Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."
Updated 11-17-08
Abutsu /Abutsu-ni /Ankamon'in
no Shijo (c.1220-aft.1283)
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"I HAD FORMED A CONNECTION WITH REMARKABLE MEN."
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In her teens, Ankamon'in no Shijo served at the Japanese court as an attendant to Princess Ankamon'in (1209-83), hence her court name. By the time she went to court, her parents were dead and her step-father was governing a distant province. When she was about 18 years old, she apparently had an affair with an unknown man, but one so superior to her in rank that there was no chance of marriage to him. She left the court about that time, but we don't know if the affair was the reason.
Utatane (Fitful slumbers), her description of the unhappy affair and of her inability to accept the end of it, was apparently written shortly after the affair ended, but long enough so that she was able to look at it and herself with some objectivity. We know nothing of her life for the next 12 years except that she became the mother of three children.
In 1252 Shijo was employed by the family of Fujiwara no Tameie
(1198-1275) to copy Murasaki Shikibu's Genji monogatari. Tameie's
branch of the Fujiwara had become the official custodians of
many of the literary manuscripts belonging to the nation (much
of what we have of early Japanese literature is extant because
of the work of his family). A year later she married Tameie as
a minor wife; in 1265, after the birth of two sons, she became
his principal wife.
When Tameie died in 1275, Shijo became a Buddhist nun and took
the name Abutsu-ni ("ni" means "nun"), but
she did not retire from worldly activity. Soon there was conflict
within the family as to whether the estate (and the guardianship
of the precious manuscripts) would go to Tameie's eldest son
by a previous marriage or to Abutsu's elder son by Tameie. In
1279, she went (accompanied only by servants) to the eastern
city of Kamakura, the seat of the military government, to plead
her son's case. There she wrote Izayoi nikki (Sixteenth-night-moon
diary), describing her trip.
After at least three years of trying to get a judgment from the authorities, Abutsu died, probably in Kamakura. In 1289, a decision in favor of her son was handed down; that decision was reversed in 1291, and finally re-reversed in the early 1300s. Her descendants continued to guard and copy much of the nation's literature.
Two volumes of Abutsu's poetry were published after her death, and forty-eight poems were included in imperial anthologies. She also wrote three prose works: a memorial for her husband; an essay of advice for one of her daughters, Menoto no fumi, (or Niwa no oshie); and Yoru no tsuru (The crane at night), which discussed the writing of poetry and emphasized the value of accurate description of nature. The brief prose works have not yet been published in English translation; nor has a complete collection of her poetry.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print:
Utatane
Izayoi nikkiInformation about secondary sources.
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1. Poetry (for prose passages, see below, under "In print"):
(a) Use your browser's search function to go to the second use of "Abutsu" for Helen Craig McCullough's version of a poem from Izayoi nikki, "All together, the travelers take their leave."
(b) Go to "Abutsu" for another Izayoi nikki poem from McCullough, "As black as ink sticks."
(c) Two other poems: "Who knows....", and "The wind silenced by rain."
2. Two pages of calligraphy attributed to Abutsu, from an edition of the 905 poetry collection, Kokinshu (the image can be enlarged).
3. Essays, etc.:
(a) A biographical-critical introduction to Abutsu.
(b) A 1997 essay by James A. Wren on the rhetorical strategies used in Izayoi nikki to establish Abutsu's two roles: as guardian and transmitter of Japan's literary heritage, and as a woman poet in the male-centered Kamakura world. Wren gives his own translations of a number of Abutsu's poems. For information on the print version of this article (which has another title, "Salty Seaweed, Absent Women, and Song: Authorizing the Female as Poet in the Izayoi nikki"), see under "Secondary sources."
(c) Near the bottom of the page, a 2003 conference abstract by Christina Laffin, "Abutsu-ni: Wise Mother, Faithful Wife, and Heroine," on the traditional views about Abutsu.
(d) Halfway down the page, a 2005 conference abstract by Laffin, "Following in Teika's Footsteps: The Poetry and Travels of Nun Abutsu," on Abutsu's use of the literary figure Fujiwara Teika (1162-1241) in Izayoi nikki.
(e) Laffin's 2005 dissertation abstract, "Women, travel, and cultural production in Kamakura Japan: A Socio-literary Analysis of Izayoi nikki and Towazugatari."
