The Tale of a Wild Goose

In classical Japanese poetry, the sound of a wild goose’s cry or the sight of a line of migrating wild geese suggests autumnal melancholy and loneliness. As Haruo Shirane has observed, wild geese are the second most frequently mentioned bird in poems from Man’yōshū (Collection of Myriad Leaves, ca. 785).1 The Tale of a Wild Goose (Kari no sōshi) draws deeply on these poetic associations and frequently alludes to other poems, including two by Ono no Komachi (ca. 825–ca. 900). It is written in a highly literary style that is somewhat unusual in otogizōshi, thus fusing the irui-mono (interspecies) subgenre with the tradition of court poetry.

The Kari no sōshi picture scroll on which this translation is based consists of a single handscroll with monochrome ink illustrations of landscapes and interior scenes (with simply drawn human figures) that depict Ishiyama Temple, a house, its garden, and a nun’s mountain retreat surrounded by rice paddies. In addition to the main text, there are some passage of dialogue, poetry, and narration that appear as gachūshi (words within the painting) in the illustrations. Although there is no evidence of wide distribution, this sole surviving manuscript probably is not the original; after the final ink illustration, a postscript by the calligrapher seems to mean “omissions possible,” implying that the extant Tale of a Wild Goose was copied from another text. The postscript ends with “Brushed in Keichō 7 [1602], middle of the sixth month,” indicating that any earlier versions would have been composed in or before that year. Both the author and the calligrapher are unknown; all that we can say for certain is that he or she must have been quite familiar with the classical poetic tradition.

Near Horikawa, there lived a daughter of a minor nobleman. She went into service at the court, and when her parents, who lived in a rustic village of no account, retired deep into the mountains,2 she had even less support than she did before. She thought about hiding her poor self among the blossoms in some distant vale, and while she sowed the seeds of these lonely thoughts, the days slipped by. How sad it would be to take that face of hers—now in the full bloom of youth, as she could see in the mirror—and shroud it in the black garb of a nun!

The woman was in the habit of visiting temples. Although she spent the months and days in the world, empty as the floating clouds in the sky, even the people in the palace thought only of their immediate diversions, and there was no one to whom she had truly pledged her troth. Thinking that Kannon might take pity on her lonely grief, she made a pilgrimage to Ishiyama Temple, intending to seclude herself there for seven days. To speak of her misery seemed pointless, even to herself, but because she had heard that the Kannon fulfilled people’s wishes in various ways, she prayed: “As I have no one to rely on, I earnestly ask for you to keep me from wandering lost in this world of dreams, and to bestow on me a desire for the world to come.” In time, without dwelling on her suffering, she read sutras and prayed day and night. In her anguish, as she gazed out at the horizon, she recalled the sentiments of the one who said long ago, “In the bright eighth month, I am sending my thoughts a thousand leagues away.”3

She heard a flock of wild geese come flying through the sky. “Even winged creatures such as these share lovebirds’ vows,” she thought, gazing jealously at the geese in their unstraying formation. And what could she have been thinking then? “The vows of men are like the morning glory,” she pondered, “not lasting long enough for the dew to linger. If even an ephemeral flying thing like this were to be my own true love, I would give my consent.”

One of the wild geese she saw in the distance flew down. She thought that she would rest for a while, and she dozed a little. Suddenly, she was startled to see a person nearby; beside her was a man dressed shabbily in informal clothes; he did not seem to be from the capital.4 Perhaps because her eyes were dazzled by the moonlight, she did not seem to recognize him, and she thought that among the many noblemen she had seen in the court, a figure such as his was rare.

He approached with a familiar expression: “I happened to be going to the capital, and since it’s on the way and I heard that this Kannon gives truly miraculous blessings, I came here. To meet you like this is surely not because of the vow of a single lifetime. If you will tell me exactly where you will be upon your return, and if there is no one standing in my way, I intend to stay in the capital for a while. So please prepare a travelers’ bed for me.”5 He spoke with passion.

Because she, too, had decided to visit the temple out of her lonely grief, she believed with all her heart that this was in fact the doing of the bodhisattva. Nevertheless, not knowing where he was from, she felt adrift, and unable to speak to a man who had spoken to her so abruptly, she gave no reply.

“I will accompany you on your return from Ishiyama Temple,” the man said. “I am Assistant Captain of the Guards Akiharu of the Koshiji Road.”6 Then he slipped away and disappeared.

