Rural Landscape, Social Difference, and Conflict
By the early thirteenth century, Fujiwara no Shunzei and his son Fujiwara no Teika had helped to canonize what are now known as the Heian classics—The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari, early eleventh century), The Tales of Ise (Ise monogatari, ca. 947), the first three imperial waka (classical poetry) anthologies (Kokinshū [Collection of Japanese Poems Old and New, ca. 905], Gosenshū [Later Collection, 951], and Shūishū [Collection of Gleanings, 1005–1007]), and Bo Juyis Collected Works (Ch. Boshi wenji, Jp. Hakushi bunshū)—which formed the textual foundation for the seasonal associations in the aristocratic literary tradition. While the power of the aristocracy declined politically and economically from the end of the Heian period (794–1185), waka culture continued to flourish and was carried on by aristocrats, Buddhist priests, and some well-educated samurai. Indeed, it could be said that the precipitous political and economic decline of the aristocracy (and then the irreversible military defeat of the imperial court itself in the Jōkyū Disturbance [1221]) led to a strengthening of the waka tradition, which the nobility developed and exploited as valuable cultural property. One result is that waka and The Tale of Genji continued to have cultural authority long after the political demise of the court and the nobility. Even after the destruction of the capital in the Ōnin War (1467–1477) and the dispersal of the nobles to the provinces, court culture centered on waka continued to represent high culture, as is evident in the numerous reconstructions of Heian court culture in genres ranging from Muromachi popular tales (otogi-zōshi) to renga (classical linked verse) to noh. In fact, one result of the dispersal of educated aristocrats and priest-scholars to the provinces was that the culture of the four seasons, with its representations of an elegant and highly encoded nature, spread to upper-rank samurai and to wealthy urban commoners (machishū), as well as to various regions of the country.
Meanwhile, another view of nature, which I have referred to as the farm-village (satoyama) landscape and which appears in the writings of low-ranking aristocrats and Buddhist priests, emerged from the estates (shōen) in the provinces. This landscape arose as early as the ancient period (before 784), but came to the fore around the twelfth century. The medieval cosmology of the satoyama has been summarized by Miyake Hitoshi:1
High mountain peak | Wizard (sennin), goblin (tengu), heavenly maiden (tennyo), divine white bird (shiratori) |
Deep in the mountain | Mountain people (yamabito), mountain ogre (yamanba), demons (oni) |
Mountain base | Fox, badger, monkey, rabbit, wild boar, snake |
Farm village | Dog, cat, chicken, cow, horse |
Rice field | Snake, frog, insect |
The typical farm village was located between the rice fields—which, in turn, were near a river that provided the irrigation—and the forest at the foot of the surrounding hills, which were home to foxes, badgers, monkeys, rabbits, and wild boars that wreaked havoc on both the rice fields and the domesticated animals (figure 17). The satoyama, which included both the sato (human settlement) and the yama (surrounding hills), can be considered a form of secondary nature in that the plants (those of both the rice fields and the immediate surrounding forest) were constantly harvested. The animals at the foot of the mountain populate the folk literature of Japan and frequently appear as local gods (kami). At a much higher elevation stood the inner recesses of the mountains (okuyama), which were basically uninhabited (except for scattered mountain people) and represented, in the cosmology of popular literature and folklore, a borderland between this and the next world. The peak of a high mountain (such as that of Mount Fuji) was considered to be the gateway to the other world. Most of the animals and supernatural creatures that appear in either the satoyama or the deep mountains never appear in waka or court tales of the Heian or Kamakura (1185–1333) periods. Except for falconry, aristocrats were not interested in hunting or in rice agriculture. This cultural and natural topography, which is strikingly different from that which emerged in aristocratic court culture in the capital, is worth examining for the impact that it would eventually have on Japanese cultural and religious views of nature.
