Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."
Updated 11-02-08
Shikishi Naishinno
/Shokushi (d. 1201)
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"WHETHER I RESENT THE WORLD OR GRIEVE OVER IT I DO NOT KNOW."
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Shikishi (alternate spelling: Shokushi), the daughter of an emperor (naishinno means "imperial princess"), was sent to the Shinto shrine at Kamo in 1159, at the beginning of the reign of her brother, Emperor Nijo. She was to serve as the shrine's high priestess (a role always filled by a royal virgin, usually beginning before puberty). Ten years later, she withdrew due to ill health, and returned to Kyoto. She remained unmarried (as did almost all imperial princesses) and led a private life, not participating in court affairs except through her poetry. In 1194 she took Buddhist vows.
She studied poetry with Fujiwara Shunzei, the leading poet of the period, and her first published poems were in the imperial anthology, Senzaishu, compiled by Shunzei in 1188. She apparently continued to write throughout her life; about 400 poems are extant, and she is believed to have written many more. Forty-nine of her poems were published in Shin Kokinshu (1205), compiled after her death by a group that included Shunzei's son Fujiwara Teika, another major poet.
According to a journal he kept, Teika met Shikishi in 1181, when he was 19 and she probably about 30. He continued to call on her throughout the years; in the two years before her death, perhaps of breast cancer, he visited her with greater frequency. Conjecture about a love affair between the two poets led inevitably to written tales and in the 1400s to a popular noh play.
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. Translations (some are alternative versions of the same poem):
(a) After an introduction, 52 poems, arranged by the seasons of which they speak, from various translators.
(b) Links to 34 poems, translated by Thomas McAuley; the Japanese is also given in script and in romanization. (And at the same site, an introduction to Shin Kokinshu, in which 49 of Shikishi's poems were published.)
(c) Thirteen poems, translated by Hiroaki Sato, with the romanized originals; and at the same site, another from Sato, "When I look around in the quiet before dawn"
(d) Use your browser's search function to go to the second use of "Shikishi" for links to 13 poems. The link at the first use of the name will take you to a brief biography.
(e) In a 2006 essay by Hisashi Nakamura on Japanese women's tanka, go to "Shikishi" for an introduction and 12 poems translated by Nakamura.
(f) Go to the two uses of "Shikishi" for two poems: "The blossoms have fallen," translated by Donald Keene, and "O my soul, my string of gems," translated by Geoffrey Bownas; Japanese script and romanization are also given.
(g) Go to "Shikishi" for "As I grow used to the moss mat and rock pillow."
(h) "In snowbound, voiceless, mountain depths."
(i) Go to the second use of "Shikishi" for "On the night when I leave home," translated by Patrick Donnelly and Stephen Miller; the romanized original is also given.
(j) Go to "Shokushi" (note spelling) for "Guide me on my way."
(k) At the bottom of the page, with the original in script and in romanization, "Your voice, I can hear--."
(l) Go to "Shokushi" for, "Paulownia leaves."
(m) Go to "Shokushi" for "If my soul can die out," translated by Ohsugi Tomoko.
(n) At the bottom of the page, with the romanized original, "I float into sleep."
2. Three versions of Shikishi's poem in Hyakunin Isshu (# 89), an anthology put together by Teika in about 1235; its popularity has made its 100 poets the most well known of Japan.
(a) Clay MacCauley's (but "modernized"), "Like a string of gems"; the original is also given, in script and romanization.
(b) Tom Galt's, "O my string of gems," accompanied by a modern illustration.
(c) William N. Porter's "The ailments of advancing years," with an 1700s woodcut.
3. Reviews (for excerpts from the translation, see below, under "In print"; for information on Keene's treatment of Shikishi, see "Secondary sources"):
(a) Go to "Shikishi" for William J. Higginson on Sato's 1993 translation, String of Beads: Complete Poems of Princess Shikishi. elsewhere, another review, anonymous but detailed.
(b) Mark Morris on Donald Keene's 1993 history, Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century.
4. A 1600s artist's portrayal of Shikishi, with a poem given in Japanese script.
5. For historical background, Jane Reichhold's 1996 essay on early Japanese women's writing; Shikishi is briefly discussed.
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[Hiroaki Sato has translated Shikishi Naishinno zenkashu, a collection of all of Shikishi's extant poems, with the romanized originals; the book has a useful introduction and detailed notes:]
String of beads: complete poems of Princess Shikishi / translated
with an introduction and notes by Hiroaki Sato (SHAPS library
of translations). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993.
(x, 177p.)
LC#: PL792.S43 A27 1993; ISBN: 0824814835
Includes bibliographical references (p.163-172) and index.
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"...there, not there...."
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[For all verses, line breaks have been added; first, on the seasons of the year:]
About blossoms I do not know;
there, not there, I look around:
haze fragrant on a spring dawn.
[p.34]
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Would there were other means of consolation than flowers:
coldly they fall, coldly I watch them.
[p.35]
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"This is not what I said."
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[On love:]
"Much in love, but look at me, I'll still live,"
this is not what I said, and you know it. [p.48]
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[The smoke is that which arises from the speaker's cremation:]
If, out of much love, smoke flows toward you,
regard it as the outcome of the pledge I made. [p.48]
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"Will I wake when this one ends?"
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[On Buddhist themes:]
When I look around in the quiet before dawn,
the night is still deep, troubled with dreams.
[p.14]
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Whether I resent the world or grieve over it I do not know,
yet my sleeves are used to the tears. [p.50]
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Not knowing the dream without beginning has been a dream,
will I wake when this one ends? [p.51]
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"Yet her voice at night pierces me."
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[On living alone:]
Did I think I'd grow used to living in it:
in Fushimi at dusk, in pine winds, this hut. [p.49]
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Mountain winds vying through leaves at the peak,
down from the clouds a stag's voice. [p.93]
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["Sleeves thick with moss" is a metaphor for someone who has taken Buddhist vows:]
Now I should find myself confined in a pine-beamed cedar hut,
my sleeves thick with moss.
[p.93]
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[Legend said that a crane calling at night was mourning her lost young:]
What a crying crane thinks at heart I do not know,
yet her voice at night pierces me. [p.94]
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[Laurel Rasplica Rodd's entry on Shikishi in this reference work discusses the poet's life and the themes found in her work; eleven poems are given, in romanization and in Rodd's translation:]
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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[Donald Keene's history discusses the poems of Shokushi --- Keene's preferred spelling --- in several places, according to the anthology particular poems were published in; use the index to find his comments. The book is also useful for background information on the period, and the bibliographies are thorough. (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 11-02-08