(f) Halfway down the page, Laffin's 2007 conference abstract, "Parting the Reeds of Naniwa: Courtly Advice to Women in The Nursemaid's Letter," on the content and influence of Abutsu's1264 Menoto no fumi.
4. Near the bottom of the page, a Kamakura stone memorial to Abutsu.
5. For historical background, an essay on Japan's Kamakura
Period, by Carole Cavenaugh.
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[John R. Wallace has translated Utatane in Monumenta Nipponica; the periodical is available at many university libraries; if you are not near one, you can get the article via interlibrary loan. (See the volume's table of contents online.):]
Fitful Slumbers: Nun Abutsu's Utatane. Trans. John R. Wallace.
Monumenta Nipponica, 43: 4, 1988; pp. 391-416.
LC#: DS821.A1 M6; ISSN: 0027-0741
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"I expected an unbroken string of nights dreaming with him."
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[The narrator thinks back over a youthful and hopeless love affair with a man of higher rank, and of her attempts to free herself of her obsession. At the start of the affair:]
After our first night together..., he often didn't even bother to wait for the night watchman to doze off. And so I expected an unbroken string of nights dreaming with him. It wasn't that I hadn't already learned that a man's inconstancy is like the easily fading dye made from the dayflower, but my heart had gone out to his, and his had dyed into mine. It was a time of careless and unfortunate confusion. [p.399]
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"I felt a distaste for the person I had become."
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[But later:]
As I considered my present circumstances, I felt a distaste for the person I had become. What would be the future of someone so unreliable as myself?... The pain grew to the point that I no longer looked forward to passing the night with him....
Then... I heard a hushed knock like that of a small child, and my calmness deserted me at once. I went quietly out to the garden, chagrined at my lack of composure. [p.402]
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"Believing it might soothe my mind... I secretly wrote...."
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[The narrator left home to go to a Buddhist convent but could not forget her lover. She tried to exorcise her feelings by writing them down:]
Although here is the moon of the Eagle-Peak where Buddha instructed, "Forsake this world," it seems my love for someone night after night finds no end.
....Believing it might soothe my mind, with a frail brush I secretly wrote about how I could not suppress the excessive bitterness and the grief I felt when I looked out as usual on the evening scene. [pp.406-407]
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"...how fleeting, too, are my dreams in fitful slumbers."
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[She became ill, left the convent, and took lodgings in a
nearby town; the poem she wrote there gives the tale its title:]
No friends were there to keep me company, so I lay down alone on the cheap bedding, uncomfortable and restless, unable to sleep soundly.
Though I bind my grass pillow
and lie down to rest,
how brief these nights are,
and how fleeting, too, are
my dreams in fitful slumbers. [pp.408-409]
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"I only wished that I had a friend...."
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[Her step-father came to Kyoto and took her to the coastal province where he was governor. What she saw along the way interested her but couldn't free her of her loneliness:]
Many things caught my eye along the way, but there was no
one close by whom I could ask where we were. [p.411]
The tidelands of Narumi Bay were even more intriguing than I
had heard. Flocks of plover flew by. The fishermen's salt kilns
had aged into many curious shapes, and I found them novel and
intriguing. I only wished that I had a friend from the capital
with me.... [p.412]
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"But my heart does not always act according to reason."
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[She decided to return to her home in Kyoto, even though she realized she would not see her lover again; this passage ends the book:]
Perhaps I had learned something from my urge to drift off like the floating reeds.... I was determined to stop worrying over my troubles and destiny in this world.
But my heart does not always act according to reason, and I could not help wondering what would become of me.
Even though these tracings
may outlast me,
he who no longer thinks of me
will not look on them
with feeling. [p.416]
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[In her anthology, Helen Craig McCullough has translated Izayoi nikki as "Journal of the Sixteenth-Night Moon"; she also gives the romanized Japanese of the nikki's poems. The book's general and individual introductions are helpful; there is a glossary and an valuable appendix on the poetry that is so integral a part even of Japanese works that are chiefly in prose. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Classical Japanese prose: an anthology / compiled and edited
by Helen Craig McCullough. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, 1990. (xii, 578 p.: ill., maps)
LC#: PL777.115 .C57 1990; ISBN: 0804716285
Includes bibliographical references (p. [575]-578).
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"This art has helped to regulate society and to calm unrest."
