Ono no Komachi
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Template:Nihongo was a Japanese waka poet, one of the Rokkasen—the six best waka poets of the early Heian period. She was renowned for her unusual beauty, and Komachi is today a synonym for feminine beauty in Japan.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She also counts among the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals.
Life
Almost nothing of Komachi's life is known for certain, save for the names of various men with whom she engaged in romantic affairs and whose poetry exchanges with her are preserved in the Kokin Wakashū.<ref name="Keene 233">Template:Harvnb</ref> She was probably born between 820 and 830, and she was most active in composing poetry around the middle of the ninth century.<ref name="Keene 233"/>
Extensive study has gone into trying to ascertain her place of birth, her family and so on, but without conclusive results.<ref name="Keene 233"/> The Edo-period scholar Arai Hakuseki advanced the theory that there was more than one woman named Komachi and that the legends about her referred to different people.<ref name="Keene 233"/> This theory was later expanded to conjecture that there were four "Komachis".<ref name="Keene 233a">Template:Harvnb, citing Template:Harvnb</ref> It has been conjectured that she was a Template:Nihongo in the service of Emperor Ninmyō, and when the latter died in 850 she started relationships with other men.<ref name="Keene 233b">Template:Harvnb, citing Template:Harvnb</ref>
According to one tradition, she was born in what is now Akita Prefecture, daughter of Yoshisada, Lord of Dewa.<ref name="Rexroth 141">Template:Harvnb</ref> The Noh play Sotoba Komachi by Kan'ami describes her as "the daughter of Ono no Yoshizane, the governor of Dewa".<ref name="keene 1011">Template:Harvnb</ref> Her social status is also uncertain. She may have been a low-ranking consort or a lady-in-waiting of an emperor.
The headnote to poem #938 in the Kokinshū implies she had some sort of connection to Fun'ya no Yasuhide.<ref name="Keene 235">Template:Harvnb</ref>
Legends
Template:Nihongo had developed as early as the eleventh century.<ref name="Keene 234a">Template:Harvnb, citing Template:Harvnb</ref> They were later used extensively by the writers of Noh plays.<ref name="Keene 234">Template:Harvnb</ref>
Stories abound of Komachi in love. One of the legends about her is that she was a lover of Ariwara no Narihira, her contemporary poet and also a member of the Rokkasen.<ref name="Keene 233c">Template:Harvnb, citing Template:Harvnb</ref> It has been speculated that this legend may derive from the perhaps-accidental placement of one her poems next to one of Narihira's.<ref name="Keene 233c"/>
Another group of legends concern her cruel treatment of her lovers, notably Fukakusa no Shōshō, a high-ranking courtier.<ref name="Keene 234"/> Komachi promised that if he visited her continuously for a hundred nights, then she would become his lover. He visited her every night, regardless of the weather, but died on the ninety-ninth night.<ref name="Keene 234"/>
A third type of legend tells of an aged Komachi, forced to wander in ragged clothes, her beauty faded and her appearance so wretched that she is mocked by all around her, as punishment for her earlier mistreatment of her lovers.<ref name="Keene 234"/> Yet another group of legends concern her death, her skull lying in a field; when the wind blows through the skull's eye socket the sound evokes Komachi's anguish.<ref name="Keene 234"/>
A different categorization system for Komachi legends was given by Masako Nakano.<ref name="Nakano 14">Template:Harvnb</ref> She gives five groupings:
Poetry
Almost all of Komachi's extant poems are melancholic.<ref name="Keene 234"/> Poet and translator Kenneth Rexroth and Ikuko Atsumi said of her poetry:
Her beauty may be legendary but her rank as one of the greatest erotic poets in any language is not. Her poems begin the extreme verbal complexity which distinguishes the poetry of the Kokinshū Anthology from the presentational immediacy of the Man'yōshū.<ref name="Rexroth 141"/>
Most of her waka are about anxiety, solitude or passionate love. Template:Citation needed In the Kokinshū, all but one of her poems—the one that later appeared in the Hyakunin Isshu, quoted below—were classified as either "love" or "miscellaneous" poems.<ref name="Keene 234"/> She is the only female poet referred to in the Template:Nihongo of the anthologyTemplate:Citation needed, which describes her style as "containing naivety in old style but also delicacy".Template:Citation needed
One of her poems was included as #9 in Fujiwara no Teika's Ogura Hyakunin Isshu:<ref name=Suzuki>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="McMillan 157">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="McMillan 11">Template:Harvnb</ref>