TOPOGRAPHY OF A SATOYAMA
This modern reconstruction of a traditional satoyama shows the virgin and secondary forests on the mountain peak; the coppice woodlands, which were a major agricultural resource and the key field of interaction between humans and nature, at the mountain base; and the village and rice paddies in the valley. (From K. Takeuchi et al., Satoyama: The Traditional Rural Landscape of Japan [Tokyo: Springer, 2003], 3. Courtesy of the National Institute of Agro-Environmental Sciences and the University of Tokyo)
In contrast to the capital-centered landscape of the late Heian and medieval (1185–1599) periods, the satoyama landscape, much like that of the ancient period (as found in the early chronicles), is saturated with deities (kami) of different types, many of them related to farming, hunting, and fishing. The mountains (and sometimes large trees and rocks) surrounding the satoyama were believed to be the home of gods, as was the sea near coastal farm villages.2 The gods of the mountains (yama no kami) were often believed by rice farmers to come down in the early spring to become the gods of the rice fields (ta no kami) and then return to the mountains in the autumn. Shrines were built at the foot of the mountains, or shrines or torii (divine gates) were erected on the shore facing the sea.3 The mountains and the sea thus represented two “other worlds” inhabited by gods, the source of great powers or treasures. In the early chronicles and the popular literature of the medieval period, birds, other animals, and plants often represented a bridge between the human world and the divine world; the birds that flew back and forth over the mountains, for example, were depicted as messengers of the gods.
Classical Birds and Commoner Birds
The contrast between the capital-centered and the provincially based representations of nature is evident in the representations of birds, which can be divided into “classical birds” and “commoner birds.” Due to extreme seasonal changes in temperature and the elongated north-south shape of the Japanese archipelago, many birds in Japan are migratory or semi-migratory. By one count, there are roughly 350 species of wild birds in Japan, which can be divided into non-migratory birds, such as the sparrow, crow, pigeon, and pheasant; semi-migratory birds, such as the bush warbler, which move within a single region with the change of season; and migratory birds, such as the small cuckoo, wild goose (kari), wild duck or mallard, and swan. The non-migratory birds—such as the sparrow, crow, and pigeon (which was eaten for food from the ancient period)—were closely associated with farming life and appear frequently in the early chronicles and anecdotal literature. Many of the semi-migratory and migratory birds—such as the bush warbler, small cuckoo, and wild goose—were seasonal and became prominent figures in waka, Yamato-e (Japanese-style painting), and aristocratic culture.
As we have seen, the capital-based poeticization of birds began in the Nara period (710–784), in the middle to late poems of the Man’yōshū (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves, ca. 759), and became a widely instituted practice in the Heian period, when certain birds, along with selected plants and atmospheric conditions, came to be representative of the seasons, each with a circle of well-known associations. The most important bird for spring was the bush warbler (uguisu); for summer, the small cuckoo (hototogisu); and for autumn, the wild goose (kari). The Man’yōshū contains as many as 150 poems on the small cuckoo, 67 on the wild goose, and 51 on the bush warbler.4 All three birds continued to be major seasonal topics in the Heian and medieval periods. In classical poetry, the birds of winter are mainly waterfowl: the plover (chidori), wild duck (kamo), mandarin duck (oshidori), and dabchick (nio or kaitsuburi). The overwhelming focus in waka on these birds is on their songs or voices. The “first cry” of the bush warbler, the “first cry” of the small cuckoo, and the “first cry” of the wild goose became important poetic markers of spring, summer, and autumn, respectively. To “hear” a certain bird was to confirm the identity of a season. Like a number of insects (such as the pine cricket [matsumushi] or bell cricket [suzumushi]), these birds also appear prominently in love poems, functioning as metaphors for irrepressible desire, longing, and loneliness.
The classical birds stand in stark contrast to what we might call the commoner or popular birds—such as the sparrow, pigeon, falcon, crow, swallow, and chicken—which appear in abundance in the early chronicles, anecdotal literature, military tales, and Muromachi tales and played a role in the everyday lives of farmers and provincial samurai. The sparrow (suzume), for example, is a major character in medieval popular tales, but is absent from the first eight imperial waka anthologies.5 Some birds—such as the small cuckoo, pheasant, wild goose, and crane—appear both in classical poetry and in popular narratives, but serve very different functions in each. For example, the first cry of the hototogisu, which was eagerly awaited by Heian-period poets as the first sign of summer, signaled to farmers the beginning of the rice-planting season and became the subject of rice-planting songs, which Sei Shōnagon observed in the Makura no sōshi (The Pillow Book, ca. 1000) on her way to the Kamo Shrine.
