinoku.” Meditation atop Mount Tate means much more than simply mountain climbing; it
implies a series program of aesthetic training. The same applies to the lengthy trek
to Sotogahama. The connection seen in Utō between Mount Tate and Sotogahama
is based, no doubt, on an actual course of aesthetic training, engaged upon byitinerant monks seeking liberation through extreme physical and spiritual exertion.
As mentioned earlier, borders of this sort appear most commonly in works offiction, being less frequent in historical documents. One reason for this is thesimple fact that neither Mount Tate nor Sotogahama, to take these two as examples among many possible others, were official boundaries established by thecentral authorities. Quite the contrary. These borders existed primarily in the
medieval imagination, finding repeated expression in works of fiction. As Utō soclearly indicates, however, these imagined borders were not mere fictions, butwere inspired by the aesthetic practices, the actual hiking courses, of real-lifeitinerant monks. In this sense, these borders were very real indeed.

Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture 1 (July 2018) 19–32© 2018 National Institute of Japanese Literature

Kikaigashima is Not So Far Away After All:
Japan’s Southwestern Borderland
murai Shōsuke
Translated by Kristopher Reeves

Shunkan dies in an otherworldly island
It was in the year Angen 安元 3 (1177) when Taira no Kiyomori 平清盛 (1118–
1181) was informed of a plot, led by none other than Retired Emperor
Go-Shirakawa 後白河 (1127–1192, r. 1155–1158), to overthrow the Taira clan.
Among those involved, three men in particular were signaled out as the main
ringleaders: a high-ranking Buddhist bishop and custodian of Hosshōji Temple
法勝寺 (located on the eastern periphery of the Heian capital) by the name of
Shunkan 俊寛 (n.d.); one of Go-Shirakawa’s trusted generals by the name of Tairano Yasuyori 平康頼 (c.1146–1220); a young greenhorn by the name of Fujiwara
no Naritsune 藤原成経 (c.1156–1202), who also waited upon Go-Shirakawa. All
three of these men were exiled to Kikaigashima 鬼界ヶ島, literally Ogres’ Isle, aninfamous place located over the raging main, somewhere far, far from the capital. It was rumored that ships seldom made it safely to this lonely island, buffeted
as it was on all sides by a merciless sea. Only one year after their exile, Yasuyori
and Naritsune received an imperial pardon. Shunkan, however, received no suchpardon. Condemned to spend the rest of his days a solitary exile on Ogres’ Isle,
Shunkan watched in horror as the ship carrying his fellow exiles pulled out towards the offing. He cried out, begging to be transported, if not back to the capital, then at least as far as the island of Kyushu. He begged in vain; the crashingwaves drowned out his cries. The ship sailed farther and farther out to sea.
Shunkan frantically drummed and stomped his feet, all the while weeping bittertears, until, at last, the ship could be seen no more, having passed over the whitewaves beyond.1
A legend regarding the after events of this tragic episode states that a monkand disciple of Shunkan’s known as Ariō 有王 (n.d.), residing in the capital,
Heike monogatari 平家物語, chapter 3, section 2: “The Foot-Drumming,” 100. All section titles,
page references, and quotations from Heike monogatari are those found in Helen McCullough’s
full-length English translation, The Tale of Heike (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988).
1

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ventured forth over the sea in order to seek out his master on Ogres’ Isle. Oncereunited, Ariō handed to Shunkan a letter written by the latter’s daughter. Not longafter reading this letter, Shunkan gave up the ghost, leaving this disciple to carryout his last rites. It is said of Shunkan, in highly conventional language, that “heceased to consume even his former meager fare, chanted the name of Amida
Buddha constantly, and prayed for correct thoughts in his final hour. On thetwenty-third day after Ariō’s arrival, he died in his rude shelter at the age of thirty-seven.”2 As for Ariō, we are told that he, like a loyal and loving disciple,“climbed mount Kōya with Bishop Shunkan’s remains [hung] around his neck,laid the bones to rest in the Inner Cloister, took the tonsure at Rengedani, andwandered as an ascetic over the Seven Circuits, praying for his master’s enlightenment in the afterlife.”3
How do such literary accounts, preserved as they are in the Heike monogatari 平
家物語 (Tale of the Heike), hold up to historical scrutiny? It has already been mentioned that, according to this work, Ogres’ Isle was not easily reached by ship.
We are further informed that “the few inhabitants [of the island] are unlike people in this country [that is, in the capital]. They are as black as oxen and inordinately hairy, and they cannot understand what others say to them. The men do
not wear caps nor do the women let their hair hang free.”4 According to thissource, to be sure, there are people living on Ogres’ Isle. However, they cannot
be compared to those living in the capital at Kyoto. With their black complexion
and hairy bodies, these savages speak in a tongue that is wholly incomprehensible to any who might chance to set foot on the island. Moreover, the men here
walk about without donning the customary cap of a dainty city gentleman. Their
women, likewise, do not let their hair hang down in neatly tied locks, as do theprimp and proper belles of Kyoto.
It must be understood, first and foremost, that, according to Japanese people
living in the medieval period, those dwelling outside of a clearly defined, preconceived boundary were considered synonymous with ogres or savage brutes (oni鬼). In the common imagination, both then and now, ogres are depicted as having horns protruding from their foreheads, and as belching mist from theirmouths. They are, in short, the antipode of civilized human beings. All the same,these inhabitants of Ogres’ Isle, despite the fact that they were certainly different
than their city-dwelling counterparts, could not properly be called ogres, at least
not in any literal sense. Consequently, the inhabitants of this island were endowed,
through the literary imagination, with a twofold nature, one that was simultaneously part ogre and part human. Ogres’ Isle, so far as the medieval Japanesemind was concerned, represented a liminal zone, one that lay between the moreor-less clearly bounded civilized world, on the one hand, and an amorphous,
Heike monogatari, chapter 3, section 9: “The Bishop’s Death,” 114.
Heike monogatari, ibid, 114–115.
4
Heike monogatari, chapter 2, section 10: “The Death of the Major Counselor,” 82.
2
3

Kikaigashima is Not So Far Away After All

21largely unknown otherworldly region, on the other; this island was at once within
and without the boundaries of normal human habitation.
The name Kikaigashima—Ogres’ Isle—appears three more times in the Tale of the
Heike. We are told, in one such instance, that, upon the death of the mythological
Emperor Chūai 仲哀天皇 (n.d.), “his consort, Empress Jingū 神功皇后, succeeded
to the throne, and attacked and subdued Kikai[gashima], Koguryō, and the
Khitans as a female ruler.”5 Note that here Kikaigashima is placed alongside the
Korean kingdom of Koguryō and the northeast Asian kingdom of the Mongolian
Khitans. Elsewhere, in an impassioned letter written by the Taira clan, who had
erstwhile been defeated and expelled from the capital, we read of their adamantdesire to be invited back to the capital, “otherwise we shall doubtless end up going to Kikaigashima, Korea, India, or China!”6 Generally speaking, Korea, India,
and China were, at that time, all synonymous with the ends of the earth, and it
is revealing to see Kikaigashima at the head of this list. In a similar fashion,
Minamoto no Yoshitsune 源義経 (1159–1189), that famous general who playeda decisive role in the eventual defeat of the Heike clan, vows to Retired Emperor
Go-Shirakawa that “I shall not return to the capital without destroying them [i.e.,
the rebellious Heike clansmen], even if it means going as far as Kikaigashima,
Korea, India, or China.”7 Here, too, we see Ogres’ Isle placed alongside lands
then equated with the farthest limits of human habitation.
These examples allow us to reconstruct what must have been the most salientfeature of Ogres’ Isle as conceived within the medieval Japanese imagination:
Kikaigashima marked the outermost boundary of the Japanese kingdom, thatplace beyond which a court-centered Japan, as such, ceased to exist, and wherea host of foreign lands held sway. When Japanese people of the medieval period
heard the name Kikai, that is, Ogres’ Land, it is very likely they imagined justsuch a place. Making this the destination of Shunkan’s exile would have engendered the aforementioned episode with an exceptionally tragic tone.
Merchant ships loaded with sulfur
The episode of Shunkan’s exile has more to tell. The following brief accountis indispensable for a proper historical understanding of Ogres’ Isle:
Meanwhile, the Kikaigashima [that is, Ogres’ Isle] exiles survived like dewdropson the tips of grasses. Although life was not to be prized under such circumstances, there were regular shipments of food and clothing to the island from
Kasenoshō, a Hizen property belonging to Lesser Captain Naritsune’s fatherin-law, Norimori, and thus Bishop Shunkan and Yasuyori were able to stayalive.8
Heike monogatari, chapter 5, section 1: “The Transfer of the Capital,” 166.
Heike monogatari, chapter 10, section 4: “The Reply,” 333.
7
Heike monogatari, chapter 11, section 1: “Reverse Oars,” 358.
8
Heike monogatari, chapter 2, section 15: “Yasuyori’s Prayer,” 89.
56

murai22This passage tells us that Naritsune, the youngest of the three exiles, was fortunate to have as his father-in-law the wealthy Taira no Norimori 平教盛 (1128–1185), who, as it turns out, owned a private estate in Hizen. It was in virtue ofprovisions sent over from this estate to Ogres’ Isle that the three exiles were able
to sustain their lives. The Kasenoshō 鹿瀬荘, or Kase Estate, was located in thesouthwestern region of modern-day Saga City, nestled in the delta of Ariake Sea,
thereby placing this estate along the sea route towards Ogres’ Isle. Seen in thislight, the island no longer looks like the hopelessly distant, desolate land it wasmade out to be in the previous section. We are beginning to see a different, lessdramatic side of the story. Furthermore, it is possible, if one only looks, to descry these same merchant ships in the tale of Shunkan. When Ariō, Shunkan’s
loyal disciple, sets out towards Ogres’ Isle, we are presented with the following
scene:He reached Satsuma Bay after a long, arduous sea voyage. At the Satsuma portof embarkation for Kikaigashima, he was stripped of his robes by people whocalled him a suspicious character, but the incident did not make him regret his
initial decision. (The daughter’s letter was hidden in his top-hair.) He reached
the island aboard a merchant vessel.9

Then, when Ariō at last makes the journey back to Kyushu, he “picked up thewhite bones [of the cremated body of Shunkan], put them in a bag, hung it
around his neck, and returned to the Nine Provinces [Kyushu] on a trading
ship.”10 From these fragmentary records, it becomes obvious that Ogres’ Isle, farfrom being an island beyond the reach of man, was frequented by merchantships, and that it was, in fact, one of many convenient ports of call along a longer sea route.
Why, we must ask, did merchant ships see fit to drop anchor at Ogres’ Isle? In
the same section in which we read of Ariō’s embarkation from Satsuma, we also
hear Shunkan reveal to his disciple how he has managed to stay alive: “There isnothing to eat on this island. While I still had the strength, I used to go to themountains and dig sulfur, which I gave to Nine Province [Kyushu] traders in
exchange for food, but I am too weak to keep it up now.”11 There we have it:
Shunkan procured food by digging up sulfur and trading it with merchants
hailing from Kyushu. Even if we are not prepared to see in this narrative an
absolutely accurate reflection of historical fact, we ought to be willing to accept
the likelihood that many inhabitants of Kikaigashima did in fact make a living
selling sulfur, a local product, to merchants sailing in from Kyushu. During the
Muromachi period (1336–1603), the sulfur gathered on Iōjima 硫黄島, literally,
Sulfur Island—one of several small outlying islands currently under the jurisdiction of Kagoshima Prefecture—was sold in great quantities, along with sulfur
Heike monogatari, chapter 3, section 8: “Ariō,” 110.
Heike monogatari, chapter 3, section 9: “The Bishop’s Death,” 114.
11
Heike monogatari, chapter 3, section 8: “Ariō,” 111–112.
910

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23

gathered from volcanoes in various Kyushu estates owned by the Ōtomo family
and from Iōtorishima 硫黄鳥島, an island off of northern Okinawa, to eager
Ming (Chinese) merchants. The Bakufu even went so far as to send to the Shimazu
family estates on Kagoshima a specially appointed official whose duty it was tooversee the sulfur trade.
A fifteenth-century map of Kyushu
We now see that Kikaigashima—Ogres’ Isle—contrary to what the medieval
imagination would have us believe, was not a desolate haunt of ogres, but aport of call for merchant vessels travelling to and from the Japanese archipelago. In a collection of maps entitled Haedong jeguggi 海東諸国紀 (J: Kaitō shokokuki,
Record of the Eastern Lands), compiled in 1471 by Shin Suk-ju 申叔舟 (1417–1475), a Korean prime minister and foreign ambassador, we find one map ofparticular interest entitled Nihonkoku Saikaidō Kyūshū no zu 日本国西海道九州之図 (“A Map of Kyushu, on the Western Seaboard of Japan,” hereafter
abbreviated as “Map of Kyushu,” see Figure 1 ). A brief note about how thisKorean prime minister came to have such a detailed knowledge of the western
coast of Kyushu is in order. Earlier, in 1453, a Japanese merchant by the nameof Dōan 道安 (n.d.) hailing from Hakata, Fukuoka, made the long sea voyage to
Korea. Upon visiting the capital of Seoul, he presented the Korean government
with a number of maps, adding to these his own detailed oral account of related
matters. Based on these, the Korean government was then able to publish several
maps of Japan and the Ryukyu Islands. On the “Map of Kyushu,” we see, along
the southernmost coast of Kyushu, a cartouche labelled Yamagawaura 山河浦,
literally, bay of mountain rivers. Below and to the left of this is another cartouche
labelled Iōjima. Directly below this again is a description of the island’s sulfur
production:
This island produces sulfur, which the Japanese are accustomed to gathering.
All of the yellow islands [in this area] produce sulfur. When the sun shinesbright upon this island, smoke can be seen floating [up from the volcanoes].
This island is eighteen leagues (ri 里) from Bō Promontory 房御崎 [located in
Satsuma, modern day Kagoshima], and one-hundred thirty-eight leagues from
Kamimatsu 上松 [located in Hizen, modern day Saga].

There are two facts we can learn from this. First, as late as the fifteenth century,
Japanese merchants were still travelling to Iōjima in order to purchase quantities
of sulfur. Second, there existed a sea route that allowed these same merchantships to sail back from Iōjima, northward along the western coast of Kyushu, all
the way up to Kamimatsura 上松浦 in modern-day Saga, which latter port was
but a short distance from the Korean peninsula. The white lines traced on the
map represent this and other commonly navigated sea routes.
Let us take a closer look at the sea route traced out along the western coast of
Kyushu, paying special attention to a number of prominent geographical features

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Figure 1. “Map of Kyushu” (detail) from Haedong jeguggi in the Collection fromHistoriographical Institute The University of Tokyo.
1 Kyushu 〇2 Yamagawaura 〇3 Iōjima 〇4 Satsuma (Kagoshima)〇
5 Hizen (Nagasaki) 〇6 Sea route 〇7 The twin harbors od Bō and Tomari〇
8 Misumi Port (tentative reading) 〇9 Amakusa Port〇
10
11
〇 Sonoki County 〇 Shimomatsura and Kamimatsura
12 Cartouche reading “towards Ōshima (the large island)” 〇13 Gaja Island〇
https://clioimg.hi.u-tokyo.ac.jp/viewer/view/idata/000/_000ki_23/2/00000017?m=
limit&n=20
https://clioimg.hi.u-tokyo.ac.jp/viewer/view/idata/000/_000ki_23/2/00000018?m=
all&n=20

and place names. First, travelling up from the southwestern tip of Satsuma, wecome across a cartouche labelled “the twin harbors of Bō and Tomari” 房泊両津, which corresponds to two areas—Bō 坊 and Tomari 泊—in modern-day
Bōnotsuchō 坊津町, Minami-Satsuma (South Satsuma) City, Kagoshima. The
two rivers seen flowing westward from the heart of Satsuma are surely the
Sendai River 川内川, to the north, and the Manose River 万之瀬川, to the south.
A ten-kilometer journey up from the mouth of the Sendai River will bring one
to the region known as Sendai, from whence the river gets its name, and where theprovincial government office (kokufu 国府) was once located. A five-kilometerjourney up the Manose River brings one to an archaeological site known as
Mottaimatsu 持躰松, more of which will be said below. Close by Sendai andMottaimatsu one can still find place names including the term Tōbō 唐坊, “Tang(Chinese) Harbor,” which indicates that such a place once served as a settlement
for immigrants from Song China. Continuing northward along our sea route, weKikaigashima is Not So Far Away After All

25

come across another cartouche bearing the following characters 三隅湍津. The
correct reading of the third and fourth characters is uncertain. The first twoyield the reading Misumi. Hence, let us refer to this place name tentatively as
Misumi Port, which corresponds to modern-day Misumi-no-seto 三角ノ瀬戸.
There is a slight problem here. Misumi-no-seto is located not in Satsuma but on
the tip of the Uto Peninsula 宇土半島, which belongs to the province of Higo(modern-day Kumamoto). It would appear, therefore, that the location of
Misumi Port has been mistakenly labelled on the Map of Kyushu. Continuing
farther northward, we come across a third cartouche labelled Amakusa Port
天草津, which likely corresponds to modern-day Hondo 本渡, in Shimojima
下島, one of the islands within the Amakusa chain that stretches from western
Kyushu to Kagoshima. Passing farther northward, and coming along the coastof Hizen, we then come to a river running northeast into the land. Here we seea fourth cartouche labelled Sonoki County 園木郡, which corresponds to a region, officially written as 彼杵郡, located in modern-day Nagasaki. The body ofwater facing this county is most certainly Ōmura Bay 大村湾. If we continue
northward and round the northwestern bight, we come to a another river, one
which is sandwiched between two cartouches, with Shimomatsura 下松浦 to theleft, and Kamimatsura 上松浦 to the right. The body of water between these twobays is none other than the modern-day Imari Bay 伊万里湾. Incidentally, there
are a number of place names scattered throughout Hizen, such as Tabira 田平,
Shisa 志佐, Yobuko 呼子, Kamochi 鴨打, and Sashi 佐志, all of which were taken
up as surnames by a close-knit body of warriors, dwelling along the coast,
known as the Matsura Confederacy 松浦党.
Let us now return the way we came, following the white line back down along
the western coast of Kyushu, until we arrive once more at Iōjima. That Iōjima
was not a final stop but rather a connecting port along a larger sea (trade) routeis seen by the fact that the white line continues still farther southward from thesouthwestern tip of the island. Just at the point where this line disappears at thebottom of the page, we see a cartouche labelled “towards Ōshima (the large
island)” 指大島. A look at the Map of the Land of Ryukyu, which continues
where our Map of Kyushu ends, and which is likewise contained in Haedong
jeguggi, reveals that this large island was considered Ryukyuan territory. Close bythis island can be seen two cartouches, one labelled “towards Akama Port andHyōgo Bay” 指赤間関・兵庫浦, the other labelled “towards Erabu” 指恵羅武.
Akama Port corresponds to modern-day Shimo-no-seki 下関, while Hyōgo
Bay is synonymous with modern-day Kobe. Erabu corresponds to modern-day
Kuchi-no-erabu Island 口永良部島, nestled close by Yaku Island 屋久島, presently
administered by Kagoshima Prefecture. The white line that continues southwardfrom this large island at last terminates at Naha 那覇, in what is modern-day
Okinawa. It must be understood, moreover, that the trade route did not end in
the Ryukyu islands. Instead, these islands served as yet another stop along theway towards China, a magnificently far-reaching route which extended all the

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way into Southeastern Asia. In this way, the sea route that passed by Ogres’ Isle—
Kikaigashima—was one that allowed enterprising merchants to venture farther
and farther out across the sea. Ogres’ Isle, therefore, aside from marking theperiphery of the (imagined) Japanese civilized world, could also serve as a starting
point for distant sea journeys.
Porcelain trade and the proliferation of harbors during the medieval period
Historians specializing in medieval Japan have recently produced a fair amountof research regarding the history of ports. As a result, not only the history ofsuch famous ports as Hakata Port (Fukuoka), Hyōgo Port (Hyogo), and Sakai
Port (Osaka) have been elucidated, but a number of anonymous ports have also
received their share of coverage. More than anything else, this enthusiasm has
been fueled by the ongoing efforts of archaeological investigation. The numberof medieval ports currently being unearthed and investigated by researchers
continues to rise at a rapid rate. Ports alone are not the only subject of interest.
Archaeologists working at these sites continue to unearth quantities of porcelain
goods: artefacts that promise to give us concrete insights into the movement ofmerchants and transportation of merchandise across trade routes—especiallysea routes—throughout the medieval period. Sites of medieval ports foundalong the coast of Kyushu contain exceptionally large amounts of porcelain
trade goods. The sheer number and variety of porcelain goods unearthed fromthe site of Hakata Port has come to serve as a standard ruler against which therelative age and character of other sites might be measured. While not so numerous as findings in Hakata Port, the composition of porcelain merchandise unearthed from sites along the sea route traced out on our Map of Kyushu reveals
unmistakable similarities to products at the Hakata site. That is to say, the whitelines on our map mark out what might be referred to as the Porcelain Road, onethat linked port to port, and island to island.
In the bottom of the sea just off the west coast of an area known as Kurakizaki
倉木崎, nearby the village of Uken 宇検村, in Amami Ōshima 奄美大島—one of
the Ryukyuan islands currently administered by Kagoshima, and located southwest of Kyushu—archaeologists have unearthed what appears to be a cache ofporcelain trade goods once stored onboard a merchant ship. The remains of thispurported ship, however, have yet to be found. Place names containing the word
gusuku, an Okinawan word referring to fortifications, can be found in the villageof Uken, a fact that speaks to early trade between the people of Amami Ōshima
and those dwelling on the more southern islands of Okinawa.
The archaeological site at Mottaimatsu, located in what was until 2005 thetown of Kinpōchō 金峰町, Minami-Satsuma City, Kagoshima, has been mentioned briefly above. Considering the hundreds of porcelain objects unearthedfrom this site, it is believed that Mottaimatsu, situated as it is on the eastern bankof the aforementioned Manose River, was once a port of discharge, that is, aKikaigashima is Not So Far Away After All

27

place where merchants could unload their merchandise for trade on land. In fact,
the mottai in Mottaimatsu is a dialectical term for pots or earthenware in general.
Near the more hilly residential area that faces the main road (running northsouth along the coast of the island), at a point close to where the road crosses
the Manose River, one can find a number of archaeological sites, such as that of
Kannonji Temple 観音寺, and another, known as the Kosono Site 小薗遺跡,
thought to be the remains of a mansion that once belonged to a local estate
proprietor. Until very recently, the port at Bōnotsu, located in modern-day
Bōnotsuchō, as already mentioned, has received almost exclusive attention as themain trade port of its time. Now, however, in light of more recent archaeologicalfindings, researchers are turning their attention to the lower course of the
Manose River, where, it is thought, a favorable lagoon once existed, an ideal resting place for seafaring merchants.
There is an archaeological site, known as the Shiraigawa Site 白井川遺跡,
located in modern-day Higashi-sonogichō 東彼杵町, eastern Nagasaki, close by
the spot where the Sonoki River 彼杵川 flows into the aforementioned Ōmura
Bay. Both the geographical location (at the mouth of a river) and compositionof goods unearthed at this site bear a remarkable resemblance to the Mottaimatsu
Site. To the west of the Shiraigawa Site, there is what appears to be the remainsof a temple—known to researchers as the Oka Site 岡遺跡—by the foot of arange of nearby mountains. The Sonoki River, like the Manose River, was oncethe site of a lagoon. This area, furthermore, once formed the heart of the
Sonoki Estate, owned by Tōfukuji Temple 東福寺, and overseen by its local
proprietors, the Sonoki family. Considering the Sonoki Estate eventually grewto embrace the entire county, or, put the other way around, that the entire
county was effectively transformed into a private estate, it follows that the cartouche on the Map of Kyushu labelled Sonoki County likely refers to Sonoki
Estate.
The Rōkaida Site 楼楷田遺跡, located in Matsuura City 松浦, Nagasaki, hasalso provided a number of porcelain items similar to those unearthed at theabove two sites. On a certain plateau, archaeologists have unearthed the remainsof a stone-paved road more than one-hundred meters in length, which, researchers surmise, was once used by people making their way from the port to a yet
undiscovered temple. It is thought that this was the headquarters of the
Shisa-Shirahama clan 志佐白浜氏, who belonged to the aforementioned Matsura
Confederate of martial houses, and that this region was part of the area labelled
Shisa on the Map of Kyushu.
Japan’s southwestern borderland and the twelve Kikai Islands
In the fourteenth-century Nagato Manuscript 長門本 of the Tale of Heike, weare told, in relation to Kikaigashima that it was, in fact, not one island but a chainof twelve islands, five of which—referred to as the “five islands about the

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mouth” (kuchi gotō 口五島), that is, the five nearer islands—were under the control of the Japanese court, and seven of which—the “seven islands in the interior” (oku shichitō 奥七島), that is, the seven farther islands—refused to submit to
the court. Scholars agree that Takeshima 竹島, Kuroshima 黒島, as well as theaforementioned Iōjima, were among the five islands that belonged to the court,
and that the seven extraterritorial islands refer to the modern-day Tokara Archipelago 吐噶喇列島, currently administered by Kagoshima. So long as we accepting this last conclusion, it follows that the border of the medieval Japanese
empire ran through the Tokara Strait. Now, there was a warrior by the name of
Chikama Tokiie 千竈時家 (n.d.), trusted vassal and local magistrate for the head
(tokusō 得宗) of the Hōjō 北条 clan—which clan was itself the administrative
head in the Kamakura shogunate—whose power base was located in KawanabeCounty 川辺郡, Satsuma. In the year Kagen 嘉元 4 (1306), just around the time
the Nagato Manuscript was completed, Tokiie wrote up a document stating
which of his many estates were to be managed by which of his five children: To
his eldest son, Sadayasu 貞泰, he entrusted estates on the five islands (kuchi gotō)
just mentioned, along with those on Wasa Island わさ島, Kikai (Ogres’) Island
喜界島, and Ōshima 大島; to his second son, Tsuneie 経家, he entrusted an
estate on the already mentioned Erabu Island; to his third son, Kumayashamaru
熊夜叉丸, he entrusted estates on “the seven islands” (shichitō); to his daughter,
Himekuma 姫熊, he entrusted an estate on Toku Island 徳之島; to his otherdaughter, Iyakuma 弥熊, he entrusted an estate located in Shimogōri 下郡, onYaku Island 屋久島. Here we see not only the seven islands—Tokara Archipelago—but also a number of the Amami Islands, such as Ōshima, Kikai Island,
and Toku Island, all of which, according to the Nagato Manuscript, were outside
the domain of the Japanese court.12
It is plain to see that the imagined boundaries of medieval Japan were not set
in stone. The court, at least as represented in the Nagato Manuscript, imagined
the border to be somewhere around the Tokara Strait, while those warriors, like
Tokiie, dwelling within the peripheries, imagined a somewhat more expansive
empire, one which included the Amami Islands. What the court viewed as territory beyond their control, and consequently, as somehow other or alien, local
warriors saw as distant estates capable of producing economic wealth. Considering the distribution of Tokiie’s many estates, we may safely conclude that the
Chikama clan was engaged in lucrative trade with the inhabitants of the southwestern Ryukyu Islands. The same may be said, by extension, of the Hōjō leaders, Tokiie’s mighty patrons. By placing Tokiie in Satsuma as their local representative, these leaders gained a firm foothold on the southwestern extremity of theJapanese archipelago. They did the same in the north of Honshu, as well. Bystationing men of the Andō 安藤 clan, another of their trusted vassal families,on the coast of Sotogahama 外ヶ浜, which faces modern-day Mutsu Bay,
12This document is preserved in the Nagashima Chikama monjo 長島千竈文書.

