Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."
Updated 06-04-09
Otomo no Sakanoue
Iratsume (early 700s)
Kasa no Iratsume (mid-700s)
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"...YOUR THOUGHTS DISHEVELED LIKE YOUR MORNING HAIR."
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Manyoshu (Collection of 10,000 leaves) is the first major anthology of Japanese poetry, compiled sometime after 760 and containing over 4500 poems. Most of the poems had been written in the previous 100 years, although a few are older. Over one-third of the poets represented are women, excluding those poems that are anonymous or known to be written by men using a female persona.
The compiler of the anthology was Otomo no Yakamochi (c.718-785), and two of the most interesting women in Manyoshu are connected to him --- the one as his aunt, his poetic mentor, and later his mother-law; the other as one of his lovers.
We know quite a bit about Otomo no Sakanoue's life ("no" is a particle used to join the surname with the personal name). Her family was powerful in both politics and literature. In about 728, Sakanoue went to live with her brother to help educate his son Yakamochi; when her brother died two years later, she continued to look after her nephew and to develop his skill at poetry. At some point she married a prince; when he died she married again to a prominent member of the Fujiwara family (just beginning the rise that would make it all-powerful 200 years later). She had at least one daughter, perhaps more. In 740, Yakamochi married her daughter. In 746, he left the capital for five years to serve as a provincial governor, and his wife went with him. Sakanoue continued to write poetry throughout her life; when her nephew came to prepare his anthology, he included 79 of her poems, more than of any other woman.
We know nothing about Kasa no Iratsume except what we find out from the Manyoshu: she was one of 14 named women (excluding his wife) to whom Yakamochi wrote love poetry. She responded and sent him 29 poems, which he included in his book. Yakamochi was apparently not the most faithful of lovers, but posterity gave Kasa no Iratsume her revenge: her poetry became extremely influential in later periods, much more so than Yakamochi's.
Kasa no Iratsume is generally considered by scholars of Japanese a better poet than Otomo no Sakanoue. In translation, though, the range of subjects and the wit of the older woman make her voice quite as interesting.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print.
Information about secondary sources.
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1. By Otomo no Sakanoue:
(a) In this collection of Japanese poetry, clicking on "Day 24" will lead you to the first of 16 poems; from the first, click on "Next" at the top of the page. For each, you will be given Japanese script, romanization, an English translation of the poem by Thomas McAuley, and the Manyoshu commentary. Highlighted lines will lead to useful notes.
(b) Two translations by Kenneth Rexroth and Ikuko Atsumi: at one site, "You say, 'I will come'" (with the romanized original); at another, use your browser's search function to go to "Otomo"for "The orange tree was planted in my garden."
(c) Go to "Otomo" for a poem on her daughter's marriage, "Now that I have given away," followed by two love poems ("If I yielded you my heart," and "Your words say you will love me").
(d) Two other poems on her daughter: "More than gems in my comb box," and "I gaze out over the fields of Tadaka" (the translator of the second is Ian Hideo Levy).
(e) Another version of the second poem given just above, "Gazing across the fields."
(f) "Never until now in this old life," translated by Levy, followed by the poem's translation into other forms of Japanese and Chinese.
(g) Near the bottom of the page of this description of Manyoshu by Kenneth L. Richard, the poem, "Like the sedge of Naniwa," followed by the Japanese script; the translation is by Geoffrey Bownas.
(h) After the Japanese script, the poem, "Painful is the love"; the romanization is also given.
(i) "My heart, thinking," translated by Arthur Waley.
(j) "Unknown love."
(k) "We have sweet memories."
2. By Kasa no Iratsume:
(a) After the romanized Japanese of four poems, links to versions of them, five in English and one in Italian, accompanied by commentary by one of the translators, E. Bruce Brooks.
(b) At the Wikipedia entry on Kasa, "In the loneliness of my heart," translated by Donald Keene; the romanized Japanese is also given.
(c) "The gods of heaven are irrational."
(d) "Last night I dreamed."
(e) Go to "Kasa" for "The white drops of dew."
(f) Go to "Kasa" for "My keepsake," translated by Burton Watson.