The difference between the treatment of the wild goose in classical poetry and in the farm village is the humorous subject of a kyōgen play, a comic genre of the Muromachi period (1392–1573) with commoner roots that often represents the cross-currents of capital- and provincial-based representations of nature. The call of the wild goose sounds like a horn (gaan, gaan), resulting, it is said, in the Sino-Japanese reading of the graph for “wild goose” as gan, which became the vernacular word for “wild goose.” But it sounded like kari, kari to the ancients, and hence the classical poetic word for “wild goose” is kari. In the kyōgen play Gan-karigane (Wild Geese / Wild Geese), a farmer from Tsu Province (the shite [protagonist]) pays the annual tax in the form of an offering of a wild goose to the landlord in the capital, citing a classical poem and using the poetic word karigane. A farmer from Izumi Province (the waki [side character]), who makes the same payment of a wild goose to the same landlord, counters by saying hatsu-gan desu (These are the first wild geese), using vernacular Japanese. Each is rewarded equally. The humor comes from the dissonance between the two cultural perspectives on nature: that of the farmer and that of capital-based culture.6
Perhaps the most striking function of commoner birds in medieval popular narratives is as a symbol of parental love, familial order, or marital fidelity. In classical poetry, the pheasant (kiji or kigisu) is a spring bird that, while seeking food in the wild fields, cries out for its mate,7 but in anecdotal literature, military narratives, and Muromachi popular tales, the pheasant is a symbol of a mother’s devotion to her child. The Hosshinshū (Tales of Awakening, 1216?), a collection of early medieval anecdotes, notes that when the pheasant encounters a fire in a wild field, it stands up in shock, but unable to leave behind its young, it enters the smoke to retrieve its chick and often burns to death in the process—a scene referred to as “pheasant in a burning field” (yakeno no kigisu). This association became the basis for the modern proverb yakeno no kigisu, yoru no tsuru (pheasant in a burning field—the night crane),8 translated roughly as “Parents risk life and limb for their children.”
Another commoner bird associated with familial love is the swallow (tsubame or tsubakurame), which came from the south in late spring and returned in autumn. Making its nest on house eaves and roof ridges, the swallow was a familiar bird from the ancient period, but it rarely appears in waka. The swallow was known for its ability to reproduce rapidly (it mates twice and sometimes three times in the summer). In the noted Taketori monogatari (Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, ca. 909), one of the suitors of the Shining Princess is given the difficult task of finding the legendary “easy-birth shell” of a swallow. The swallow was also thought to be faithful to its mate (spending each year with the same partner) and to take care of its young, and thus it became a symbol of marital and familial harmony. In “Karukaya,” a sermon tale (sekkyōbushi) written in the Muromachi period, the son, upon seeing a family of swallows (father, mother, and young), realizes that he has no father.9
Commoner birds frequently functioned as messengers from the other world, much more so than classical birds. In one of the most famous stories about a sparrow, “How a Sparrow Repaid Its Debt of Gratitude” (48), in Uji shūi monogatari (A Collection of Tales from Uji, early thirteenth century), a sparrow whose back is broken by a child repays an old woman who nurses it back to health. With the seed of a gourd brought by the sparrow, the old woman is rewarded with many gourds filled with rice. A neighbor attempts to duplicate the old woman’s luck by first injuring a sparrow and then trying to nurse it back to health, but is punished instead. In this story, which became the basis for such popular folk tales as “Koshiore suzume” (Broken-hip Sparrow) and “Shita-kiri suzume” (Tongue-cut Sparrow), the sparrow, as a representative of heaven or a higher world, brings just rewards to the human world.10
Animals as Prey and as Victims
Birds also appear as prey and as food in popular narratives. Ryōri monogatari (Tales of Cooking, 1643), an influential cookbook that reflects the new values of the Edo period (1600–1867), lists eighteen different birds in order of culinary merit, beginning with the crane; followed by the swan, wild goose, wild duck, pheasant, and mountain pheasant; and ending with the chicken. In addition to its association with good fortune and felicity, the crane (tsuru) was considered the number-one prey in falconry, being prized by warriors as the tastiest of birds. In the Edo period, the crane was given as a precious gift from the provincial warlords (daimyo) to the shogun and from the shogun to the court and to selected daimyo. The value of cranes as game was such that commoners were forbidden to hunt them11 and the military government (bakufu) took special measures to protect them, causing a conflict with farmers, who considered cranes to be harmful since they ate the grains of rice.12 A pheasant captured by a falcon was also regarded as a great delicacy.13 In section 118 of Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness, 1310–1331?), Priest Kenkō (ca. 1283?–1352?) notes that the meat of the pheasant was considered to be equal to that of the carp, the king of fish; and in the famous story “How Ōe no Sadamoto, Governor of Mikawa, Became a Buddhist Monk” (19:2) in Konjaku monogatari shū (Tales of Times Now Past, ca. 1120), Ōe no Sadamoto (Jakushō) witnesses a pheasant being feathered, skinned, and cooked alive, a traumatic experience that causes him to take holy vows. By the end of the medieval period, the pheasant had become one of the “three birds” (best for hunting) in samurai society, along with the crane and the wild goose.
