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Updated 03-29-08
Izumi Shikibu (c.974-aft.1033)
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"WILL I ALONE BE LEFT TO TELL THE STORY OF OUR PAST---DESTINED
TO BE NUMBERED WITH OLD TALES OF PAINFUL LOVES?
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The daughter of a Japanese provincial governor, Izumi Shikibu began service at court in her early teens. In 995 she was married to the governor of Izumi, and in 997 she had a daughter, Ko-shikibu. Izumi had been known as a poet before her marriage; she had already written one of her most popular poems, "I go out of the darkness."
Around the year 1000, she began an affair with Prince Tametaka (977-1002), the son of the Emperor by a junior consort. The affair was apparently not conducted discreetly, for it became the subject of gossip; Izumi's husband divorced her, and when Tametaka died, his death was rumored to be due to his visiting Izumi during a plague season.
A year after Tametaka's death, his brother, Prince Atsumichi (981-1007), began to visit Izumi. It is the first year of this affair that the Izumi Shikibu nikki describes, from the early summer of 1003 to the spring of 1004, when Atsumichi's wife left his house in anger. Although called a nikki (memoir) Izumi's book reads much like fiction: the story is told in the third person; the thoughts of various characters are given; and the two major characters' names are never given: they are simply "the lady" and "the Prince."
The affair continued until Atsumichi's death in 1007. In the next year Izumi went to court to be an attendant to Michinaga's daughter, Empress Shoshi /Akiko (joining Murasaki Shikibu, who had been there for a year or so). If Izumi Shikibu nikki was written during this period, one of its purposes may have been to explain her indiscretion to her fellow courtiers. Certainly many of Izumi's poems (Izumi Shikibu shu) not included in her Nikki appear to come from this period; a good portion of these are poems mourning Atsumichi, while other reflect life at court.
Around 1010, Izumi remarried and went to the provinces, apparently never to return to court, although she continued to write poetry; 240 of her poems were included in later imperial anthologies. We don't know how long she lived; the last official reference to her was in 1033.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translation in print:
Izumi Shikibu nikki
Izumi Shikibu shu
Information about secondary sources.
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1. A link to The Diary of Izumi Shikibu, translated by Annie Shepley Omori and Kochi Doi, 1920. You can also link to Amy Lowell's introduction to Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan, of which Izumi's is one; some of Lowell's facts have been made outdated by newer research, and the tone is occasionally patronizing, but her insights are worthwhile. The link to the appendix will give you a useful chronology of the period.
2. Sites with translations of Izumi's poetry (some are different versions of the same poem):
(a) Links to 85 of Izumi's poems from imperial anthologies, translated by Thomas McAuley; for each, the Japanese is also given in script and in romanization.
(b) In a 2006 essay by Hisashi Nakamura on Japanese women's tanka, use your browser's search function to go to "Izumi" for an introduction and eight poems, translated by Nakamura.
(c) Seven poems, translated by Dave Bonta.
(d) At the Wikipedia entry on Izumi, four poems, with Japanese script and romanization.
(e) Four poems, translated by Christopher Mulrooney.
(f) Go to "Izumi" for four more, translated by Hiroaki Sato (for more from Sato, see below, under "In print").
(g) In a collection of poems by Japanese women, three translations by Kenneth Rexroth; Izumi is the fifth poet given.
(h) Go to "Izumi" for "I go out of the darkness," translated by Rexroth, but in a different version than that given above.
(i) Go to "Izumi" for two more versions of the above poem, the first translated by Edwin A. Cranston.
(j) "There is not even a moment of calmness..." translated by Zoltan Barczikay, with Japanese script and romanization.
(l) Several sites have translations by Jane Hirshfield and Mariki Aratani from The Ink Dark Moon:(1) Eight poems.
(2) Four poems.
(3) Go to "Izumi" for "Come quickly."
(4) Go to "Izumi" for a poem on Buddhism, "Although I try to hold the single thought."
(5) Go to "Izumi" for "Where are you hurrying to?"
(6) At the bottom of the page, "Nothing in the world."
(7) Go to "Izumi" for a poem on her daughter's 1025 death, "Why did you vanish into the empty sky?"