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29

Tsuruga Peninsula, Aomori, the shogunate engaged in trade with the local Emishi
蝦夷 people.
While Kawanabe County was primarily under the control of the Hōjō shogunal
administrators, the Shimazu 島津 clan, as provincial constable or military governor (shugo 守護), the family responsible for maintaining order and peace in
Satsuma, also had a degree of influence in the area. In the year Karoku 嘉禄 3(1227), Shimazu Tadahisa 島津忠久 (?–1227) formally invested his heir, Tadayoshi
忠義 (n.d.), with the dual post of local estate steward (jitō 地頭) and provincial
constable (shugo) of Satsuma. In the investiture document, Tadahisa explicitly
states that Tadayoshi was to exercise control over all of Satsuma, excepting the
Isaku Estate 伊作庄, Kawanabe County, and Ibusuki County 指宿郡.13 Fujiwara no
Yoritsune 藤原頼経 (1218–1256), fourth shogun (1226–1244) of the Kamakura
shogunate, who officially approved this inheritance, stated that Tadayoshi was toreceive the position of local estate steward (jitō) of all the twelve islands (jūnitō
jitōshiki 十二嶋地頭職) save Kawanabe County.14 The position of local estate
steward of all the twelve islands was initially created by Minamoto no Yoritomo
源頼朝 (1147–1199), founder of the Kamakura shogunate, after subjugating
those rebel forces that had escaped to Kikai Island. Yoritomo saw fit to invest
the Shimazu clan with this position, as an adjunct to their preexisting estate in
Kawanabe County, Yorigōri 寄郡, Satsuma.
Eventually, in the wake of the Jōkyū Disturbance of 1221, control over KawanabeCounty returned to the hands of the Hōjō leaders (tokusō). According to a declaration written up in Kannō 観応 3 (1352) by Ashikaga Tadafuyu 足利直冬
(c.1327–1387/1400), illegitimate child of Takauji, first shogun of the Muromachi
shogunate, the Hōjō leaders exercised authority over Kawanabe County in the dual
capacity of local estate stewards (jitō) and county or district officials (gunji 郡司).15
What the Shimazu clan inherited in relation to the twelve islands was the position of local estate steward. The Hōjō leaders retained for themselves the position of local governor over all the remaining southern islands, as well as the position of county official (gunji) over Kawanabe County. The Chikama clan, in theirturn, served as representatives of the local estate stewards ( jitō daikan 地頭代官)
over the twelve islands, as well as county officials over the whole of Kawabe
County. This latter position, in actual fact, extended beyond the twelve islands toinclude authority over the Amami Islands, as well.
In the year Genkō 元弘 3 (1333), when the Hōjō leadership had crumbled, thetwelve islands became the sole property of the Shimazu clan. Ashikaga Yoshiakira
足利義詮 (1330–1367), second shogun of the Muromachi shogunate (1359–1367),
who, in Enbun 延文 1 (1356), wrote up a document confirming the estates ofThis document is preserved in Kamakura ibun 鎌倉遺文, document no. 3621.
This document is preserved in Kamakura ibun 鎌倉遺文, document no. 3670.
15
This document is preserved in Nanbokuchō ibun: Kyūshū hen 南北朝遺文九州編, document
no. 3317.
13
14

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Shimazu Sadahisa 島津貞久 (1269–1363), declared that the Shimazu clan wereindeed the rightful local estate stewards of the twelve islands.16 In another document, dated Jōji 貞治 2 (1363), in which Sadahisa bequeaths his estates to his
son Morohisa 師久 (1325–1376), it is declared that Kawanabe County, under thejurisdiction of the Shimizu clan, consisted of both the twelve islands as well as“five other islands.”17 While the precise identity of these five islands is uncertain,
it is possible that they refer to the Amami Islands.
The border between Ryukyu and Korea
It is well understood that the sea route running east and west from Japan to
China through the East China Sea, along with the large port city of Hakata, served
as major features in delineating the western border of medieval Japan. There was,however, a second sea route that likewise played an important role in defining thewestern border of Japan. This sea route, which extends from south to north, andcrosses over the former east-west route at Hirado, a cluster of islands in what is
now northern Nagasaki, begins in the Ryukyu islands, and continues northward to
Kikaigashima (Ogres’ Isle), the western coast of Kyushu, Iki, Tsushima, arriving
finally at the Korean peninsula. When looked at from the perspective of thissouth-north route, the western border of Japan extends to Ryukyu and Korea.
Some places labelled on the Map of Kyushu include a note regarding their distance, in Japanese leagues (ri ), from a given place. The reason why this map,though published in Korea, includes measurements in Japanese and not Korean
leagues lies in the fact, as noted above, that the original maps were brought overfrom Japan by a Hakata merchant by the name of Dōan. The three most commonly mentioned points of reference in regards to distance on this map are,first, Kamimatsura (hereafter abbreviated as Kamimatsu), second, Ōshima(which refers to Amami-ōshima), and, third, Bōnotsu, in Satsuma. For example,
the label for Erabu (Kuchinoerabu Island) states that the island may be reached
154 leagues out from Kamimatsu, or 245 leagues out from Ōshima. Gaja Island 小蛇島, now written 臥蛇島, which belongs to the Tokara Islands, includes a similarnote, stating that the island may be reached 198 leagues out from Kamimatsu, or
80 leagues out from Bōnotsu. Note that all three of these reference points areimportant stops along the south-north sea route, and that, conversely, no mention is made of Hakata port, the most important stop on the east-west sea route.
Recall that Chikama Tokiie, the year Kagen 4 (1306), invested his eldest son
with, among others, an estate on Wasa Island, the location of which has continued
to allude scholars. Hashimoto Yū 橋本雄 has offered a possible answer, pointing
out the fact that the Gaja in Gaja Island is, in Korean, pronounced Wasa 와사; itThis document is preserved in Nanbokuchō ibun: Kyūshū hen 南北朝遺文九州編, document
no. 3891.
17This document is preserved in Nanbokuchō ibun: Kyūshū hen 南北朝遺文九州編, document
no. 4467.
16

Kikaigashima is Not So Far Away After All

31

Figure 2. “Myōhonji Map of Japan,” showing the location of Tamurosamu, that is,
Jeju Island, from Zuroku Nichiren shōnin no sekai 図録日蓮聖人の世界, eds. Nichiren
shōnin no sekaiten jikkō iinkai, 日蓮聖人の世界展実行委員会, Ōsaka: Genryūji 原立寺.

is possible that Wasa Island corresponds to Gaja Island. This possibility is enforced by a number of fifteenth-century Korean documents in which Gaja/Wasa
Island is given special attention in virtue of the fact that it was seen as traversing
the boundary between the Ryukyu Islands and Satsuma. This might also accountfor the curious practice, on records of inheritance and other estate-related documents, of listing Gaja Island separately from the aforementioned seven islands(shichitō), even though the former was generally understood as belonging to the latter.
There is a certain map of Japan, stored at Myōhonji Temple (in modern-day Kyonan Town, 鋸南町, Chiba)—known as the “Myōhonji Temple Map of Japan” 妙本寺蔵日本図 (Figure 2)—which reflects the geographical understanding of
Muromachi-period Japan. On this map, Jeju Island 済州島, the largest island of
the coast of the Korean Peninsula, and currently administered by South Korea,
is written as 耽羅, which, though usually read as Tamura, is here rendered as
Tamurosamu タムロサム. Very likely, this final samu is a phonetic approximationof the Korean word seom 섬, that is, island. What these two examples indicate is
this: the south-north sea route, passing as it did through Korean waters, served
to introduce Japanese navigators to the Korean names of certain islands, named
which were recorded, albeit in a somewhat mutilated form, on Japanese maps.

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murai

In the first half of the fifteenth century there was a man by the name of Kim
Won-jin 金元珍 (n.d.) who travelled widely across the south-north sea route, engaged in trade, foreign diplomacy, and ship building. Although he was, ethnicallyspeaking, Korean, when left Kyushu and arrived in Korea, he was referred to by
the local Koreans as a Japanese man (wajin 倭人). He referred to himself as themessenger of Minamoto no Habuku 源省 (n.d.), a man stationed on Tabira, justacross from Hirado, or, at other times, as the messenger of Minamoto no Sadashi
源貞 (n.d.) and Minamoto no Yoshi 源義 (n.d.), both of whom were stationed on
Hirado itself. All of these Minamoto men belonged to the Matsura Confederacy.
In 1423, Kim engaged in negotiations with Shimazu Hisatoyo 島津久豊 (1375–1425), eighth head of the Shimazu clan, and local protector (shugo) of Hyūga 日
向, Satsuma, and Ōsumi 大隅, that is, modern-day Miyazaki, western and eastern
Kagoshima. Kim petitioned Hisatoyo for the release of Korean prisoners of
war that he might transport them back to their native Korea. Some seven years
later, in 1430, Kim, as official interpreter or envoy for the Kingdom of Ryukyu,
delivered a diplomatic document sent by Liang Hui 梁回 (n.d.), a Fujian-born
magistrate then governing in the capacity of grand councilor (changshi 長史) in
Ryukyu, to the Korean government. In 1435, Kim requested permission to fell
tress for the purpose of procuring ship building material. His request was denied. At this time, incidentally, Kim was accompanied by a certain Ryukyuan
shipwright by the name of Ōsato 大里, who expressed a desire to become a subject of the Korean kingdom, which desire was granted.
References
Hashimoto Yū 橋本雄, “Chūsei no Kikaigashima, Nansei shotō, Kanhigashi
Shinakai” 中世の喜界島・南西諸島・環東シナ海, in Ikeda Yoshifumi 池田滎
史, ed., Kikaigashima kenkyū shinpojiumu: kodai, chūsei no kikaigashima shiryōhen 喜
界島研究シンポジウム 古代・中世のキカイガシマ 資料編, 2005.
Ikeda Yoshifumi 池田榮史, ed., Kodai chūsei no kyōkai ryōiki: Kikaigashima no sekai
古代中世の境界領域 キカイガシマの世界, Tokyo: Koshi shoin, 2008.
Kreiner, Josef ヨーゼフ・クライナー, Yoshinari Naoki 吉成直樹 and Oguchi
Masashi 小口雅史, Kodai makki, Nihon no kyōkai: Gusuku isekigun to Ishie isekigun
古代末期・日本の境界―城久遺跡群と石江遺跡群, Tokyo: Shinwasha, 2010.
Murai Shōsuke 村井章介, Chūseishi kenkyū no tabiji: sengo rekishigaku to watashi 中世
史研究の旅路―戦後歴史学と私, Tokyo: Azekura shobō, 2014.
Murai Shōsuke 村井章介, Kyōkai wo matagu hitobito (Nihonshi riburetto 28) 境界をまたぐ人びと〈日本史リブレット28〉, Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2006.
Murai Shōsuke 村井章介, Kyōkaishi no kōsō (Nihon rekishi watashi no saishin kōgi 12)
境界史の構想〈日本歴史私の最新講義12〉, Tokyo: Keibunsha, 2014.
Yamauchi Shinji 山内晋次, Nissō bōeki to “iō no michi” (Nihonshi riburetto 75) 日宋貿
易と「硫黄の道」〈日本史リブレット75〉, Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2009.

Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture 1 (July 2018) 33–37© 2018 National Institute of Japanese Literature

Chikura Sea:
A Marine Border Between Japanand Tang China
koida Tomoko
Translated by Kristopher reevesW

hat sort of conceptions did Japanese people living in the medieval period harbor regarding the borders of their own land? The popular military tale known as Soga monogatari 曽我物語 (Tale of the Soga Brothers,thlate 13 century or somewhat later) contains an episode in which a retainer of
Minamoto no Yoritomo 源頼朝 (1147–1199), first shogun of the Kamakura bakufu,
sees an auspicious dream in which his master gains command over the entire
country.1 It is in the second chapter of this work that this retainer very explicitly
states the imagined boundaries of Japan: the land is bound to the east by Sotogahama
外浜, literally “outer bay,” and to the west by Kikaigashima 鬼界島, “Ogres’ Isle.”
This delineation is repeated in another famous military tale entitled Genpei jōsuiki
源平盛衰記 (Rise and Fall of the Minamoto and Taira Clans, 1247–1249) as well as the
kōwakamai 幸若舞 play Yume awase 夢合せ (Portent of Dreams). Soga monogatari contains a second, more complete, reference to the borders of Japan: to the extreme
east, in the region of Ōshū 奥州 (corresponding to what is now the northeasternregion of Honshū) lies Sotohama; to the west lies Kikaigashima, the western bastion; to the south, along the southern seaboard, stands Mount Kumano; to thenorth, along the shores of Echigo 越後 (modern-day Nigata) stretches a raging sea(Cogan, ch. 9). Here, then, we are given a clear picture of how medieval Japanesepeople envisioned the borders of their land.
Aside from the aforementioned landmarks, another toponym, that of Chikura
gaoki ちくらが沖, that is, Chikura Sea, appears often in medieval literature andthe performative arts—in Muromachi tales and kōwaka lyrics, for example—as amarine border separating Japan from tang China. Seeing as how this particular toponym is used neither before nor after the medieval period, it follows that Chikura
Sea represents an imagined border, the significance of which was unique to the
For a complete English translation of this work, see Cogan, Thomas, trans., The Tale of the Soga
Brothers. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1987.
1

33

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koida

Figure 1. Illustration of the naval skirmish at Chikura Bay, from a manuscript ofTaishokan held in the National Institute of Japanese Literature.
https://doi.org/10.20730/200016463

medieval period. Take, for example, the kōwaka play Taishokan 大織冠 (The Great
Woven Cap), which features a battle to gain possession of a precious jewel. Fujiwara
no Kamatari 藤原鎌足 (614–669), fabled ancestor of the Fujiwara clan, was to begiven this jewel as a present from the reigning emperor of the Tang empire. The
ship bearing this gift is intercepted, however, by General Manko 万戸将軍 and his
asura 阿修羅—more-or-less demonic—soldiers, hired by the Dragon King 龍王
himself, to whom, we are told, this jewel originally belonged. General Banko andhis men wait in ambush for the ship at none other than Chikura Sea, a place theplaywright refers to revealingly as “the marine border between Japan and the Tang
empire.” A naval skirmish ensues, wherein all manner of supernatural and otherworldly combatants try their mettle against an army of mortal men, thus forming
the climax of the first half of Taishokan. Every extant illustrated manuscript of
this play contains a picture of this impressive scene (see Figure 1). Chikura Sea
serves as the battleground between earthly and unearthly forces, just as it does,
incidentally, in another kōwaka play entitled Yuriwaka daijin 百合若大臣 (Minister
Yurikawa).
In this second play, Minister Yuriwaka 百合若 is commanded to lead an army
against a Mongolian general bent on invading Japan. While sailing from Tsukushi,
in modern-day Kyushu, to one of the Korean kingdoms known in Japan as Kōrai
高麗 (K: Koryŏ), Minister Yuriwaka is intercepted by the Mongolian general, who,
seeking to prevent his enemy from gaining the shore, confronts him in Chikura
Sea. A prolonged and fierce naval battle is at last concluded in the minister’s favor,
though only after he has received divine aid from a number of native gods. A
manuscript of Yuriwaka monogatari emaki 百合若物語絵巻 (Illustrated Tale of Minister
Yuriwaka) currently stored in the Tokyo National Museum contains an illustrationof this naval battle, wherein the Mongolian general, like General Banko and his
demonic minions, as found in Taishokukan, is likewise depicted as an otherworldly
fiend (Figure 2). Moreover, just as was the case with Taishokukan, Chikura Sea

Chikura Sea

35

Figure 2. Illustration of the naval battle at Chikura Bay, from a manuscript of Yuriwaka
monogatari emaki held in the Tokyo National Museum.

serves in Yuriwaka monogatari emaki, too, as a liminal sort of marine battlegroundbetween two forces, the one more-or-less familiar and wholly worldly, the other—here represented by the Mongolian threat—foreign and otherworldly.
Chikura Sea, representing as it did a locus of contact between things worldly andotherworldly, came also to serve as the watery stage upon which various strange
and fantastic creatures were wont to appear. In a Muromachi tale entitled Sumiyoshi
no engi 住吉の縁起 (The Origin of Sumiyoshi Shrine), a Tang emperor, intent on invading Japan, sends the famous Chinese poet Bai Juyi 白居易 (often transliterated
as Bo Juyi, 772–846) over to the archipelago in order to ascertain the intelligenceof its inhabitants. Having reached Chikura Sea, Bai Juyi’s vessel is hailed by anelderly fisherman who engages in a lively dialogue with the poet. Astonished at thelevel of erudition exhibited by this seemingly lowly fisherman, Bai Juyi concludes
that the Japanese people must be among the most intelligent in the world. The
Tang emperor, upon hearing this news, abandons all plans to invade Japan. We
are informed that this fisherman was in fact an embodiment of none other than
the god of Sumiyoshi Shrine, and that, no sooner had he disappeared than the sea
began churning violently, followed by an appearance by the Dragon King, ruler of the
waves.
There is a sermon ballad of the Edo period (sekkyōbushi 説経節) by the name of
Karukaya かるかや (Vines) in which the mother of Kūkai 空海 (774–835), portrayed here as the daughter of a Tang emperor, is sent away from her homeland ina dugout canoe on account of her apparently supremely despicable nature. Eventually she is washed up and rescued on the shores of Chikura Sea. In the kyōgen 狂
言 play entitled Mechika 目近 (The Phony Fan), this same Chikura Sea is said to contain a miraculous rice paddy in which, if a man sows but a single seed, his yield ofrice will increase ten-thousand-fold. Another kyōgen play by the name of Jishaku 磁
石 (The Lodestone), contained in Kyōgenki 狂言記 (Record of Kyōgen Plays, 1660),
a collection of kyōgen scripts, has the spirit of the lodestone inhabiting a mountainlocated in Chikura Sea. All of this goes to demonstrate how Chikura Sea, in the

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koida

medieval imagination, was seen as a place where divine and otherwise supernaturalforces were wont to convene.
Jōruri monogatari 浄瑠璃物語 (A Tale of Lady Jōruri, probably 15th century), is amusical puppet-ballad depicting the love affair between the young general Minamoto no Yoshitsune 源義経 (1159–1189) and a courtesan who goes by the nameLady Jōruri 浄瑠璃姫. Significantly, the robe which Yoshitsune wears is described
as being embroidered with a picture of Chikura Sea, “the marine border between
Tang China and Japan,” wherein two monkeys, one representing China, one Japan,
bear their teeth at one another, each hoping to pass over the watery border into
the other’s territory. The Museum of Art (MOA) in Fukuoka contains a 17th-century manuscript of Jōruri monogatari emaki in which Yoshitsune’s robe sports twoembroidered monkeys, facing off against each other over the sea, one with a red,the other with a white face. The same sort of description of Yoshitsune’s robe canalso be found in the kōwaka play Eboshi ori 烏帽子折 (The Courtier’s Cap). It must
be remembered that Yoshitsune is a man around whom all sorts of legends havebeen crowded: he is purported to have travelled to Ōshū, the northeastern borderof Honshū, where he visited not only the land of ogres and the realm of tengu 天狗, long-nosed mountain goblins, but even descended into the depths of purgatory. It is only proper, therefore, that this man, a heroic figure able to traverse
those borders between this and other worlds, should bear upon his back such asymbolically decorated robe.
Where exactly was this Chikura Sea supposed to be located? What is the significance of this toponym? The late writer and scholar of Japanese literature, Saigō
Nobutsuna 西郷信綱 (1916–2008), has looked in some detail at the history of thistoponym (“Kodaiteki uchū no ichi danmenzu” 古代的宇宙の一断面図 in Kodaijin
to shi 古代人と死. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1999). According to his investigations into
the beliefs and rituals of ancient Japanese people, the two oldest historical works
of Japan, namely, Kojiki 古事記 (Records of Matters of Antiquity, 712) and Nihon
shoki 日本書紀 (Chronicle Documents of Japan, 720), contain references to somethingwhich might very well be related to the name of Chikura Sea. In a particular mythabout Susanoo スサノヲ, one of the more destructive gods amidst the ancientpantheon, we hear of an altar upon which the offerings of those wishing to beritually purified are laid. This altar is known as the chikura no okito or chikura no
okikura 千座の置座, literally, the altar of a thousand shelves, or offerings (chikura <chi one-thousand + kura shelf, platform, offering). In this context, says Saigō, thechikura altar serves as an embodiment of the land’s collective defilement. He thenconcludes by averring that it was the Urabe, a clan of hereditary ritual masters
serving at court, who gave the name to this bay, a bay which Saigō locates off theshores of Tsushima and Iki, two of Japan’s westernmost outlaying islands (bothof which currently fall under the jurisdiction of Nagasaki Prefecture). The Urabe
卜部 were based originally in these two islands—places associated with borders
and border-crossings precisely in virtue of being located so close to the continent.
These Urabe, being intimately involved with the aforementioned purification

Chikura Sea

37

ritual, drew upon the liminal nature of the chikura altar, serving as it did as a kindof border between the world of men and the world of gods, and applied thisname to the sea about their native islands. By bringing in considerations of ancient Japanese rituals, Saigō sought to explain the liminal nature of Chikura Sea,
insofar as it served as a place where strange and supernatural creatures were
thought to appear, interacted, and, at times, engage in fantastic warfare.
Unno Kazutaka 海野一隆 (1921–2006), a scholar of geography who specialized
in the history of geography in Asia, located Chikura Sea in what the Engi shiki 延
喜式 (Procedures of the Engi Era, 927) refers to as Tōchika 遠値嘉, “the westernmost border of the land” (“Chikuragaoki: awasete Jishakuyama mo ちくらが沖―合わせて磁石山も” in Tōyō chirigakushi kenkyū: Nihon hen 東洋地理学史研
究―日本篇. Osaka: Seibundō, 2005). This would correspond, he concludes, to thewesternmost extremity of modern-day Fukuejima (likewise under the jurisdictionof Nagasaki Prefecture), one of a group of five islands lying yet further southwestof Tsushima and Iki. Finally, Unno suggests that the toponym Chikura ga oki,
Chikura Sea, is an abbreviated form of what was originally Chikaura no oki,
namely, the offing near Chika Bay. That is, the first a in chika-ura (Chika Bay) was
dropped to produce chikura. Whatever the supposed location of Chikura Sea
might be, it remains certain that this place, as it appears in Muromachi tales andkōwaka plays, represented to the medieval Japanese imagination a western marine
border, the nature of which was different than Kikaigashima, Ogre’s Isle, also
thought to lie to the west of Japan.

Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture 1 (July 2018) 39–55© 2018 National Institute of Japanese Literature

The Borders of Shindenzukuri:“Inside” and “Outside” as Staged
by Uchi’ide
akazawa Mari
Translated by Miriam mcConnell

Introduction
Shindenzukuri 寝殿造 refers to a form of residential architecture popular in Japan
from the tenth through the thirteenth centuries. Shindenzukuri spaces served asimportant venues for the performance of noble culture, which centered heavily
on the emperor. In modern Japan, the term shindenzukuri conjures images of pictures in history textbooks, miniatures in museums, and movies, paintings, ormanga which take up topics such as the famous Heian period text Genji monogatari 源氏物語 (The Tale of Genji) as their subject matter.
An element of Japanese traditional culture which emerged in the Heian period,
shindenzukuri estates are considered emblematic of the ostentatious Heian noble
life. The shinden 寝殿 (“dwelling hall”) served as the main building, with tai 対(wings or subsidiary living quarters) flanking it on the left and right, creating an
open-style palace bounded on the outside with greenery and man-made streams.
The tsuridono 釣殿 (“fishing pavilion”), izumidono 泉殿, a building built over thesource of the garden pond or stream, and tsukiyama 築山, a miniature artificial
mountain constructed of sand or stone, served as the stage for imperial court
ceremony.
As important cultural arenas in the classical and medieval periods, how did shindenzukuri spaces treat the subjects of class and gender? In this paper, I will draw
upon preceding research to contemplate anew the question of gender throughthe lens of uchi’ide 打出, a form of female garment display which took place
within shindenzukuri spaces.
1. The Spatial Transformations of the Dairi
When considering Japanese traditional architecture as a whole, it is possible todraw a broad dichotomy between Chinese-inspired designs and native Japanese39

40

akazawa

designs. For example, in the early Heian period, public institutions were built
according to Chinese models while private facilities followed native models.
Chinese-style buildings boasted tiled roofs, earthen floors or elevated stone
foundations, and red-lacquered exteriors. On the other hand, native Japanesebuildings were characterized by cypress bark thatched roofs, raised floors, andplain, unpainted materials.
The creation of shindenzukuri spaces was heavily influenced by the Dairi 内裏(“Inner Palace”), the imperial family’s official residence where both imperial
daily life and affairs of state took place. In the Nara Period, the imperial residence was at Heijō Palace 平城宮. The Chōdō 朝堂 compound, where daily political matters were handled, was surrounded by corridors lined by roofed mudwalls, while both the Daigokuden 大極殿 hall, a space used for national governmental affairs, as well as the emperor’s personal living quarters lay amidst corridors within the Chōdō.
When the imperial residence moved to Heian Palace, the Chōdō and Daigokuden
were similarly constructed, but the emperor began conducting affairs of state
within the Dairi itself. In the first half of the Heian period, the Shishinden 紫宸
殿 hall served as the location for daily political matters, while the Jijūden 仁寿殿
hall served as the emperor’s private quarters. By the middle of the Heian period,
however, the Seiryōden 清涼殿 hall came to serve as both the imperial private
quarters and the location for governmental affairs.
From the tenth century on, as a political system of those with personal ties tothe emperor―chancellors and regents, chamberlains, and courtiers (tenjōbito 殿上
人―nobles granted the privilege of appearing before the emperor)―evolved, theshōden 昇殿 (court entrance) system developed. In the late Heian period, under
the shōden system, only nobles (kugyō 公卿) and courtiers were granted access tothe imperial court, with the system changing as power passed from one emperor
to the next. Under the direction of the head chamberlain, courtiers served regularly within both the privy chamber (tenjō no ma 殿上の間) and the Seiryōden, performing tasks on rotation such as night duty and waiting on the emperor at
mealtimes. From the time of the Uda 宇多 (867–931) imperial court (887–897)
onward, as part of an overhaul and expansion of the shōden system, the privy
chamber came to function as a public entity. The nobles’ service to the emperorchanged environments from senior noble meetings held at the guard-post (jinnoza陣座) to the privy chamber itself. Similarly, from the mid Heian period onward,
large scale ceremonies and rituals which took place within the Chōdō or its
courtyard grew fewer as increasingly such matters were handled within the
courtyards and interior spaces.
2. The Space and Borders of Shindenzukuri
Shindenzukuri spaces were divided into inner and outer bounded territories,
comprised respectively of a main building made up of the moya 母屋 (core room)

The Borders of Shindenzukuri

41surrounded by the hisashi 庇 (roofed aisles running alongside the moya) and thesunoko 簀子 (open verandas). Traditional Japanese residences had a “chamberand hall” composition, which juxtaposed open and closed spaces. This “chamber and hall” composition is exemplified by, for example, the façade of the main
hall used during the Daijōsai 大嘗祭 (“Great Thanksgiving”) festival, in which forthe first time the newly enthroned emperor offered to the deities, and himself
partook of, new grains, the main building of the Sumiyoshi-taisha Shrine 住吉大社, and predecessor buildings to the Denpōdō 伝法堂 (“Dharma Transmission”Hall) of Hōryūji Temple 法隆寺, originally a Nara period residence.
In shindenzukuri, closed spaces (nurigome 塗籠―inner rooms with plaster walls)
existed within open spaces, and the central space was composed of the moya andthe surrounding hisashi and magobisashi 孫庇 (lower auxiliary, literally “grandchild,” eaves). Fundamentally there were no definitive divisions, rather primarily
open spaces. Round columns formed supports; floors were wooden; and tatami
mats were used in sleeping and sitting areas. One large space was divided by portable curtain stands (kichō 几帳), folding screens (byōbu 屏風), and sliding paper
doors (shōji 障子) to create living areas. Furthermore, outside fixtures were suspended from and lifted on black-lacquered lattice-shutters (kōshi 格子), whichwere replaced with horizontal sliding style fixtures from the late medieval period
onward. Because of this transition, black-lacquered lattice-shutters came to beemblematic of classical and medieval nobility in art produced during the earlymodern period.
2-1 The Double Structure of Gates and Inner Corridors―the Boundaries
of Entering the Court
Shindenzukuri estates had a gate in the outer wall (facing east or west) on theinside of which a chūmonrō 中門廊 (middle gate corridor) connected through adoor to the southern courtyard. Thus, to enter the southern courtyard, one had
to pass through the double boundary of the gate and the chūmonrō. According to
Kawamoto Shigeo, this practice originated from courtyard-style residences built
in the style of the Chinese Sanheyuan, which appeared among powerful familiesof the Kofun 古墳 (Tumulus) period who bounded off their residential landwith walls. Entrance through the main gate and then through the door of thechūmonrō into the southern courtyard was limited to a select few. Several court
entrance procedures existed for the occasion of, for example, an imperial or aristocratic visit to a given residence. The person of the highest social standing
would pass through the inner gate riding in a palanquin and thus enter intoeither the shinden or tai. Next, once through the inner gate, he would traverse theinside of the estate by way of the chūmonrō and finally enter through the door of
the chūmonrō. On the other hand, a person of low social standing was not able toenter the door of the chūmonrō, but would instead traverse the sunoko runningalongside the chūmonrō and finally enter the attendants’ corridor (saburai-rō 侍廊).

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When musical performances were held, the attending musicians were similarly
not allowed to enter the buildings of the imperial estate, but were instead relegatedto the Imperial Court Music Hall (gakusho 楽所), a special carvel-built musicchamber which sat in the courtyard near the tsukiyama. For the performanceitself, musicians sat atop moss around the stairs of the building, while nobles
and courtiers sat on the perimeter of the stairs near the courtyard or on thesunoko. Following this pattern, shindenzukuri spaces existed as highly prescribeddomains where ingress was only possible depending upon social status.
2-2 Shinden and Tai: Moya, Hisashi, and Magobisashi―the Boundariesof the Inner Spaces
From public ceremonies such as New Year’s banquets, the arrival of special
guests, or the selection of an empress, to private occasions held by the regental
family, such as uta-awase 歌合 (poetry competitions), a variety of events were heldin shindenzukuri spaces. According to Kawamoto, during a New Year’s banquet,
nobles were seated in the moya, the head of the household sat in the southernhisashi, and council secretaries (geki 外記) and court historians (shi 史) sat in descending order according to rank in the watadono 渡殿 (an open or closed bridgeway connecting buildings). As evidenced within shindenzukuri spaces, the venue
for a ceremony was arranged based upon both the characteristics endemic tothat ceremony as well as the relative social standings of the participants. Overthe course of the period of cloistered sovereigns (a roughly 130 year period
stretching from the end of the Heian period through the beginning of the
Kamakura period, c. 12th century), ceremonial venues gradually shifted from theshinden to the tai.
In everyday life, the hisashi as well as the moya and nurigome of the shinden served
as the living space of the head of the household. Often the southern face of theshinden served as a space for ceremony, while the northern face was used for daily
life; ladies-in-waiting were stationed in the daibandokoro-rō 台盤所廊 (“table room”).
The section of the Kempo 建保 7 (1219) text Tamakiharu たまきはる (The Diaryof Kenshunmon’in Chūnagon nikki 建春門院中納言日記) entitled “Nichijō no gosho”
日常の御所 (“The Everyday Imperial Residence”) describes the hisashi as the nobles’ place, while the space hidden behind veils was closed to all but someladies-in-waiting of particularly high rank. When waiting upon the nobles of thehousehold, the ladies-in-waiting would slightly raise the bamboo blinds (misu 御簾) within the veranda or hirobisashi 広廂 (“wide aisles”) and serve with only partof their bodies visible.
2-3 Nurigome and Mich�o: Boundaries of the Non-Routine
In the center of the moya lay the nurigome, a room with white plaster walls. In
the Seiryōden, for example, this room was referred to as the yoru-no-otodo or
yon-no-otodo 夜御殿 (“night hall”). The nurigome was a sacred space used for purification, weddings, and the enshrinement of the dead.