Still unaccustomed to travelers’ lodgings outside the capital, the woman felt somehow sad. By day the cicadas sang, and all night long the insects in the grass cried beneath her pillow. At dusk, the setting sun and the moon emerging from behind the mountains were clear and bright, and only those friends of hers in the sky remained unchanged. She felt the gloom of autumn in them, too.

A flock of wild geese passes over Ishiyama Temple (bottom), and a mysterious man appears before the woman at Ishiyama Temple (top). (From Kari no sōshi, courtesy of the Kyoto University Library)

The unknown traveler came and said, “When you return from your pilgrimage, if you don’t make sure to tell me where you are, I must inform you that I will bear eternal resentment and disappear like the dew.” Night after night he came to ask, and because of his heartfelt, passionate pleas, the woman thought that perhaps indeed he had been sent by a bodhisattva. She vaguely hinted, “Truly, if you were to seek out this lovers’ bond, then in Horikawa …”

Toward the left of the first illustration (not fully reproduced here), the following dialogue is inscribed:

Man: Because of a long-standing vow, I have made a pilgrimage from the distant countryside, and drawn by the faintest glimpse of you, I have come here. This might seem rude, but please be my guide to the capital. I will accompany you on your return.

There is a little something I want to speak to you about.

Woman: Who are you? Perhaps you have mistaken me for someone else.

I am also a fisherman’s child with no fixed abode,1 and I don’t know the capital.

  1. The woman’s words allude to the anonymous poem 1703 in Shinkokin wakashū (New Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern, 1205):

shiranami no

As I am a fisherman’s child,

yosuru nagisa ni

passing my days

yo wo sugusu

by the shore, lapped by

ama no ko nareba

the white-capped waves,

yado mo sadamezu

I have no fixed abode.

After seven days had passed, she returned to the capital. The man found her somehow, and he visited night after night. Because he was from the country, she feared that he would be terribly rustic and rough, but he was in fact incomparably gentle and charming. Even had he not been, she would have been of a mind to go “like the floating weeds, should the water invite,”7 so she earnestly rejoiced at Kannon’s blessing. She stayed shut up in her home, and even neglected her court service. However, the man did not come to speak with her by day; he visited only at night. “Perhaps he lives near Katsuragi,” she thought, completely failing to understand.8

In the second illustration (not reproduced here), the following dialogue is inscribed:

Woman: You said that there’s nothing separating us, so what should I say? We can’t leave things as they are.

Man: Just because I don’t say where I go, do you think that means I must be holding back from you? I’m a man who has a little something to hide, so what of it?

Servant (bearing a tray): Since the lord happens to be resting now, please give him this.

Time passed one way or another, and perhaps because he was a man from the countryside, he sometimes brought her large gifts of rice from the autumn fields. This was a funny, countrified way of doing things, but maybe because she guessed at the sadness of his poverty, she did not seem to love him any the less for it.

The woman did not know precisely where in the capital the man was staying, so she sometimes resented him, thinking, “He is as reserved from me as a remote mountain. Has the cruel autumn of his love arrived?”9

“Ever since I was young,” he said evasively, “I have been cautious of my parents’ enemies, so even if you feel deeply for me, I am reluctant because of the people serving around you.”

The year ended, and the light of spring arrived at last. Even the poor plum trees at the fence of a humble dwelling blossomed as if they were smiling. For some reason, with the arrival of spring, the man seemed to be lost in thought. He was unable to sleep at night, and in the morning he made uneasy vows repeatedly, saying, “If for some reason I should go far away beyond the clouds, I wonder what sort of men you will see! It worries me.”

The woman did not know what to make of this. “Because he is a traveler,” she thought, “perhaps he is considering returning to his hometown.” She was endlessly forlorn, and her feelings were in complete disarray.

The cherry blossoms by the eaves were at their peak, and now would only scatter; gazing at them together in the moonlight, the man recited:

kokoro ni wa

Although my heart

kokoro wo sashite

does not hasten so,

isoganu ni

the flowers

kaeru to tsuguru

in the night breeze

hana no yūkaze

say I must return.

Despite the blossoms, the woman’s spirits darkened, and she replied:

kaeru sa wo

Because he is

susumeba koso wa

so eager to return

furusato ni

to his hometown,

hana wo misutete

the traveler hurries,

isogu tabibito

overlooking the flowers.