3. Finally, versions of the Izumi Shikibu poem included in Hyakunin Isshu, an important anthology of the 1200s:
(a) "Soon my life will close," by Clay MacCauley (but "modernized"), with both Japanese characters and romanization given.
(b) "In the thought that soon," by Tom Galt, with a modern illustration and a commentary.
(c) "My life is drawing to a close," by William N. Porter, with a 1700s woodcut.
4. Go to "Izumi" for Murasaki Shikibu's view of her fellow courtier, "Lady Izumi Shikibu corresponds charmingly, but...."; the translation is by Omori and Doi.
5. Reviews (For more on the translation, see "In print"; for information on the other books' treatment of Izumi, see "Secondary sources"):
(a) Robert D. Wilson on Jane Hirshfield's and Mariki Aratani's 1990 translation, The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu (and at the same site, a 2006 interview with Hirshfield, in which she discusses the difficulties involved in translating Komachi and Izumi).
(b) Donald Richie on John R. Wallace's 2005 study, Objects of Discourse: Memoirs by Women of Heian Japan.
(c) Mark Morris on Donald Keene's 1993 history, Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century.
6. From the 1600s, an artist's portrayal of Izumi, with a poem in Japanese script.
7. An essay by Richard Hooker on women in early Japan and on the Heien period memoirs; there is a brief section on Izumi Shikibu nikki.
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[Edwin Cranston's is probably the most helpful translation of Izumi Shikibu nikki. His book has a good introduction, which includes a discussion of whether the Nikki is fiction or a memoir. Cranston's notes are detailed, and he gives the romanized originals of the nikki's poems:]
The Izumi Shikibu diary; a romance of the Heian Court. Translated
with an introd. by Edwin A. Cranston (Harvard-Yenching Institute.
Monograph series, v.19). Cambridge, Harvard University Press,
1969. (x, 332 p.)
LC#: PL788.2.Z5 A33 1969; ISBN: 0674469852
Bibliography: p. 297-304.
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"He cannot be at all like your former master, I suppose."
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[The opening, in the spring of 1003; the lady's former lover, "the late Prince," had been dead about a year:]
Frailer than a dream had been those mortal ties for which she mourned, passing her days and nights with sighs of melancholy. And now... the shade beneath the trees grew even deeper. The fresh green of the grass on the embankment---though most people would hardly have given it a glance---somehow aroused an emotional awareness within her, and as she sat gazing out at it she noticed a movement at the nearby openwork fence. Who could it be, she wondered....
[Her visitor was a young page who had served her dead lover, and after his death, her lover's brother, "the Prince." The lady found herself interested in the living prince:]
"How splendid! He has a reputation for being most distinguished and difficult to approach. He cannot be at all like your former master, I suppose."
"No, but still he is very friendly. He asked if I often went to your residence, and when I replied that I did, he said, 'Take this with you and present it to her, and observe her reaction.'"
With these words the page extended a sprig of orange blossom. [p.131]
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"...how susceptible she was!"
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[Although both the Prince and the lady were concerned with the possibility of scandal, they met and began an affair:]
But even as she wrote [to the living Prince], her mind was a tangle of sad and conflicting emotions. What an incomprehensible person she was! After all the tender vows the late Prince had made---
Just then the same page came again. Had he brought a letter? No, apparently not. She felt terribly dejected. And this itself proved how susceptible she was! [p.135]
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"Never let a man get any rest, the ladies in this house."
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[One scene moves from the Prince's thoughts to the lady's; it is a humorous scene, but one that also exemplifies the accidents that kept the lovers apart:]
It was past the twentieth of the ninth month when late one night the Prince was awakened by the shining of the dawn moon. What a terribly long time it had been, he mused, and wondered, touched by the thought, whether she too might not be looking at this same moon. Surely she must, but what if someone were with her? Despite his misgivings on this score he set out, accompanied only by his usual page.
The lady was lying awake, thinking of many things, when she heard the knocking at the gate. Perhaps because the season had infected her with a autumnal melancholy, everything of late seemed more than usually touching in its sadness, and now she was lost in vacant reverie.
Strange! Who could it be, she wondered and awakened the servant who was sleeping nearby to go and inquire, but the girl was in no hurry to get up, and when at long last she was pulled from under the covers, she went off to wake a manservant who would not be roused either.