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A sleeping platform known as the michō 御帳, a bed surrounded by curtains
and raised on posts above a foundational hamayuka 浜床 (curtain-dais), sat within
the nurigome as an installation used for the staging of non-routine or extraordinary spaces. The michō was used in ceremonies which occurred outside of daily
life such as watamashi 移徙 (a term referring both to the move of a nobleman’s
house and the movement of a portable shrine), birth, marriage, and the death ofan emperor. For watamashi, for example, a yin yang master (onmyōji 陰陽師) would
be consulted in order to choose an auspicious time and date for the curtained
sleeping platform to be set up in the shinden, and paper amulets would be affixed
to the posts as wards against evil.
Furthermore, again during watamashi, the michō set up in the moya would be ritually slept upon for three days. During childbirth, the moya and hisashi on thenorthern side of the shinden was prescribed as the “birthing place;” the customary sleeping platform, the white platform, was moved to the birthing place, andafter childbirth, the mother and child used the white sleeping platform. On theoccasion of a wedding, the michō was placed in the nurigome; the bridegroom
would enter from the “purified” side (haremen ハレ面), while the bride would enterfrom the northern side, and they would together partake of four different typesof mochi 餅 (sweet rice cakes) provided by the bride’s family. Finally, on the occasion of a funeral, the lattice-shutters were lowered all day. The body was preferably kept inside the michō, but in the event that it was instead placed outside, afolding screen was erected to cultivate the feeling of a room within the space.
Thus, in marriage, birth, and death, borders were created through the use of
space demarcated by walls and cloth.
3. Women’s Boundaries in Shindenzukuri
3-1 Public Ceremony
As evidenced above, within shindenzukuri spaces boundaries were both createdfor extraordinary events and based upon social class. However, were similarboundaries created by the spaces in which men and women were separately
relegated? Kawamoto asserts that during rituals held in shindenzukuri spaces,
women’s spaces were not fundamentally established, and that this was due
largely to the influence of Tang dynasty mores. Within the palace which served
as the emperor’s living space, women played important roles in ceremonies andrituals. For example, during the Nai-en 内宴, a private palace banquet held 20
days after New Years in the Jijūden of the Dairi, banquet seating for women specifically was set up. However, nearly 120 years later, when the retired emperor
Go-Shirakawa’in 後白河院 revived the Nai-en in the 12th century, no women
were allowed to participate in the feast. Kawamoto lays this at the feet of both
the general decline of the station of lady-in-waiting in terms of social currency
as well as simultaneous influence from Tang China.

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3-2-1 Private Leisure: Poetry Contest Seating
Women’s positions were firmly established in spaces of private leisure. Let us
consider the cockfighting scene presented in Nenjū gyōji emaki 年中行事絵巻 (The
Picture Scroll of Annual Functions) which portrays a cockfighting event held in thesouthern courtyard of a shindenzukuri estate (Figure 1).
On the right (east) stands a gate and through that the chūmonrō; attendees too low
in status to be allowed to enter the southern courtyard watch the fight from there.
Male aristocrats sit on the eastern side of the shinden, while the women sit on
the western side, watching from between the gaps in the portable curtain stands
set behind the bamboo blinds. Moreover, on the western side of the sukiwatadono
透渡殿 (a type of watadono), more fan-wielding female figures appear, their seating pattern reflecting the hierarchical social strata within the group.
3-2-2 The Ladies-in-waiting of Poetry Contests
When considering contemporary leisurely pursuits accessible to women, uta-awase(Japanese poetry competitions) must be mentioned, the counterpart of thenobleman-hosted shi-awase 詩合 (Chinese poetry competitions). When ladies-inwaiting serving in the imperial court or a noble household participated in an
uta-awase, there was much consideration given to their seating arrangement behind the bamboo blinds, where they sat in order to remain hidden from sightfrom the participating male aristocrats. During the Teijino’in uta-awase 亭子院歌合
held in Engi 延喜 13 (903), the poem presenter of the left side was a lady-in-waiting
who presented from her place behind the bamboo blinds, which were raised
only 1 shaku 尺 5 sun 寸 (approximately 45 centimeters). Figure 2 shows the seating arrangements during the palace uta-awase of Tentoku 天徳 4 (960).
The Seiryōden acted as venue for this uta-awase, and the bamboo blinds were lowered throughout the western hisashi’s oni-no-ma 鬼間 (“demon room”), daibandokoro,
and the asagarei-no-ma 朝餉間 (dining room), a space measuring seven ken 間 (oneken being approximately two meters). As seen in figure 2, the left-side ladies-in-waiting
sit in the two ken of the daibandokoro and the oni-no-ma, while the right-side ladies-inwaiting sit in the two ken of the asagarei-no-ma; a chair from the daibandokoro isplaced in a central location for Emperor Murakami 村上天皇. Three green bordered mats are laid out from the Seiryōden to the watadono connecting the
Seiryōden and the Kōrōden 後涼殿, (Imperial Kitchens), which served as seating
for the nobles, and long tatami mats cover the eastern sunoko of the Kōrōden forcourtiers’ seating. Finally attending musicians from the Imperial Court MusicHall sit in the courtyards to the north and south. A writing desk and suhama 州浜 stand (a decorative “landscape tray” shaped like a sandy beach) are placed on
the veranda of the western hisashi. Moreover, the floor coverings and costumes
are color coordinated, with red on the left and blue on the right. On this occasion, as participants in the uta-awase, the ladies-in-waiting are wearing appropriate
attire to match either the left or right side and, as per protocol, are participatingfrom behind the bamboo blinds.

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45

One major feature of this particular uta-awase is the “impure” (ke [褻]) space of
the Seiryōden, the western hisashi where the event was held which overlooked
the interior courtyard. Other imperial court events which took place at the
Seiryōden were instead generally held in the eastern hisashi, which overlooked thefront courtyard. However, according to the opening of Emperor Murakami’s
personal records, because the Tentoku 4 Dairi uta-awase was hosted by theladies-in-waiting, it was held in the western hisashi, where the ladies-in-waiting
served.
Figure 3 is a restored image of Empress Kanshi’s 寛子 Spring and Autumn
uta-awase held in Tengi 天喜 4 (1056), which took place at the Empress’ residence
in the Ichijōin of the Satodairi 里内裏 (“Town Palace,” the temporary imperial
residence used when the Dairi was unavailable); the eastern wall was removed andthe bamboo blinds lowered, and Emperor Goreizei 後冷泉天皇 (1025–1068,
r. 1045–1068) and Empress Kanshi sit in the eastern face of the building. With
Empress Kanshi’s seat as the focal point, five left-side ladies-in-waiting sit in theeastern hisashi, five right-side ladies-in-waiting sit to the south, and five left-side
and five right-side ladies-in-waiting sit in the southern hisashi. The left-side
sports spring colors, and the right-side fall colors, and the costumes are adorned
with decorations and embroidery as well as gold, silver, gems, and lapis lazuli.
The ladies’ garments allowed to peek out from under the bamboo blinds are notuniform but rather, in a new fashion, vary in design from person to person.
Fujiwara no Yorimichi 藤原頼通 and the high ministers (daijin 大臣) sit inside
the bamboo blinds on the southern watadono, enjoying the uta-awase. Nobles sit in
the eastern watadono, and courtiers on the sunoko. Male aristocrats sitting in thewatadono appreciate the costumes of the ladies-in-waiting which spill out fromunder the bamboo blinds.
During uta-awase, uchi’ide became layered with meaning as it served to hide theladies-in-waiting sitting behind the bamboo blinds from sight while simultaneously hinting at their presence and appearance. In the following section, I willfurther explicate on the import of uchi’ide and its function in creating borders todemarcate female spaces.
4. Uchi’ide: Creating Female Territory
The palace of the shogunate family of the early modern period was composedof the omote 表 (front), nakaoku 中奥 (middle interior), and ōoku 大奥 (large interior) areas. Fundamentally, the women lived in the interior sections, which men
were only allowed to enter if they were members of the family or physicians. On
the other hand, in the classical and medieval periods, because the courtyards
were the venue for important ceremonies and rituals, the outer sections of thehouse became the women’s space. Uchi’ide then served to obscure the figures ofthe ladies-in-waiting serving the aristocratic women of the household from themen outside the bamboo blinds.

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4-1 Uchi’ide: Decorating “Inside” and “Outside”
Masasuke shōzokushō 雅亮装束抄 (Masasuke’s Notes on Court Costumes), a text describing the customs and rituals of the classical period dating from the latter halfof the 12th century, contains an entry on uchi’ide. According to the text,
ladies-in-waiting would sit face to face by the columns in a living area, and theedges of their clothing would be pushed out from under the bamboo blinds
such that, between two columns, one sleeve from two different costumes would
be shown.
Furthermore, in one section of Imakagami 今鏡 (Mirror of the Present) entitled“Ono no yukimi gokō” 小野雪見御幸 (“On the Occasion of Snow Viewing atOno”), when retired emperor Shirakawa 白河 unexpectedly calls on the Empress
Dowager at Ono 小野, there are not enough costumes prepared for an uchi’ide
display to properly receive him. Thus, the back of the costumes are cut, doubling
their number from ten to twenty, purely for the purpose of decorating the outside of the room. Based upon this story it can be surmised that, in everyday circumstances, uchi’ide served to adorn both the inner and outer areas of a given
space.
The fourteenth-century Komakurabe gyōkō emaki 駒競行幸絵巻 (Picture Scroll ofHorses of the Imperial Progress), also bears consideration in this discussion (seeFigure 4). This scene depicts a horse race held at the Kayanoin 高陽院 (a mansionof the Fujiwara regental line), at which Shōshi 彰子, also known as Jōtōmon’in
上東門院, is in attendance with her retinue. On the left (western) side, one ken
near the central seating area just to the left of the male aristocrats is empty but
for a portable curtain stand, but in the two intervals between the columns at theedge, the fringes of the female attendants’ costumes are visible peeking out inuchi’ide style (see Figure 4). The space between the columns in which only a curtain stand is visible indicates the presence of Imperial Lady Shōshi, and thus theuchi’ide presumably points to the presence of her ladies-in-waiting.
Similarly, according to the mid-Kamakura period text Sanjō nakayama kuden 三条中山口伝, uchi’ide was performed by the high ministers’ and regental houses, aswell as the retired or cloistered emperor, on the third day of New Year’s as partof the ritual salutation to the regent. It was set up at the start of the festival at a
minister’s household. In the event that the empress or the wife of the minister
was absent, no uchi’ide would occur, the presence or absence of ladies-in-waiting
thus being the primary factor in determining whether such a display would
be set up. Those below the rank of counselor (nagon 納言) would not stageuchi’ide.
The highly ranked noblewomen appearing in ōchō monogatari 王朝物語 (courtly
narratives) are generally served by 20 to 40 ladies-in-waiting. For example, texts
such as Murasaki Shikibu nikki 紫式部日記 (The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu) andEiga monogatari 栄花物語 (A Tale of Flowering Fortunes) make note of the numerous
ladies-in-waiting sitting behind bamboo blinds during formal occasions. Uchi’ide

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47

afforded not only the opportunity to display one’s own beauty and sophistication but also the social power of the noble lady of the house.
Tamakiharu describes the image of ladies-in-waiting sitting behind the bamboo
blinds during the emperor’s formal visit to his father and mother. The shinden of
the Hōjūjiden 法住寺殿 is used by the emperor, while the women’s territory
encompasses the eastern edge of the shinden and the two buildings to the east. The
ladies-in-waiting as per usual array themselves extravagantly, sitting from the veryedge of the uchi’ide display to the daibandokoro and the eastern hisashi of the shinden.
However, although the ladies line up beginning from eight in the morning, only theelderly are able to see the arrival of the imperial family via palanquin; the rest can
only listen to the sound of ranjō 乱声 music played for the occasion.
In Towazugatari とはずがたり (The Confessions of Lady Nijo), Gofukakusa’in Nijō
後深草院二条 (Lady Nijō) is requested to participate in Kitayama no Jugō’s 北山の准后 90th birthday celebration as a lady-in-waiting displayed via uchi’ide. Although Nijō disapproves of being so conspicuously displayed, she is persuaded
to participate because of her long relationship with Kitayama Jugō. Thus, fromthis story it may be inferred that, to a lady-in-waiting, participation via uchi’ide
in an event hosted by a woman with whom she had some connection was one
aspect of contemporary etiquette.
4-2 The Formation and Transformations of Uchi’ide
In its earliest incarnations, uchi’ide appeared merely as the natural event of garments spilling out from under bamboo blinds behind which the women wearing
them were hidden. However, it gradually developed into a ritualized display
which emphasized human absence.
The formal layout of a given space during an uchi’ide display was established in
the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. For example, according to Gyokuyō 玉葉(The Diary of Kujō Kanezane 九条兼実), which covers roughly the years 1164–
1200, the decoration of the perimeter of the imperial ladies’ and empress’ seating area was of primary importance. The text also describes the tsumado 妻戸(double doors) as the location for the reception of servants, and contains examples from the latter half of the twelfth century onward of uchi’ide being placednear the seating area of the male aristocrats.
While generally uchi’ide hinted at the presence of ladies-in-waiting, only showing the hems of their garments, examples of “female absent” uchi’ide, where thegarments alone were suspended from portable curtain stands and displayed, also
exist. As described in Tamakiharu, during the funereal memorial service held at
the Saishōkōindō 最勝光院堂 hall on the 21st of the tenth month of Jōan 承安 3(1173), while the ladies-in-waiting are seated in costume behind the uchi’ide, theuchi’ide is taller than the length of the garments, thus preventing outside onlookers from viewing the display. Because of this, the women are arrayed on the
inner side of the uchi’ide to set up a kind of double uchi’ide.

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4-3 Uchi’ide as Considered from the Inner (Female) SideHow was uchi’ide conceived of by both the inner side of the display (ladies-inwaiting) and the aristocratic outer side (men)? In this section, in considering thisquestion I look at Eiga monogatari, which contains a detailed account of uchi’ide as
told from the perspective of the ladies-in-waiting.
The 24th volume of Eiga monogatari contains an account of the great banquet
held by Empress Kenshi in the Biwadono 枇杷殿 (a detached palace in Kyoto)on the 23rd of the first month of Manju 万寿 2 (1025). From the previous night
to the day of the feast the ladies-in-waiting are completely engrossed in setting
up the uchi’ide. Aware that the high nobility would be sitting in the southern faceof the sunoko, the young ladies-in-waiting cultivate a spirit of competition
amongst themselves over the colors and coordination of their costumes. The
ladies with personal rooms temporarily erect folding screens or portable curtain
stands in their chambers, while the ladies from other towns take up residence inthe daibandokoro and do the same, tightly arraying themselves behind the screensand curtains. Their male patrons likewise take their places in the ladies’ chambers. In the west, from the southern hisashi of the shinden to the southeasternhisashi of the western tai, and in the east, from the southern hisashi of the shinden
to the watadono, the bamboo blinds are erected, and the ladies-in-waiting arrange
themselves, two for every one ken. According to the text, the sight of all of thedisplayed costume skirts is magnificent. In the eastern tai, the upper nobility sit
in the moya while the courtiers sit in the southern hisashi. Following the ritual salutation to the regent, the upper nobility descend the eastern stairs of the shinden
to the southern side of the sunoko and sit with the hems of their shitagasane
under-jackets trailing off of the balustrade.
The author explains that only about one shaku (30.3 centimeters) of the female attendants’ garments is visible; that the costume hems peeking out from under thebamboo blinds are so colorful and layered so thickly that the sight is reminiscentof pillow books bound with colored brocades; and that the garments’ cuffs areas round as small wooden braziers. Empress Kenshi cannot but be astonished.
According to the text, Fujiwara no Yorimichi is incensed by the extravaganceof the ladies’ costumes, and upon hearing of it, Yorimichi’s father, Fujiwara no
Michinaga 藤原道長, is similarly upset, and lays the whole event at the feet of his
son’s mismanagement.
4-4 Uchi’ide as Considered from the Outer (Male) SideA certain cool estimation of the import of uchi’ide may be seen occasionally inancient historical records or diaries penned by male aristocrats. In Chūyūki 中右記 (The Diary of Munetada, Minister of the Right), for example, the author describes
the uchi’ide display of the costumed ladies-in-waiting, bedecked with gold and silver embroidery, jewels, and brocade, at waka-kai (waka poetry parties), hokke hakkō
法華八講 lectures on the Lotus Sutra, and other similar events as “unsuitably luxurious beauty,” and thus goes into little detail describing the sight.

The Borders of Shindenzukuri

49

Similarly, the Gyokuyō entry for the 28th day of the fourth month of Kenkyū 建
久 4 (1193) describes the uchi’ide display for the Extraordinary Iwashimizu Festival(iwashimizu rinjisai 石清水臨時祭). Even though Bifukumon’in 美福門院 demurely
declines to participate in the uchi’ide, as her husband, retired emperor Toba’in 鳥羽院, will not be participating in the festival, Shichijō’in 七条院 (Fujiwara no
Shokushi 藤原殖子) intends to participate, a decision the author questions. However, on the day of the festival, Shichijō’in is menstruating and thus unable to enter
the court. In the end, the author problematizes the value of uchi’ide as a whole,and the entire passage reads as a criticism against Shichijō’in, who attempted todisplay her social power through uchi’ide.
Furthermore, again in Gyokuyō, the passage for the 19th day of the fifth monthof Jōan 4 (1173) contains the following query:
What good is uchi’ide on the occasion of judai (the presentation of imperial
brides)? There was uchi’ide for Yomeimon’in’s 陽明門院 (Princess Teishi’s 禎子)
entrance, but not for Ikuhōmon’in’s 郁芳門院―why the discrepancy? It is thegeneral consensus that uchi’ide occurs only very rarely in the Shishinden, the emperor’s ceremonial space.

From the point of view of a male aristocrat, then, it appears that uchi’ide was
not recognized as a public decoration. Moreover, the viewpoints presented in
texts penned by these male aristocrats versus those seen in diaries penned by theladies-in-waiting themselves present a largely dichotomous divergence in opinions on uchi’ide.
Conclusion
As evidenced above, shindenzukuri spaces were territories in which permitted
entrance and allowed location were regulated by both a person’s gender and social class. Fences and doors, differing floor levels, wall partitions, bamboo blinds
and portable curtain stands―these furnishings all carried additional meanings asborder creators.
Flexibility stood as the defining characteristic of these spaces in the classicaland medieval periods, as borders were able to be created and recreated as needed
during both ceremonial events and everyday life. Bamboo blinds and fabrics,
floor level differences, etc., all allowed people to exist in designated areas whilestill ultimately sharing the same space. On the other hand, in shoinzukuri architectural spaces appearing from the early modern period onward, the borders created by social class and gender were reified instead by differing buildings androoms; the segregating borders became physical structures integrated into thearchitecture itself.
In the classical and medieval periods, furniture and other furnishings lentmeaning and function to the spaces in which they were installed, with uchi’ide inparticularly coming into existence as an apparatus used to denote female seatingareas in ceremonial spaces. This placement or display of women’s clothing implied

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the otherwise invisible separation of the women’s domain from other spaces
within the estate. Much like how the use of Shinto shimenawa 注連縄 straw festoons or gohei 御幣 wands and other religious accoutrements made manifest theexistence of the deities, this visualization of gender domain demarcation wasachieved through a method of performative authority.
As ladies-in-waiting in service to the lady of the house, the women on the inner side of the uchi’ide, much like the male aristocrats in service to the emperor,
were explicitly relegated to specific allowed seating areas, whereby they acted asavatars of their mistress’ power along with their own beauty and cultivation. To
the male aristocrats allowed in the outer hisashi, watadono, and courtyards, among
other places, however, the sumptuous uchi’ide display served as little more thanan exercise in extravagance, and they criticized it thusly.
Uchi’ide gradually fell out of fashion after the late medieval period, with threemain factors contributing to its disappearance:(1) Ceremonies which were formally almost synonymous with the courtyard
gradually came to take place indoors instead.
(2) The hanging lattice-shutters, once emblematic of shindenzukuri, were gradually replaced by sliding doors, which thus led to the disappearance of theinter-column space where uchi’ide were set up.
(3) As events at which both men and women shared the same space, such asuta-awase, increasingly disappeared, the presence of ladies-in-waiting in these
event spaces was no longer displayed.
As a tool for displaying costumed ladies-in-waiting through the gap underbamboo blinds, uchi’ide stands as a cultural manifestation of the ladies-in-waiting
themselves who were eventually expelled from within noble manors, andtoday exists only in extant emaki-mono (picture scrolls) and period art, offering us
a glimpse of erstwhile scenes from the ancient past.
Principal References
Fujita Masaya 藤田勝也, Nihon kodai chūsei jūtaku shiron 日本古代中世住宅史論.
Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2002.
Furuse Natsuko 古瀬奈津子, Nihon kodai ōken to gishiki 日本古代王権と儀式.
Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1998.
Hirai Kiyoshi 平井聖, Nihon jūtaku no rekishi 日本住宅の歴史. Tokyo: NHK
Books, 1974.
Ike Kōzō 池浩三, Genji monogatari: sono sumai sekai 源氏物語―その住まい世界.
Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 1989.
Kawamoto Shigeo 川本重雄, “Shindenzukuri no naka no josei no kūkan” 寝殿
造の中の女性の空間. Rekihaku, 151, 2008.
Kawamoto Shigeo 川本重雄, Shindenzukuri no kūkan to gishiki 寝殿造の空間と儀式. Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2005.

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51

Tamakoshi Yoshio 玉腰芳夫, Sumai no genzōgaku: Tamakoshi Yoshio kenchiku ronshū す
まいの現象学―玉腰芳夫建築論集. Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan,
2013.
Nihon kenchiku gakkai 日本建築学会, Nihon kenchikushi zushū 日本建築史図集.
Tokyo: Shōkokusha, 2011.
Yoshizumi Kyōko 吉住恭子 “Uchi’ide: Nyōbō shōzoku ni yoru bi no enshutsu
to sono rekishiteki hensen” 打出―女房装束による美の演出とその歴史的変
遷, Fūzoku kaiga no bunkagaku III 風俗絵画の文化学Ⅲ. Kyoto: Shibunkaku
Shuppan, 2014.

Figure 1. Scene from The Picture Scroll of Annual Functions (Nenjū gyōji emaki 年中行事絵巻), Tanaka 田中 Family Collection.

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Figure 2. Seating arrangements in the Seiryōden 清涼殿 during the palace poetry
contest of Tentoku 天徳 4 (960). Image modeled on the one in Nihon kenchikushi
zushū 日本建築史図集. Tokyo: Shōkokusha, 2007.

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Figure 3. Diagram of Empress Kanshi’s Spring and Autumn Poetry Contest. Image
modeled on the one in Nihon kenchikushi zushū 日本建築史図集. Tokyo: Shōkokusha,
2007.

Figure 4. A scene from the Picture Scroll of Horses of the Imperial Progress (Komakurabe gyōkō emaki 駒競行幸絵巻, Izumi City Kubosō Memorial
Arts Museum Collection, fourteenth century).

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Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture 1 (July 2018) 57–61© 2018 National Institute of Japanese Literature

Saigyō:The Monk Who Travelled Between
Two Worlds
yoshino Tomomi
Translated by Kristopher reevesSaigyō 西行 (1118–1190) was not only a Buddhist monk but an admired poetof vernacular verse (waka) as well. It was through both his religious and literary activities that Saigyō succeeded in traversing a number of borders, suchas that between life and death, the holy and the profane, the past and the future,
this world of living men and the purgatory of condemned souls, man and nature,borders relating to social class, along with those supposed to exist between Buddhist divinities and nativistic deities. Saigyō was certainly no magician; it was not bymeans of any magical spells that he was able to actually traverse these borders.
Above all else, Saigyō adopted vernacular poetry as the ideal vehicle for exploring
imaginary realities, other worlds existing—if not in actuality, at least in fancy—
beyond his immediate environs. How exactly did Saigyō accomplish these poetic
journeys? What manner of literary devices did he employ? There are, it seems tome, two primary strategies repeatedly used by Saigyō. First, his practice of including certain telling phrases, the intoning of which was supposed to somehow assist
the reader in bridging the gap between one world and another. Second, Saigyō isfond of using appeals or direct petitions to unseen beings, along with the related
literary devices of analogy and personification.
Regarding the first strategy, that is, the use of certain phrases believed to assist
the reader in travelling between two worlds, let us focus our attention here on the
curious expression wa ga nochi no yo, which may be rendered in English simply as“when I am gone,” or, more literally, “that world (or life) to which I shall go after
death.” This expression occurs twice in Sankashū 山家集 (Poems of a Mountain
Home, late 12th century), Saigyō’s personal collection of vernacular poems.1 Significantly, this particular expression does not seem to have been used by any otherpoet before Saigyō. This was, for all we know, a unique invention of Saigyō’s
For a full English translation of this collection, see Burton Watson, trans., Saigyō: Poems of a
Mountain Home. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
1

57

58

yoshinoFigure 1. Image accompanying the poem “If anyone should come to pay his respects
to my soul [. . .] place as your offering a cherry blossom before the Buddhist statue
atop my grave.” From Saigyō monogatari (NIJL, Ukai bunko 鵜飼文庫, item no. 96–616,
image no. 65).
https://doi.org/10.20730/200020115

poetic genius. It should be understood that, in the world of vernacular poetry
where conformity to tradition, including traditional poetic diction, was strictly regulated, the introduction of a new expression such as this exerted a real influence
over both contemporary and later poets. Now, let us look at those two poems inwhich Saigyō uses this new expression of his:O, pine tree, I implore you, do pay your respects to the place I once was longafter I have left this world for the next, for there is no one else in all the world
who will ever remember me.
(Sankashū, poem no. 1358)
If anyone should come to pay his respects to my soul after I have gone to thenext world, please, I beg, place as your offering a cherry blossom when someone would hold a service for my soul (see Figure 1).
(Sankashū, poem no. 78)

In the first poem, the phrase “after I have left this world for the next” corresponds to the original wa ga nochi no yo わが後の世, while in the second, this same
expression has been translated as “gone to the next world.” As may be plainly seenfrom these poems, the use of this expression allows the poet, who is still living inSaigyō59

Figure 2. Saigyō and Mount Fuji. From Saigyō monogatari (NIJL, Ukai bunko, item
no. 96–616, image no. 36).
https://doi.org/10.20730/200020115

this mortal world, to imagine himself as though he were already in the land of thedeceased. Again, this is something very unique to the poetry of Saigyō. Anotherpoem of his, while not employing this particular expression, nevertheless reveals
the same attitude of meditating intensely upon his own demise:This soul of mine is like the smoke that issues forth from Mount Fuji only to drift
away and dissipate somewhere in the sky: there is no telling where it will go after
this (see Figure 2).
(Shin kokin wakashū, miscellaneous poems II, poem no. 1615)

Just how idiosyncratic, and indeed how essential, this manner of expression wasto the inner life and work of Saigyō may be appreciated by the fact that only one
other poet, namely, the monk Jien 慈円 (1155–1225), is known to have used thisexpression repeatedly in his own verses. It is for this very reason, I suspect, that
Jien is seen as the spiritual successor of Saigyō.
Of course, wa ga nochi no yo—the world after this one—is not the only example
of an expression meant to assist the reader in imaginatively projecting himself
into another world. Saigyō was fond of including certain place names, dialecticalwords used only in limited areas, as well as curious expressions used only by, say,fishermen and lumberjacks, as a means of blurring the boundaries between theholy and the profane, between the elegant and the mundane.

60

yoshinoFigure 3. Saigyō pays his respects to the tomb of Retired Emperor Sutoku. From
Saigyō monogatari (NIJL, Ukai bunko, item no. 96–616, image no. 57). This image may
be accessed at https://doi.org/10.20730/200020115.

Turning now to the second strategy—Saigyō’s use of appeals, analogy, and personification—let us look at an example of a poem employing direct petition, in
this case, to the soul of Emperor Sutoku 崇徳天皇 (1119–1164, r. 1123–1141):
If it must be so, then so be it. Dear sovereign, even supposing you were stillseated upon your jeweled throne, what comfort could that possibly afford
where you are now—now that you have left this world of men?
(Sankashū, poem no. 1355)

Direct appeals of this sort are encountered quite frequently in Saigyō’s poetry,
where they serve as the most important vehicle by which other worlds are imaginatively reached. In the above poem, Saigyō, having visited the grave of Emperor
Sutoku upon Mount Shiromine 白峰, in Sanuki 讃岐 (modern-day Kagawa)—theplace, so far away from the capital, where Sutoku died in exile—proceeds to address
the soul of the deceased sovereign (see Figure 3). By thus envisioning the spirit of
Sutoku as though it stood before him, Saigyō is able to temporarily transcend theboundaries between the living and the dead and, through the medium of poetry,engage Sutoku as a fellow man. Nowhere in any of the eight imperial anthologies ofvernacular poetry—from the early tenth century through to the beginning of thethirteenth century—do we find any examples of a poet directly addressing or con-

Saigyō61

versing with the departed. This strategy, too, is wholly unique to the work of Saigyō.
The thought of addressing the soul of a deceased Emperor Sutoku at his
gravesite captured the imagination of later writers. Some were inspired to imagine
that Sutoku, moved by Saigyō’s verses, either appeared in the form of a spirit before the monk, or made his presence known by means of a formless voice alone.
A Kamakura-period collection of anecdotal tales known as Shasekishū 沙石集(Sand and Pebbles, 1278–1283) contains one such tale.2 Saigyō, we are told, while
passing through Sanuki, recited his “If it must be so” poem over Sutoku’s grave,“composing his verses there on the spot, just as they came, in accordance with his
deep sense of sympathy” for the departed soul. Moved by this show of sincerity,
Sutoku responded, albeit faintly from beneath the ground, with a poem of his own:
Plovers leave their tracks in the sandy shore, while the calligrapher’s brush leaves
its inky traces in a letter. Letters can be sent to the capital, whereas I, confined tothis solitary mountain of pine trees, can but cry, like the birds that visit me here.