Farmers had to kill insects and other animals that harmed their rice fields, which led to the widespread ritual of praying for the spirits of slaughtered animals and insects. In order to get rid of harmful insects that damaged the harvest, farm villagers lit pine torches (taimatsu) and rang bells. This was followed by mushi-kuyō (offerings to the spirits of deceased insects). Similar offerings were carried out for whales, fish, boar, deer, and other hunted animals.14 Numerous medieval anecdotal tales (setsuwa), Muromachi popular tales (otogi-zōshi), and noh plays reveal this fundamental conflict between the need to control nature—particularly the pressure to hunt, kill harmful animals, and clear the forests—and the desire to appease and worship nature, which was believed to be a realm filled with gods. This tension was made even more complex by the gradual infiltration into Japan of Buddhist thought, particularly the prohibition against killing certain animals and the notion that all sentient beings can achieve enlightenment. The sin of killing could be compensated for, at least in part, by praying for the spirits of dead animals (kuyō) or by releasing captured animals (hōjō), frequent motifs in early and medieval anecdotal literature.
An awareness of the Buddhist sin of hunting and killing, which emerged as early as the Nihon ryōiki (Record of Miraculous Events in Japan, ca. 822), came to the fore in the medieval period and created a sense of sympathy for the hunted animal, an attitude evident in setsuwa such as “How a Man Called Umanojō Shot a Male Mandarin Duck in Akanuma in Michinoku Province and Then Received the Tonsure” (30:713), in the collection Kokon chomonjū (A Collection of Things Written and Heard in the Past and Present, 1254):
In Michinoku Province, the village of Tamura, there lived a man named Umanojō So-and-so who raised hawks. One day, when his hawks had failed to catch any birds and he was coming home empty-handed, at a place called Akanuma he saw a pair of mandarin ducks flying about. Fitting an arrow with a special type of point to his bow, he shot and killed the male of the pair. He fed the body to his hawks and put the remainder in his bag and took it home.
That night in a dream, a beautiful little woman came to his pillow, crying piteously. Wondering at this, he asked, “Who are you, and why are you crying?”
She replied, “Yesterday at Akanuma, a terrible thing happened. You killed my husband, my companion of many years, and therefore I weep in unbearable sorrow. I have come to tell you of this. Because of this sorrow, I do not know how I can go on living.” Weeping uncontrollably, she recited this poem in Japanese and then went away, still weeping:
| Hi kurureba | As evening comes, |
| sasoi shi mono wo | how sad that I, |
| Akanuma no | who had slept with my mate, |
| makomo-gakure no | must sleep alone in the shade |
| hitorine zo uki | of the marsh grass of Akanuma. |
Shocked and saddened by these words, on the following day the man opened his bag to find the bill of the female bird paired with that of her mate. Because of what had happened, he abandoned his regular occupation and took the tonsure. He was a samurai in the service of Lord Nakayoshi, former commissioner of the Ministry of Justice.15
This story embodies the fundamental tension between the provincial dependence on hunting and the Buddhist sin of killing birds and other animals. The tale is poignant because the bird that is killed is (for humans) a highly sympathetic animal, the mandarin duck (kamo), which forms longterm pairs and had become a poetic and cultural symbol of marital fidelity and deep love. Following the pattern of Buddhist tales, the killing results in religious awakening and conversion (hosshin).
In these stories of hunting, the prey animal is often personified. In “Kari no sōshi” (Story of a Wild Goose), a Muromachi popular tale that survives in a picture scroll (emaki) from 1602, a lonely lady-in-waiting sets off on a pilgrimage to Ishiyama Temple to pray to the bodhisattva Kannon, sees a flock of wild geese flying in front of a bright autumn moon, and wishes that someone would marry her, even a wild goose. A young man in court dress soon appears, and they become intimate. One night, in the middle of the Third Month, the man regretfully informs her that he must return home and promises to come back in the autumn. The next morning, the woman sees a wild goose fly off from the eaves and realizes the young man’s true identity. The woman continues to long for her former lover and has a dream in which the wild goose reveals that he was killed on the way home by a hunter. The woman retreats to a hermitage, takes holy vows, and is reborn in the Pure Land.16 This late Muromachi tale, which belongs to the “marriage to another species” (iruikon) type, is remarkable for the way in which it employs the classical poetic associations of the wild goose—loneliness, arrival in autumn, return in spring, and evening moon—and personifies the bird. The story, which also shows the Buddhistic concern with the sin of hunting, treats the wild goose as a victim whose death leads to the woman’s disillusion with this world.