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The poem was originally included in the Kokinshū as #133, in the section dedicated to seasonal (springTemplate:Citation needed) poetry.<ref name="Keene 234b">Template:Harvnb, and accompanying note (p. 242, note 66).</ref> The poem is filled with many layers of significance, with almost every word carrying more than one meaning.<ref name="McMillan 105">Template:Harvnb</ref> It was the subject of a short essay appended to Peter McMillan's translation of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu.<ref name="McMillan appendix">Template:Harvnb</ref>
In his Seeds in the Heart, translator, critic and literary historian Donald Keene said that "[t]he intensity of emotion expressed in [her] poetry not only was without precedent but would rarely be encountered in later years. […] Komachi's poetry, however extravagant in expression, always seems sincere."<ref name="Keene 235"/> He also praised her poetry along with that of the other poets of the “dark age” of waka in the ninth century in the following terms:
The passionate accents of the waka of Komachi and Narihira would never be surpassed, and the poetry as a whole is of such charm as to make the appearance of the Kokinshū seem less a brilliant dawn after a dark night than the culmination of a steady enhancement of the expressive powers of the most typical Japanese poetic art.<ref name="Keene 237">Template:Harvnb</ref>
Legacy
The many legends about her have made her the best-known of the Rokkasen in modern times.<ref name="Keene 224">Template:Harvnb</ref> Until relatively recently, when the title "Miss XYZ" became common in Japan, the woman considered most beautiful in such-and-such town or region would be dubbed "XYZ Komachi".<ref name="Katagiri 8">Template:Harvnb</ref> She and her contemporary Ariwara no Narihira are considered archetypes of female and male beauty, respectively, and both feature heavily in later literary works, particularly Noh plays.<ref name="Keene 225">Template:Harvnb</ref>
Komachi features frequently in later-period literature, including five<ref name="Keene 67">Template:Harvnb</ref> Noh plays: Sotoba Komachi, Sekidera Komachi, Ōmu Komachi, Sōshi Arai Komachi and Kayoi Komachi. These works tend to focus on her talent for waka and her love affairs and the vanity of a life spent indulging in romantic liaisons. Komachi's old age is also frequently portrayed: when she has lost her beauty, has been abandoned by her former lovers, and now regrets her life, wandering around as a lonely beggar woman — albeit still appreciated by young admirers of her poetry.<ref name="Rexroth 141"/> This fictional description is influenced by Buddhist thought and there may be no factual resemblance between it and the historical reality. Komachi is also a frequent subject of Buddhist Template:Transliteration paintings, which depict her dead body in successive stages of decay to emphasize transience.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Mishima Yukio reworked Sotoba Komachi for the modern theater, publishing his version in January 1952.Template:Sfnm It was first performed the following month.Template:Sfnm The basic plot (the age-worn former beauty encounters a young poet and relates some of her life's story, which causes him to fall in love with her, with fatal results) is retained, but the action takes place in a public park, with flashbacks to the salons and ballrooms of Meiji-era Japan.Template:Citation needed An English translation by Donald Keene was published in 1967.Template:Citation needed
The play Three Poets by playwright Romulus Linney includes a one act story about Komachi the poet.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In her honor, the Akita Shinkansen is named Komachi.<ref name="Akita Komachi">Template:Cite web</ref> A variety of rice, Akita Komachi, also bears her name.<ref name="Akita Komachi"/>
Gallery
- Ono no Komachi image gallery
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Ono no Komachi drawn by Kikuchi Yōsai
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Ono no Komachi by Kanō Tan'yū, 1648
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The poetess Ono-no Komachi in the rain
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Ono no Komachi, from the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu.
References
Cited works
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- Katagiri Yōichi 2009 (2nd ed.; 1st ed. 2005). Kokin Wakashū. Tokyo: Kasama Shoin.
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External links
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- Bengali translation ono no komachi by Moom Rahman
- E-text of her poems in Japanese
Template:Commons Template:Wikiquote Template:Rokkasen Template:Authority control
- Pages with broken file links
- Ono no Komachi
- 820s births
- 900s deaths
- 9th-century Japanese women writers
- 9th-century Japanese poets
- Year of birth uncertain
- Year of death uncertain
- Place of birth unknown
- Hyakunin Isshu poets
- Writers from Akita Prefecture
- Japanese women poets
- Deified Japanese women
- People of the Heian period
- Ono clan