This episode may be compared to another, of similar content, found in the
Kotohira MS of Hōgen monogatari 保元物語 (The Tale of Hōgen, c. 1320), a military talewhich vividly depicts those circumstances surrounding the Hōgen Rebellion of1156, in which Retired Emperor Sutoku, having failed in an attempt to wrest thethrone from Emperor Go-Shirakawa 後白河天皇 (1127–1192, r. 1155–1158), is
ignobly sent into exile in Sanuki. Sutoku is presented to us as having perished in
Sanuki, bitter and full of rage, cursing the world for his ill fortune. Some time passes,
and Saigyō is shown paying his respects to the deceased sovereign’s sorely unkempt
grave. Utterly overcome with sadness at the thought of poor Sutoku, imagining how
much the man wished to return to his beloved capital, and with what rage he musthave perished, Saigyō falls down at the lonely graveside and indulges in tears. In the
midst of his weeping, the monk fancies he hears a voice speaking to him in verse:
Compare me to a little boat, which, having drifting haplessly upon the waves, wasthrown upon the shore of this lonely mountain of pines. Here the boat yet remains, dry, brittle, and broken—of no more use to anyone.

Saigyō, in turn, responds to this with his famous “If it must be so” poem. Asa final sign of appreciation, the buried sovereign replies with a series of threebrief tremors that shake the earth about his grave. Whether inspiring a dead sovereign to reply, or causing his gravesite to miraculously quake, Saigyō’s poem
served as a means of communicating with souls of the deceased. The real power
behind these verses lies in Saigyō’s effective use of the direct appeal. It is thisdevice that allows the poet to transcend the border between life and death, between his own immediate surroundings and some other imagined world. Herein
we are certain discover the lasting charm of Saigyō’s poetic legacy.
2
The tale in question is preserved in fascicle 5, part II, tale no. 6. For a full English translationof this collection, see Robert Morrell, trans., Sand and Pebbles: The Tales of Muju Ichinen, a Voicefor Pluralism in Kamakura Buddhism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985.

Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture 1 (July 2018) 63–77© 2018 National Institute of Japanese Literature

The Space and Liminalityof Folding Screens:
Iconography of the Sea and Pine Trees
ido Misato
Translated by Kristopher reeves

Introduction: Unfolding a Folding Screen
Folding screens, as their Sinitic name, byōbu 屛風, implies, serve to block out(byō) undesired drafts (bu). Furthermore, these screens serve as practical portablepartitions for separating larger spaces into smaller compartments. Historical
documents strongly suggest that, aside from these more obviously pragmaticfunctions, folding screens were also employed for ceremonial purposes in various annual events and other ritual spaces. Unlike more permanent partitions,such as sliding doors decorated with painted images (fusuma 襖), folding screens
could be stored away, taken out, and moved about as necessity required. Consequently, it is often difficult to say with much precision exactly where a given folding screen might once have been used. Moreover, while documents from the
Heian period include numerous references to folding screens, evidence that suchfurnishings were indeed abundant, only one folding screen from the period has
survived to the present, namely, the byōbu depicting a landscape scene (Senzui
byōbu 山水屛風) preserved at Tōji Temple 東寺. With such a dearth of extant examples, it is no easy task to reconstruct the world of artistic imagery once seen
on folding screens throughout the Heian period.
Comprehensive research into those spaces in which folding screens were
employed has already been carried out. Investigations of so-called “paintingswithin-paintings” (gachūga 画中画), depictions of painted folding screens embedded within illustrations found in illustrated scrolls (emaki 絵巻), have revealed agreat deal about such spaces.1 For example, in the Hōnen Shōnin eden 法然上人絵
See Mochimaru Kazuo 持丸一夫, “Ishiyamadera engi to Boki ekotoba ni arawareta shōheiga” 石
山寺縁起と慕記絵詞に現れた障屏画, Bijutsu kenkyū, 169, March 1953. Mochimaru Kazuo“Hōnen eden ni arawareta shōheiga” 法然絵伝に現れた障屏画, Bijutsu kenkyū, 171, November
1953. Takeda Tsuneo 武田恒夫, “Chūsei shōheiga to sono gachūga” 中世障屏画とその画中画, in
Chūsei shōheiga 中世障屏画. Kyoto: Kyōto National Museum, 1970.
1

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伝 (Illustrated Biography of Master Hōnen, 1307–1310) we find a depiction of

Hōnen’s (1133–1212) birth (scroll 1, section 2), as well as another of the deathof his father, who died around the year 1141 (scroll 1, section 5). Likewise, in the
Takada Manuscript of Shinran shōnin eden 親鸞聖人絵伝 (Illustrated Biography ofMaster Shinran, oldest manuscript dated 1295), we find depictions of Shinran’s(1173–1263) taking the tonsure, as well as his funeral. All of these scenes—
depictions of birth, departure from the home to become a monk, and death—
include illustrations of folding screens. Scroll 1, section 3 of the Taima mandara
engi emaki 当麻曼荼羅縁起絵巻 (Illustrated Scroll of the Origins of the Taima Mandara,
mid-Kamakura) includes an illustration of Princess Chūjō 中将姫 (747–775) anda Buddhist nun dipping lotus fibers into a well in order to prepare the thread for
dying—thread which, bound as it is to be used in weaving the Taima mandara,
suddenly and miraculously takes on five vibrant colors. In this scene, the princess and her female companions are surrounded by a series of folding screens.
Scroll 5, section 1 of the Ishiyamadera engi emaki 石山寺縁起絵巻 (Illustrated Scrollof the Origin of Ishiyamadera Temple, mid-fourteenth century) shows the estranged
wife of Fujiwara no Kuniyoshi 藤原国能 (n.d.) secluding herself within the precincts of Ishiyamadera Temple, vowing to remain within the temple until her
death. Behind her stands a folding screen, in front of which can be seen thebodhisattva Kannon, appearing in her dream in response to the woman’s
prayers.
These and other examples of the sort draw attention to the fact that folding
screens, beyond their more mundane, purely practical function as indoor furnishings, furthermore served as a material medium capable of delineating temporary
spaces. Kanmon nikki 看聞日記 (Memoir of Things Seen and Heard, 1416–1448), adiary composed by Prince Sadafusa 貞成親王 (1372–1456), father of Emperor
Go-Hanazono 後花園天皇 (1419–1471, r. 1428–1464), and which records detailsof daily court life and rituals, demonstrates that folding screens were an integral
part of the indoor furnishings prepared especially for such auspicious occasions
as Buddhist services, poetry matches, and tea ceremonies. Interestingly, folding
screens, which were prepared (or sometimes borrowed) prior to the event inwhich they were to be used, were promptly removed and stored away, along withthe flowers and vases, soon after the event in question had been concluded. That
is to say, folding screens were erected not merely as decorative accoutrements, but
as partitions delineating a sacred ceremonial space, clearly separating that spacefrom the mundane world.2 An illustration appearing in Daijōin jisha zōjiki 大乗院
寺社雑事記 (Miscellaneous Records of Daijōin Temple, 1450–1527) depicts the scene ata Tanabata 七夕 Festival, in which the sitting area is surrounded by a gold-leaf-gilt
folding screens (see Figure 1).
Ido Misato 井戸美里, “Kanmon nikki ni okeru zashiki no shitsurai” 看聞日記における座敷の
室礼, in Matsuoka Shinpei 松岡心平, ed., Kanmon nikki to chūsei bunka 看聞日記と中世文化. Tokyo:
2

Shinwasha, 2010.

The Space and Liminality of Folding Screens65This article is an investigation into the function of folding screens, during thefifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as temporary delineators of sacred spaces, withspecial emphasis on the materiality and iconography of these screens. I will consider here only those folding screens decorated with paintings dealing primarily
with what are conventionally considered native Japanese themes—collectively
known as yamato-e byōbu やまと絵屛風, or Yamato-style painted folding screens—as opposed to those screens decorated with images reminiscent of Sinitic
themes and personages (kara-e byōbu 唐絵屛風).
1. Yamato-style Folding Screens: Materiality and Function as Delineatorsof Sacred Space
An entry in the aforementioned Kanmon nikki dated to the sixth day of theseventh month in the fourth year of Eikyō 永享 (1432) gives some details about
those furnishings prepared for the Tanabata Festival that was to take place thefollowing evening. In particular, two folding screens were borrowed expressly
for the occasion: one, which depicted pine trees in four seasons, was accentuated with some form of gold pigment or foil (kinmigakitsuke 金磨付), while othersported paintings of the sea, boats, and pine trees. This entry, being one of theearliest records of Yamato-style folding screens from the Muromachi period,
has drawn much attention. Unfortunately, very few actual examples of folding
screens from that period survive. Furthermore, as the Muromachi period saw
the efflorescence of a new style of ink painting deeply influenced by Zen philosophy, not much consideration has been given to painted folding screens ofthat era. An exhibition entitled “Folding Screens of the Muromachi Period”(Muromachi jidai no byōbu-e), held at the Tokyo National Museum back in 1989,
which introduced the public to then newly discovered folding screens, marked
the first attempt at drawing attention to this topic. The catalogue published inassociation with this exhibition contains an introductory essay by Tsuji Nobuo
辻惟雄, a specialist in the history of Japanese art, which is especially informative.
Somewhat more recently, in 2007, the Suntory Museum of Art organized an
exhibition entitled “BIOMBO/byōbu,” in which the function of folding screens
received serious consideration.3 In this section, using the entry from Kanmon
nikki mentioned above as a starting point, I would like to consider in some detailthe materiality of gold pigment or foil, as well as iconography of the sea, boats,and pines.
I will begin with a brief summary of extant Yamato-style folding screens produced duringt the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Four such examples, insofar as
3
Sakakibara Satoru 榊原悟, “Byōbu=girei no ba no chōdo: sōsō to shussan wo rei ni” 屏風＝儀礼の場の調度―葬送と出産を例に, in Nagaoka Ryūsaku 長岡龍作, ed., Kōza Nihon bijutsushi
daiyonkan zōkei no ba 講座日本美術史 第四巻 造形の場, Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai,2005. Considerations in this article pertaining to the function of folding screens in relation to
funerals and childbirth rely to a great deal on Sakakibara’s research.

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they seem to reflect the sort of paintings recorded in Kanmon nikki, are particularly
noteworthy here: the “Matsuzu byōbu” 松図屛風 (Pine Screen), attributed to
Tosa Mitsunobu 土佐光信 (c.1434–1525) (Tokyo National Museum); three folding screens known collectively as “Hamamatsuzu byōbu” 浜松図屛風, depicting
pine trees growing along the seashore, one of which is privately owned, theother two being in the collections of Tokyo National Museum and the Agency
for Cultural Affairs; the “Jitsugetsu sansuizu byōbu” 日月山水図屛風, containing
paintings of the sun, moon, and landscape (Kongōji Temple 金剛寺, Osaka); andthe “Shiki kabokuzu byōbu” 四季花木図屛風, which depicts seasonal flowers(Idemitsu Museum of Arts). Izumi Mari avers that these folding screens wereintended to serve as decorative furnishings for auspicious events, considering
the generous use of gold, silver, and mica, embellishments often found on decorative offertory sutras.4
Next, let us return to contemporaneous written records and see in what manner these decorative folding screens were used. The first folding screen mentioned in the entry from Kanmon nikki—pine tree in all four seasons, embellishedwith gold pigment or foil—is the first recorded instance of a gold-ground folding screen decorated with the image of a pine tree. Entries regarding Buddhist
services conducted for the shogun found in the diary Inryōken nichiroku 蔭凉軒日
録 (Daily Records of the Inryōken, 1435–1493) reveals that on such occasions, folding screens depicting pine trees surrounded by azaleas, bamboo were erectedbehind memorial tablets and household altars (see entries for Chōkyō 長享 3[1489]4.8 and Entoku 延徳 3 [1491]1.28). We are told, in this same source, thatit sometimes took up to several months before gold-ground folding screens of
this sort could be obtained for a funeral. The presence of such lavish furnishings
at funerals was an absolute necessity. Moreover, aside from their use within
Japanese households, Yamato-style folding screens embellished with gold pigment
or foil were also sent as gifts to China and Korea.5 Documents from the fifteenthand sixteenth centuries bear ample witness to the fact that these gold-groundfolding screens were produced and employed exclusively for special events andceremonies. A number of theories have been put forward as to the precise nature of the term kinmigakitsuke—gold pigment or foil. It would appear that thismethod of embellishing folding screens was somewhat different from that usedin later generations, namely, the application of minute gold flakes or foil overthe entire surface of the folding screen. Instead, this older method consisted ofa layer of adhesive gold pigment (kindei 金泥)—a mixture of gold foil andglue—spread over the surface of the screen, to which was then variously applied
Izumi Mari 泉万里, “Chūsei byōbu no kira to kingin” 中世屏風の雲母と金銀, Kokka, 117,
August 1995.
5
Akazawa Eiji 赤澤英二, “Jūgo seiki ni okeru kinbyōbu ni tsuite” 十五世紀における金屏風について, in Takeda Tsuneo 武田恒夫 and Yamane Yūzō 山根有三, ed., Nihon byōbue shūsei 日本屏風絵集成, volume 6. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1978.
4

The Space and Liminality of Folding Screens67

finely cut filaments and powder-like flecks of gold foil, known respectively as noge
野毛 (wild hair) and sunago 砂子 (sand grain).6
It is not surprising that gold-ground folding screens should have been associated with Buddhist services, considering the many depictions in Buddhist scriptures of the Pure Land, a paradise whose ponds and roads purportedly shimmered with a bright golden hue. Furthermore, Takeda Tsuneo has pointed outthat the highly refined and finished quality, the very materiality of gold foil itself,might have readily suggested itself to contemporary minds as something befitting religious events.7 Rooms designated for the purpose of childbirth were decorated not with gold-ground folding screens, but with screens embellished exclusively with mica (shiroe byōbu 白絵屛風), giving them a distinctly whitish glow.
Mica was believed to exert salubrious medicinal effects.8 Yamato-style folding
screens embellished with various combinations of gold, silver, and mica wereclearly differentiated: a preponderance of gold foil destined one screen for Buddhist services, while a preponderance of mica made another suitable for the precarious ordeal of childbirth. Whatever the occasion, these folding screens served
as partitions marking off a sacred or pure space from the more secular, surrounding areas. It was, in fact, the glistening qualities of gold, silver, and mica
pigment—the concrete materiality of these substances—that endowed thesefolding screens with the perceived power to transform secular and impure space
into sacred purified space. Of course, the materiality of these screens was not
the only factor at play. The specific images and motifs painted upon their surfaces contributed just as much to the elevated status of folding screens and theiruse in special occasions. One clear example of this is the presence on mica-ground folding screens erected during childbirth of such auspicious images
as pine trees, bamboo, cranes, and turtles, all of which suggest longevity andconstancy. The aforementioned “Senzui byōbu” and “Jitsugetsu sansuizu
byōbu” (Kongōji Temple) are said to have been used during Esoteric initiation
rituals (kanjō 灌頂) for Buddhist monks. We may safely conclude that natural images of mountains, rivers, the sun, and the moon, as depicted on these and othersimilar screens, were seen as fitting images for these ceremonies.
2. Iconography of Yamato-style Folding Screens
The three “Hamamatsuzu byōbu” mentioned above are, representative examples of folding screens produced during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
each depicting pine trees growing along the seashore, along with the occasional
Yamane Yūzō, “Muromachi jidai kaiga ni okeru kin to gin: senmenga to byōbue wo chūshin
ni” 室町時代絵画における金と銀―扇面画と屏風絵を中心に―, Kokka, 1200, November 1995.
7
Takeda Tsuneo 武田恒夫, “Kinpeki shōhekiga ni tsuite” 金碧障壁画について, Bukkyō geijutsu,
59, December 1965.
8
Izumi Mari 泉万里, “Chūsei byōbu no kira to kingin” 中世屏風の雲母と金銀, Kokka, 117,
August 1995.
6

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seasonal bird or flower (see Figure 2).9 These folding screens bring to mind
the description of the second of two folding screens recorded in the entry in
Kanmon nikki mentioned above. The diary describes this screen as having been
decorated with images of the sea, boats, and pine trees. Among the three extant“Hamamatsuzu byōbu,” there are those that, aside from seashore pines, also
depict flowers and birds of the four seasons, along with small boats. Moreover,in the case of the aforementioned “Shiki kabokuzu byōbu” and “Jitsugetsu
sansuizu byōbu”, we see flowers of all four seasons lining the seashore. In the
Ishiyamadera engi emaki, already introduced above in relation to the practice ofembedding images of painted folding screens within paintings appearing in illustrated handscrolls, when the bodhisattva Kannon appears, we are shown a folding screen upon which can clearly be seen the image of a seashore pine, exactlyof the type preserved in the “Hamamatsuzu byōbu” screens. Similarly, in thethird section of an illustrated manuscript of the tale Utatane sōshi うたたね草子(A Wakeful Sleep, early sixteenth century) (National Museum of Japanese History),
we see a folding screen that depicts a seaside pine. This folding screen appears at
a key moment in the tale when a woman, making her way to Ishiyamadera Temple—the same temple whose miraculous origins are recounted in the Ishiyamaderaengi emaki—suddenly meets in person the man she had heretofore only known in
the world of dreams. The aforementioned Shinran shō’nin eden, in depicting thedeath of Shinran, includes a sliding door upon which can be seen the paintingof a sandy seashore. No doubt, the sandy banks of a wave-beaten seashore wererich with poignant connotations.
It is not easy to trace the origin of this image of sandy seashore, known as suhama.
The Isle of Penglai 蓬莱 (J: Hōraitō), that idyllic island-home of the blessed
immortals believed to be located somewhere east of Parhae, was a prominent
topos in Sinitic literature. In Japan, the Isle of Penglai came to symbolize anotherworldly place somewhere far out to sea, associated, among other things,
with Mount Fudaraku 補陀落山 (Skt: Potalaka), temporary dwelling place of thebodhisattva Kannon while on earth, such that the seashore itself served as asymbol of the sacred and the otherworldly. The “Jigoku gokurakuzu byōbu” 地
獄極楽図屛風, a folding screen produced sometime during the thirteenth andfourteenth century, (Konkai kōmyōji Temple 金戒光明寺), in Kyoto, depicts
scenes both of the Buddhist purgatory and of the Pure Land. In this depiction,
the Pure Land towers atop a sandy seashore somewhere far over the sea. Here,too, the seashore represents a sacred space. Even more interesting is the fact that
For research on the three “Hamamatsuzu byōbu” screens, see Tanaka Ichimatsu 田中一松,“Hamamatsuzu byōbu” 浜松図屏風, Kokka, 738, September 1953; Mochimaru Kazuo, “Hamamatsuzu byōbu ni tsuite” 浜松図屏風について, Bijutsu kenkyū, 177, September 1954; Mizuo
Hiroshi 水尾博, “Hamamatsuzu byōbu” 浜松図屏風, Kokka, 806, April 1959; Izumi Mari, Chūsei
byōbue kenkyū 中世屏風絵研究. Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2013; Izumi Mari, “Hamamatsuzu byōbu (held by the Ministry of Culture): Umibe no Shikie” 浜松図屏風 (文化庁蔵): 海
辺の四季絵, Kokka, 1432, February 2015.
9

The Space and Liminality of Folding Screens

69

this folding screen was produced expressly for use in the Buddhist service conducted for those who were about to breath their last. Upon the reverse side ofthis same screen may be seen a painting of Amida 阿弥陀 (Skt: Amitābha), theBuddha who welcomed the departed souls of the faithful into paradise. Marksaround his hand where five-colored strings were once attached—strings representing karmic bonds, which believers would grip in the final throes of death—can still be discerned. This folding screen served as a powerful medium for guiding newly departed souls into the Pure Land.10
Folding screens were not the only medium through which this image of thesacred seashore was artistically depicted. Miniature models, known as tsukurimono
つくり物, literally, “fabricated objects,” were constructed, often as a means ofrepresenting the Isle of Penglai, replete with tiny flowers, birds, and sometimes
people. The earliest recorded use of such miniature models occurs in relation to
the grand eye-opening (kaigen 開眼) ceremony—roughly similar to the modern-day
unveiling ceremony of a monumental sculpture— conducted in the fourth
month of the fourth year of Tenpyō shōhō 天平勝宝 (752) in celebration of thecompletion of the Great Buddha at Tōdaiji Temple 東大寺. The Shōsōin Treasury 正倉院 at that same temple contains two miniature representations ofscene, one known as the Lotus Pond (Renchi 蓮池), the other as the Ephemeral
Mountain (Kazan), which might very well represent the sort of models employed during the eye-opening ceremony of 752.11 Waves beating against theseashore, constantly in motion, forever taking on new shapes, have, since ancient
antiquity, been invested with a sense of the sacred. The following poem is a fineexample of this: “The waves coming in at Shiga Bay (Shiga no ura 志賀の浦) glisten with an array of five colors—a reminder of that ancient age when [the deityof Miwa 三輪] descended from the heavens and strode across shore.”12 Anothertelling poem reveals the close relationship between waves along the seashore, on
the one hand, and pine trees and birds, on the other: “Countless birds floating
upon the water’s evening waves cry out as the wind signs its lonesome tune
through pine trees along Shiga Bay.”13 The seashore, waves, flowers and trees—pine trees especially—were all understood as being somehow sacred, or symbols
Kasuya Makoto 加須屋誠, Bukkyō setsuwaga no kinō: shigan to higan no ikonorojī 仏教説話画の機能―此岸と彼岸のイコノロジー. Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2003.
11
For research pertaining to these miniature models of the seashore, see Inagi Nobuko 稲城信子, “Tsukurimono no keifu: suhama, yamagata, shimeyama” 造物の系譜―洲浜・山形・標山など, Gangōji bunkazai kenkyūjo nenpō, 1977–1978, March 1979; Koizumi Masako 小泉賢子,“Suhama ni tsuite” 洲浜について, Bijutsushi kenkyū, 33, November 1995; Sano Midori 佐野みどり, Fūryū, zōkei, monogatari: Nihon bijutsu no kōzō to yōtai 風流・造形・物語: 日本美術の構造と様態.
10Tokyo: Sukaidoa, 1997.
12
Shūgyokushū 拾玉集, poem no. 1484. Hirata Hideo 平田英夫, “Seinaru nami no denshō:chūsei jingika no ‘sasanami ’ wo megutte” 聖なる波の伝承―中世神祇歌の『ささ波』をめぐって―, Chūsei bungaku, 47, June 2002.
13
Horikawa hyakushu 堀川百首, poem no. 977.

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of the sacred. Miniature models, likely similar to those described above, werecreated and displayed during poetry matches. While this is not the place for a
detailed examination of these models, suffice it to say these contained representations of pine trees, bamboo, cranes, and various flowers and trees, and were,along with folding screens likewise containing paintings of pine trees growing
along a wave-beaten shore, an integral part of the elaborate performances witnessed at these poetry matches.
3. Folding Screens and Performance Venues: From Temporary Furnishings to Permanent Fixtures
a. Furnishings for Ritual Spaces
Let us return to the entry in Kanmon nikki dealing with the Tanabata Ritual.
The two folding screens displayed during that event were, as previously noted,
not merely decorative furnishings, but partitions, endowed as they were withhighly-refined, reflective gold pigment, along with auspicious representations of
the sea, boats, and pine trees, capable of delineating a unique space in which thebanquet could be held. Rituals and public banquets, however, were not the only
venues in which folding screens were employed in order to temporarily demarcate specially designated spaces. Folding screens were also used in a variety ofways within the private home, where they also served as markers or dividers ofspace. It is necessary, when examining the uses of folding screens within private
homes, to distinguish between those folding screens intended for purely practical, daily use—merely as temporary partitions—on the one hand, and those intended for some special purpose, on the other. One way of doing this is to pay
attention to the decorative properties of a given screen, namely, its materiality
and its iconography, and to what sorts of pigments and materials are used, andthe types of images and motifs painted upon its surface. We must also take into
consideration the manner or orientation in which a given folding screen wasplaced. During inauspicious occasions, for example, a folding screen normallyemployed for daily use would be turned upside down as a means of temporarily
symbolizing the transformation of otherwise mundane space into somethingout of the ordinary.14
Aside from their use in temporarily delineating sacred or pure spaces during
such special events as childbirth, funerals, and Buddhist services, I would argue
that folding screens were used, moreover, during the Muromachi period, as ameans of demarcating or encircling performative venues. Performances of thetea ceremony, poetry matches, and Nō plays all necessitated the temporary delineation of a special space in which actors and audiences could appreciate these
events. There has been little, if any, research done into the precise manner in
Suzuki Hiroyuki 鈴木廣之, “Kaiga no arukeorojī: Muromachi jidai ni okeru byōbue no igi”
絵画のアルケオロジー―室町時代における屏風絵の意義, Kokka, 1200, November 1995.
14

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71

which folding screens were positioned around these venues. Kanmon nikki informs us that, upon the performance of a tea ceremony, a poetry match, or about of linked poetry, the sliding doors were removed and replaced with folding
screens, which were arranged in such a way so as to encircle the entire venue.
The Inryōken nichiroku tells us that gold-ground folding screens were arranged
around the venue of a poetry match in which Sinitic verses were presented.15 Regardless of the particular event, these folding screens were, as a rule, removed
and stored away after the event had been concluded.
The practice of arranging folding screens around a given venue seems to havewaned during the Momoyama period, that is, the last two decades of the fifteenth century, when a new form of residential architecture known as shoinzukuri
書院造 (study or drawing room layout) came into fashion. The demarcation of
separate rooms within the house was then, as now, executed by means of permanent walls, while sliding doors, decorated with painted images and fitted into
these walls, could be opened or closed to either enlarge or limit the size of aroom when so desired. One question begs to be asked: how did the traditions
governing the proper furnishing of special venues, detailed in contemporary
sources such as Kanmon nikki, transform as tea rooms (chashitsu 茶室) and Nō 能
stages became permanent and highly specialized fixtures? The following examination of folding screens and images of the seashore used in tea ceremony andother performative venues, while not strictly of indoor furnishings, neverthelessoffers a glimpse into at least the vestiges of earlier Muromachi-period practices
of indoor furnishings, when folding screens still played a central role in the demarcation of space.
b. Concepts of the Seashore as Seen in the Tea Ceremony
The space designated for a performance of the tea ceremony was originallyreferred to as a kakoi 囲い, that is, an encircled space: before the development ofspecialized tea rooms, the tea ceremony was customarily carried out in the corner of a larger room. Sōtan nikki 宗湛日記 (The Diary of Sōtan, 1586–1613) includes an entry for the fifth day of the fifth month in the second year of Keichō
慶長 (1597), wherein we are told of a tea ceremony performed by the seashore,with participants encircled by a gold-ground folding screen. Here, instead ofbringing the seashore to the tea performance in the form of a painting or model,
as was customary, we see the performers bringing their tea to the seashore. Thisparticular tea ceremony was of special significance: an assembly of daimyo was
temporarily camped along the seashore of Hakata, where they were rallying
troops in preparation for a large-scale invasion of Korea. The tea ceremony washeld at Iki no matsubara 生松原, literally, the plain of living (or life-giving) pines,
Akazawa Eiji 赤澤英二, “Jūgo seiki ni okeru kinbyōbu ni tsuite” 十五世紀における金屏風について, in Takeda Tsuneo 武田恒夫 and Yamane Yūzō 山根有三, ed., Nihon byōbue shūsei 日本屏風絵集成, volume 6. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1978.
15

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a coastal region in Hakata. The venue for this tea ceremony was delineated by asingle gold-ground folding screen. The iron tea kettle was hung from the lower
branch of a pine tree, while the charcoal for boiling water was heated directly
upon the sandy seashore. After the development of specialized, permanent tea
rooms, the inner space of the tea ceremony was reached through a low-frameddoor cut into the wall expressly for that purpose. Once in the room, one was effectively cut off from the everyday world outside. Once settled in the quiet of
the tea room, one would, upon hearing the soft bubbling of boiling water in the
kettle, call to mind the rustling of wind through pine trees.16 Some tea ceremonies would adopt the use of painted images of waves and so-called matsushima(pine island) tea jar in order to further enhance the atmosphere.17 In other words,
the seashore, being as it was a symbol of otherworldliness, of something whollyout of the ordinary, was incorporated into the interior space of the tea room bymeans of various artistic innovations.
This tea ceremony detailed in Sōtan nikki, what with its stalwart daimyo andtheir soldiers setting up a gold-ground folding screen by the roaring seashore,
anticipating the imminent invasion of Korea, may seem contrary to modern
conceptions of the tea ceremony, which is now seen as a sublimely peaceful
event. It must be understood, however, that during the Muromachi period, tea
ceremonies served an important political function, providing those in powerwith a congenial venue in which to congregate and reconfirm their mutual alliances. That these daimyo chose to hold their tea ceremony close by the seashore,that they chose, moreover, to encircle themselves with a gold-gilt folding screen,is proof that they saw this event as something fundamentally separate from everyday life. The idea of a tearoom that was wholly outside the realm of daily life
was, at least conceptually, already in the making. It was this very concept that inspired the architects of Nishi Honganji Temple to construct a tearoom—the
Hiunkaku, or soaring-cloud pavilion—along the shore of a pond.
c. Performance Venues
Let us now turn our attention to the performative spaces of Nō drama. Prior
to the development of specialized, permanent stages for the performance of Nō
plays, performances were held on temporary stages erected in temples andshrines, or along the riverside. Sixteenth-century illustrations reveal a transitionary period between temporary and permanent stages for Nō performances. The“Rakuchū rakugaizu” screen 洛中洛外図 (Scenes Inside and Outside the Capital)in the collection of at the National Museum of Japanese History (Kō Version,c. 1525) depicts a temporary stage composed of boards surrounded by a sort of
enclosure, signifying the special nature of this space. The “Kannōzu byōbu” 観能図屛風 (painted sometime after 1607), which vividly depicts a Nō performance
16
17

Yamanoue sōjiki 山上宗二記.
Matsuya kaiki 松屋会記, Tenbun 天文 11 (1542) April 3.