On one night, around the middle of the third month, the man came to her and said, “Tonight is the last night that I can come here. At dawn, I will return to my hometown. It is not my wish, but I have been summoned and must go. If I live until then, I intend to return again next autumn. As long as the colors of your heart have not faded like a pale-indigo robe, I will definitely come. Please wait faithfully.” He spoke falteringly, weeping heartfelt tears—how sad!

“Even if it is not your intention,” the woman said, “if you are summoned by the snow and hail of Mount Arachi, I will not hold it against you.”10 She yearned to be with him, but because it could not be, she said, “If this is the end, when I receive word of you on the wind, I will surely write.”

The woman watches her husband fly off into the early-morning darkness. (From Kari no sōshi, courtesy of the Kyoto University Library)

Speaking intimately throughout the night about what had passed and what was to come, they eventually parted in despair. Thinking that this was the end, she went outside to watch his departing figure in the darkness before dawn, whereupon, strange to say, the man seemed to disappear. A wild goose emerged from near the eaves and flew off, crying into the distant sky:

ima wa tote

Now is the end, you say;

isogu mo kanashi

how sad is the hurried parting,

wakareji no

with tears

namida ni kumorite

clouding the eyes

kaeru karigane

of the returning goose.

What a fleeting vow—she felt as if she were in a dream. Dwelling intently on this, she realized her wretched fate: she had confined herself at Ishiyama Temple and voiced her despair at not having anyone of her own, and because of some attachment from an unfortunate previous life, Kannon had matched her not with a human but with a bird. Still, the man had come night after night, regardless of the wind and rain. Even the traces of him lingering in the sky moved her, and remembering their parting words, she felt as if she were facing him now. Even though she regained her composure, she longed for him terribly.

With her old pillow as her companion, thinking all night that he might come to visit, if only in a dream, she wore inside out the raven robe of the night.11 While she was half-dozing, half-dreaming, a wild goose flew through the sky and left a letter by her pillow. Thinking it strange, she looked at it in surprise.

The third illustration (not reproduced here) contains no text. In the fourth illustration, the following text is inscribed:

The woman watched his departing figure sadly, knowing that now the end had come. Because her eyes were blurred with tears, perhaps, she could not see where he went; and perhaps because of the mist, she could not see the road. It seemed strange, but there was only a wild goose flying away. She wept miserably, realizing that her husband had been the wild goose that she had heard on the Koshiji Road.

Delighted that it was real, the woman quickly arose and read it: “How strange was our previous life, that because of some trivial fate I was born with these hateful wings, but without any way to escape the bonds of love. For eight months it was like a dream, our pillows side by side, rising and resting in the same bed with you, but the sky of my journeys was darkened by tears of rain. I rested by the side of the road, and without reaching my hometown, I disappeared at the tip of the arrow of a huntsman’s catalpa bow. I promised to come again next autumn, but I have abandoned that as a dream for the distant future. Thus, as my intentions have not changed, I wish to be reborn in Amida’s Pure Land with you. Please become a nun and help me in the afterlife.”

The letter continued with a poem:

akazu shite

Without tiring of you,

misutete ideshi

I have abandoned you

karigane no

and gone away;

hana yori saki ni

how sad for a wild goose to have fallen

chiru zo kanashiki

before even the short-lived blossoms.12

The woman dwelt intently on her strange vow: “In China, there was also such an example. The Han emperor attacked the Xiongnu barbarians and sent Su Wu to the distant border; fearing the barbarian forces, Su Wu fled, pointlessly prolonging his life. Trapped in a cave and having lost his leg, time passed in vain, and in his sadness he entrusted to a flock of wild geese a letter to his hometown. The wild geese dropped it in the garden of the Han emperor, and thereby Su Wu returned to his home.13 Perhaps among birds, wild geese truly have a heart, and thus we sealed such a fleeting vow.” Pitifully, she abandoned hope of even the man’s promise that she should wait for the next autumn.

The woman lives as a nun in a brushwood shack. (From Kari no sōshi, courtesy of the Kyoto University Library)

In the fifth illustration (not reproduced here), the following text is inscribed:

“Well, Sukedono,1 you have been dreaming. You thought that he had come—you were about to say ‘how wonderful’—but even to see him is pointless. You know that he is unhappy and imperiled. You were doubtful, and then because you were surprised to discover that that wonderful man of the Koshiji Road was perhaps only a dream, how strange that a real letter has arrived! Impatient to open it, you arise and look; how unreal it feels. Well, Sukedono, reading a letter from the man you love makes it feel as if he’s really here.”