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[At the start, Abutsu explains why securing a library of poetic
manuscripts was worth going to the other end of the country.
Her intended audience included those military judges in Kamakura
who had never shown great interest in "the art of poetry":]
When I thought the matter over, it... seemed to me that there might be people who regarded the art of poetry as lacking in seriousness, as mere frivolous amusement. But our wise men have told us that this art has helped to regulate society and to calm unrest in the Land of the Rising Sun.... [p.340]
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"...the guardian of sons and of countless old bits of paper."
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I had formed a connection with remarkable men... and, by karmic chance, had become the guardian of... sons and of countless old bits of paper having to do with poetry....
It was easy to think of bidding farewell to my own life, because I held it in no special affection, but I could not bear the darkness of heart that arises from worry about a child, nor could I overcome my feelings of regret when I contemplated the present state of poetry.
Obsessed by the thought that the merits of our case must appear as cloudless reflections in the tortoise mirror of the east, I forgot every cause for hesitation, put aside every thought of self, and resolved to set off for Kamakura at once, following the beckoning of the sixteenth-night moon. [pp.340-341]
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"It has awaited the second meeting."
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[For the first part of the trip, she went through much of the same territory she had traveled with her stepfather over 40 years earlier, territory she had described in Utatane:]
Around noon, we headed toward a hill splendid with colored leaves.... Evergreen trees also grew there; it was like looking at a brocade with a green ground. Upon making inquiries, I learned that the hill was called Miyajiyama.
How it has showered!
A thousand dippings in dye,
until at last
the old colors disappear
from the autumn-leaf brocade.
It seemed to me that I had seen the hill before---and even the season was the same.
Miyajiyama,
the mountain I crossed of yore!-
It has awaited
the second meeting that comes
as showers fall again. [pp.351-52]
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"I can but question the waves for tidings of days gone by."
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[She passed homes of old friends, now dead:]
Hamamatsu (the name of the region thereabouts) had been the
home of some people I had got to know fairly well. I saw in my
mind's eye the faces of those who had dwelt there for years,
and was deeply moved that I had lived to revisit the spot.
I hoped to find friends
unchanged as the shore-pine shade,
yet they are no more:
I can but question the waves
for tidings of days gone by.
I invited the children and grandchildren of those past friends to my lodgings. [p.353]
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"Had my husband lived...."
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[The trip began to take a toll on the 60-year-old woman:]
We descended a mountain so steep that people could hardly
keep from slipping.... After just managing the descent, we came
to a river at the bottom called the Hayakawa [Swift River], It
was swift enough! [p.359]
We groped our way across the Mariko River in the pitch dark and
spent the night at Sakawa, planning to enter Kamakura on the
following day.
Twenty-ninth Day. We left Sakawa and traveled a great distance along the beach.... A mist spread over the waves as they advanced and retreated on the shore.... It seemed a dream that I had journeyed so far from the capital.
Had my husband lived,
I would not have known this spray
nor experienced these trials
so far from the capital. [pp.359-60]
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"...close to the sea at the foot of a hill, a dreadfully
windy spot."
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[She arrived in Kamakura, then an isolated military-base city on the sea, far different from her urban and court-centered Kyoto:]
The place where I lived in the eastland was... close to the sea at the foot of a hill, a dreadfully windy spot. The Mountain Temple was nearby, so the environs were both peaceful and lonely.
The murmur of the waves and the soughing of the wind in the
pines never stopped. [p.360]
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"I stayed up all night writing letters for the capital."
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[She stayed in Kamakura at least three years, trying unsuccessfully to get the government to hear her suit; her only solace was in writing to her family:]
Having learned that someone who could carry messages was to leave before dawn, I stayed up all night writing letters for the capital. In the one to my older sister, with whom I was on close, loving terms, I spoke in detail of the little boys and then, with the winds and waves raging as usual, I added a description of my present circumstances:
Staying up alone
while the wind blows across the beach,
I try in vain all night long
to brush away the teardrops
and put my brush to paper.
Again, I wrapped together a few bits and pieces from the beach
to accompany a letter to my younger sister, the nun, with whom
I was equally intimate, and who would be longing for me in the
old home:
Though I seek solace
in idly gathering seaweed
and kindling salt fires,
how I long to see the nun
in the old familiar home! [p.363]
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"It seems as though they are playing favorites."