(g) Go to "Kasa" for "If it were death to love," translated by Graeme Wilson.
(h) "I fell deeply in love with someone I had vaguely 'seen.'"
(i) Finally, go to "Kasa" for the witty poem, "To love somebody who doesn't love you" (for another version of this, see below, under "In print").
3. Third and fourth in a collection, one poem from each, translated by Wilson: Kasa's "I dreamt, and in my dream," and Otomo's "In the shadows of a thicket."
4. A review by Mark Morris of Donald Keene's 1993 history, Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century (for information on the book's treatment of Kasa, see "Secondary sources").
5. For historical background:
(a) A 1999 essay on the Manyoshu, by Kris Larsson.
(b) Jane Reichhold's 1986 essay on early Japanese women's writing; Otomo and Kasa are briefly discussed.
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[This translation by Ian Hideo Levy of the first 5 of the 20 books (scrolls) of the Manyoshu has 42 of Otomo no Sakanoue's poems and 27 of Kasa no Iratsume's; the introduction is thorough and the notes detailed:]
The ten thousand leaves: a translation of the Manyoshu, Japan's
premier anthology of classical poetry / [translated by] Ian Hideo
Levy (Princeton library of Asian translations). Princeton, N.J:
Princeton University Press, c1981-. (v. <1 > : ill.)
LC#: PL758.15 .A3 1981; ISBN: 0691064520.
Includes index.
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[H.H. Honda has translated the complete Manyoshu, including the 79 poems of Otomo no Sakanoue and the 29 of Kasa no Iratsume. The book is available in many university libraries; but note the size --- it may be shelved with oversized volumes, a fact that catalogs should but don't always tell:]
The Manyoshu: a new and complete translation. Honda, H[eihachiro]
H., tr. [Tokyo, Hokuseido Press, 1967. (xii, 345 p. 31 cm.)
LC#: PL782.E3 M3 1967
Otomo no Sakanoue Iratsume
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"You stood by the gate, my daughter."
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[Two poems to her daughter. The first, "Sent from the rice fields of Tomi to her daughter, the elder maiden of the Sakanoue house, who had stayed at home":]
Though I did not venture
to some far eternal land,
you stood by the gate,
my daughter,
with such sorrow on your face
that thinking of you,
unmindful of day
and pitch-black night,
has turned my body gaunt.
When I sigh for you
my very sleeves are wet with tears.
When I long for you
in vain like this,
I feel I cannot bear to stay
here in my native village
even this single month.
Is it because, my little girl,
you long for me,
with your thoughts disheveled
like your morning hair,
that I saw you in my dreams?
[Levy: #723-24; p.321]
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"Oh my child who loved me helplessly..."
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[And, "Sent to her daughter from the rice fields of Tadaka":]
I gaze out
over the fields of Tadaka
and see the cranes that cry there
without interval,
without pause:
such is my longing for you.
Oh my child
who loved me helplessly
like a hovering bird
over quick river shallows!
[Levy: #760-761; p.331]
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"...far from kinsmen, far from home."
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[Written in 735: On the death of a Buddhist nun who was a close friend of Sakanoue and her mother:]
Our nun came from Korea to this country
far from kinsmen, far from home;
and not caring for a prosperous town,
chose the hill of Saho for her dwelling place,
and for many years lived there.
But "every one is doomed to perish,"
and during the absence of her journeying friends
she went the way of all.
She sleeps now on a hill
beyond Kasuga field across the Saho.
And I roam about with tears I wish would change
Into rain to pour upon her grave. [Honda:
#460; p.41]
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"...the orange tree that I planted and raised in my garden."
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[Two poems on her daughter's marriage in 740:]
Now that I have given away
the orange tree that I planted
and raised in my garden,
I am distracted with regret---
I rise, I sit, I rise again---
but there is no use. [Levy:
#410; p.210]
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"I must endure it."
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My precious jewel has been received
into its owner's hands
and I must endure it.
Now let me sleep
with my pillow for companion.
[Levy: #652; p.299]
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"...my heart that I had burnished slick as a true, clear
mirror."
