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Updated 08-28-08
Senshi Naishinno
/Daisaiin Senshi (964-1035)
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"HOW I WISH THERE WAS A WAY FOR ALL TO RIDE TOGETHER, WITHOUT
DISTINCTIONS."
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The youngest daughter of the Japanese emperor Murakami (naishinno means "imperial princess"), Senshi was named saiin (high priestess) of the Shinto shrine at Kamo, near the capital, when she was 11 years old. This was customary: the priestess was always of royal birth, assigned before puberty, and expected to remain a virgin while she was serving, usually for one reign. What was not customary was the length of time Senshi stayed on the job; she remained at Kamo through five reigns, and retired only when she was 65 and in ill health. Her long service is recognized in the title daisaiin (grand high priestess).
Because of Senshi's personality and the women she gathered to serve her, her home near the shrine became a center for literary figures, a salon at least as prestigious as those that formed among the empresses served by Sei Shonagon and Murasaki Shikibu. In her Nikki, Murasaki Shikibu compares the literary quality of the poems that come from Senshi's household with those that were written at court; Murasaki naturally favors her own empress' court but says that Senshi and her women make their palace "a very elegant and sophisticated kind of place" (Bowring, p.50).
Senshi's poetry is found in two volumes of poems written by her and the women who served her, as well as in several of the imperial anthologies. Her most famous single work is the Hosshin wakashu (Collection of Japanese poems for the awakening of faith), composed in 1012. This is a series of 55 poems in which she responds to Buddhist texts.
Scholars have been intrigued by the fact of a Shinto priestess, theoretically required to avoid contact with anything to do with Buddhism, writing poetry that reveals a strong belief in Amida Buddha (who promises salvation to all) and the power of the Lotus Sutra (which offers the possibility that women can attain salvation without being reborn as men). But Senshi's contemporaries seem not to have been bothered by this apparent contradiction, and today it is the poems themselves that speak to us.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print:
Hosshin wakashu
Other poetry
Information about secondary sources.
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1. Links to the individual pages of Edward Kamen's 1990 study
and translation, The
Buddhist Poetry of the Great Kamo Priestess: Daisaiin Senshi
and Hosshin Wakashu. The whole book is valuable, but
for the 55 poems in English, click on "Part Two: A Reading
of Hosshin Wakashu" and then go to p.77; the Japanese script
of the text is given in an appendix. (For samples of Kamen's
translations, see below, under "In print.")
2. Near the bottom of the page, Helen Craig McCullough's version
of a passage from Sei Shonagon's Makura no soshi, quoting
a poem sent by Senshi to the empress at the New Year in 998,
"The
echo of axes" (hare sticks were auspicious New Year
gifts).
3. In this translation of Murasaki Shikibu nikki by Annie Shepley Omori and Kochi Doi, use your browser's search function to go to the second use of "Kamo" for Murasaki's unfavorable comparison of the women who served Senshi ("They seem to be living an idle poetic life,") with her own harder-working fellow courtiers.
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 Keene's treatment of Senshi, see "Secondary sources").
5. For historical background:
(a) "A Mirror for Women? Reflections of the Feminine in Japanese Buddhism" (2005), by Dharmacari Jnanavira, which explains the problems of Buddhist women of the period.
(b) "The Lotus Sutra in Early Japanese Buddhism" (1996), study notes by Paul Groner.
(c) At the end of Chapter 11 of the Lotus Sutra (beginning at section #47) is the story of Senshi's "dragon girl," the daughter of the Naga-king, who achieved perfect enlightenment without being reborn as a man (the men Pragnakuta and Sariputra represent those who denied that women could achieve Buddhaship). At the same site you can link to all of the Lotus Sutra chapters, translated by H. Kern (1884).
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[Available online, This book by Edward Kamens is not merely a translation of the 55 poems of Hosshin Wakashu, although it does give that (and a romanization of the original Japanese); it is a study of Senshi's relationship to Buddhism. Kamens is good on Buddhism in 1000s Japan and on women's relationship to the Buddhist texts:]
Kamens, Edward. The Buddhist poetry of the Great Kamo Priestess:
Daisaiin Senshi and Hosshin Wakashu (Michigan monograph series
in Japanese studies; no. 5) . Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese
Studies, University of Michigan, 1990. (xi, 170 p.)
LC#: PL789.S43 H635 1990; ISBN: 0939512416
Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-164) and index.
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"...a raft that carries us to the opposite shore!"
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[In each case below, the Buddhist text is given in quotation marks, followed by Senshi's response to it. In the first response, "dharma" means truth, or teachings of the Buddha. Kamens sees in the first poem a wish that women not be excluded:]
"Sentient beings are numberless: I [a bodhisattva] vow to save them all."
How I wish there were a way for all to ride together,
without distinctions,
the dharma a raft that carries us to the opposite shore! [p.77]
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"Those that are closest to me...."