In Muromachi popular tales that belong to the “marriage to another species” subgenre, an animal or a plant enters the world in human form and has a relationship with a human. Sometimes the animal appears only temporarily in human form, as in “Kari no sōshi.” In one version of “Nezumi no sōshi” (Story of a Mouse), a similar tale, a girl who desires to be married is suddenly blessed with visits from a male lover, to whom she plans to be formally married. When her mother comes to meet her future son-in-law, she is accompanied by a cat that pounces on the man, whereupon he returns to his original form as a mouse. In these iruikon tales, which became very popular in the late medieval period, the animals not only are sympathetic characters, but make their world more familiar to the human audience, as the tales in such collections as Aesop’s Fables often do.17
This kind of sensitive, anthropomorphic representation of animals extends to kyōgen, which features animal and even plant protagonists in such plays as Kani-yamabushi (Crab Mountain Priest), Ka-sumō (Mosquito Sumo), Semi (Cicada), Tako (Octopus), and Tokoro (Mountain Potato).
Plants as Protagonists
Perhaps the most striking example of the personification of animals, plants, and even atmospheric conditions in the Muromachi period is the large group of noh plays in which they appear as spirits and gods (kami). The most prominent examples are Kochō (Butterflies), Ume (Plum Tree), Saigyōzakura (Saigyō and the Cherry Blossoms), Sumizome-zakura (Ink-Dyed Cherry Blossoms), Yugyō yanagi (The Wanderer and the Willow), Fuji (Wisteria), Kakitsubata (Iris), Bashō (Plantain Tree), Hajitomi (The Lattice Shutter), Susuki (Miscanthus Grass), Kaede (Maple Tree), and Yuki (Snow).18 While nature is often personified in waka of the Heian and medieval periods, the plants and animals do not appear as spirits of the dead or as gods. In this respect, these noh plays hark back to the early chronicles and reflect local beliefs in the existence of kami in plants, animals, and rocks. The numerous spirits of nature in these plays, though, do represent the continuation of a long tradition of waka, in which nature is personified or treated as a companion. As Ki no Tsurayuki (872–945) notes in the kana preface to the Kokinshū: “Hearing the cries of the warbler among the blossoms or the calls of the frog that lives in the waters, how can we doubt that every living creature gives voice to song?” This statement became the object of extensive medieval waka commentary, which both drew on and gave rise to anecdotal literature (setsuwa) on poetic topics.
Typically, a tree or flower found in classical poetry or in a classical text such as The Tales of Ise or The Tale of Genji appears as a beautiful woman and performs a dance. Following the double structure of the dream-noh (mugen-nō) play, in the first half (maeba), the waki (usually a traveling Buddhist priest) meets the protagonist, who normally appears as a local woman; she reveals that she is in fact the spirit of a tree or another plant, and then reappears in the second half (nochiba) of the play as that spirit. These plant-spirit plays tend to follow one of two fundamental patterns. One type dramatizes a legend about a plant from waka. The other type uses the plant spirit to preach the Buddhist notion that all plants have the capacity to achieve salvation or enlightenment. Often, both types are combined.
A good example of the waka-centered play is Fuji, in which a traveler visits Tago-no-ura (Etchū Province), a place made famous for wisteria by Ōtomo no Yakamochi (718–785?) and others in a series of poems in the Man’yōshū (19:4199–4202). When the traveler recites a poem on the wisteria, a local woman is critical of the poem and recites two other poems about the famous wisteria that she deems to be superior. In the second half of the play, the woman appears as the spirit of the wisteria and praises both the Lotus Sutra and the wisteria. Thus Fuji pays homage to the rich cultural history of wisteria, drawing on its classical associations, such as its relation to the pine and the significance of the color lavender.