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[A long poem, a choka, describing the progress of a romantic relationship:]
You spoke to me
with feelings fine as the sedge
at Naniwa,
where sunlight sweeps
across the bay,
and told me we would be together
"deep and long, through the years,"
and so I yielded you my heart
that I had burnished
slick as a true, clear mirror.
Since that day
my mind has known no pitch and roll,
no seaweed's swaying with the waves.
And now that I trust in you,
as I would in a great ship---
Oh is it the raging gods
that rend us apart
or is it the men of this world
who obstruct you?---
my Lord, who came back and forth to me,
you cease to come.
And lately I do not even see
your messenger,
with his jeweled catalpha staff,
and I am helpless in my terrible despair.
All through the pitch-black nights
and through the days
till the red-trailing sun yields to dusk
I grieve,
but there is no use,
I long,
but there is nothing I can do.
Just as they say---
"a frail-limbed woman"---
I wander about,
weeping and crying aloud like a child.
How long, I wonder, can I wait
for your messenger.
If you had not made me
place my trust in you,
promising me "forever,"
would I have fallen
into such longing? [Levy:
#619-620; pp.289-290]
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"...like swords in a twin sheathe."
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[And two briefer poems on love:]
Is it for the thickness of men's gossip
that you stay there, longing for me,
our houses separate
like swords in a twin sheathe? [Levy:
#685; p.309]
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This cherishing heart
is a quick river
that, stopped
and stopped again,
yet shall burst its dams. [Levy:
#687; p.310]
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"Drink with sake, comrades gay."
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[Finally, a poem on autumn---and age:]
We'll put plum petals in our cups,
and drink with sake, comrades gay.
Then after that we shall not care
If all the blossoms fall away.
[Honda: #1656; p.135]
Kasa no Iratsume
[Some of Kasa no Iratsume's poems to Yakamochi, perhaps describing the path of their relationship:]
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"...like the cranes that seem to cry in the dark night."
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Will I go on
merely hearing of you from afar---
like the cranes that seem
to cry in the dark night---
never meeting you? [Levy:
#592; p.282]
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"...as near to me as the spaces in a bridge of stepping
stones."
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This world is thick with men's eyes,
and so I must go on longing for you,
my Lord,
though you are as near to me
as the spaces in a bridge of stepping stones.
[Levy: #597; p.283]
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"We bound our hearts."
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Strong-rooted, like the sedge
on the banks of the rocks
in the inland mountains,
are the feelings
we bound our hearts with---
I cannot forget. [Levy: #397;
p.206]
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"...like kowtowing to hungry demons... from behind."
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To long for one
who does not long for you
is like kowtowing to hungry demons
in the great temple
from behind. [Levy: #608;
p.286]
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"Years have trailed away like a strand of rough gems."
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You think it is all right
now that years have trailed away
like a strand of rough gems.
But no, my man, don't do it!
Never reveal my name! [Levy:
#590; p.282]
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"I dreamed my jeweled comb box was open to the light."
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Are my thoughts
revealed to others?
I dreamed my jeweled comb box
was open to the light. [Levy:
#591; p.282]
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[Although the focus of this study by Helen Craig McCullough is on the next major collection of Japanese poetry, the chapter on "Pre-Heien Song and Poetry" gives a thorough discussion of the Manyoshu (pp. 97-153); McCullough translates and discusses several of Otomo no Sakanoue's poems:]
McCullough, Helen Craig. Brocade by night: "Kokin wakashu"
and the court style in Japanese classical poetry. Stanford, Cal:
Stanford University Press, 1985. (xii, 591p.)
LC#: PL728.22 .M35 1985; ISBN: 0804712468
Includes indexes. Bibliography: p. [561]-567.
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[Donald Keene's history has a chapter on the Manyoshu, in which he briefly discusses Kasa no Iratsume; for this chapter as for all, Keene's bibliography is useful. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Keene, Donald. Seeds in the heart: Japanese literature from
earliest times to the late sixteenth century. New York: Henry
Holt & Co., 1993. (xiv, 1265 p.)
LC#: PL726.115 .K44 1993; ISBN: 0805019995
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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Updated 06-04-09