The Space and Liminality of Folding Screens73

held in 1588, shows us a gold-ground folding screen behind the stage uponwhich is painted waves, birds, and reeds. The “Sōōji byōbu” 相応寺屛風 (Sōōji
Temple Folding Screen, seventeenth century) likewise contains an image of afolding screen upon which can clearly be seen paintings of flowers and trees.
The permanent backdrops of modern-day Nō stages are routinely decorated
with paintings of pine trees. Before the Edo period, however, folding screensserved in place of permanent backdrops, and sported images not only of pinetrees but of various other trees, as well. The practice of painting exclusively pinetrees was, in all probability, not established until the development of permanent
Nō stages during the Momoyama period.18 Also of interest here is the presence,
during that period when temporary stages were still in use, of folding screens
behind the audience as well. The “Hōkoku saireizu byōbu” 豊国祭礼図屛風
(early seventeenth century), which depicts a grand memorial ceremony held in
1604, shows a gold-ground folding screen behind the audience decorated with
an image of a pine tree.
Incidentally, this juxtaposition of motifs depicted on the above screens brings
to mind the interior design at Azuchi Castle 安土城, completed in 1579. According to Shinchō kōki 信長公記 (Public Records of Nobunaga, 1568–1582), the artist
Kanō Eitoku 狩野永徳 (1543–1590) was commissioned to provide all the wall
paintings for the castle. This same source tells us that the fifth floor of the central tower contained a reception hall consisting of three distinct areas: the mainand most spacious area, the walls of which were decorated with paintings ofpine trees, and two smaller areas, one to the West and one to the South of themain area, their walls likewise decorated, respectively, with images of rocks andbamboo. These three rooms were referred to as the Pine Room, the Rock Room,and the Bamboo Room. When Nō performances were held in the main pineroom, the audience was seated in the Rock room, while the musicians and chorus singers were seated in the Bamboo Room This last room was likely used also
as a changing room (kagaminoma) where performers would don their masks,
thereby transforming themselves into something divine.19 Instead of folding
screens, this reception area uses permanent wall paintings to represent the sameimages we saw earlier, namely, pine trees, rocks (to represent the seashore), andbamboo. Here, the sacred seashore has moved from temporary folding screens
to permanent walls.
Nishi Honganji Temple contains the oldest extant permanent Nō stage: theKita Nō butai 北能舞台, or Northern Nō stage. Aside from this, however, thetemple also contains a Minami Nō butai 南能舞台, or Southern Nō stage. When
Ido Misato, “Matsu no e to nōbutai wo meguru ichi kōsatsu: unkokuha kanren no shiryō wochūshin ni shite” 松の絵と能舞台をめぐる一考察―雲谷派関連の資料を中心にして―, Nōgaku
gakkai, ed., Nō to kyōgen, 7, April 2009.
19
Miyagami Shigetaka 宮上茂隆, “Azuchijō fukugen” 安土城復元, in Nihon bijutsu zenshū 日本
美術全集, volume14, Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1992.
18

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plays were performed upon the Southern stage, the audience was seated in alarge reception area, the walls of which were decorated with large paintings ofpine trees. Just below the tatami mats of this room was another indoor Nō stage,
allowing for performances to be held within the hall itself. In addition to that, aroom known as the Nami no ma 波の間 or Room of Waves was set aside at thefoot of the bridge-like passage (hashigakari 橋掛かり) leading onto the southern
Nō stage. This space, where performers supposedly waited before entering thestage, was so called because it was decorated with paintings of waves. Performers
would pass by this room of waves on their way across the aforementioned
bridge, ultimately arriving on an expansive stage covered completely with finewhite sand. Add to this the painted pine decorating the audience’s seating area,
and we can see how this entire permanent performance space had been transformed into a figurative seashore. It is not certain when exactly this symbolic
framework was thoroughly incorporated into those performance spaces dedicated exclusively to Nō theater. That this framework has since become a mainstay is evinced by the fact that modern-day indoor Nō stages incorporating backdrops including painted pines trees, are surrounded on three sides by shallow
channels full of white pebbles or sand, and have three pine trees placed along
the bridge-like passage that leads on and off the stage.
Ogasawara Kyōko informs us that, during the Muromachi period, performances of such dance arts as dengaku 田楽 and sarugaku 猿楽 tended to be held
outside of the city at temples or shrines, along the riverside, or at the crossroads.
All of these venues were intimately associated, in one way or another, with therealm of the dead.20 Amino Yoshihiko also tells us that woods, fields, and mountains once served as asylums, and that seashores once served as both burial andritual grounds. These liminal spaces, he argues, were the original birthplaces of
premodern performing arts.21 If the origins of dengaku and Nō theater are indeed
to be traced back to such liminal spaces, it is no wonder that images reminiscentof the seashore—one of the most poignantly liminal of earthly spaces—wereincorporated into the permanent Nō stages of later ages, where they could inturn endow these stages with an air of the otherworldly. In the genre of Nō plays
known as dream or phantasmagoric drama (mugennō 夢幻能) in particular, where
the protagonist is inevitably a visitor from another world, most often from therealm of the dead, symbolic seashore imagery played a crucial role in creating
the extra-mundane atmosphere appropriate for such performances.

Ogasawara Kyōko 小笠原恭子, “Chūsei kyōraku ni okeru kanjin kōgyō: muromachi ki” 中世
京洛における勧進興行―室町期, Bungaku, 48:9, September 1980.
21
Amino Yoshihiko 網野善彦, Nihonron no shiza: rettō no shakai to kokka 日本論の視座―列島の社会と国家. Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1993.
20

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Conclusion
This article began with a reconsideration of an entry in the Kanmon nikki dealing with Yamato-style folding screens. Having shown how the folding screens
employed during the Tanabata Festival were gold-ground screens decorated withpaintings of pine trees and the seashore, I then indicated the importance of themateriality of shimmering pigments, such as gold, silver, and mica, as well as iconography, as factors contributing to the ability of folding screens to delineate
sacred or purified space. In this capacity, folding screens could serve as temporary partitions, employed as indoor furnishings on special occasions, thereby
creating extra-mundane spaces as necessity demanded. The development, within
the realm of residential architecture, of more permanent dividers of space—walls and sliding doors—brought about a decline in the use of folding screens.
Instead, as in the case of Azuchi Castle and Nishi Honganji Temple, adjacentrooms were decorated with wall paintings, assigning each room or area a uniqueand permanent function. Despite artistic changes concomitant with the transition from folding screens to painted walls, the result of which was the establishment of wholly distinct tearooms and Nō stages, the iconography of seasidepine (hamamatsuzu) remained unchanged, insofar as these symbols continued to
endow performative venues with a sense of the sacred and the otherworldly. To
conclude, folding screens, whether directly or somewhat indirectly—as in thecase of the term kakoi (encircled area) used to designate the space in which a tea
ceremony was performed—with their consistent iconography of the seashore,served to recreate those liminal spaces in which the arts were, in more distanttimes, first developed and practiced.

Figure 1. An entry from Daijōin jisha zōjiki dated 1475.7 (From Zōho zokushiryō taisei kankōkai, ed., Daijōin jisha zōjiki, 2011).

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Figure 2. “Hamamatsuzu byōbu” (Sixteenth century, artist unknown, Tokyo National Museum, one folding screen of six panels).

The Space and Liminality of Folding Screens77Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture 1 (July 2018) 79–88© 2018 National Institute of Japanese Literature

The Bird of Boundaries:
Beliefs and Folk Customs
Surrounding the Chicken
koike Jun’ichi
Translated by Elizabeth marsh

Introduction
Chickens have lived alongside humans since ancient times. They have beenused for various purposes and have been the focus of much attention, giving rise
to a rich body of legends and traditions. In Japan, these birds have been projected
prominently in art and literature, including notable appearances in monogatari andwaka. In the present article, we will address the legends, rituals and magicalthinking surrounding the chicken. We will consider its characteristics in folklore
and its role in the traditional Japanese worldview, with the primary goal of investigating and positioning it among the art and literature of Japan.
Let us begin by reviewing past research and texts that have looked into the roleof chickens in the field of f olklore.
From early on, Yanagita Kunio 柳田國男 had been researching the relationshipbetween the image of the chicken and gold in Japanese folklore. In his studiesof legends published in the 1920s, he delineated the ways in which these birds
have been linked to the treasures of the spirit world and to the genre of chōja
densetsu 長者伝説, or “millionaire legends.” Yanagita’s Santō mintanshū 山島民譚集(1914) contains a study titled Ōgon no niwatori 黄金の雞 in which he addresses this
topic.1 His work examines the reasoning behind the appearance of chickens inlegends that contain reference to treasures, drawing on material from early modern
investigations and topographical data. Following this, Minakata Kumagusu 南方
熊楠 published his Jūnishikō 十二支考 which contains his studies on the sequenceof the sexagenary cycle, among which he touches on the topic of chickens.2 A
similar investigation has also been conducted by Miyatake Shōzō 宮武省三 inYanagita Kunio 柳田國男, Zōho santō mintanshū 増補山島民譚集, eds. Seki Keigo 関敬吾 andŌtō Tokihiko 大藤時彦, Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1969.
2
Minakata Kumagusu 南方熊楠, “Tori ni kansuru densetsu” 鶏に関する伝説, in Jūnishikō 十二支考. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1994.
1

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which he refers to various legends involving chickens.3 For information on therole of the chicken in the daily life of Japan, there is Tori no hanashi sono ta 雞の話其他 by Hayakawa Kōtarō 早川孝太郎, which records memories of thechicken in farm life until the early modern period.4
Later research on folk customs related to chickens largely adhered to Yanagita’sviews, while providing additional supporting data and materials. Yūtsukedori 木綿
附鳥 by Takasaki Masahide 高崎正秀 includes an investigation of texts from Japanese classical literature, shedding much light on the historical development oforal transmissions and the human awareness of the chicken.5 Additionally, inKinkei densetsu 金雞伝説, Ōtō Tokihiko 大藤時彦 provides an extensive study onsuch legends, expanding further on Yanagita’s views.6
With literary investigations at its foundation, the study of chicken folklore has
been developing steadily over time, through the contribution of reports from various regions. The present article will examine the formation process and reasoning behind such folklore, while drawing heavily on the data presented in the above
works. Research available until this point has clarified the association between thechicken and boundaries in Japanese folk custom. In the present work, we aim to
re-examine in even further depth, how and in what context such folklore cameinto being, and in what capacity they functioned.
In the following sections, we will begin by discussing early magic practices involving the use of chickens, followed by an investigation into folklore on theconnection between chickens and the native Japanese gods. In the final section,
we will consider legends in which the chicken appears, and will elucidate the relationship between these birds and boundaries.
The Magical Powers of the Chicken
In Seno (present day Mutsu), located in Wakinosawa village in the Shimokita
district of Aomori, when boats capsized in the sea and the passengers could not
be located, people would row out to the scene of the shipwreck with a hen
aboard their boat. When the boat passed over a drowned body, it is said that thehen would let out a piercing cry and that upon hearing her call, the body would
rise to the surface of the water. Similarly, in Cape Shiriya which lies on the Pacificcoast of Higashidōri village on Shimokita Peninsula, whenever a boat capsizedin the water, the people would light a fire on the shore, which they referred to as“the flame that welcomes the Buddha.” Alternatively, they would take a boat toMiyatake Shōzō 宮武省三, “Tori ni kansuru densetsu to minzoku” 雞に関する伝説と民俗, inShūzoku zakki 習俗雑記. Tokyo: Sakamoto Shoten, 1927.
4
Hayakawa Kōtarō 早川孝太郎, “Tori no hanashi sono ta” 雞の話其他, Minzoku, 1: 1, 1925.
5
Takasaki Masahide 高崎正秀, “Kintarō tanjō tan” 金太郎誕生譚, in Takasaki masahide chosakushū
高崎正秀著作集, vol. 7. Tokyo: Ōfūsha, 1971 (1937).
6
Ōtō Tokihiko 大藤時彦, “Kinkei densetsu” 金雞伝説, in Nihon minzokugaku no kenkyū 日本民俗学の研究. Tokyo: Gakuseisha, 1979 (1972).
3

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81

the scene of the accident and throw hand towels or other such pieces of cloth
into the water, upon which it is said that the bodies of the deceased would surface. If the victims still could not be located, they would take a hen with themout into the water, and when they approached the location of the submerged
body, the bird would cry out.7 Chickens were understood to possess the miraculous ability to sense the conditions of the sea. It is not entirely clear how far back
we can trace such beliefs in the perceptive and magical powers of the chicken,
but for the present we will take a look at some data that will shed further light on
this matter.
The Wakun no shiori 倭訓栞 collection of dictionaries was first compiled by
Tanikawa Kotosuga 谷川士清 in the An’ei 安永 6 (1777). In the latter portion of
the fourteenth volume, there is a section titled Niwatori にはとり, which statesthat “when searching for a submerged body, if you set out into the water in aboat, bringing [a chicken] with you, it is said that the chicken will cry out at thelocation of the body. This was practiced at Lake Suwa [in present day Nagano
prefecture].” From this description, we know that the magical ritual of using
chickens to search for submerged bodies was also performed at Lake Suwa.
Related to this, in Suzuki Bokushi’s 鈴木牧之 Hokuetsu seppu 北越雪譜, there isrecord of chickens having been used to uncover missing people after an avalanche.8 (Figure 1)
In the main passage of this description, it is written that “[when someone once
went missing in an avalanche] an elderly man said he knew of a technique fortimes such as these. He took a young man with him to the neighbouring village
to procure some chickens, and after scattering feed over the snow, he allowed thebirds to wander about freely. Upon doing so, although it was not yet dawn, one
chicken crowed and the rest of the birds also joined in. [Thus, the missing bodywas discovered.] This technique was used when searching for bodies submerged
under water, but to think of using such a method in the snow was extremely
clever, and the people continued to praise his idea well into the future.” From
this account we can see that in the early modern era, the practice of using chickens to search for sunken bodies was widely known, and that there were instances
when it was also applied in the wake of avalanches.
For us humans who dwell on land, the depths of the water and snow are distant realms beyond our imagining, and are difficult to even begin to grasp. To
gain some insight into these unfamiliar territories, we rely on the power of thechicken and the special abilities it possesses, as revealed through the wondrous
magic of its call.
This demonstrates that the chicken has the power to reveal to us the border
Takamatsu Keikichi 高松敬吉, “Kainan shisha e no girei” 海難死者への儀礼, in Fuzoku totakaikan no minzokugakuteki kenkyū 巫俗と他界観の民俗学的研究. Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 1993.
8
Suzuki Bokushi 鈴木牧之, Hokuetsu seppu 北越雪譜, vol. 1, middle section. Tenpō 天保 6, 1836.
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Figure 1. A method of using chickens to search for survivors buried under thesnow. Suzuki Bokushi 鈴木牧之, “Nadare hito ni saisu” 雪頽人に災す, in part 1,
volume 2 of Hokuetsu seppu 北越雪譜 初編巻之中 (NIJL).
https://doi.org/10.20730/200019786

between land and water, and that its crow can expose the barrier that separates
this world from the afterlife. Thus, through its call, the chicken has become asymbol of the division between the land of the living and the land of the dead,and between life and death itself.
Chickens and the Gods
At Miho Shrine 美保神社 in Matsue city, Shimane prefecture, there is a legendthat every night the tutelary deity crosses over to the opposite shore to visit a
goddess. On one such occasion, a rooster crowed out at the wrong time, causing
the god to hurry back to the shrine and injure himself in his haste. It is said that
because of this, the god of Miho Shrine came to despise all chickens, and that in
the town of Mihonoseki there is a taboo against owning chickens and eating
eggs.9
Orikuchi Shinobu 折口信夫, “Keimei to kagura to” 鶏鳴と神楽と, in Orikuchi Shinobu zenshū
折口信夫全集 2. Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Shinsha, 1995 (1920).
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Figure 2. A chicken that has been turned to stone. Kiuchi Sekitei 木内石亭, “Henka
rui: kei kaseki” 変化類・雞化石, in volume 3 of Unkonshi 雲根志 (National Diet Library, Japan).
https://doi.org/10.11501/2563667

Simply by carrying out its natural behaviour of crowing at dawn, the chicken
ended up being loathed by the god of Miho Shrine. However, there is also a theory that the tabooed relationship between the two had already existed, and thatthe legend was created as a way of explaining this association. It seems that sucha legend alludes to some sort of unique relationship or close connection thatnaturally existed between chickens and the Japanese deities.
In short, we can see that the chicken reveals to us the border between nightand day, and symbolizes the point of contact between humans and the gods.
This being the case, it would appear that the native Japanese gods share close ties
to chickens, and that an investigation into the physical form of these birds and thevarious names assigned to them may shed light on the nature of this connection.
As one example which may provide some insight into this, below is a passage
from the third volume of Kiuchi Sekitei’s 木内石亭 Unkonshi 雲根志 (An’ei 2,
1773 to Kyōwa 享和 1, 1801), in which the legend of Kei kaseki 鶏化石 is recorded as follows. (Figure 2)
There is a keiseki 雞石 in Kashiihama, Chikuzen Province. In the past, a chicken
appeared in a seaside village and became troublesome to the local farmers, whothen decided to kill it. Thereupon, a travelling monk came along and pleadedwith them to forgive the chicken for its misdeeds. The people refused and the

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chicken was killed. In response, the monk composed a waka, upon which thechicken was immediately turned to stone and was enshrined in a hokora 祠 (small
shrine). Following this incident, small rocks in the shape of a chicken could becollected from the area around the hokora. (The author has not personally seensuch rocks.)

From this description, we can see that the chicken and its physical form cameto be attributed with divine qualities.
In Soma, Fukushima, there are hokora dedicated to deities with such names as
Niwatari ニワタリ, Miwatari ミワタリ, and Niwatashi ニワタシ. In the Japanesescript, they are often written as 庭渡 (lit. garden crossing), 荷渡 (lit. baggage crossing), 御渡 (lit. honourable crossing), respectively, with each character being used
for their phonetic quality rather than their semantic meaning. The names are uncertain and the deities themselves are not clearly defined. In everyday life, peoplecommonly attributed them with various roles, including the granting of water,
the ensuring of safe passage across the sea, and the healing of coughs.
For instance, atop a hill near a paddy field in Sekizawa, Iitate, there is a hokora
dedicated to the chicken deity Niwatori daimyōjin 庭鳥大明神. It is said that long
ago, a chicken was being chased by something and came to this hill, where it met
its fate. The cry of the chicken is believed to resemble the sound of a personwith a cold coughing violently and gasping for air, giving rise to its identification
as a deity who heals coughs. In Ogawa, Shinchi, there is another hokora known
as Niwatari 二羽渡, which is dedicated to a pair of swans fabled to have once
flown by and descended upon that spot. The deified birds are said to have thepower to heal coughs, and drawings of a pair of chickens are given as offerings byvisitors to the shrine.10 Niwatari and other similar gods had once existed in large
numbers throughout Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures. Their original
meaning however was forgotten long ago, and we can see that folklore related tovarious divinities has since emerged.
It should be noted that the names of these deities, Niwatari, Miwatari, andNiwatashi, are suggestive of the traversal of water and that they are collectively
associated with the niwatori (chicken). They are further identified with the border-related role of water distribution commonly attributed to the chicken, and are
likewise thought to be linked to the barrier between land and water by guaranteeing safe passage through the sea. Moreover, the belief that they suppress coughs
is not only rooted in the audible similarity between the cough and the call of thechicken, but in the idea that these gods are able to soothe the symptoms of thecough as it crosses the border from the inside of the human body to the outside
world. The chicken, and the divinities that developed from it, remind us of theborders that exist across various settings.
Iwasaki Toshio 岩崎敏夫, Honpō shōshi no kenkyū 本邦小祠の研究. Sōma: Iwasaki Hakushi
Gakui Ronbun Shuppan Kōenkai, 1963.
10

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Chicken Legends
The description of Hiraizumi in Matsuo Bashō’s 松尾芭蕉 Oku no hosomichi 奥の細道 contains the following passage: “The splendor of three generations ofthe Ōshū Fujiwara-shi 奧州藤原氏 has vanished. All that is visible are country
fields, with not a single trace of their glorious era. It is now only Mount Kinkei(Kinkeizan 金鶏山) that remains.”
The name Mount Kinkei (lit. Golden Chicken Mountain) is rooted in the legend that Fujiwara no Hidehira buried a golden chicken in the soil. It is commonly known that numerous legends concerning golden chickens have also
been transmitted throughout the Tōhoku region. For instance, in Matsura Seizan’s
松浦静山 Kasshi yawa zokuhen 甲子夜話続篇, Volume 13, there is a narrative aboutŌtsuki Gentaku 大槻玄沢, in which the following passage is recorded.
In Hatamura, Sannohe in the Kurihara District of Ōshū, there is a place called
Niwatorizaka (鶏坂, lit. Chicken Hill). Here, a chicken made of pure gold wasonce dug up from the ground. In the past, a charcoal maker named Tōta 藤太
used to live in this village. It is said that he discovered gold near his home andbecame very wealthy. Using this gold, he made a pair of golden chickens andoffered them to the mountain gods. After some time, he buried them underground together with his charcoal. This is how the area came to be known as
Niwatorizaka. It is written as such in Tōta gyōjō 藤太行状, published in the
Jōkyō 貞享 3 (1686). Furthermore, in the Fourth Month of Bunka 文化 15(1819), a farmer living in the same village went up the mountain to dig for goldand discovered the pair of golden chickens. They weighed approximately one
hundred monme 銭目, and engraved on them were the two characters 山神(mountain god).11

This describes how the recent discovery of buried treasures has verified thelegends of the golden chickens that have been transmitted in the Tōhoku region
since ancient times. After investigating other areas, it became apparent that such
golden chicken legends were not only known in Tōhoku, but also in various
places throughout Japan. A few such examples are presented below.
About fifty meters from Shōhōji Temple 正法寺 in Aitani, Sakaaibe, in the
Uchi District of Nara, there is a place called Hanabatake 花畑. A golden chicken
is buried here, which is said to cry out on the morning of New Year’s Day. A
wealthy man once lived in Uchimura in the same district, in a place called Arazaka.
On his estate was a pond with a stone bridge, under which a golden chicken wasburied, and when the morning of New Year’s Day arrived it was said to cry out.12
In Kanage, Ōimura in Kyoto Prefecture, there is a mound known as Dairizuka
大理塚. It is told that a noble prince was once buried alive here. His soul trans11
Matsura Seizan 松浦静山, Kasshi yawa zokuhen 甲子夜話続篇, vol. 1, eds. Nakamura Yukihiko 中
村幸彦, Nakano Mitsutoshi 中野三敏. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1979.
12
Tamura Yoshinaga 田村吉永, “Chōja to kin no niwatori ” 長者と金の鶏, Kyōdo kenkyū 郷土研究, 2:

3, 1914.

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formed into a golden bird which appears and cries out each year on New Year’smorning.13
Furthermore, the following description is found among the legends of Kiso
Valley (Kisodani 木曽谷) in Shinshū Province.
Long ago, there was a wealthy man named Kurashina sama 倉科様 who lived in
Matsumotodaira. One year, he went to the capital planning to display his treasures in a competition, and packing up a multitude of them, he set off on
Kisokaidō Road 木曽街道. One evening while taking his lodging in Tsumago,
three robbers attempted to steal his riches. One of them entered the inn andwarmed up the foot of a chicken. This triggered the bird to crow in the middleof the night as if to signal the coming of dawn, thereby tricking the man into
setting back onto the road in the darkness. The wealthy man travelled along theMagome Tōge 馬籠峠 mountain pass until he arrived at a place called Aza
Otaru 字男垂. The three robbers came up behind the man and stabbed him
with a bamboo spear, killing him. They took his treasures and fled. Among theirplunder was a golden chicken which fell into the river, disappearing under thewaterfall basin at Otaru男垂. Even to this day, it is said that the chicken crows
at the break of dawn each New Year’s morning.14

Among the treasures was a chicken which announced the break of dawn, indicating its presence. The possible meaning behind such a legend, however, is amatter that has yet to be resolved.
Furthermore, from Tokushima prefecture there is the following account.
In Kuwanomura, Naka District, Tokushima, there flows a river that is approximately fifteen ken 間 in width. It is the upper course of Kuwano River 桑野川.
Long ago, an itinerant rokubu 六部 monk who was travelling through the village
requested to stay the night at the home of a wealthy man, who gladly obliged(I will omit his name). However, he heard that the monk had a golden chicken
stored together with a mosquito net in a square box measuring one sun 寸 allaround. When the monk departed early the following morning, the wealthy
man followed behind and killed him with a blade near a murky pool of water.
The golden chicken flapped its wings noisily and flew away, leaving the manwith just the mosquito net. Even to this day, the water in the pool is dyed red
with the blood of the monk. From this time forward, the people of this house
only made rice cakes using pre-ground flour, as those made with steamed ricewould always become tainted with his blood. It is said that the family still owns
the mosquito net.15

This story is called Rokubugoroshi 六部殺し,16 and can be considered a variant
tale of Jun’ichi Nomura’s 野村純一 Konna ban e no ashidori こんな晩への足取
13Kakita Ioji 垣田五百次 and Tsuboi Tadahiko 坪井忠彦, Kuchi tamba kōhishū 口丹波口碑集.
Tokyo: Kyōdo Kenkyūsha, 1925.
14
Hayashi Rokurō 林六郎, “Kiso Tsumago yori” 木曽妻籠より, Kyōdo kenkyū 郷土研究 4: 9, 1916.
15
Yoshikawa Yasuto 吉川泰人, “Nigori ga fuchi” 濁りが淵 , Kyōdo kenkyū, 1: 2, 1913.
16
Komatsu Kazuhiko 小松和彦 has written about Rokubugoroshi in his Ijinron: Minzoku shakaino shinsei 異人論―民俗社会の心性―. Tokyo: Seidosha, 1985.

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り.17 It is interesting to note that the travelling monk’s golden chicken vanishedwithout being stolen. A common feature among such legends is that the goldenchicken crows on New Year’s morning, and in doing so, the chicken which symbolises wealth asserts its presence by revealing the border between the old year andthe new. From the motif of the rice cake, we can conjecture that this final legendfrom Tokushima was narrated in relation to the new year, or in other words, to thetransition point between the years.
Further investigation is required into the relationship that such tales draw between buried gold and the shape of the chicken, and furthermore, what effectthis connection has on chicken legends and folklore at large. The fact that thechicken momentarily vanishes from this world and reveals itself at the border oftime must somehow be connected to the fact that the gold is transformed into
the shape of the chicken. In other words, the gold (or the golden chicken) ought
to be buried out of sight, and yet it announces its presence at the start of every
new year, which constitutes the most significant barrier of time. This also indicates that the boundary-related nature of the chicken is repeatedly recalled on anannual basis. The relationship between chickens and boundaries in folklore indeed bears multiple layers of meaning.
Afterword

According to a report by Hayakawa Kōtarō 早川孝太郎 on the Higashi-mikawa district of Aichi prefecture, it was because the chicken was a niwatori 庭鳥,
or “garden bird”, that it occupied the doma 土間 (dirt floor) area of the home. He
writes that the Kamadogami 竈神 (lit. stove god), Dokōshin 土公神 (god of theearth), enjoys watching the chicken at play, and that the chicken’s act of waking
up early each morning, rustling its wings and crowing serves to clear away theevil spirits of the day.18 In times long past, chickens commonly lived alongsidehumans and it seems that it was because of this that they came to be attributedwith boundary-related qualities and meaning. Chickens inhabited the doma, aspace imbued with the dual character of both the inside and outside realms, andthrough the power of its voice the chicken divided night from day.
In general, most chicken folklore is associated with contextually and temporally specific transformation or change. Transmissions of such lore elicit in us
recollections of the boundary-related character and symbolism of the chicken
which have been largely forgotten in present times. By reviving these narratives
however, our past feelings toward the chicken are reawakened and we are able toSee, for example, Nihon no sekenbanashi 日本の世間話. Tokyo: Tōkyō Shoseki, 1995.
Dokōshin is the most significant boundary-related divinity in Japanese folk custom. For
more on this, see Iijima Yoshiharu 飯島吉晴, Kamadogami to kawayagami: ikai to kono yo no sakai 竈
神と厠神―異界と此の世の境―. Tokyo: Kōdansha Gakujutsu Bunko, 2007 (1st ed. 1986). For
more on the chicken’s role in ridding the day of evil spirits, see Hayakawa Kōtarō’s 早川孝太郎“Tori no hanashi sono ta” 雞の話其他, Minzoku, 1: 1, 1925.
17
18

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see in a new light the potential and latent strength lying in the boundaries ofspace and time. This will also be valuable as the first step toward uncovering thehistorical relationship between mankind and birds.
ReferencesŌtō Tokihiko 大藤時彦, “Kinkei densetsu” 金雞伝説, in Nihon minzokugaku no
kenkyū 日本民俗学の研究. Tokyo: Gakuseisha, 1979 (1st ed. 1972).
Takasaki Masahide 高崎正秀, “Kintarō tanjō tan” 金太郎誕生譚, in Takasaki
masahide chosakushū 高崎正秀著作集 7. Tokyo: Ōfūsha, 1971 (1st ed. 1937).
Takamatsu Keikichi 高松敬吉, “Kainan shisha e no girei” 海難死者への儀礼, inFuzoku to takaikan no minzokugakuteki kenkyū 巫俗と他界観の民俗学的研究.
Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 1993.
Minakata Kumagusu 南方熊楠, “Tori ni kansuru densetsu” 鶏に関する伝説, in
Jūnishikō 十二支考. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1994 (1st ed. 1951).
Hayakawa Kōtarō 早川孝太郎, “Tori no hanashi sono ta” 雞の話其他, Minzoku,
1: 1 1925.
Yanagita Kunio 柳田國男, Zōho santō mintanshū 増補山島民譚集”, eds. Seki Keigo
関敬吾 and Ōtō Tokihiko 大藤時彦, Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1969.

Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture 1 (July 2018) 89–120© 2018 National Institute of Japanese Literature

Persons, Monks, Children,
and Non-Persons1
kuroda Hideo
Translated by Charles woolley

ForwardThis chapter is an attempt at developing a structural understanding of the medieval status, or mibun 身分, system. What initially stirred my interest in writing
on such a topic was my reading of Minegishi Sumio’s “Nihon chūsei no mibun to
kaikyū ni tsuite no oboegaki”,2 and the strong impression it had on me. Minegishi,with his accessible style and penchant for distilling complex concepts into clear
diagrams, has always performed the exemplary role of clarifying the many confusions that emerge in our field. Perhaps more decisive, however, was the following incident: When, in the course of commenting on the presentation that had
just been given by Hotate Michihisa at last year’s conference hosted by the Historical Science Council (Rekishi kagaku kyōgikai 歴史科学協議会), I happened topoint out two or three contentious points in Minegishi’s models, Minegishi, who
himself was presiding over the proceedings, chimed in with: “In that case, Mr.
Kuroda, why don’t you give it a shot?” In this way I was given a direct “challenge,” so to speak.
The major points I had wanted to make eventually appeared on the pages ofRekishi hyōron with some revisions,3 but while writing them up I began to mullover the prospect of accepting Minegishi’s challenge. Perhaps from the perspective of actual experts in subfield of status studies (mibun-ron 身分論) my efforts
here and what argument I attempt to make will appear ill-advised, or perhaps
This article is a translation of Chapter 9 of Kuroda Hideo’s 黒田日出男, Kyōkai no chūsei,shōchō no chūsei 境界の中世・象徴の中世. Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1986. In hopes ofpreserving the original historical value of this article, all dates mentioned by the author havebeen deliberately left unchanged. When Kuroda writes “last year,” for example, readers must understand this to mean 1985, the year before this article was originally published.
2
Minegishi Sumio 峰岸純夫, “Nihon chūsei no mibun to kaikyū ni tsuite no oboegaki” 日本中世の身分と階級についての覚書 in Rekishi hyōron, issue 376, 1981.
3“Illustrated Picture Scrolls as Historical Documents and the Medieval Status System” Shiryōtoshite no emaki-mono to chūsei mibun-sei, in Rekishi hyōron, issue 382, 1982.
1

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kurodaeven presumptuous. Nevertheless, taking cues of course from Minegishi regarding schematization and model-making, in the following I will do what I can tosketch a structural model of the medieval status system, after my own fashion.
In a previously published paper, Minegishi presents an illustrated model of the“Medieval Status System” (Chūsei no mibun taikei 中世の身分体系).4 Therein, heestablishes two axes; the X-axis consists of an opposition between the fundamental members constituting the state (kokka no kihon-teki seiin 国家の基本的成員) and non-members (hiseiin 非成員) outside the system, while the Y-axis is organized by the opposition between the Secular or Worldly (seken 世間), that is,
the world governed by karmic and social bonds (en 縁), and the Sacerdotal or
Extra-Secular (shusseken 出世間), that is, a world without karmic or social bonds(muen 無縁). Within this framework, Minegishi divides medieval status into four
categories: the Mundane (zoku 俗), the Lowly (hi 卑), the Holy (sei 聖), and the
Abject (sen 賤). The “Mundane” status group encapsulates the overwhelming
majority of the population, and is structured through class stratification, internally divided as it is between the ruling classes, such as the nobility or samurai,
and the ruled. The “Lowly” status denotes indentured servants or slaves (ge’nin
下人 and shojū 所従), subject to their masters, whether the latter be aristocrats,
samurai, commoners, or priests; in turn, these ge’nin and shojū are vouchsafed protection by virtue of this relationship of rule and subjugation (shujū kankei 主従関係), or class relations (kaikyū kankei 階級関係). The third category, the Holy,referring to priests and monks (sōryo 僧侶), in inhabited by those who by taking
Buddhist vows have severed their ties with the world of attachments (en). The
fourth, the Abject (hi’nin), has in common with servants and slaves its extra-systemic
status, while sharing with monks and priests the characteristic of being “extra-social”(having no karmic or social bonds). This schematization is quite seductive, I
must admit.
Nevertheless, I have doubts concerning the model’s ability to grasp the theoretical principles informing status. My complaints are the following: Minegishi
constructs his Y-axis through an opposition between the Secular (seken) and theExtra-Secular (shusseken), and from this derives the two status categories of theMundane and the Holy. So far, so good. Against this, however, Minegishi posits
a binary that is incommensurate with the former, and this is his opposition between “members of the state” and “non-members” along his X-axis; this choice
I have great difficulty understanding. While the Y-axis is predicated on categories
common in historical sources, and moreover neatly corresponds to the opposition between the Mundane (zoku) and the Holy (sei), the binary informing theX-axis is a theoretical one of Minegishi’s own derivation, and thus is of an entirely different quality from that of the Y-axis. Furthermore, due to this organization of the X-axis, Minegishi’s division of status categories into the four
given—Mundane and Lowly, Holy and Abject—leaves the reader with the4Please refer to page 14 of Minegishi’s paper.

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unshakable impression of being somehow off-kilter or otherwise lacking ininternal coherence.
I have several other reservations, but setting them aside for the time being, I
would like to elaborate in what follows how precisely I envision the “medieval
status system.”
1. Visual Markers of Status
First, I would like to direct the reader’s attention to Figure 1. This diagram appeared at the end of my paper, “Illustrated Picture Scrolls as Historical Documents and the Medieval Status System,” but as it is indispensable to my argument, I have reproduced it here.
In this figure, I have used visible or visual markers of status, in this case hairstyle or headwear, to categorize the medieval population into four basic
groups—“Children” (warawa 童), “Persons” (hito 人), “Monks” (sōryo), and“Non-Persons” (hi’nin). While the first category, that of Children or warabe, undergoes various transformations in hairstyle early in its cycle, beginning with theshearing of the baby’s head at birth (sute-gami 棄髪), its constituent members nevertheless do not belong to the world of Persons, or hito, which is symbolized by
the eboshi cap 烏帽子 and top-knot (motodori 髻). “Children” are not “Persons,”
and only become “Persons” after undergoing the coming-of-age ceremony (genpuku 元服), at which point they very literally “become people” (seijin suru 成人する). The second category, that of Persons or hito, is the domain of rulers and theruled, organized by the state system of court rank and appointments (kan’i 官位
and kanshoku 官職), the hierarchy of which is made manifest through visible
markers of status, such as the crown (kanmuri 冠) or eboshi. This category corresponds more or less to the “Mundane” status in Minegishi’s rubric. Monks, or
sōryo, the third category, is the domain of the sacred, symbolized by the shaved
head (bōzu-atama 坊主頭). The fourth and final category, that of Non-Persons or
hi’nin, comprises those various people seen as unclean (fujōshi sareru 不浄視される), with the figure of the leper—loathed as the most polluted (mottomo kegareta 最も穢れた) of beings—forming its absolute limit; they are organized as a statusgroup visually through their lack of headwear and their unkempt, unbound hair(hōhatsu 蓬髪).5
As I discussed these four categories in my previous essay, I will refrain fromelaborating any further, but would like to make two supplementary points.
The first relates to lepers (raisha 癩者) and the “heads of the lodge,” or shuku
no chōri 宿の長吏, who were charged with managing the former. According to the5
However, according to Kuroda Toshio’s 黒田俊雄 understanding, the status characteristics
particular to hi’nin are that 1) they fall fundamentally outside the social and status systems, andthus are not in an indentured or enslaved state; 2) they are excluded from the means of production; 3) they are seen as unclean; see “Chūsei no mibun-sei to hisen kannen” 中世の身分制と卑賎観念, Buraku mondai kenkyū, 33, 1972.

92

kurodaFigure 1. Social status as visually displayed through hairstyle and headwear.

Sankō Genpei seisuiki 参考源平盛衰記 (Redacted Record of the Rise and Fall of the Genjiand Taira) cited on page 169 of the second volume of Emakimono ni yoru nihonjōmin seikatsu ebiki 絵巻物による日本常民生活絵引 (Illustrated Index of the Life of
the Common People of Japan through Illustrated Picture Scrolls), it is believed that lepers
were required to wear white face-coverings and persimmon-colored garments
similar in style to mourning wear (chaku-i 著衣). Indeed, examining the versionof Ippen-hijiri e 一遍聖絵 (Ippen the Sage in Pictures) contained in the supplementaryvolume of Nihon emaki-mono taisei 日本絵巻物大成 (Compendium of Japanese Illustrated
Picture Scrolls), one finds (on pages 141, 142, 167, 179, 196, 298, 312, and 330) what
appear to be lepers, almost without exception depicted with white face-coveringsand garments in a sort of persimmon-colour.6 However, the instance on pageI am aware that, when it comes to identifying and agreeing upon the colors found in illustrated picture scrolls, one encounters many complications—what lexical term is appropriate?
What would the historical expression of a particular color be? I have referred to Nagasaki Seiki’s
長崎盛輝 Iro no Nihon-shi 色の日本史 (Kyoto: Tankō Sensho, 1974), in which “persimmon-color” isdescribed as “a yellow-orange dye resulting in a color similar to that of a ripened persimmon. Dyeof this sort appears in the late Heian period, but in the Muromachi period, together with peony and6Persons, Monks, Children, and Non-Persons

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330, showing three figures with white face-coverings and in persimmon-colored
dress among the crowd of people lamenting Ippen’s death, differs in terms of
the figure’s placement, manner of dress, and facial expression,7 leading one tobelieve that these are rather shuku no chōri 宿の長吏. If so, this would indicate thatthey had in common with lepers their persimmon-colored clothing and whiteface-coverings.8
The second concerns the warabe category. One of the purposes of using visualindices such as hairstyle and headwear to construct this model of status was toeduce thereby the coordinates of the warabe. The term itself, of course, denotes
purple becomes a favourite of the aristocracy. During the same period, bitter-persimmon-juice
color (kaki-shibu-iro 柿渋色), produced by rubbing the brownish juice of bitter persimmons onundyed cloth, also was popular. That color is thought to be more or less similar to shibu-gami 渋紙, paper colored by the same method. With the popularity of brown in the Edo period, thiscolor was widely adopted. This color was even incorporated into the wardrobe of Kabuki actors.
A reference can be found in the line ‘plucking at his persimmon front-tying robe.’ While the line
gives ‘persimmon,’ here it refers not to persimmon-color, but rather a dark brown. The original
persimmon-color, as well, depending on one’s view, could be considered more red, or moreyellow.” Additionally, comparing several different varieties of the sort of standard color template
cards available on the market has been helpful to the ends of cultivating a better sense of color,
as well as to deciding on the proper color terms to use.
7
In particular, in the scene depicted, the three figures are shown tightly ensconced within thecrowd of men and women surrounding the dying Ippen. This sort of emplacement differs fromany other of the persimmon-garbed, white-masked lepers, and in conjunction with the otherdiscrepancies in expression and dress, there is little doubt that these figures are either shuku nochōri or their subordinates. It goes without saying, but notes on the colophon allows the scroll
to be dated to the late 13th century. Thus, this would be an image of late 13th-century shuku
no chōri. It is possible, then, to push back the image of shuku no chōri found in the Ippen shōninekotoba-den 一遍上人絵詞伝 (Life of Saint Ippen in Pictures and Words, 14th century) to the late 13th
century.
8
Thanks to a heads-up from Ishii Susumu 石井進, I had the opportunity to see the Ippen shōnin
eden 一遍上人絵伝 (Illustrated Life of Saint Ippen) from the Tanaka Shinbi 田中親美 collection(being a Sōshun-edited edition) at the Japanese National Museum at the end of February. Fortunately, the portion on display was from the first section of the third scroll, depicting the scene at
Jinmoku-ji temple 甚目寺, and I was thus able to examine the coloration satisfactorily. From thatscene, the scroll can be thought to be in the Konkōji Temple 金光寺 lineage, and thus does notinclude a depiction of shuku no chōri. Nevertheless, I was able to analyze it, and would like to summarize a few important points.
1) Of the three circles, the first is composed of standing beggar-monks, dressed in the robesof various sects. The people forming the second circle of “non-person” beggars (kojiki hi’nin 乞食非人) and the disabled variously wear garments in colors such as light brown or pale yellow. In
the third circle, that of the lepers, all have a white face covering and have persimmon-colored clothing.
This suggests that the style of dress adopted by lepers was socially imposed. Additionally, I shouldlike to point out that there are two types of coloration represented in the persimmon-colored robes
on display, one being a stronger orange, the other, having a red tinge. Both are the same as thoseworn by the lepers and shuku no chōri in the Ippen the Sage in Pictures.
2) The greater part of the figures in the first circle have some kind of footwear, while those in
the second and third circles are almost exclusively barefoot.
3) The bowls held by the beggar-monks in the first circle are black, with crimson interiors,

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kurodayoung children who have yet to go through the coming-of-age ceremony. After
proceeding through several stages of transformation in their hairstyle—theshearing off of hair already on the head at birth (sute-gami) and the iterative shaving of the baby’s head (ubu-zori 産剃) before letting it grow out until shoulder
length (tare-gami 垂髪) and the attendant kami-oki 髪置 ritual around the ageof three—a child dons the eboshi cap and becomes an adult—or rather, a “person”
or hito—and henceforth is subject to being considered a “person” by others.
Now, if we should turn back to the level of my model of the medieval status
system, which we will discuss in greater detail a bit later, what aspects of the theoretical principles underpinning the warawa category, within the social relationships of rule and bondage (shihai reizoku kankei 支配・隷属関係), should we beable to elucidate?
Hotate Michihisa’s recent essay “Shōen-sei-teki mibun haichi to shakai-shi
kenkyū no kadai” 庄園制的身分配置と社会史研究の課題 (in Rekishi hyōron, 380)
cites a passage from the fifth section of Chiri bukuro 塵袋 (Bag of Dust, see page355 in the Nihon koten zenshū edition) dealing with ethics (jinrin 人倫):
What is the meaning of words like ayatsu アヤツ or koyatsu コヤツ? What ofwriting the character for ‘dog’ 犬 on the forehead of a young child (shōni 小児)and calling it ayatsu? What is the reading of the character for ‘dog’? Ayatsu
means ‘it (the slave) over there’ 彼奴, koyatsu, ‘it (the slave) over here’ 此ノ奴 . . .
Since the custom is to call things that are not people (hito naranu mono 人ナラヌ
モノ) such, since it is like a dog, one writes ‘dog’ on the forehead of the child.

From the above, one can see that “young children,” “slaves” (yakko 奴), and“dogs” share the same quality of “not being people.” In other words, each issomething “kept,” in the sense of “keeping” an animal (kawareru sonzai 飼われる存在), or “provided for” (kyūyō 給養), and not seen as full persons (ichi’nin-mae no“hito” 一人前の「人」).9
In other words, slaves and servants, Hotate informs us, are dependent at leastin part on their masters for their upbringing and provisioning, and the convention of providing additional service as thanks beyond one’s contracted term
while those of the second and third circles are grey or black on the inside, as well. Why thisdifference? By the second and third circles of beggars and lepers, there are depicted oval
containers (eleven by the second circle, nine by the third), probably containing the tools of theirlivelihood. Perhaps these grey- or black-lined bowls are theirs, rather than belonging to the temple? This is potentially interesting.
Additionally, for more regarding persimmon-color and such colored vestments, see Amino
Yoshihiko’s 網野善彦 upcoming essay “Mino-kasa to kaki-katabira” 蓑笠と柿帷, in the special
color-themed issue of is, 1982.
9
Ge’nin, or servants, were in the most extreme cases essentially slaves, but as I elaborate later,
they were situated within the patrimonial and patriarchal order within their master’s household
and mediated by it; thus they both had the potential to be and in fact could be positioned within
the status order within the domain of Persons or hito, while their fortunes were tied to those of
their masters.

Persons, Monks, Children, and Non-Persons

95(rei-bōkō 礼奉公) would find its expression through unpaid menial labour, such asattending to their master morning and night (chōseki shikō 朝夕祗候), or the giving of gifts. From this perspective, the status of the servant can be understoodas in principle falling within the warabe category.
In the most extreme cases, the figure of the servant is raised from a young age
within the master’s home, and thus through eating and drinking together andplaying with the master’s children, etc., he reproduces relations of domination
and bondage that are colored, on the one hand, with feelings of obedient duty
for his master, much like those of a child towards a parent, and, on the other, asense of identification (ittai-kan 一体感) as with one’s own siblings vis-à-vis hismaster’s children.10
Returning to the task at hand, what sort of fundamental organizing principle
can one locate through these four categories? As indicated in Figure 1, one canlocate here the oppositions between “Purity” (jō 浄) and “Impurity” (fujō 不浄or kegare/e 穢), on the one hand, and that between the “Sacred” (sei) and the“Mundane” (zoku), on the other. These are the principal oppositional axes I haveestablished, in contradistinction to those in Minegishi’s schema of the status
system.
Ōyama Kyōhei identifies the core structure of the medieval status system asthat of “kiyome” キヨメ or “purification;” at its center sits the emperor, superlatively pure and isolated to preserve him from contamination.11 And within theurban structure of the capital governed by the concept of kiyome, indivisible
from the notion of pollution (kegare ケガレ) that had been amplified and nourished by the court aristocracy, those discriminated against as the most polluted
group were “non-person” beggars (kojiki hi’nin 乞食非人) and lepers.12 As
Chijiwa Itaru’s recent essay “Chūsei minshū no ishiki to shisō” 中世民衆の意識と思想 (in Ikki, volume 4, Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1981) indicates, oneof the principal punishments stipulated for breach of agreement in medieval
contracts, or kishōmon 起請文, was the contraction on the part of the offending
party of “the severe illnesses of white leprosy (byakurai 白癩) and black leprosy”(kokurai 黒癩); one important factors keeping the people in thrall within the medieval Shōen estate system was precisely this fear of suffering “white and black
leprosy” in the present life.
In sum, this dichotomy of Purity and Impurity, having as its antipodes theIt goes without saying that this identification is a kind of false consciousness, but it behooves one to pay attention to the fact that it has its roots in the shared communal experiencesof eating, etc., and re-examine it.
11
See Ōyama Kyōhei 大山喬平, “Chūsei no mibun-sei to kokka” 中世の身分制と国家, in
Nihon chūsei nōson-shi no kenkyū 日本中世農村史の研究. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1978.
12Ōyama, on page 369 of the previously cited monograph, points out that “at the gates ofaristocratic residences at the beginning of the 11th century were posted plaques directed towards
eta 穢多 reading ‘No Entry to Unclean People’ 不浄人不可来.” I would like to inquire further as
to what “Unclean Person” or eta-henman 穢多遍満 meant in these cases.
10

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kurodafigure of the emperor and the leper, can be thought to be the central axis of themedieval status system.13
However, the motivation for constructing the model in Figure 1 was—if I may
be allowed to digress—to shed light precisely on those groups of people who did
not neatly fit into any of its categories. The following anecdote provides a useful
illustration. The Rinzai monk and founder of Chōrakuji Temple 長楽寺 in Serata
世良田, Kōzuke Province, Shakuen Eichō was lecturing to a crowd when hecaught sight of a “mountain ascetic” or yamabushi 山伏 in his audience. Pointing
him out, he said, “What do we have here? It looks to be a man (otoko 男) at firstglance, and indeed it wears something like a priest’s kesa, but it wears no eboshi, and
it is not a child, nor is it a monk. Neither is it a fart, nor is it a piece of dung; could
it be something like a loose stool?” The monks in attendance were mortified—since yamabushi were known to be querulous and quick to violence, they were sure
Eichō had gotten them all into trouble. The yamabushi, however, rather than flying
into a rage, was deeply moved by Eichō’s sermon, and soon after took the tonsure.
This narrative of course corroborates the classificatory rubric delineated in theforegoing, but moreover suggests the liminal (kyōkai-teki 境界的) quality of the
yamabushi, in this case neither a “man” (lacking an eboshi cap), “child,” nor“monk.” What a dynamic understanding of the medieval status system will ultimately require will be a better understanding of the forces—like this yamabushi
or “villains in persimmon garb”—that operate on the borders and fringes of thisclassificatory rubric, and which will ultimately have a hand in its collapse.
2. The Collection of Common Sermons—an Analysis
What do we understand to be the organizing principles maintaining status order in the domains of Persons, or hito, and Monks, or sōryo? That shall be ournext task. To my knowledge, best-suited to aid in our analysis is the Futsū shōdōshū
普通唱導集 (Collection of Common Sermons).
This text has been taken up most recently in the work of Kuroda Toshio, but
it is my aim, informed by Kuroda’s insightful observations and analysis, to drawout from the various sort of relationships partially visible in his work a schematic understanding of the principles governing status relations.
As Kuroda has written, the Collection of Common Sermons, collated in 1297, is areference or compendium of proselyting narratives (shōdō 唱導), but the sort ofclassification of social types carried out in its editorial organization is most likely
representative of prevalent social attitudes at the time of its composition, andtherefore useful to our ends. Below are the sections relevant to our investigation,
to which I have appended some guiding marks.14
I see Kuroda Toshio’s “Hereditary Structure” (shusei-teki kōzō 種姓的構造) of status as beinga system of opposition between Purity and Impurity.
14
The following list, as it appears now in this translation, has been greatly simplified for thesake of clarity.
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97

I. two types of Spirits: Secular and Extra—Secular
A. Secular division(a) Emperors, aristocrats, and other closely related individuals(b) Rulers, parents, relatives, nursemaids, servants, house-holding monks
and nuns
B. Extra-secular division(a) Officially licensed monks and persons employed at religious institutions(b) Teachers, fellow disciples, young acolytes, monks, nuns, and Zen masters
II. two Divisions of Arts and Professions
A’. Secular division(1) Professional scholars, performers, and other highly specialized technicians(2) Diviners, spiritual mediums, and fortune-tellers(3) Painters, sculptors, printers, and manufacturers of various products(4) Prostitutes, female divers (ama), boatmen, fishermen, dancers and musicians(5) Merchants, townspeople, and horse-drivers(6) Gamblers, including players of go and backgammon
B’. Extra-secular division(1) Preachers, chanters, writers of Sanskrit, monks and mountain ascetics(2) Various sects of Japanese Buddhism: Hossō, Sanron, Tendai, Kegon,
and Shingon
Regarding the first category, I, Kuroda Toshio observes that A(a) delineate various status categories at the level of the state, while A(b) comprises the various
relationships within the patrimonial and patriarchal order; B, on the other hand,indicate public sacerdotal ranks and master-disciple relationships. The term
“spirits” or “souls” (shōryō 聖霊) in the category heading Kuroda interprets as
referring to the various status categories derived from concepts of relative hierarchy, these in turn predicated on the state and political order and its concomitant class relations. Regarding II, Kuroda indicates that these are status categories determined by a particular art or skill (gigei 技芸), and thus in a broad sense
represent the division of labour within society, both in the domains of the Secularand the Extra-Secular; Kuroda also suggests that these could be conceptualized as

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kurodaFigure 2. Social relations as depicted within Futsū shōdōshū (Collection of Common Sermons).

“creative” or “artistic” statuses (“geinō-teki” mibun 「芸能的」身分). I believe
Kuroda’s reading regarding I is certainly correct, and while I reserve for the present judgement regarding his identification of “artistic” statuses in II, I am
mostly in agreement with his findings there.
In the following, I would like, informed by Kuroda Toshio’s findings summarized above, to stress the points I would like to make (though there may be someoverlap with Kuroda Toshio’s analysis).
In the Collection of Common Sermons, one finds a quadripartite division—A, B, A’,
B’—determined by the two oppositional axes of the “Secular ↔ Extra-Secular”
and “Spirit ↔ Art,” as can be seen in Figure 2; however, one can also discern
an organization based on the relationships in the groupings marked (a) and (b).
A(a) delineates the system of status organized by official court ranks and appointments, beginning with the emperor and moving downward until reaching
the common people (shonin 諸人). A(b) has at one limit “the master” or “lord”(shukun 主君) and at the other, “servants” (shojū), while in between falls the domestic

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99

patriarchal order, organized around relations of filiality. In other words, thisindicates that the master-servant relationship is mediated by domestic patriarchal
relations. Thus, the status system at the level of the state—as seen in A(a)—requires for its establishment the internalization of these relations of control
and subjugation at the level of persons.
The same can be said in the case of group B. B(a) gives the official statuses ofmonks and priests, and thus is a system of status organized by the axis of official
sacerdotal ranks and titles (sōi 僧位; sōkan 僧官) at the state level. This system ofofficial state statuses, however, cannot stand on its own; the relationship of masterand disciple upheld between instructors and their students and child-acolytes (dōgyō
童形), comparable to that of A(b), allows it in reality to be sustained and reproduced.
Category A corresponds to the “Persons” or hito subdivision in Figure 1,
whereas B fundamentally corresponds to the “Monk” or sōryo subdivision. However, the underlying framework of the former category can be understood as
being this state-level status system, mediated by patriarchically and domestically-encoded relations of control and subjugation.15 The latter, as well, has as its
underlying framework this state-level status system, here mediated by master-disciple relations. According to Tanaka Minoru in his essay “Samurai bonge-kō「侍・凡下考」(in Shirin, 59: 4), the differentiation between the social status ofsamurai and commoners in the medieval period devolved on whether the person
in question boasted an official rank—the structural significance of the system ofofficial ranks and appointments to the status system within the domain of “Persons” is quite clear.
Here, however, I have considered the relationship articulated in A(b) between
the figure of the shukun or master and shojū or servants as essentially being amaster-servant relationship, but how does this bode for the sort of relationshipone can establish between the ge’nin, or servants, which I categorized as belonging to the warabe or Child category in my rubric, and these shojū?
I will not indulge in a thorough analysis here, but the conclusion to be drawn
is that both can be understood to fall in principle within the warabe category.
However, it would appear as though there is a slight difference between shojū andge’nin—essentially, that the former implies rather strongly an aspect of hierarchy ora master-servant relationship.16 In conjunction with the expansion of the master’s
15
Here, Myōe’s 明恵 famous words, also quoted by Kuroda Toshio, also symbolize how thehierarchical relationship between the emperor and his retainers operates as the undergirding
frame within the domain of Persons: “For the monk there is a proper was of being a monk, andfor the layman, a proper way of being a layman. For the Emperor, as well, there is a proper way
of being Emperor, and for his retainers, a proper way of being a retainer. To go against thisproper way of being is entirely evil.”16
One task for future investigation will be to consider the distinctions and similarities between
ge’nin and shojū. I am furthermore very much interested in how various terms—ke’nin 家人, rōdō郎等, shojū, etc.—were used to express status, and how they interacted or overlapped with eachother. At the present, however, I cannot say any more.

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kurodaor lord’s household, ge’nin and shojū would be incorporated as “retainers” (ke’nin家人), “young servants” (waka-tō 若党), or “serving men” (rōdō 郎等), and somewould be granted family names (myōji 名字), and with the amelioration of themaster’s rank and status, it was possible that they too would come to be interpolated into the state system of official ranks and titles. Since this relationshipwould have its basis in the support and care provided by the master, it would besustained by a form of identification, outwardly similar to a parental or sibling
relationship, and thus labour “morning and evening” or tribute would be expected
reciprocally. Moreover, since the maintenance or improvement in the standingof the master or lord was tied to one’s own emancipation from one’s current status or one’s advancement to a superior position, ge’nin and shojū could but devote
themselves fully to their service. Therefore, since a certain portion of ge’nin wereable to ascend to the status of household staff, the notion that one’s own fortunes and those of one’s master were one and the same was a sort of false consciousness binding ge’nin and shojū to their service, recursively reproduced.
As shown above, A (the Secular) and B (the Extra-Secular) in Figure 2 correspond to categories of hito and sōryo in Figure 1, and both are the domain of theruler and the ruled, ordered by the system of state-level ranks and appointments(either A(a) or B(a)). Internally organizing this order are the relations articulatedin A(b), those between the master and his subordinates (or B(b), between masterand disciple). And, as indicated by the arrows in Figure 1, one in the warawa category, being born the child of parents in the Persons or hito category, will in turn
become a Person upon coming of age; similarly, servants, conceptually occupying the same warawa category, have the possibility of ascending to the status of
Person, and thus can be represented by the same dotted arrow.17
Next, let us examine the two categories of A’ and B’ dedicated to the arts in
Category II.
As Kuroda Toshio points out, these two categories list practitioners of a widearray of skills and professions, representing the division of social labour in avery broad sense, but just as A and B demonstrate a certain logic to their ordering and the relationships implied therein, these groups are no more organized
at random than the preceding. The Shin sarugaku-ki 新猿楽記 (New Saru-Gaku
Record)18 lists various “abilities” (shonō 所能) current in the 11th century, when the
medieval system of private Shōen estates and court-owned lands was coalescing:Gamblers, warriors, female mediums, blacksmiths, scholars of history, law, andmathematics, sumo wrestlers, gluttonous and bibulous women, horse dealers,
carriage drivers, carpenters, doctors of medicine, diviners, musicians, poets ofvernacular verse. . .

More ideologically than realistically, however.
Contained in volume 8 of Kodai seiji shakai shisō 古代政治社会思想, from Iwanami Nihon shisō
taikei. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1979.
17
18

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101

And so on and so forth. In addition to including such outliers as “women who
eat little but love to drink,” “uncouth fools,” “dregs” (sōkō 糟糠), and “widows”(yamome 孀) in its list of abilities, one can clearly see that this list is comparatively
random in its ordering of terms.
In other words, judging from the manner in which the “abilities” in the New
Saru-Gaku Record are listed, one could point to, in these various “abilities” ofearly medieval people, a disorganized dynamism, a vitality not constricted by thestatus order.
By contrast, in the 13th century Collection of Common Sermons, as I demonstrate
in Figure 2, the various “arts” listed are ranked, forming a corresponding pairwith the “spirits” in categories A and B. A’ can thus be roughly broken down into
six subgroups, numbered above. Group (1) comprises the “arts” of the court,with its “literati” (bunshi 文士) and poets (kajin 歌人), directly tied to the worldof the aristocracy—the emperor of course as its center; Group (2) collects
various magic-workers (jujutsusha 呪術者), while Group (3) brings together
artisans of various sorts; Group (4) lists acrobats and entertainers, Group (5),merchants and traders, while Group (6) lists competitive game-players. From theclear contrast between Groups (1) and (6), it is apparent that the logic informing
the selection and order here is governed by some kind of value judgement.
Particularly interesting is that the magicians of Group (2) occupy the second
rung, immediately following Group (1), gesturing toward the importance of suchprofessions in the middle ages. Second, the fact that fishermen (amabito 海人)
and sailors (funabito 船人) are listed after courtesans (yūjo 遊女) is striking, but theposition of the latter here perhaps has some relation to the Eguchi courtesans(Eguchi no yūjo 江口の遊女). The third point of interest is that the position
attributed to merchants and townsmen is lower than that of Group (4)’s entertainers,
and that moreover they are seen as being proximate to gamblers; this certainly
invites one to consider the position of merchants and townsmen during thisperiod.
Similarly, B’ evidences a logic to its ordering, and as can be seen in Figure 2,
with “those knowing the sutras and constantly reciting them” (jikyōja 持経者) at
the head, and “mountain monks” (yamabushi) at the tail, and most likely indicatesthe same sort of value judgement as seen in A’.
If this is the case, it should prove impossible to collect these various “artistic”
statuses and reduce them to either one status or status stratum. In other words,
as one can glean from the order given, these “artistic” statuses demonstrate acertain stratification, one that corresponds to the status system having the emperor as its center. The various arts and professions expressed in A’ and B’ aresituated hierarchically within the system of official state ranks and titles, one
could say. Be it the domain of Persons or that of Monks, without the hierarchical distribution throughout the system of the agents responsible for performing
these various “arts,” neither register would be able to last a day—such goes almost without saying.