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[The "five obstructions" are the kinds of rebirth not available to a woman (until she has first been reborn as a man):]
"Afflictions are numberless: I vow to eliminate them all."
There is no way to count them all, but those that are
closest to me
are certainly these Five Obstructions. [p.78]
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"Somehow I will learn...."
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[Learning all of the teachings was believed to be almost impossible, especially for a woman:]
"The Buddhist teachings are inexhaustible: I vow to know them all."
Somehow I will learn all there is to know,
though they say it is difficult to gain enlightenment,
difficult to enter the gate to it. [p.78]
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"So I, too, can hope...."
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[In a story from the Lotus Sutra (available online), the dragon girl is changed into a man, without having to wait for death and rebirth; it was this story that opened the possibility of immediate nirvana for women:]
"...[A]ll from a distance seeing that dragon girl achieve Buddhahood and universally preach Dharma to the men and gods of the assembly of that time were overjoyed at heart."
Here is the example of one who was not obstructed by the Obstructions,
so I, too, can hope that no more clouds will block my way. [p.112]
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"...this bright moon."
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[Another passage from the Lotus Sutra promises guidance:]
"As the bright light of the sun and moon can clear away
all darkness and obscurity,
so this man, going through the world, can extinguish the darkness
of the beings."
Were the clear light of this bright moon not shining,
I would be all alone as I travel on this dark path. [pp.120-21]
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"I shall remain, resolute, in this Path."
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[The Buddhist text that Senshi quotes here is part of a promise by a large group of bodhisattvas to preach the Lotus Sutra in the face of opposition:]
"...[T]o preach this scripture, we will endure these troubles. We do not covet bodily life, we do but regret the Unexcelled Path."
Though I shall endure sorrows that are beyond endurance,
I shall remain, resolute, in this Path.
[p.113]
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[Akasome Emon's Eiga monagatari contains four of Senshi's other poems, along with the details of their composition. In Volume 1 of this translation by Willian H. and Helen Craig McCullough, see pp. 162, 292, 306; in Volume 2, see p.715:]
A tale of flowering fortunes: annals of Japanese aristocratic
life in the Heian period / translated, with an introd. and notes,
by William H. and Helen Craig McCullough. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1980. (2 v. [xv, 910 p.]: ill.)
LC#: PL787.E5 E5 1980; ISBN: 0804710392
Bibliography: p. [855]-864. Includes index.
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"Even you, they tell me, have made your entrance...."
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[In 1026, when a 39-year-old retired empress (Murasaki Shikibu's Shoshi), became a Buddhist nun, the 62-year-old Shinto priestess sent her this poem:]
Even you, they tell me,
Have made your entrance
Upon the path of truth,
Leaving me to wander alone
Through the eternal darkness of delusion. [p.715]
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[One translation of Murasaki Shikibu's comparison of the women who served Senshi with the women who served her empress, is online; for another version, see pp. 49-53 of Richard Bowring's translation of her Nikki. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
The diary of Lady Murasaki / translated and introduced by
Richard Bowring (Penguin classics). London; New York N.Y.: Penguin,
1996. (li, 91 p.: ill., map)
LC#: PL788.4.Z5 A3513 1996; ISBN: 014043576X
Bibliography: p. 91-[92].
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[For a c.1200 Japanese woman's view of Senshi, see Michelle Marra's translation of Shunzei kyo no musume's Mumyozoshi, pp. 432-433. The periodical is available at many university libraries, so you can get the pages through interlibrary loan:]
Marra, Michele, tr. Mumyozoshi. Monumenta Nipponica,
39: 2-4 (1984)115-145, 281-305, 409-434.
LC#: DS821.A1 M6; ISSN: 0027-0741
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[This article by Kamens discusses (more broadly than in his 1990 book, above) the Japanese Buddhist teaching that women could not achieve salvation without being reborn as a man. Kamens analyzes poetry, mostly by women and some by Senshi, to look at the way poets dealt with this belief. (See, three-fourths of the way down the page, the issue's table of contents online.):]
Kamens, Edward. "Dragon-girl, maidenflower, Buddha: The
transformation of a waka topos, 'the Five Obstructions.'"
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 53:2 (December 1993),
389-442.
LC#:DS501 .H3; ISSN: 0073-0548
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[Diana Y. Paul's collection of Buddhist texts includes her translation of the dragon girl episode from the Lotus Sutra (pp.185-90), available in another translation online. Paul also gives other texts that deal with the question of women's enlightenment; her introductions are helpful for the general reader:]
Paul, Diana Y. Women in Buddhism: images of the feminine in
Mahayana tradition/ with contributions by Frances Wilson; foreword
by I.B. Horner. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press,
c1985. (xxviii, 333 p.: ill.)
LC#: BQ4570.W6 P38 1985; ISBN: 0520054458, 0520054288
Includes index. Bibliography: p. [321]-328.
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[In his history Donald Keene mentions Senshi only in a note (pp.597-98), but his chapters on Heian literature are good for background on the period. (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 08-28-08