The latter, when he was finally made to get up, banged about in the dark and bumped into so many things that by the time he reached the gate the knocking had stopped. Whoever it was apparently had gone home, no doubt thinking she was fairly drugged with sleep, lying there without a care in the world. Who could it be, this person who was kept awake by the same thoughts as hers?
The manservant... came back grumbling. "Nobody there. Never let a man get any rest, the ladies in this house. Think they hear something and send a fellow off to stumble around in the middle of the night." And he went back to sleep. [pp.156-57]
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"They talked together to their hearts' content from morning
till night."
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[This scene shows one of the few times in the affair when the lady was at ease. The "directional taboo" was a religious restriction on one's movements (as Michitsuna no haha had noted earlier in the century in Kagero nikki, it is interesting how often the taboo kept men from visiting their wives but not their lovers):]
He came to her as usual in his carriage. Because of having changed his residence temporarily due to the directional taboo, he was now living in a highly secluded place, he said. She went with him, deciding that this time she would simply do whatever he asked of her.
They talked together to their hearts' content from morning till night, rising or sleeping as they pleased. She felt relief of the bitter tedium of her days, and wished to go and live with him. But the period of his taboo passed, and she returned to her own home. [p.178]
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"...old tales of painful loves, many as the nodes of black
bamboo."
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[Perhaps because of the secrecy in which their affair had to be conducted, the Prince became depressed; he began to talk of becoming a monk, and then of death:]
What could be weighing on the Prince's mind? Again he began to talk despondingly: "After all, I am not long for this world."
She responded:
"Will I alone be left
To tell the story of our past---
Destined to be numbered
With old tales of painful loves,
Many as the nodes of black bamboo?"
[p.186]
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[This collection contains a translation of Izumi Shikibu nikki by Earl Miner. The introduction is a good overview of the nikki as a genre, but for the general reader the book lacks the detailed help that Cranston (above) gives:]
Japanese poetic diaries. Selected and translated with an introd.
by Earl Miner (Publication of the Center for Japanese and Korean
studies). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. (xvii,
211 p. illus., facsims., maps, plan, ports.)
LC#: PL782.E3 M45
The Tosa diary, by Ki no Tsurayuki.--The diary of Izumi Shikibu,
attributed to Izumi Shikibu.--The narrow road through the provinces,
by Matsuo Basho.--The verse record of my peonies, by Masaoka
Shiki.--Bibliographical note (p.[207]-211)
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"Can others feel this way?"
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[At one point, the lady sent the Prince some prose notes she had written to develop into poems; with the Prince we can watch the poet transforming sense experience into poetry:]
The sound of the wind---it blows through branches threatening to spare no leaves---more than ever it makes one feel the true sadness of things. When a little rain seems about to scatter in drops from a sky sheeted in clouds, then one feels that the sadness is almost too much to bear.
During the autumn
My sleeves have moldered with my weeping;
When the real drizzle
Comes with the winter to bring its sadness,
Who then will lend me sleeves for tears? [p.121]
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With the people of the house all dead asleep, I myself am unable to say why I remain awake, and with my eyes barely open am filled with a lazy sadness of regret, when suddenly the geese coming south cry out in flight. Can others feel this way? Certainly my feelings are too strong to be repressed.
How many night now
Have I spent the hours in sadness
Unbroken by any sleep,
Setting myself the single occupation
Of listening to the voices of the geese. [p.122]
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[This collection contains the print version of the
Nikki translation that is online. Annie Shepley Omori's and
Kochi Doi's translation is interesting in that it is a more literal
rendering of the Japanese; as such, it shows the difficulty of
assigning speeches to the right speaker and deciding to whom
a pronoun refers:]
Diaries of court ladies of old Japan. Translated by Annie
Shepley Omori and Kochi Doi. With an introd. by Amy Lowell. New
York, AMS Press, [1970] (xxxii, 200 p. illus.)
LC#: PL782.E8 O4 1970; ISBN: 0404048196
Reprint of the 1920 ed. The Sarashina diary.--The diary of Murasaki
Shikibu. --The diary of Izumi Shikibu.
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[This anthology has 120 of Izumi Shikibu's poems, translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani (see online for examples). The book also gives the poems' transliterated originals in the notes and has a valuable essay on translating Japanese poetry:]
The Ink dark moon: love poems by Ono no Komachi & Izumi
Shikibu; translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani (Vintage
classics). New York: Vintage Books, 1990. (xxi, 212 p. : ill.)