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kurodaRecently, Amino Yoshihiko 網野善彦 has taken interest in such “arts” (geinō)and “abilities” (shonō), and has argued the case for a “non-titled commoner status” (heimin mibun 平民身分) and an “artisan status” (shokunin mibun 職人身分) as
discrete status categories for “free commoners” (jiyūmin 自由民) in the middle
ages.19 I will refrain from addressing the former, but I would like to touch uponthis artisan status category in its connection to the “arts.”
Of course, Amino’s arguments cover a great deal of ground, and in a host ofdifferent contexts in his Nihon chūsei no minshūzō 日本中世の民衆像 he essays adefinition this artisan status. I fear I will not do a tidy job in summarizing, but
one can perhaps proffer the following few points. One: Those individuals who
engage in the arts (‘geinō’ wo itonami 「芸能」を営み), have their own specialized“Way” (michi 道), or make their living through “lowly craft” (‘gezai’ wo togetsutsu「外財」を遂げつつ) are dubbed “artisans” (p. 119). Two: Such artisans comprised, from the 12th and 13th centuries onward, those not involved in agriculture,such as fishermen, hunters, craftsmen and artisans, merchants, performers, andmagicians (p. 105–6), and since “employment” (shoku or shiki 職) and “art” (geinō)
are indissolubly linked, low-level shōen stewards could also be included in the
category (p. 109, 123). Three: As a prerogative ensured either at the state orsocial level, they were either all or in part exempt from annual taxation and otherobligations, and were thus ensured a special kind of “freedom” (p. 23, 105, 110,124), and in exchange, with their particular skills serve the powerful religious
institutions, beginning with the emperor (p. 105, 125–6).
These are all insightful observations, and deserving of consideration. However, if the questions is whether this proves sufficient for determining “the artisan” as a discrete status category, I am afraid I have to differ. First of all, Amino
is compelled to limit historically his “artisan” to the 12th and 13th centuries onward due to the fact that the New Saru-Gaku Record lists “farmers” (tato 田堵)among the various “abilities” it enumerates (p. 106). According to Amino’s argument, in the 12th and 13th centuries, farmers disappear from the realm of the“arts,” leaving it the domain of those not engaged in agriculture. However, as
discussed earlier, this notion of the “arts” or geinō is based on a broad understanding of the social division of labour, a perspective sufficiently capacious, as
one sees in the New Saru-Gaku Record, to include even “women given choose
drink over food” and “uncouth fools.” In this sense, it could be said that anyone
and everyone would have some “art.” In fact, the late Muromachi Sanjūni ban
shokunin uta-awase emaki 三十二番職人歌合絵巻 (Thirty-two Artisans Poetry Competition
Amino Yoshihiko, “Chūsei toshi-ron” 中世都市論, in Iwanami Chūsei kōza Nihon-shi, Chūseivol. 4, 1976; “Chūsei zenki no ‘sanjo’ to kyūmenden” 中世前期の『散所』と給免田, in Shirin,
59: 1, 1976; “Chūsei ni okeru tennō shihai ken no ikkōsatsu” 中世における天皇支配権の一考察,
in Shigaku zasshi, 81: 8, 1980; Nihon chūsei no minshūzō 日本中世の民衆像. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
1980. For a representative critique of Amino, see Wakita Haruko 脇田晴子, “Chūsei-shi kenkyū
to toshi-ron” 中世史研究と都市論, in Nihon chūsei toshi-ron. Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai,
1981, in which she critiques his work on three points, all of which are quite important.
19

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103

Picture Scroll) features a “farmer” (nō’nin 農人), indicating that the prevailing attitude until the late medieval period included “farmers” within the category of“artisans.” Second, that Amino includes the various “artisans” of the Shōenestate—local landlords (myōshu 名主), estate administrators (shōkan 荘官),
lower-ranking stewards (geshi 下司), assistant-stewards (kumon 公文), guards andpolice (sōtsuibushi 惣追捕使)— in his artisan status category is simply untenable,
and rouses a great number of doubts. Would Amino, for instance, maintain that
local landlords are not peasants, or involved in agriculture (hinōgyōmin 非農業民)?
Furthermore, simply because they share the general attribute of being exempt
from taxation and eligible for the receipt of tax-exempt fields, is it at all feasible
to lump together stewards, local landlords, lacquer workers, dyers, and puppeteers within a single status category? This anticipates what will be the thrust of
the argument in the following section, namely, how should one think about status?
Third, Amino considers “sacrifice-catcher” (niebito 贄人), “offeror” (kugonin 供御人), “a person in service to the gods” (ji’nin 神人), “offering-maker” (gusainin 供祭人), and “mediums” (yoryūdo 寄人) and such to be mere appellative terms ordesignations, or designations within the system (as opposed to discrete status
categories) (p. 127, 128, 133). This may be par for the course within Amino’s
framework, operating as he is with his artisan status category, but how do these
designations relate to expressions or articulations of status? In my opinion, jinin
and yoribito for instance function in the medieval period as status categories at thestate and social level. In sum, I consider these various groups as forming a status
category composed of a collective serving powerful religious institutions with
their particular skills or “arts.” If one had to give it a representative designation,
perhaps one could call it the “medium status.”20
From the foregoing, it should be apparent that within the field of medieval
status studies, the relationship between status designations (mibun koshō 身分呼称) or expressions of status (mibun hyōgen 身分表現), on the one hand, and conceptsof status (mibun gainen 身分概念), on the other, has yet to be made clear. In thefollowing section, I would like to interrogate this particular problematic.
3. Status Terms and Status Concepts
The problematic I proposed in the previous section can be divided into twopoints for argument. The first revolves around how one should think about andevaluate the appellative terms used for status —the lexical terms or designations
used to indicate status. The other concerns status at the conceptual level—how
should we conceptualize status, and subsequently what sort of approach should
we adopt when considering it? Due to the formal constraints of this essay, theobservations here will per force be limited to fulfilling the task at hand, the elabSee Wakita Haruko’s previously cited essay, p. 24. For an accessible summary of Wakita’s
opinion, see his “Shinza no keisei” 新座の形成, Rekishi kōron, 5: 9, 1983.
20

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kurodaoration of a structural schema of medieval status after my own fashion. In any
case, let us begin with the latter of the two.
So, what is status? Heretofore there have been many definitions suggested.
Perhaps most well-known is Ishimoda Tadashi’s 石母田正 definition: “Status is ahierarchical order (kaisō-teki chitsujo 階層的秩序) in which class relations (kaikyū
kankei 階級関係) have been fixed as the political or state order (seiji-teki mata wa
kokka-teki chitsujo 政治的または国家的秩序). . . . With the emergence of modern
capitalist society, this status order is completely dismantled, thereby laying barethe actual class relations underlying it; in anterior periods—with the exception,of course, of the primitive era before either class or status—class relations moreor less were manifest through the phenomenological form of status.” 21 However, the current attitude is that this definition has been basically overturned already by work done on subject of status authored by Kuroda Toshio and others.
For instance, Kuroda has demonstrated the coexistence of multiple strands ofstatus relations (mibun no sho-keiretsu 身分の諸系列) in (1) the village (sonraku 村
落), (2) Shōen or court rule (shōen kōryō no shihai 荘園・公領の支配), (3) the patrimonial order of powerful institutions (kenmon no kasan chitsujo 権門の家産秩序),and (4) the state structure (kokka-teki taisei 国家的体制), as well as the corresponding contingent sites through which status is established or realized—in (1)the community (kyōdōtai 共同体), through (2) the social division of labour(shakai-teki bungyō 社会的分業), via (3) class relations (kaikyū kankei 階級関係),
and through (4) the state (kokka 国家)—and has deftly shown how they relate toeach other.22 Thus, this proposed an analytical position that has permitted us tomove away from an understanding of status as merely the phenomenologicalmanifestation of class relations.23 The importance of this argument is clear fromthe growth the field of medieval status-system studies has seen in its wake. Next,
we have Ōyama Kyōhei’s definition. While basically accepting Kuroda’s argument, Ōyama proceeds to define status in the following terms:
The organization of status in premodern society takes as its foundation thatprinciple responsible for organizing internally collective human power exercised through the perpetual achievement of human social activity. These various social activities can be divided into a range of levels, encompassing productive activities, such as agriculture, fishing, hunting, etc., artistic and military
Ishimoda Tadashi 石母田正, “Kodai no mibun chitsujo” 古代の身分秩序, in Nihon kodai
kokkaron, part I. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1973, p. 250.
22
See Kuroda Hideo’s essay, the citation for which is given in note 5.
23
Takahashi Masaaki’s 高橋昌明 essay “Chūsei no mibun-sei shuppitsu ni atatte ryokuten wo
oita koto” 『中世の身分制』執筆にあたって力点をおいたこと (yet to be published, but will
surely go to print sooner or later), while supplementing the essay mentioned in my supplement
to this chapter, locates the fundamental problems in Ishimoda’s theory of status. For anothercritique of Ishimoda’s theory, see Hara Hidesaburō’s 原秀三郎 “Nihon kodai kokka-shi kenkyū
no riron-teki zentei” 日本古代国家史研究の理論的前提, in Nihon kodai kokka-shi kenkyū. Tokyo:
Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1980.
21

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activities, and even political and religious activity. Status has the basis for its establishment in the internal norms of a collective that has organized itself as theexecutive agent of social activity at such various levels.

So defining status, Ōyama gives as archetypes of such social collectives ororganizations (1) the household (ie イエ), (2) the village (mura ムラ), (3) parties(tō 党), coalitions (ikki 一揆), guilds (za 座), congregations (shū 衆), warriorgroups (bushi-dan 武士団), (4) powerful nobles (kenmon kizoku 権門貴族), the military government authority, or bakufu 幕府, powerful religious institutions (kenmon
jisha 権門寺社), and (5) the state. In this manner, Ōyama’s interpretation is firstof all informed by the theory of the division of labour, and second, takes as its
point of departure the establishment of internal parameters or norms on thepart of its various social collectives, and posits as the basis for the establishmentof the status system a procedural movement on the part of all social collectives
towards a general norm.
In this way, the definitions of and debate surrounding status have changed
greatly since Kuroda’s essay was published in 1972.24 The three points of greatest importance I have learned from this new wave of research are, (1) the needto consider the multiple contingencies, such as the division of labour, class, thecommunity, and the state, informing the establishment of status; (2) that one
should understand premodern people as part of social collectives, and that one
should apprehend status as the internal norm or order of such social collectives;and (3), that one must consider the conceptual character of status at the level of
habit or custom, law, and religion. That being said, I would like to offer my own
definition of status:
Status is the basic mechanism or system (shisutemu システム) in premodern society of human differentiation (ningen sabetsu 人間差別) and stratification (seisōka
成層化). In premodern society, human beings exist principally as part of a collective or group, and as such, the various statuses inscribed on individuals also
have ontological presence as various status groups. These various status groups
can be understood to range in an ever-expanding fashion from the smallest ofcollective social units (the household, the village) through various social collectives at every level, until culminating at its furthest extent at the level of the national community. The principle establishing and maintaining internal structuralorder within each status collective at each level is precisely status. The contingencies through which it is actualized are primarily the divisions of labour andclass, among others, and it sees legitimation through custom, law, and religion.25

However, this definition is merely a starting point, a springboard for moving
Arashiro’s 安良城 essay, noted in my supplementary comments, gives perhaps the mostconcise reflections on the basic essence, formation, contingency of emergence, structure, andorganization of status; unfortunately, it is still incomplete, and I anxiously await its completion.
25
Regarding concepts of status, there are many definitions offered by sociologists, beginningwith Weber. I am still deliberating just how to receive them.
24

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kurodacloser to our goal. The question is, rather, by turning our sights towards status,
what sort of insight into the social or state order of the medieval period will become available to us? We require analytical methodologies and conceptual categories that can guide us to those ends. In the following, I will briefly summarize
what is currently in our arsenal.
First of all, there is the question of the appellative terms used for status,
touched upon in the foregoing. In my opinion, original work directed towards
constructing an understanding of the various terms used reciprocally between
people in the middle ages remains to be done. In other words, since humanbeings in premodern society find themselves necessarily situated in direct, unmediated relationships with other human beings through the relations of interpersonal dependency binding them together, one can only assume that human relationships, of no matter what sort, must find articulation at the level of language
or naming—in brief, through appellative terms; thus, it is imperative that a levelof analysis able to interrogate these various terms in an original manner be established. If one approaches such appellative terms from the vantage point of
their categorization and organization, the question quickly becomes one of precisely how one chooses to in fact go about their categorization, but such terms
can and do very well exist for nearly every conceivable kind of human differenceor classification—people’s physical conditions, their social rank, faculties orskills, employment, their age, gender, race, place of residence, religion, et cetera.
Dredging up from this veritable “sea of appellatives” those that can properly beconsidered “status terms” is a task unto itself. For instance, even in the case of
the New Saru-Gaku Record or Collection of Common Sermons cited in the previous
sections, the various appellative terms that appear are not at all exclusively statusterms. For instance, few would admit as status categories an “uncouth fool” status, or a “dregs” status, or a “widow” status. One also has difficulty conceivingof a “constant-sutra-reciter” status, as well.
However, the problem is, of course, that mingled with all these various appellatives are, in fact, status terms, and that they can tend to overlap subtly withothers. For instance, if presented with a “fisherman” status (ama mibun 海人身分), a “townsman” status, or a “courtesan” status, it is not entirely inconceivablethat some critics, at least, would recognize them as such. Even in the case of critics who take such status terms more broadly, one can imagine the next development in the discussion.
As to what I myself have come up against, one finds quite a variety of discriminatory status terms in circulation—“non-person” (hi’nin), “hill person” (saka no
mono 坂者), “lodge person” (shuku no mono 宿者), and “dog-priest” (inu-ji’nin 犬神人), among others. These terms, it would seem, while nevertheless being subtly
distinct also overlap. In some cases, they are essentially synonymous, while inother historical documents, they seem to refer to entirely different figures. In
such cases, one surmises that their actual substance (jittai 実体) was itself perhaps

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fluid, and that the status terms themselves are either regionally specific, or thatthey are named merely metonymically, based on their place of residence or thelabour in which they were engaged. Moreover, the labour of these “non-persons”
was varied and could change quite easily.
While I am of the opinion that, when confronted with how best to sum up
these various status terms, Kuroda Toshio’s model, positing as it does a“non-person” status category, is at present the most convincing,26 it is nevertheless clear that we require a framework in which we can situate and put in orderthe debate moving us closer toward these diverse status terms. If such can beaccomplished, it is certain that we will be able to gain much in ordering, investigating, and analyzing all sorts of status terms. In the medieval period, forinstance, it was not uncommon for a single individual to belong to different
collectives concomitantly, and in such cases, that person, one supposes, would
have had two different status appellatives simultaneously.27 Such cases, if approached rigorously, would be sure to furnish the grounds for very interestingargument.
If one pushes the point further, two considerations come to mind. One is apoint emerging from the difference in quality of status terms. Otherwise put, incontradistinction to one’s status determined by birth (through lineage or bloodline),28 there are status terms of a different sort—for instance, statuses that aredelimited to the lifetime of the individual.29 How to contend with these statuses
and their corresponding appellatives will likely be a question of individual approach. The second point is that there are many status terms—such as “underling/slave” (warawa/yakko) and “servant” (ge’nin)—that have an incredibly broad
denotative extent.30 In order to deal with these sorts of status terms, one must
problematize the distinctions made and the linkages between relative articulations of status (sōtai-teki mibun hyōgen 相対的身分表現) and relative status relationships, on the one hand, and absolute articulations of status (zettai-teki mibun hyōgen
絶対的身分表現) and absolute status relationships, on the other. In other words,
articulations of relative status would, depending on the vantage point fromSee Kuroda’s essay in note 5, pages 361, and 377–390.
The Tanaka essay cited in footnote no. 20 points out that it was possible for one to serve twomasters at the same time, and underscores the fact that in such cases one would have two statuses
at the same time (p. 21–22). Also, see p. 296 of the Takahashi essay mentioned in my supplementary notes.
28
At the heart of the ideological underpinnings of the status system, of course, are conceptsof heredity or origin (shusei kannen 種姓観念), in other words, lineage, bloodlines, and blood relations.
29
Takahashi divides these into birth status, status of affiliation, and labour or employment status. This seems promising for future inquiry.
30
Takahashi Masaaki’s work in “Nihon chūsei hōken shakai-ron no zenshin no tame ni—
ge’nin no kihon-teki seikaku to sono honshitsu” 日本中世封建社会論の前進のために―下人の基本的性格とその本質, Rekishi hyōron, 332, 1977, can be read as an example of the particularbreadth of the ge’nin designation.
26
27

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kurodawhich the articulation of status is made, see the same status appellation deployed
to refer to a different object.31 If one fails to make this distinction clear, it will be
impossible to avoid confusion at the level of argument.
It is my honest feeling that one cannot make any progress in thinking throughthe various aspects of status terminology without delving deep into the lexicaluniverse of the middle ages and its people, but I must concede that at the present, I do not have the resources for an undertaking at that level. At this juncture,
I can only indicate what remains to be done.
In what remains of this section, I would like to outline the direction andmethod of my approach, and connect it to the presentation of my model of themedieval status system that will follow in the next section.
In sum, by regarding the numerous appellatives comprising such status terms
in relation to the system of symbolic and theoretical classification and differentiation, can one not perhaps not situate their coordinates within the status system? Thinking thusly, I set out in the first section of this chapter from a very
fundamental and symbolic categorization of people. This was my quadripartite
model of hito, sōryo, warawa, and hi’nin (the only important group not addressedin this schema is that of onna, or Women). By examining them through their linkages with these four categories, situating these various appellative terms should
be possible. And, from this perspective, one can see that of the five distinctions
made in status at the state level, or what has been conventionally considered theapex of the system, three—the aristocratic status (kishu mibun 貴種身分), thebureaucratic/samurai status (tsukasa samurai mibun 司・侍身分), and the peasantstatus (hyakushō mibun 百姓身分)—fall within the realm of hito or Persons, while
those excluded from the realm of Persons are those of the ge’nin status, who fallwithin the rubric of warawa, and those of the hi’nin status, falling into the hi’ninor Non-Persons rubric.
Secondly, one must consider status and the status system while keeping in
mind the distinction between the “endogenic” status relations within social collectives and “exogenic” status relations—those operative between social collectives.
In other words, as Ōyama has previously indicated, status operates as the internal norms of a social collective. And in premodern society, no matter who
one may be, it is only as a constituent member of a collective or group that one
can be an “individual.” Therefore, people, through the endogenic norms of theirsocial collective, are positioned within a particular set of status relationships,
while at the same time, vis-à-vis the outside world, they per force display the
Tanaka Minoru’s 田中稔 essay “Samurai bonge kō” 「侍・凡下考」, Shirin, 59: 4, 1976, discusses how Kujō Kanezane 九条兼実, in his diary Gyokuyō 玉葉, refers to Hatta Tomoie’s steward
Shōji Tarō as “Tomoie’s shojū,” “Tomoie’s ge’nin,” and “Tomoie’s rōjū,” demonstrating that, eventhough he was of samurai extraction, to Kanezane, he was nothing more than a servant. This isa representative example of such relative status.
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Figure 3. The two orders (vertical) and three levels (horizontal) of social organiza1
tion. [I] First order: Rulers and the ruled; [II] Second order: Communal groups; a〇2 powerful houses and religious institutions; a〇3 the state; b〇
1 villages;
household; a〇2 counties and provinces; b〇
3 the stateb〇particular characteristics of their status affiliation—through their abilities, work,
dress, mannerisms, etc.—in their “exogenic” engagement in social activity. In
other words, status relations must be analyzed with a clear distinction made between such internal status relations and external status relations.
In this case, one is faced first with the problem of breaking various social collectives into discrete units, and next by the relative level of each social collective(see Figure 3). In brief, one must differentiate between at least three levels ofendogenic status relations and appellatives—those at the level of the individual
social collective unit, those at the broader societal level (shakai-teki kibo 社会的規模), and ultimately those at the national or state level (kokka-teki kibo 国家的規模). I think one can envision this in principle as operating along two sets of

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kurodaaxes.32 The first, axis a, operates vertically, indicating relations of rule and subjugation, and moves upward from (1) the household, through (2) the powerful
local authorities to ultimately reach (3) the state. The second, axis b, operates laterally, representing communal relations, and thus moves outward, from (1) thevillage, through (2) the county or province before extending to the entirety of (3)the state. In other words, a(1) and b(1) are first-degree social collective units,
while a(2) and b(2) represent the second-degree, societal level of internal status
relations and order, and a(3) and b(3) represent the third-degree, national levelof internal status order (of course, this is merely a model; one could, for instance, posit b(1) as “the town,” or b(2) as a “provincial coalition”).33
Here, at the first-degree level of social collective units, we have individual
households and villages. Within these first-degree units, the vertically-organizedhousehold comprises the master and his servants or ge’nin and shojū, over whom
he exerts authority, while the laterally-organized village comprises residents andvillagers, on the one hand, and peripheral “in-between people” (mōto 間人) andvagabonds (rō’nin 浪人), on the other.34
Of importance here is that these individual collective units, as the individual
cells of society and the state, formulate their own specific status relationships
and terminology. The status relationships internal to these collective units are,generally speaking, closed, and function in accordance with the principles orcharacteristics specific to them; however, it should be clear that they cannot becompleted through their internal functioning alone. In other words, they are determined by the status terminology and relationships operative at the secondary
and tertiary levels. No matter what the term, chances are that it operates either
as a term or relationship at the secondary or tertiary levels, and even in the caseof exceptions to such, it would be linked to the system of external, exogenic status relations and nomenclature. For instance, “status XX” within a certain collective may correspond to “status YY” in another collective, but at the secondaryor tertiary levels, both would be found to correspond to “status ZZ,” thereby
rendering apparent the relative positions of the various status terms at play. In
this sense, the status relationships and terminology within a collective unit only
come to bear meaning in relation to the exterior. In other words, at the secondary level, regional society or the institutions of local authority cannot but impose
a particular internal status order, and as such this secondary level becomes thebasis for the status relations and terminology internal to society.
Ready examples of such second-level regional societies are, of course, theprovince, county, and township (gō 郷). Here, regional coalescence forms a
Please refer to the entry on “Status-System Society” authored by Naruse Osamu 成瀬治, inSekai daihyakka jiten 世界大百科事典. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2007.
33
I have let “powerful local authorities” represent the second-degree category, but other groupings—parties, coalitions, guilds, congregations, etc., are basically situated at this second-degree level.
34
This community need not be the village; it could be, for instance, a craftsmen’s or merchants’ guild.
32

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discrete set of “endogenic” status relations, and thereby structures the status hierarchies and orders operating reciprocally between individual social collective
units. “Exogenic” status relations at the level of individual collective units form
the “endogenic” status relations at the secondary level. The same holds for the
institutions of authority, as the various individual units incorporated into thepatrimonial order and ruling system are ranked through their organization as“endogenic” statuses (for instance, karei 家礼 versus ke’nin 家人). Within such apatrimonial system, is it natural to observe a multitude of positions commensurate with the complexity of its organization. Additionally, shrine-workers (ji’nin),mediums (yoribito), kugonin, niebito, kunin, and weavers (ori-te 織手), among others,
have their status determined by the shared condition of being in service to thispatrimonial ruling system, and can thus be understood as “endogenic” statuses
at the second level—in other words, as societal- or state-level statuses.35
By contrast, the tertiary, state level subsumes the regional domains negotiatedreciprocally by the local political and landed authorities or county or provincial
administration, and as a larger unit absorbing such borders, has establishedwithin it its status relations and designations. The status system qua state orderconstitutes, basically, the normative set of relations within the state, and is thus
status qua endogenic normative relations. At this level, status is ordered according to the axis of official court ranks and titles. The status ranking at this thirdlevel, in other words, at the internal level of the state, comprises the aforementioned categories of the aristocracy, bureaucrats and samurai, and peasants andlesser commoners.36
In this manner, status relations and order can be organized into three levels.
The first are those operative within social collective units as foundational “endogenic” status relationships. The second are the status relationships within a
specific regional society or within the administrative purview of powerful ruling
institutions, which operate at the societal level, incorporating as they have these
individual social collective units. One could say that these are status relations ofa dynamic character, prone to change in response to transformations or developments in various social collectives.37 Comparatively, the third is the set of
Takahashi considers these status terms to be what he calls statuses of affiliation.
According to Kuroda, Tanaka, Ōyama, and Ishida Yūichi 石田雄一, these groups can moreor less be summarized in the following way. The aristocracy comprises the collective of nobles
organized around the imperial family, the highest ranking being the family of the regent (sekkanke摂関家), then descending from the rank of kugyō 公卿 to tayū 大夫, no lower than the fifth rank.
They hold political power. Bureaucrats and samurai are lower ranking courtiers, serving andsubordinate to the aristocracy while still making up the ruling class. Peasants and commoners
compose the majority of the ruled, have no rank, and maintain households.
37Ōyama in the previously cited essay does similarly (p. 374), but Takahashi’s essay deepens its
ruminations on the fact that status “is shaped by its involvement with the existence of autonomous groups of various types, and thus has a social reality and ‘rationality’ of its own” (p. 319).
I have thought about this, but have yet to make up my mind entirely.
35
36

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kurodastatus relations or the status order that has internally organized at the level of thestate the status relations between various social collectives, and is thus the set of
status relations or status order internal to the state. It is only natural that thisshould fulfill the role of regimenting the status relations “between” social collectives. Not only that, but this status order, oriented outward, produces international and ethnic status hierarchies with China, Korea, or the Ryukyu Islands.
It goes without saying that responsible for bringing together social collectives
in this manner is the state-level status order. Within this regime, subordinate status relations are arranged as “endogenic” status relations. This is because, inother words, at that level, the state-level organization of status determined by
official court ranks and titles is taken to be the fundamental axis of the social
order, and through this, the reciprocal relationships between status relations andtheir concomitant articulations are arranged.
Of course, the arrangement of status at the state level is static. Its primaryfunction is the maintenance, ordering, and fine tuning of the reciprocal relations
between the existing status categories.38 Therefore, its position is diametrically
opposed to that of the various activity, carried out by dynamic, moving agents,
responsible for the production of status terminology in premodern society.
However, at the same time, when thinking of the formation of a new state, itwould be natural that the formation of a new status order at the state level would
be dynamic, having as its axis the status of the state-forming subject. What I
would like to emphasize here in particular is that the development of the common people at the societal level, specifically development in the social divisionof labour and the growth of the classes, always harbours within it the tendency
to form new statuses.
However, this Japanese status order is, however, far from simple. For one, thenational, “endogenic” order is itself in turn determined by its emplotment
among states within an international status order. For instance, the status orderat the diplomatic level surrounding the relationship between the Chinese emperor (kōtei 皇帝) and the Japanese king (kokuō 国王). Another example would be
the relationships between people variously “within” and “outside” the state; thelines drawn to determine at what point one ceases being Japanese and begins to
be a foreigner, or a barbarian, for instance, are implicated in structuring theframework of status relations at a very delicate level. Here, status relations at theinter-ethnic level begin structuration.
4. The Status System in the Middle Ages: In Lieu of a Conclusion
What has been delineated in the preceding is altogether quite simple. To summarize, in the first section, by indicating what facets of the status system are
It should go without saying that the power this function of status at the state has is conceptual and ideological.
38

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visible at the level of visual markers, we were able to derive two sets of opposing
principles, Purity ↔ Pollution, on the one hand, and Sacred↔Mundane, on theother, and we indicated that the central axis of the medieval status system wasfor the former, having at its poles the emperor and the hi’nin, in its extreme form
the leper.
In the second section, by analyzing the Collection of Common Sermons, we indicated that similarly two sets of contrasting oppositions could be derived—one
being Extra-Secular ↔ the Secular, corresponding to the Sacred-Mundane binary, and the other, Spirit ↔ Art. The level of Spirit can be summed up as follows. The Secular world is organized by a status system, mediated by the relations of authority and subjugation binding lord and follower, linking theemperor at its zenith to the common people as its base through the state systemof court ranks and titles. The Extra-Secular world is organized in an analogous
fashion, governed by a state-level status system of priestly ranks from sōjō 僧正
to ushiki or yūsoku 有職, mediated by the master-disciple relationship. By contrast,
the grouping of Arts appears at first glance to be composed of a random assortment of professions, but upon closer examinations reveals itself to be ordered
in a manner analogous to the state-level status systems above, suggesting that its
composition has in part been determined by the state-level status order.
In the third section, to assist our investigation of status, we discussed the distinction to be made between “endogenic” status and “exogenic” status, and attempted to show how the nature of status, as a set of internal, endogenic norms,
is arranged at three levels: the first, within the unitary social collective, the second, within a larger societal context, and the third, finally, as a status system atthe state level.
What remains to be done at this juncture, after making these observations, isof course to visually schematize the medieval status system. The status system,
demonstrating the sort of complexity of the medieval period that it does, recognizes at the state level only the categories of “the aristocracy,” “bureaucrats andsamurai,” and “peasants and commoners” as forming its basic constituent statusgroups. Kuroda Toshio has previously remarked on this. The problem confronting us is what sort of diagram can we elaborate while retaining these three statusgroups as an axis while including our findings from the preceding sections.
The first point we should reiterate here is that the status system functions as
the endogenic organizing principle for social collectives. In the vertically organizes warrior households, for instance, status relations are maintained by the axis
furnished by hierarchical authority, domestic relationships and relationships ofdependency, like the relationship between master and servant. While eachhousehold exists with its own individual peculiarities, as a stratified order eachhas at its poles the master and his servants, with all individual relationships falling in between organized hierarchically through one’s specific relationship to thehead of the household. The organization of these unitary collectives can be understood to have an oblong, fusiform morphology, similar to those of muscle

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kurodaFigure 4. Spindle-shaped model depicting the relationships between social groups

fibers. The status system as a societal system is constituted by the interactions
and interrelationships between these fusiform units. In other words, the larger
fusiform units of patrimonial households will contain within them a pluralityof smaller households, and thus contain a plurality of smaller fusiform units.
Powerful ruling institutions, such as the estates of the local nobility or shrine
and temple estates, regardless of their relative size, form compound, aggregate
fusiform status systems. These fusiform social collectives of sizes great andsmall, through their reciprocal interactions, give shape to status relations. Meanwhile, while communal groupings such as the village, forming the lateral axis, dodemonstrate stratification, representing them by fusiform units is inappropriate;
to illustrate, for instance, how the village is a communal unit comprising all
individual households, I have decided to represent this, via the dotted lines in
Figure 4, as an oval cross-section laterally circumscribing the vertically-oriented
unitary collectives. Larger administrative units, such as provinces or counties, arehomologous.