The renga-esque use of the poetic and lexical associations of a flower, a tree, or another plant is also a salient characteristic of these waka-based plays. Such associations, which can be found in handbooks such as Renga yoriai (Linked-Verse Lexical Links, 1494), were woven together, particularly in the song and dance sections of noh plays, to create a rich intertextual fabric. For example, the second half of Saigyō-zakura includes an “exhaustive listing of famous places” (meisho-zukushi) known for cherry blossoms. Similarly, Yugyō yanagi has an “exhaustive listing” of legends about the willow in China and Japan, including the scene in the “Wakana jō” (New Herbs, Part I) chapter in The Tale of Genji in which Kashiwagi, who is standing near a willow tree, catches a glimpse of the Third Princess.
Probably the most prominent example of a plant-spirit play that foregrounds the belief that “trees, grasses, and earth all become buddhas” (sōmoku kpkudo shikkfli jōbutsu) is Bashō, which was written by Konparu Zenchiku (1405–1468) and is set in China. A woman (the shite) appears in front of a hermit who is reciting the Lotus Sutra. As she listens to the sutra, she asks if it will bring salvation to women and to non-sentient beings, such as plants. According to the hermit, the “Yakusōyu hon” (Parable of the Medicinal Plants) in the Lotus Sutra teaches that trees and other plants can achieve Buddhahood and that women can escape from the “Burning House”—this illusory world. In the second half of the play, the woman reappears as the spirit of the plantain (bashō) praises the Lotus Sutra, gives a lyric description of the four seasons, and explains the impermanence of all things. In the end, the leaves and flowers break and scatter: “The mountain wind, the wind through the pines, sweeps through, sweeps through; the flowers and plants scatter and scatter; the plantain leaves are torn and left broken.”19 In this play, the bashō not only becomes a symbol of the impermanence of all things, but represents those beings (such as women) who are thought to have difficulty being saved.
The “Yakusōyu hon” gave rise to the doctrine that plants could attain Buddhahood. Chan-jan (711–782), the ninth patriarch of the Tiantai (Jp. Tendai) school, argued that since all matter contains the fundamental, unchanging nature of all things, even non-sentient beings can become Buddha.20 In China, there was considerable debate about this issue,21 but in Japan, this Tendai position was accepted by all the major new Buddhist sects (Shingon, Zen, Jōdo, and Nichiren), leading to the popular phrase “trees, grasses, and earth all become buddhas,” which appears repeatedly in plant-spirit plays. By representing both the ever-changing seasonal nature of plants and the notion that these non-sentient beings can achieve Buddha-hood, Bashō suggests that humans may be spiritually awakened by grasses and trees, which, like all phenomena, undergo continuous change even as they retain their unchanging Buddha nature.22
Plant-spirit plays also defend the value of waka. A good example is Kaki-tsubata, which is based on the famous story of a single poem in The Tales of Ise. As a priest (the waki), who has traveled to the Eight Bridges in Mikawa Province, gazes at the blooming iris, a young woman tells him about Ariwara no Narihira’s (825–880) famous kakitsubata poem in which Narihira expresses his longing for a lover back in the capital. The woman later reappears in the Chinese robe (karakoromo) described in Narihira’s poem, revealing that she is the spirit of the kakitsubata, that Narihira was the manifestation of a bodhisattva, and that she hopes to attain enlightenment through Narihira’s poem, which has the power of a sutra. The play ends with the words of the chorus: “The flower of the iris, whose heart of enlightenment opens up, truly, in this moment, trees, grasses, and earth, truly, in this moment, trees, grasses, and earth all become buddhas, and with this she vanishes.”23
The idea that the noted poet Ariwara no Narihira is a manifestation of a bodhissatva reflects honji-suijaku belief, which casts local deities as “traces” or incarnations (suijaku) of originary Buddhist gods (honji). In the Muromachi period, the logic of honji-suijaku was often reversed to give higher value to the local deity (here Narihira), making him or her the origin rather than the trace. In a similar manner, Kakitsubata uses Buddhist thought to give priority to waka and to make it the source and embodiment of the divine.24 Thus the play is not only a manifesto of the Buddhist notion that “trees, grasses, and earth all become buddhas,” but also a defense of waka, particularly against the Buddhist criticism of classical poetry as kyōgen kigo (wild words and ornate phrases), which condemned poetry for deceiving readers and arousing frivolous thoughts. Kakitsubata implies that waka, which was associated with love and passion, could function as an expedient means (hōben) to lead audiences to a higher level of truth or enlightenment.