LC#: PL758.825.L6 I55 1990; ISBN: 0679729585
Includes bibliographical references (p. 209-212).
[Also published: New York : Scribner, c1988. (116 p.) ISBN:
0684189712, 0025518208]
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[Another anthology has 51 of Izumi's poems, translated by Hiroaki Sato; many of the poems are different from those in Hirshfield and Aratani, above:]
From the country of eight islands: an anthology of Japanese
poetry / edited and translated by Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson;
with an introduction by Thomas Rimer; associate editor, Robert
Fagan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986, c1981. (xliv,
652 p.)
LC#: PL782.E3 F74 1986; ISBN: 0231063954
Bibliography: p. [641]-648. Includes index.
[Also published: (1) Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1981.
ISBN: 0385140304; (2) Seattle: University of Washington Press,
c1981. ISBN: 0295957980]
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"Which is worse, to miss someone dead or to be unable to
meet someone alive?"
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"Matters I want settled": three tanka:
Which should I think shouldn't exist in this world,
those who neglect or those who are neglected?
Which is worse, to miss someone dead
or to be unable to meet someone alive?
Which is worse, to love someone far away
or to often see someone you don't love? [p.148]
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"I can no longer tell which is who."
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"Waiting for my two lovers stationed in distant places:"
Having waited for this one for this, that one for that,
I can no longer tell which is who. [p.142]
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"You aren't with me."
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[From "Elegies for Prince Atsumichi":]
I miss your voice as you talked to me--your face is before
me as it was,
but it does not say a word.
[p.145]
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"On the night of the last day of the year:"
Dead people come to visit tonight, I'm told, but you aren't
with me;
the village I live in is without souls.
[p.145]
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"Which of us does she care for?"
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[From "Elegies for Her Daughter, Ko-Shikibu, Who Died
in the Eleventh Month, 1025"; this part is titled "Looking
at my grandchildren":]
Having left us, which of us does she care for?
I think more of my child, she, surely, of her children.
[p.147]
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[For a c.1200 Japanese woman's view of Izumi Shikibu, see Michelle Marra's translation of Shunzei kyo no musume's Mumyozoshi, pp. 425-427. 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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[John R. Wallace's study includes a substantial chapter, "Lady Izumi's Story --- Poetry, Romance, Strategy," which sees the poems and surrounding narrative in Izumi Shikibu nikki as a report on a "game of love" between the protagonist and Atsumichi. Wallace analyzes several passages to illustrate their rhetorical sophistication (generally greater on the protagonist's part than on Atsumichi's). The book's introduction and first chapter provide useful background on the writing of the period and the role of the court salons; the notes summarize recent Japanese-language studies. All quoted passages are given in Wallace's own translation. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Wallace, John R. Objects of discourse: memoirs by women of
Heian Japan (Michigan monograph series in Japanese studies; no.
54). Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Japanese Studies, the University
of Michigan, 2005. (xi, 325 p.: ill.)
LC#: PL741.2 .W35 2005; ISBN: 1929280343
Includes bibliographical references (p. 296-308) and index
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[Wallace's earlier article develops more fully than in his
2005 study his belief that Izumi's goal in writing the Nikki
was to rehabilitate her reputation with those in her court
circle:]
Wallace, John R. Reading the rhetoric of seduction in Izumi
Shikibu nikki. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 58:2 (December
1998), 481-512.
LC#:DS501 .H3; ISSN: 0073-0548
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[Donald Keene's history discusses the Nikki (pp.375-77) and Izumi's other poetry (pp.295-98); Keene also gives a good overview of the literature of the period, and his 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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[Ivan Morris' 1964 study is probably still the best single introduction to Japanese court society of the 900s and 1000s:]
Morris, Ivan I. The world of the shining prince: court life
in ancient Japan; with a new introduction by Barbara Ruch (Kodansha
globe). New York: Kodansha International, 1994. (xxvii, 336 p.:
ill.)
LC#: DS824 .M6 1994; ISBN: 1568360290.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [321]-324) and index.
[Also published: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England; New York,
N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin Books, 1969, c1964 (1985 printing)
ISBN: 0140550836]
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Updated 03-29-08