One of the central preoccupations of medieval Japanese no drama, and indeed of medieval Japanese cultural genres in general, is the depiction of the remote past. Events, characters, sites, and texts from the Nara (710-794), Heian (794-1185), and Kamakura (1185-1333) periods provided rich material for Muromachi-era (1392-1573) playwrights. In many instances, the dominant perspective is nostalgic, portraying the past as implicitly superior--aesthetically, politically, and socially--to the disordered present. But the collective historical consciousness of no playwrights is varied and complex. In this paper, I will use changing representations of a single site--the Kawara-no-in and its garden--to index this shifting understanding of the Heian past.
Research on traditional Japanese drama is impaired by presentism. We tend to focus on plays that are in the current repertory, ignoring or paying less attention to those works whose texts are extant but that are no longer performed. Anyone conducting historical study of no is well advised to correct for this bias by attending to haikyoku, plays that are no longer included in the repertories of the five major schools, which were fixed for the most part centuries ago. Like the no actors who occasionally resurrect the defunct plays for performance on the stage, scholars must revive these plays intellectually. Part of this article constitutes an attempt to go even a step further: to explore the relationship of a lost play from the repertoire of Kannami (Lord Toru, discussed below) to a process of historical revisionism practiced by his son Zeami and other no playwrights in the fifteenth century. It is likely that political as well as aesthetic motives caused the later writers to suppress the malevolent and demonic aspects that were present in the early interpretations of this site and its owner. To understand the range of treatments available to late medieval playwrights, I will review the extensive nondramatic literature, including historical accounts, poetry, monogatari (tales), and setsuwa (narrative) literature, then show that as no gained prestige and elite patronage, more benign depictions of Toru's character and the site displaced the earlier, unsettling images of him and, by extension, of the Heian past.
Toru in Life
The Kawara-no-in is so tightly associated with one of its many owners, the aristocrat and minister of state Minamoto no Toru, that mention of one summons the memory of the other. Toru was born in 822, the son of Emperor Saga (786-842; r. 809-823). In 838, at the age of seventeen (by the Japanese count), he was reduced to commoner status, given the Minamoto surname, and became a courtier. This was a common practice to relieve the burden on the government's finances, reduce the potential for succession disputes, and permit capable princes to serve the realm as ministers. In 872, at the age of fifty-one, Toru rose to the office of Minister of the Left, one of the most powerful positions at court, and held that post for the rest of his life. In 887, at the age of sixty-six, Toru was promoted to Junior First Rank. He died in 895 at the age of seventy-four, and was posthumously awarded Senior First Rank, the highest of all court ranks. His career was by all measures extremely successful.
Okagami (The Great Mirror), an anonymous historical tale completed in the late eleventh or early twelfth century, includes an intriguing anecdote about Toru. In 884, Minister of the Right Fujiwara no Mototsune (836-891) forced out his nephew Emperor Yozei (868-949; r. 876-884), who was regarded as dangerously unstable. When Mototsune was considering possible successors, Toru (who would have been in his early sixties and serving as Minister of the Left) volunteered, on the grounds that he was in the direct line of royal descent. But Mototsune turned him down, citing a lack of precedent for a commoner to ascend the throne. (1) Putting aside for a moment the historical veracity of the anecdote, the story indicates that later generations regarded Toru as unsatisfied with his very comfortable and powerful position; his true wish was to become emperor. This further suggests friction between Mototsune and Toru. Such friction is quite plausible, as Toru theoretically stood in the way of Mototsune's complete domination of court politics. Instead of Toru, Mototsune installed a pliable prince who was known as Emperor Koko (830-887; r. 884-887). After Koko's reign, Mototsune arranged for the enthronement of a former prince of the Minamoto family as Emperor Uda (867-931; r. 887-897). Thus, if Mototsune did rebuff Toru's proposal, his stated reasons for doing so were quite likely disingenuous.
Like other courtiers, Toru wrote poetry, and a handful of accomplished works have survived. (2) Nevertheless, he is best known for his Kawara-no-in, such that his sobriquet was the Riverside Minister of the Left (Kawara no sadaijin). The villa was located on the western bank of the Kamo River in the southern part of Kyoto, the capital. Its lot is said to have occupied eight cho (approximately 23.5 acres or 9.5 hectares), which was rather large for a property located in the city. (3) The Kawarano-in was depicted as a place for elegant gatherings at which the participants would compose poetry, chat, drink sake, and play music. For example, section 81 of Ise monogatari (The Tales of Ise, mid tenth century) recounts the following episode:
A certain Minister of the Left once lived in a very interesting house on the bank of the Kamo River near Rokujo Avenue. Late in the Tenth Month one year, when the white chrysanthemums had taken on a reddish tinge and all the trees and bushes blazed in autumn hues, the Minister invited some imperial Princes to visit him for a night of wine and music. As dawn approached, the guests fell to composing poems in praise of the mansion's elegance. A humble old fellow, who had been creeping about below the veranda, recited this after the others had finished: shiogama ni When might I have come itsu ka kinikemu to Shiogama shore? asanagi ni How nice it would be tsuri suru fune wa were a boat trolling for fish koko ni yoranan to approach in the morning calm! A traveler to Michinoku Province sees countless unusual and Intriguing places. In all the sixty and more provinces of our country, there is nothing quite like Shiogama; thus, the old man heaped praise on the host's garden in saying, "When might I have come to Shiogama?" (Watanabe 1976: 95-96; trans. McCullough 1990: 58-59)
Like other passages in Ise monogatari, this section appears garbled. It suggests that "the humble old fellow" (traditionally associated with the courtier Ariwara no Narihira [825-880], a contemporary of Toru's who was himself the commoner son of a prince) compared Toru's garden with the distant seaside city of Shiogama because both were "unusual and intriguing." But why Shiogama, of all the pleasing landscapes in the country? Other, later texts state that Toru attempted to recreate a scene from Shiogama on the grounds of the Kawara-no-in, even going so far as to install salt kilns (shiogama [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) used in the extraction of salt from seawater, and having seawater hauled in from the coast. Episode 151 in Uji shui monogatari (A Collection of Tales from Uji, ca. 1221?) begins: "Long ago, the Palace by the River was the residence of the Minister of the Left Toru. He devised all manner of interesting features while living there, such as having the garden laid out to resemble the scenery at Shiogama in Michinoku, and having salt made in kilns with brine specially brought in ..." (Miki et al. 1990: 306-07; trans. Mills 1970: 368).
The textual evidence for Toru actually having accomplished such an ambitious and eccentric project is quite skimpy. Nonetheless, this is how Toru and his garden were perceived by later generations. In addition to the problem of historical …
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