Persons, Monks, Children, and Non-Persons

115

The second point is to situate the emperor at the apex, and the non-person
hi’nin at the terminus. According to Kuroda Toshio, “the medieval status system,
having a special hereditary quality, . . . establishes above a status stratum reserved for the revered and sacred, above and beyond the realm of the human,and below, an abject status stratum of the unclean, far below the realm of thehuman, and within these conceptually powerful strictures, produces a public,
stratified status system, that does not rely on private interpersonal relations. That
is its particular characteristic.”39 As I understand it, as the emperor, occupying
the apex of the status system, represents the quintessence of purification andde-personalization (hi’ningen-ka 非人間化), within the collective of non-person
hi’nin, lepers are considered the quintessence of the polluted or unclean, and thisdichotomy of purity and pollution determines the oppositional poles undergirding relations within the medieval status order. Between these extremes are thecompound fusiform collectives previously discussed, varying in size and proportion. Thus, this overarching relationship can be modeled as a much larger fusiform structure, subsuming all other fusiform units and pulling them towards its
two extremes.
The third point to be made is that the status system basically articulates theorder or stability between the center and the periphery or borders. In otherwords, rural regions and localities, having the capital as their putative center,
determine their status systems concentrically. One must understand the total
status system in Japan as divided between the capital, the rural provinces, andthe periphery or borderlands. It is likely that one’s relative proximity withregards to the seat of political authority and the capital was an indispensablefactor in understanding the calculus of the status structure. In the case of thecapital, since it was arranged around the emperor as the seat of purity, thepolluted were made to gather at its edges. Outside the capital lie Yamashiro
Province and the Kinai region. Were the peasants of the capital and the Kinai
region, and those of more distant provinces, considered to share the same status? Most likely not. Similarly, as Tanaka has pointed out regarding the samurai
status, one can see discrepancies in shogunate law in the standing and treatmentof rural samurai.40 When it comes to those living on the distant peripheries orborderlands of the state, as Murai has pointed out, since they were often seen
to be something akin to “demons” (oni 鬼) it is difficult to think that the statusof those on the periphery of the state’s territory would have been considered
to share the same status with the inhabitants of the Kinai region. In other words,
if one were to take a cross-section of our fusiform model, at the resulting circle’s
center would be the site of purity, and at the perimeter, the zone of pollution,
thereby visually representing the regime of Purity↔Pollution laterally.41 As theSee p. 392 of the previously cited article.
See previously cited Tanaka article.
41
Please refer to pp. 36–44 of Murai’s essay, mentioned in my supplementary notes.
39
40

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kurodavertical status relations within the system are organized by this Purity↔Pollution
dynamic, the status system is clearly influenced by this concentric spread at theregional level and by the oppositional relationship between Purity and Pollution,and thus does not stop or reject the incorporation the “outside,” other ethnic
groups or other collectives at the periphery or on the borders of the status system. In other words, the structure of the status system encompasses the entiretyof the concentric Purity ↔ Pollution opposition.42
The fourth point in need of making is that the “Sacred” collectives, positioned
in contradistinction to the “Mundane,” occupy a position of great importance inthe medieval period. To the left-hand side of the central axis organized by the
figures of the emperor and the leper lies the status order organizing the domainof the “Sacred,” while to the right lies the status order organizing the domain of
the “Mundane.” The former can be roughly partitioned into two categories:“learned monks” (gakuryo 学侶), including among others the monzeki 門跡, thearistocrats within the temple precincts, and “low-ranking monks” (dōshū 堂衆),with shimo-bōshi 下法師 and shimobe 下部 filling out the lowest rungs. This domain
is ordered by the sacerdotal ranks and titles subtended at the state level, and as iswell known from the Kōan reisetsu 弘安礼節, sees the “Mundane” and “Sacred”
reciprocally establish correspondence between the coordinates of their relative
status systems.43
However, the world of Monks or sōryo is not simple.44 While informed by thedomain of Persons or hito, one must keep in mind the slippages between it andthe mundane realm (This, however, is not a problem that can readily be resolved
here. It will first be necessarily to clarify the status relations and rankings within
individual temples, then expand one’s analysis to whole regions or sects toascertain the relative rank of specific temples. Only then can one begin to havea sense of the status organization of the Monk or sōryo category at the statelevel.).
The fifth point to be made regards the shrine-workers, mediums, kugonin, andFrom this perspective, the conceptual connections between the sort of attitude evinced towards non-person hi’nin as “unclean,” and those held toward the Ezo 蝦夷 will require careful
evaluation.
43
For more on the Kōan reisetsu, see Tanaka (p. 29) and Takahashi (p. 317).
44“Learned monks” were divided into monks of aristocratic origin and common monks, withthe former being made up of those of the fifth rank or higher, and some of high-ranking samurai status. From cases in which one knows the class background of the dōshū or lower-ranking
monks, they tended to be of middle-to-low samurai rank. By contrast shimo-bōshi and gebu shaved
their heads, but were not official monks, and took care of menial tasks within the temple—one
could consider them the peasants or commoners of the temple. Seen from this perspective, the“learned monks” correspond to the aristocratic classes in the domain of Persons or hito, whiledōshū correspond to the samurai class, and the shimo-bōshi and shimobe, to the commoner classes.
However, there is a degree of clear slippage between these categories. Further investigation isrequired to the ends of a better understanding of the factors informing the status order within
religious institutions.
42Persons, Monks, Children, and Non-Persons

117

niebito, among others. They have their own specific lateral affiliation informedby the type and mode of their profession and are incorporated into the administrative bodies of the powerful ruling authorities; somewhat later, historicallyspeaking, the professional or guild-like aspect specific to them will become increasingly clear.45
The sixth point to be made is that, as can be readily observed should one understand our model as a compound body of fusiform social collectives, there are
myriad spaces and interstices between and at the edges of the plurality of fusiform units forming the whole. In these spaces operate the social collectives of
the non-person hi’nin, but they too form their own individual collectives andgroups particular to them.46
By incorporating these various conditions, our schema of the medieval status
system perforce adopts a fusiform morphology; within it, fusiform social collectives both great and small stand in relationships of reciprocal opposition andco-dependence, enfolding each other or overlapping in various ways. The exogenic positions of these fusiform social collectives are endogenically arranged atonce by the system of court (or sacerdotal) ranks and titles, produced with the
opposition of Purity and Pollution centered on the emperor as well as the authority of the throne as its central axis, and by the geographical or spatial opposition between Purity and Pollution centered on the capital. And, within the gaps
between these fusiform social collectives, those that have elected to remove
themselves from society, or those individuals or collectives that have fallen
through or been left behind, are active on the peripheries and borders, either ofthe capital or further afield.
Figure 5 is the structural diagram described in the foregoing. One can only
hope that it can perhaps serve some purpose as a reference.
In concluding, I would like to digress slightly and append some further explanation. In brief, what can be apprehended from a theological or sociological perspective as the tripartite structure of Cosmos (the Sacred), Nomos (the Mundane), and Chaos47 can also be identified within this model. In other words, tothe left one as Cosmos, the Sacred, to the right, Noumos, the Mundane, and at
the very base, Chaos. However, while in principle this model should have threevertices, in our fusiform diagram of the medieval status order, the vertices of
Cosmos and Nomos converge at the apex, while Chaos is positioned diametriSince the goal of this paper has been to elaborate a model of the medieval status system,
there has been no diachronic analysis of the developmental process of the status system. This
will be a task for the future.
46
For more on the hierarchies of these groups, see “Illustrated Picture Scrolls as Historical
Documents and the Medieval Status System,” also contained in this volume.
47
Kimura Yōji’s 木村洋二 chapter “Shōchō-teki sekai no yonkyoku kōzō moderu” 象徴的世界の四極構造モデル, Warai no shakaigaku 笑いの社会学. Tokyo: Sekai Shisōsha, 1983, interestinglyinterprets the Sacred as a “superstructure” or potential that produces “structure” and therefore“order.”45

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kurodaFigure 5. Schematic depiction of the system of social status relations prevailingthroughout the medieval period.

cally against both at the structure’s lowest point, in the position of greatest pollution. Cosmos and Nomos are thus set against Chaos, in the form Cosmos/
Nomos↔Chaos.
Chaos, however, exists at the threshold of all social collectives. In this sense,

Persons, Monks, Children, and Non-Persons

119while its symbolic pole may be located at the very terminus of the status system,
Chaos nevertheless may lurk anywhere within those interstices—such as the liminal spaces of the public roads or riverbanks—at the Cosmic and Nomic peripheries.
Supplementary Note:
The latter half of this chapter consists of new material. That being said, it is
not informed by more recent findings, but rather is the result of the reworking
and reorganization of a draft wrote concomitantly with the composition of thefirst half. That draft was to have been completed and to have appeared as “SomeAdditional Notes on the Medieval Status System” in the magazine Jinmin no rekishi-gaku, but at about the same time I found myself in the position of having toprepare the keynote address at the conference hosted by the Historical Science
Society of Japan (contained in this volume as “Epidermal Sensation and Fear in
the Common People of the Middle Ages”), and lacked either the time or energy
to complete it. But, as the first half was going to be included in this monograph,
I no option but to finish the second half. I thought about rewriting the entire
thing, but if I were to have done so, it would have ill-fit with the first half. Therefore, I only went so far as to put the argument from the original draft in betterorder. For that reason, one could say that there isn’t much in the way of newmaterial to be found in the latter half, but such was necessary for the completionof the essay and its argument. As a result, however, I have been reminded of theurgent need for a more rigourous and thoroughgoing engagement with thestudy of status, and hope to fill in some of the blank in future work.
When revising an older manuscript, however, it is hard to keep one’s later reading from finding its way into one’s work. I have tried to mark such places withadditional footnotes, but I am unsure whether this has been sufficient. For thatreason, I list here those papers published in the interim that I myself found to
be important.
a) Arashiro Moriaki 安良城盛昭, “Mibun narabi ni mibun-sei ni tsuite norironteki sho mondai” 身分ならびに身分制についての理論的諸問題, inNihon hōken shakai seiritsuron 日本封建社会成立論, vol.1, postscript. Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 1983.
b) Takahashi Masaaki 高橋昌明, “Chūsei no mibun-sei” 中世の身分制, in Kōza
Nihon rekishi 講座日本歴史, volume 3, chūsei 1. Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku
Shuppankai, 1984.
c) Koyama Yasunori 小山靖憲, “Chūsei no senminsei” 中世の賤民制, in Kōza
Nihon rekishi 講座日本歴史,volume 4, chūsei 2. Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku
Shuppankai, 1985.

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kurodad) Yokota Fuyuhiko 横田冬彦, “Kinsei no mibunsei” 近世の身分制, in Kōza
Nihon rekishi 講座日本歴史, volume 5, kinsei 1. Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku
Shuppankai, 1985.
e) Murai Shōsuke 村井章介, “Chūsei Nihon rettō no chiiki kūkan to kokka” 中世日本列島の地域空間と国家, Shisō, June 1985.
All of the above are rich works of scholarship, but I will refrain from further
commentary here, and instead, as stated above, will continue my process of digestion. Finally, I would like express my sincerest apologies to the editorial department of Jinmin no rekishigaku for having failed to complete the second halfof this chapter until the present, as well as for having put it to print—the slothof the author is the blame on both accounts.

Studies in Japanese Literature and Culture 1 (July 2018) 121–124© 2018 National Institute of Japanese Literature

Yoshitsune Crossing the Ocean:
The Tale of Onzōshi Shimawatari
Saitō Maori
Translated by Kristopher reevesP

erformative works from various genres—nō 能, kōwakamai 幸若舞, kojōruri
古浄瑠璃—that foreground episodes in the life of Minamoto no Yoshitsune
源義経 (1159–1189) and his immediate circle are collectively referred to as
hōgan mono 判官物, a term taken from the fact that Yoshitsune himself served aslieutenant of the imperial police (hōgan). Many of these episodes where circulated
and enjoyed in the form of picture books (so-called Nara ehon 奈良絵本) and illustrated scrolls, a great many of which focused on events taken from Yoshitsune’s
younger years. One of the more noteworthy events takes the form of a fantastic
legend in which Yoshimitsu succeeds in obtaining a manual containing esotericteachings of martial strategy. An adaptation of this legend appears in the second
fascicle of Gikeiki 義経記 (The Chronicle of Yoshitsune), for example, contains a section, entitled “Yoshitsune Pays His Respects to Venerable Master Kiichi or Oniichi
鬼一,” wherein readers are treated to a tale of martial courage and ill-fatedlove.
A fine example of how this same legend was adapted into the world of popular fiction is to be found in a vernacular tale (otogi zōshi 御伽草子) entitled Onzōshi
shimawatari 御曹子島渡り (Yoshitsune’s Island Hopping).1 The first part of the titleof this tale, onzōshi, is a polite term used to refer to the son of a high-ranking,well-to-do father who has not yet gained own independence. This term eventually came to serve as an epithet for Yoshitsune, at least during his early years.
Vernacular tales of this sort, compiled and published between the fourteenthand seventeenth centuries, often included illustrations, thereby taking the form
either of picture books or illustrated scrolls. These works grant us a glimpse into
the visual culture of medieval Japan. Despite much research, in most cases, neither the authors nor the illustrators of these works are known. This is so in regards to Onzōshi shimawatari, of which only ten manuscripts, including both
For an English translation by Charles Woolley of this vernacular tale, complete with illustrations, see Keller Kimbrough and Haruo Shirane, ed., Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds: A Collection of Short Medieval Japanese Tales, New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, pp. 149–165.
1

121

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Saitō

woodblock and fragmentary editions, are currently known to be extant.
In recent years, however, an exceptionally beautiful manuscript of this tale,consisting of three large-sized illustrated scrolls completed sometime in the seventeenth century was discovered among the Ikenoya Collection いけのや文庫.
In August, 2017, the National Institute of Japanese Literature made these scrolls
available to the public in the form of digitalized images available on-line.2 It isbelieved that the Ikenoya MS was produced in the same studio that compiled
what is now known as the Kuyō Collection 九曜文庫 MS of Onzōshi shimawatari,considering a number of striking similarities found in both manuscripts.
A summary of the tale as found in this Ikenoya MS is in order. Yoshitsune, atthe recommendation of a certain Hidehira of the Northern Fujiwara clan, undertakes a long sea voyage in hopes of obtaining a rare manual of martial strategy entitled Dainichi no hō 大日の法, or, Stratagem of the Great Sun. This esotericmanual, we are told, is in the hands of Great King Kanehira かねひら大王, andemonic, ogre-like lord, who dwells in Kiken Castle 喜見城, somewhere in thenorthern lands of the Emishi tribes. Yoshitsune sets out from the port at Tosa
and arrives at the northern castle only to have his request denied outright: Great
King Kanehira is not willing to reveal his secret manual to the young visitor. Undaunted by this initial rebuff, Yoshitsune manages to enlist the aid of Asahi
Tennyo 朝日天女, Divine Maiden of the Morning Sun, a princess at Kanehira’s
court, who promises to assist the young man by making a copy of the manual.
No sooner had she copied the pages of the manual than the text of the latter
was magically erased, leaving only a blank scroll. Fearing the wrath of Kanehira,Princess Asahi quickly ensures that Yoshitsune is safely sent away from the island, copied scroll in hand. Unfortunately, the princess was unable to preserve
her own life, slain as she was at the hands of an enraged Kanehira. In the end, it
is revealed that Princess Asahi was actually a temporary manifestation of
Benzaiten, a goddess whose abode was believed to be on Enoshima 江の島,
Kanagawa. This goddess, in an act of divine intervention, deigned to descend to
this mortal world in the form of a maiden and, allowing herself to be married tothe demonic Kanehirae, succeeded in assuring the victory of the Minamoto clanover their—and evidently her—rivals, the Taira clan. Armed with his newfoundesoteric martial teachings, Yoshitsune was able to defeat the Taira forces, thereby
fulfilling Benzaiten’s wish.
Some research has already been done in regards to similarities between Onzōshi
shimawatari and another popular vernacular tale entitled Kibune no honji 貴船の本地 (The Original Buddha of Kibune), insofar as both tales depict the tragic love affair
between the mortal son of a high-ranking father, on the one hand, and the divine
princess of a demonic overlord, on the other. Furthermore, investigations into
the cultural background inspiring tales of secretly transmitted manuals or otherwritten material has brought to light the relationship between such practices and2

See https://kotenseki.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100257436/viewer.

Yoshitsune Crossing the Ocean

123

Figure 1. The artistic choice of including twenty-five of these tiny people here was
likely meant to indicate the twenty-five bodhisattvas (nijūgo bosatsu) believed to accompany Amida Buddha as members of the divine entourage that descended to themortal plane to welcome faithful believers at their dying hour. “Island of the Tiny
People,” as depicted in the Ikenoya Collection MS.
https://doi.org/10.20730/100257436

the nature of economic trade in medieval Japan.3 While other vernacular tales,such as Tengu no dairi 天狗の内裏 (The Palace of the Tengu) and Minazuru 皆鶴(Princess Minazuru), both of which belong to the genre of hōgan mono, are love stories that involve beautiful princess and the hunt for esoteric manuals of martial
lore, Onzōshi shimawatari is unique in that it includes a journey to a distant, otherworldly island. Among literary works produced during and after the fourteenth
century one may find a number of equally peculiar islands: Nyogo ga shima 女
御島, the Isle of Women; the elusive Hadaka jima 裸島, an island who inhabitants run about naked all year long; an island supposed to be populated exclusively by miniature people (see Figure 1).
How exactly all the elements found in Onzōshi shimawtari found there way intothat single tale is not altogether clear. It is worth noting, however, that a numberof the fantastical islands depicted in this tale appear, albeit in somewhat alteredform, in poplar Chinese encyclopedias (Ch: riyong leishu; J: nichiyō ruisho) published3
See Kanazawa Hideyuki 金沢英之, Yoshitsune no bōken: eiyū to ikai wo meguru monogatari no bunka
義経の冒険—英雄と異界をめぐる物語の文化史, Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2012; Ōtani Setsuko 大谷節子, “ ‘Chōryō ikkan no sho’ denjutan kō: yōkyoku Kurama tengu no haikei” 「張良一巻書」伝授譚考—謡曲「鞍馬天狗」の背景—, in Muromachi geibun ronkō 室町藝文論攻, Tokyo: Miyai Shoten,
1991; Hotate Michihisa 保立道久, Monogatari no chūsei: shinwa, setsuwa, minwa no rekishigaku 物語の
中世—神話・説話・民話の歴史学, Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1998.

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during the Ming Dynasty. Many of these encyclopedias contain sections dedicated to “foreign lands,” in which both real—or at least semi-real—as well as
purely fictional lands are placed side by side. It has recently been established thatthese sections on foreign lands served as a primary source of inspiration for a
Japanese vernacular tale entitled Ikoku monogatari 異国物語 (A Tale of Foreign
Lands, 1658), a picture book version of which has since been introduced to thescholarly community. Onzōshi shimawatari was written during an age when the interests of authors and readers was being drawn towards an imaginary world populated not merely by the already familiar triad of China, India, and Japan, but by
a whole host of far-off, purely fantastic lands. The general efflorescence at thistime of what is now referred to very broadly as nature studies (hakubutsugaku 博物学) played an important role in spurring on this imaginative movement. Consequently, Onzōshi shimawatari presents us with valuable insight into ways inwhich Japanese authors were manipulating both geographical and intellectual
boundaries.
Illustrations accompanying medieval vernacular tales served as a visual meansof imparting to readers the nature of a given boundary or liminal zone appearing within the story. One commonly cited example of this is the use of decorative wave-like patterns in a depiction of the aforementioned Kiken Castle, a motif that was utilized in many seventeenth-century illustrated scrolls and picture
books as a means of signifying that the place in question was not of this world.4
While Yoshitsune was able to obtain a copy of Kanehira’s esoteric manual, he
was unable to lay his hands on the original. He was, furthermore, unable to takePrincess Asahi away from the island with him. It would appear that artefacts andpeople properly belonging to other worlds can never be brought back to ourmundane world. This is in perfect accord with, say, the comb case (tama tebako 玉手箱) given to Urashima by the Dragon Princess, or the widespread taboo
against gazing on otherworldly or supernatural things found in ancient Japanese
literature such as the Kojiki 古事記. In Kibune no honji, already mentioned above,the male protagonist—a privileged son like Yoshitsune—first falls in love withthe princess when seeing her likeness drawn on a fan. He, like Yoshitsune, is ultimately unable to take the woman back with him to the mundane world. Onzōshi
shimawatari offers ample material for considerations of the nature of liminality
and other worlds in medieval Japanese literature. Now that the Ikenoya Collection MS of this tale has been made publically available to a wider audience, it ishoped that more research in these areas will be forthcoming.

Saitō Maori, “Crossing the Sea in an Illustrated Scroll: Onzōshi shimawatari in the Ikenoya Library,” in The Bulletin of the National Institute of Japanese Literature, 44, March 2018, alsoavailable on-line at: http://id.nii.ac.jp/1283/00003596/. The images in question may be viewed
at: https://doi.org/10.11501/1288381, https://doi.org/10.20730/200017771, and https://doi.
org/10.20730/100066698.
4

contributors
Kanazawa Hideyuki 金沢英之
Associate Professor at Hokkaido University
Areas of Research: Ancient Japanese literature, history of mythology
Major Publications:◆ Norinaga to Sandaikō 宣長と『三大考』. Kasama Shoin, 2005.
◆ Yoshitsune no bōken: eiyū to ikai wo meguru monogatari no bunkashi 義経の冒険―
英雄と異界をめぐる物語の文化史. Kōdansha, 2012.
Kobayashi Kenji 小林健二
Professor at the National Institute of Japanese Literature
Areas of Research: Japanese medieval literature (Muromachi period)
Major Publications:◆ Chūsei gekibungaku no kenkyū 中世劇文学の研究. Miyai Shoten, 2001.
◆ Chūsei no geinō to bungei 中世の芸能と文芸. Chikurinsha, 2012.
Murai Shōsuke 村井章介
Professor at Rissho University
Areas of Research: Japanese medieval history, history of East Asian culturalinteractions
Major Publications:◆ Nihon chūsei kyōkai shiron 日本中世境界史論. Iwanami Shoten, 2013.
◆ Nihon chūsei no ibunka sesshoku 日本中世の異文化接触. Tōkyō Daigaku
Shuppankai, 2013.
Koida Tomoko 恋田知子
Associate Professor at the National Institute of Japanese Literature
Research topics: Japanese medieval literature
Major Publications:◆ Hotoke to onna no muromachi: monogatari-sōshi ron 仏と女の室町―物語草子論.
Kasama Shoin, 2008.
◆ Ikai e izanau onna: emaki nara ehon wo himotoku 異界へいざなう女: 絵巻・
奈良絵本をひもとく. Heibonsha, 2017.
Akazawa Mari 赤澤真理
Lecturer at Morioka Junior College, Iwate Prefectural University
Research topics: History of Japanese architecture
Major Publications:◆ Genji monogatari-e ni miru kinsei jōryū jūtaku shiron 源氏物語絵にみる近世上流住宅史論. Chūōkōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2010.

◆ “Gakusō no ba toshite no heian kenchiku: Utsuho monogatari, Genji monogatarini shimesareta gyoyū no kūkan kōsei” 楽奏の場としての平安建築―『うつほ物語』『源氏物語』に示された御遊の空間構成, in Higashi ajia no ongaku
bunka: monogatari to kōryū to 東アジアの音楽文化―物語と交流と, Ajia yūgaku
アジア遊学, volume 170 (February 2014), Bensei Shuppan, pp. 211–226.

Yoshino Tomomi 吉野朋美
Professor at Chuo University
Research topics: Medieval Japanese vernacular poetry (waka)
Major Publications:◆ Saigyō zenkashū 西行全歌集. Iwanami Bunko, 2013.
◆ Go-toba-in to sono jidai 後鳥羽院とその時代. Kasama Shoin, 2015.
Ido Misato 井戸美里
Lecturer at the Kyoto Institute of Technology
Research topics: History of Japanese art
Major Publications:◆ Sengokuki fūzokuzu no bunkashi: Kikkawa, Mōrishi to “Tsukinami fūzokuzu
byōbu” 戦国期風俗図の文化史 吉川・毛利氏と「月次風俗図屏風」. Yoshikawa
Kōbunkan, 2017.
◆ “ ‘Tōyōga’ toshite no kachōzu: jūkyū nijū seiki shotō no Chōsen no kyūtei ni
okeru Nihonjin gaka no katsudō wo tōshite”「東洋画」としての花鳥図: 十九―二十世紀初頭の朝鮮の宮廷における日本人画家の活動を通して ,in Tōyō bunka kenkyū kiyō 東洋文化研究所紀要, 173 (March 2018), pp. 25–69.
Koike Jun’ichi 小池淳一
Professor at the National Museum of Japanese History
Research topics: Ethnology, history of beliefs
Major Publications:◆ Onmyōdō no rekishi minzokugakuteki kenkyū 陰陽道の歴史民俗学的研究.
Kadokawa Gakugei Shuppan, 2011.
◆ Kisetsu no naka no kamigami: saiji minzokukō 季節のなかの神々―歳時民俗考―. Shunjūsha, 2015.
Kuroda Hideo 黒田日出男
Professor Emeritus of Tokyo University
Areas of Research: Historical iconography, medieval and early modern history
Major publications:◆ Kokuhō jingōji sanzō to wa nanika 国宝神護寺三像とは何か. Kadokawa
Gakugei Shuppan, Kadokawa Sensho, 2012.
◆ Rakuchū rakugaizu, funakibon wo yomu 洛中洛外図・舟木本を読む. Kadokawa
Gakugei Shuppan, Kadokawa Sensho, 2015.

Saitō Maori 齋藤真麻理
Professor at the National Institute of Japanese Literature
Areas of Research: Japanese medieval literature
Major Publications:◆ Amerika ni watatta monogatari-e: emaki, byōbu, ehon アメリカに渡った物語絵
絵巻・屏風・絵本. Perikansha, 2013.
◆ Irui no utaawase: Muromachi no kichi to gakugei 異類の歌合 室町の機智と学芸.
Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2014.

Translators
Kristopher reeves クリストファー・リーブズ
Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Japanese Literature
Elizabeth Marsh エリザベス・マーシュ
Writer and researcher; Master of Arts in Asian Studies
Miriam Mcconnell ミリアム・ミッコネル
Doctoral Student of Japanese Literature at the University of Colorado Boulder
Isaac wang アイザック・ワン
Doctoral Student of Japanese Literature at the University of Colorado BoulderCharles woolley チャールズ・ウーリー
Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University

translation consultants
Keller KiMbrough ケラー・キンブロー
Professor of Japanese and Director of Graduate Studies in Japanese at the Universityof Colorado Boulder
Christina laffin クリスティーナ・ラフィン
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Premodern Japanese Literature
and Culture at the University of British Columbia
Cover design: The design of the cover is based on a Japanese traditional pattern frequently
used after the Heian period called uchigumori. It is made by drawing, usually on
high-quality paper, cloud-like lines, commonly indigo blue on the upper portion of thepage and purple on the lower, thereby representing the sky and the earth.
Designed by Power Design Co., Ltd.. (http://www.powerdesign.co.jp)

Submission guidelines
The National Institute of Japanese Literature (NIJL) is engaged in a number ofinternational collaborative projects, all of which have their origin in the earlier“Project to Build an International Collaborative Research Network for Pre-modern
Japanese Texts (NIJL-NW Project).” We invite contributions for Studies in Japanese
Literature and Culture of articles dealing with Japanese literature and culture andrelating to a designated theme. The theme for the first and second issue is borders(kyōkai 境界).
Please be sure to read carefully over the submission guidelines before submitting
any written material:❂ We cannot accept any writing that has previously been published elsewhere.
❂ All submissions must be in English. Clearly indicate your full name, and affiliation at the end of your article. Also, please provide us with a 300 word
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must be dealt with by the submitter beforehand.
❂ Submit articles to the following address: journal@nijl.ac.jp. Attach both aWord version and a pdf version of the article.
❂ The submission deadline for the second issue is December 20th, 2018. Thissecond issue is scheduled to be published in March, 2019.