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[Her health began to fail, but she kept the ability to laugh at herself:]
On alternate days towards the end of the Third Month, I suffered
two bouts of what seemed to be the kind of fever children have.
It struck me as very odd. [p.366]
...[T]he Fourth Month drew to a close and I abandoned hope of
hearing even a faint echo of the cuckoo's song.... I suppose
there have never been many cuckoos anywhere in the east as far
as Michinoku. One could accept it if there were none at all,
but it makes one fidgety and envious to learn that others hear
them occasionally. It seems as though they are playing favorites.
[p.365-66]
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"The pleas she has presented---the leaves of her words---"
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[Izayoi nikki ends with a long poem, surely intended for someone in the Kamakura government who might be made to care about poetry and her son's claim. After a start in praise of poetry:]
....And thus, many times,
in faithful obedience
to august edicts
from successive sovereigns,
men have raked together
collections of salt seaweed
from Poetry Bay.
And among that company
there have been, in truth,
a father, son, and grandson
successively famed.
Now, there is actual proof
of a property
granted to that grandson's son
by special bequest.
....For love of that son,....
his mother, weeping aloud
like a crane in the night,
has embarked on a journey
from the capital,
but she is of small account,
and affairs of state
proliferate like grasses
at Kamakura.
The pleas she has presented---
the leaves of her words---
remain as buds on the branches,
and now the plum trees
have blossomed in the springtime
of a fourth year.
....If only the government
will reach a verdict
without delay---if only
it will emulate
the meadow spring whose waters,
though once they stagnate,
flow again as in the past.... [pp.372-76]
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[In this anthology, Edwin O. Reischauer translates Izayoi nikki as "Diary of the Waning Moon." Reischauer's notes are helpful and he gives the poems in romanized Japanese; however, the book lacks the other supplementary material that is given by McCullough:]
Translations from early Japanese literature [by] Edwin O.
Reischauer and Joseph K. Yamagiwa (Harvard-Yenching Institute
studies, 29). 2d ed., abridged. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University
Press, 1972 [c1951] (vii, 358 p.)
LC#: PL782.E1 R43 1972; ISBN: 067490422
The Izayoi nikki.--The Tsutsumi chunagon monogatari.--The Heiji
monogatari.
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[John R. Wallace's substantial entry on Abutsu in this reference work discusses her life and, of most interest, includes descriptions of and passages from three of Abutsu's prose works that have not yet been translated:]
Medieval Japanese writers / edited by Steven D. Carter (Dictionary
of literary biography; v. 203). Detroit: Gale Group, c1999. (xxii,
378 p.: ill., maps; 29 cm)
LC#: PL726.3 .M43 1999; ISBN: 0787630977
Includes bibliographical references (p. 313) and index
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[This collection includes an essay by Joshua S. Mostow, "On Becoming Ukifune: Autobiographical Heroines in Heian and Kamakura Literature," which briefly (pp.49-51) but usefully how Utatane uses earlier tales, especially Genji monogatari, to present the central character. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Crossing the bridge: comparative essays on medieval European
and Heian Japanese women writers / edited by Barbara Stevenson
and Cynthia Ho (New Middle Ages). New York: Palgrave, 2000. (xiv,
234 p.: ill.)
LC#: PN471 .C67 2000; ISBN: 0312221673
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[James A. Wren's article (available online) discusses the rhetorical strategies used by Abutsu to present the argument of Izayoi nikki. and to defend her right to make it. The "seaweed" of Wren's title refers to an image used for poetry:]
Wren, James A. Salty seaweed, absent women, and song: Authorizing
the female as poet in the Izayoi nikki. Criticism: A Quarterly
for Literature and the Arts, 39 (Spring 1997), 185-204.
LC#: AS30 .W3 A2; ISSN: 0011-1589
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[Donald Keene's summaries and evaluations of Japanese diaries from the 800s to the mid-1800s includes chapters on "Fitful Slumbers" (Utatane) and "The Diary of the Waning Moon" (Izayoi nikki). In both discussions, Keene gives his own translation and the original Japanese for quoted poems. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Keene, Donald. Travelers of a hundred ages: The Japanese as
revealed through 1,000 years of diaries. New York: Holt, c1989.
(xi, 468 p.)
LC#: PL 741 .K44 1989; ISBN: 0805007512
Bibliography: p. 443-449. Includes index
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Updated 11-17-08