Noh began as a form of entertainment for commoners involving mime and dance and then gained such elite appeal that it was performed regularly for shoguns; this status was due primarily to the efforts of Kan’ami (1333–1384) and Zeami (1363–1443), who incorporated the classical poetic tradition into noh. In refashioning noh, dramatists drew on every possible source, from ancient myths to anecdotal literature to Buddhist texts. In doing so, they relied heavily on two intermediaries: renga manuals, which provided the lexical and cultural associations of particular poetic topics and words, and medieval commentaries on waka and the Kokinshū, which explored the “historical origins” of places, flowers, and plants in Japanese poetry and sought out the “historical personages” behind personifications in poetry. The secret commentaries, for example, explained how the “twin pines of Takasago and Suminoe grew old together,” an anecdote that, when combined with poems on these trees, provided the basis for the noh play Takasago.25 Noh dramatists combined this kind of setsuwa-based commentary with honji-suijaku belief, stressing the importance of waka as a means to enlighten the audience, particularly in the face of the Buddhist condemnation of literature as “wild words and ornate phrases.”
In a number of noh plays, the spirit of a plant, particularly a tree, is a god (kami). According to Kageyama Haruki, kami were originally thought to be formless beings that resided in certain rocks and trees.26 Trees—or branches or leaves—also functioned as intermediaries between humans and the gods, as in the example of the sacred branch of the sakaki, which appears as early as the Nihon shoki (Chronicles of Japan, 720), in which Ame-no-uzume-no-mikoto puts sakaki branches on her head in preparation to draw the sun goddess, Amaterasu, out of a grotto. Sakaki was used in Shinto rites as an offering to the kami or as an implement to drive away pollution or evil spirits. Shrines were originally thought to be sacred groves inhabited by the gods.27 Yorishiro, objects that the kami could descend to, were often sacred trees called shinboku (sacred tree) or himorogi (marked dwelling place of a god).28
These animistic beliefs form the backdrop for noh plays such as Oimatsu (Old Pine), Takasago, and Miwa. In Oimatsu, a god-noh (waki-nō) and dream-noh (mugen-nō) play attributed to Zeami, a worshipper at the Kitano Tenman Shrine (dedicated to the poet Sugawara no Michizane [845–903]) has a dream telling him to visit the Anraku-ji temple in Tsukushi (present-day Kyūshū). When he arrives at the temple, he is met by an old man (the mae-jite [protagonist of the first half of the play]) and a guardian of the flowers. They tell the visitor about the Old Pine and the Crimson Plum (Kōbaidono), both divine trees, and then disappear. In the second half of the play, the god of the Old Pine (the nochi-jite [protagonist of the second half]) appears, blesses the spring of the great reign, and dances. The story tells and dramatizes the legend of Sugawara no Michizane in which the plum tree, in response to a poem by its exiled master, Michizane, flies overnight to Tsukushi to follow him and then is followed by the pine (the name Oimatsu can be read as either “Old Pine” or “Following Pine”). In Takasago, another god play, the spirit of the god of Sumiyoshi resides in a pine at Sumiyoshi and the spirit of the god of Takasago resides in a pine at Takasago. In Miwa, a dream-noh play, a priest (the waki) gives a woman (the mae-jite) a robe that appears the next day hanging from a cypress tree. When the priest prays beneath the cypress, the god of Miwa appears in the form of the woman, tells the ancient myth about Mount Miwa, dances a god dance (kagurd), and disappears. In this play, the spirit of a god (Myōjin of Miwa) resides in a cypress tree.
Nature in noh, in short, derives from both the Heian court poetry tradition and the animistic medieval farm-village landscape, often incorporating both into one play.
Resistance and Legitimation
The medieval period, beginning around the early thirteenth century, was a time of extensive deforestation in Japan, as farmers cleared trees to lay out new rice fields.29 As medieval anecdotal tales (setsuwa) reveal, there was constant conflict between farmers who wanted to fell trees and long-held beliefs in the spirits of large trees. Two kinds of forests appear in medieval anecdotal literature. The first is the coppice (mixed-tree) woodland (zōkibayashi), represented by the red pine (akamatsu), which surrounded the farm villages (satoyama) and covered the foothills of the mountains. This forest was considered communal property and was constantly harvested by villagers, who used it for fertilizer, building materials, firewood, and other basic necessities. The second kind of forest, which was found deeper in the mountains, consisted of oak (kashi), chinquapin (shii), and other broad-leaved evergreen trees that grew to great heights and were thought to be divine or inhabited by gods.30 Stories about cutting down “giant trees” usually involved these trees, which often grew on or around the grounds of a shrine and temple.