  1. The woman may be speaking to herself, or another woman may be addressing her.

One evening, she summoned her nurse Chūjō and left in disguise, becoming a nun in a nearby temple. She decided to perform austerities wherever her feet might lead her, and since it was all the same, she departed toward the Koshiji Road. In a certain field, standing in the shadow of the reeds of Tamae of the summer harvest, the woman felt the sadness of being without a sky to fly off into.14 Traveling onward, she came to the Koshiji Road. She built a brushwood hermitage near a mountain rice paddy and spent the months and days there.

In the final illustration (not fully reproduced here), the following dialogue is inscribed:

Nurse: The clear water is so lovely.

Woman:

yo no naka ni

Born

kakare tote koso

with a fate like this

mumarekeme

into the world,

kotowari shiranu

but not knowing why,

waga namida kana

my tears—1

  1. This poem is almost identical to poem 1845 in Shokukokin wakashū (Collection of Ancient and Modern Times Continued, 1265), attributed to Emperor Tsuchimikado (1195–1231, r. 1198–1210).

The end of her life neared, and in her final hour the woman attained rebirth in the Pure Land.

tanomitsuru

The leaves of rice

inaba no karete

that I had relied on

tsuyu no ma no

wither as briefly as the dew:

kakaru hakanaki

the fleeting night’s dream

kari no yo no yume

of a wild goose.

[Colophon:]

Omissions possible.15

Brushed in Keichō 7 [1602], middle of the sixth month.

How awful! But we would all wish to be like this.

TRANSLATION AND INTRODUCTION BY RACHEL STAUM MEI

 

 

The translation and illustrations are from the Kari no sōshi picture scroll (1602) in the collection of the Kyoto University Library, typeset and annotated in Ichiko Teiji et al., eds., Muromachi monogatari shū jō, Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei 54 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1989), 311–24.

  1. Haruo Shirane, Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature, and the Arts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 41.

  2. The implications of this passage are unclear. It could mean that they either took monastic vows or died.

  3. This is an allusion to a poem by the Tang poet Bai Juyi (772–846).

  4. The man is said to be dressed in kari shōzoku (hunting garb), which is a kind of informal court attire. The word kari (hunting) is a homophone of kari (goose).

  5. This is a pun on the word ukine, which signifies both a temporary or an unsettled bed, and the floating sleep of a bird on the water.

  6. The name Akiharu means “fall and spring,” and it suggests the seasons of a goose’s migration.

  7. This is an allusion to poem 938 in Kokin wakashū (Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern, ca. 905), attributed to Ono no Komachi:

wabinureba

In my loneliness,

mi wo ukikusa no

like the rootless

ne wo taete

floating weeds,

sasou mizu araba

should the water invite me,

inamu to zo omou

I would go.

  8. The woman alludes to the legend of Hitokoto-no-nushi, a deity associated with Mount Katsuragi who is said to have been so ashamed of his ugliness that he came out only at night.

  9. This passage contains layered, poetic language. The phrase kokoro wo oku (to be reserved) connects to okuyama (remote mountain). In addition, there is a play on aki, which means both “autumn” and “to tire of.”

10. Mount Arachi lies on the border between Ōmi and Echizen provinces, to the north of Lake Biwa.

11. This is an allusion to poem 554 in Kokin wakashū, attributed to Ono no Komachi:

ito semete

When I long for you

koishiki toki wa

the very most,

mubatama no

I wear inside out

yoru no koromo wo

the raven robe

kaeshite zo kiru

of the night.

It was believed that wearing robes inside out would allow one to see a lover in a dream.

12. The word karigane (goose) contains the word kari (short-lived), which refers to the ephemerality of the blossoms.

13. The story of Su Wu is recorded in volume 54 of Han shu (The Book of Han). The story of Su Wu and the goose is retold in Japanese in The Tale of the Heike (thirteenth century; Kakuichi text [1371], 2:17).

14. This is an allusion to poem 219 in Goshūi wakashū (Later Collection of Gleanings, 1086), attributed to Minamoto no Shigeyuki (d. 1000):

natsukari no

Trampling the reeds

Tamae no ashi wo

at Tamae of the summer harvest,

fumishidaki

the flocking birds

mureiru tori no

have no sky

tatsu sora zo naki

to fly off into.

15. These words appear to be a disclaimer added by the calligrapher.