Farmers, who had to hew large trees that were blocking sunlight, frequently turned to higher authorities, including the emperor, for aid, as in “Giant Oak at Kurimoto District in Ōmi Province” (31:37) in Konjaku mo-nogatari shū. In this story, the shadow of a giant beech tree in Ōmi Province prevents villagers in three districts from tilling the land. The farmers receive imperial permission to fell the tree, which they do without hesitation. The elimination of the tree results in a bountiful harvest. The story reinforces the authority of the emperor, who brings prosperity, but also shows that the farmers were afraid to cut down large trees and felt the need to placate their angry spirits. As Hōjō Katsutaka has shown, the long history of myths, legends, and folktales about this conflict tends to break down into two categories: narratives that legitimize the felling of large trees, and narratives that reveal the resistance of the trees.31
Japanese folktales about the resistance of trees include these narrative variations:
1. When part of a tree is cut, it immediately grows back.
2. Blood flows from the gash in the tree.
3. The tree refuses to be cut.
4. The tree screams or groans when cut.
5. The spirit of a tree appears in human form and marries a human being.
6. The woodcutter becomes ill or dies.
7. The felling of the tree brings natural disaster.
8. The tree is cut down but refuses to be moved.32
In these narratives, the tree is shown to have the emotions, flesh, blood, and suffering of human beings. If the spirit of a giant tree marries a human, the union results in a child, but when the tree is cut down, the tree spirit and its family are forced to part. Sometimes, when the tree refuses to be felled or to move, the family offers prayers to pacify its spirit and the tree is finally turned into lumber.
Probably the best-known tree-spirit narrative of this type is the play Sanjū sangendō munagi no yurai (Origins of the Ridgepole of the Thirty-Three-Pillar Buddhist Hall), which first appeared as a puppet play (jōruri) in the Hōreki era (1751–1764) and later became popular as a kabuki play.33 The protagonist is a giant, old willow in the mountains of Kumano (Kii Province) that is about to be cut down, but whose life is saved by a samurai called Yokosone Heitarō. (In the Kojiki [Record of Ancient Matters, 712] and Nihon shoki, legends about tree deities are almost exclusively located in Kii Province, perhaps because that vast forest region was close to the center of imperial power.)34 In the play, the tree spirit appears as a beautiful woman called Oryū (Willow), who marries the samurai and bears him a child named Midorimaru. At the request of Retired Emperor GoShirakawa (1127–1192, r. 1155–1158), an order is given to cut down the giant willow in Kumano to build the ridgepole for the Thirty-Three-Pillar Buddhist Hall in Kyoto. When Oryū learns that she is about to die, she bids farewell to Heitarō and Midorimaru and disappears. The huge willow is brought down and hauled to the capital, but it suddenly stops in front of Heitarō’s house; only when Midorimaru straddles the tree and sings does it slowly begin to move again, allowing for the completion of the temple hall. In Japanese myths, the marriage between a human and an animal usually ends (as in the myth “Luck of the Sea and Luck of the Mountain” in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki) when a taboo on viewing is broken and the animal is seen by a human. But in the marriage between a human and a plant, the plant usually withers away or is tragically cut down, as in the Muromachi popular tale “Kiku no sei mono-gatari” (Chrysanthemum Spirit; also known as “Kazashi no hime” [The Story of Princess Kazashi], sixteenth century).35 The jōruri—kabuki version of Sanjū sangendō munagi no yurai, which stresses the close bonds between husband and wife, mother and child, also reflects the tension between the power of the imperial state and the sympathy of commoners toward the sacrificed tree. As with many noh plays, this drama has a chinkon (pacification of a restless or angry spirit) function, intended to offer prayers to a god or spirit who died an unnatural or unfair death.
The literature of the Muromachi period, both popular and dramatic, is marked by a major reemergence of animism, which appears extensively in ancient chronicles and remains in popular narratives of the Heian period, but is almost completely absent from Heian court tales and classical poetry. Medieval popular narratives also incorporated local folklore, particularly about foxes, badgers, and other semi-imaginary animals that interacted with the inhabitants of the farm village (satoyama).36 The emergence of spirits of plants and animals in Muromachi popular literature can also be traced, at least in part, to the increasingly widespread Buddhist belief in the notion that “trees, grasses, and earth all become buddhas.” Instead of regarding animals as a lower tier of existence—as part of the Six Worlds (Rokudō), or six levels of samsaric migration—as in early Heian—period setsuwa anthologies such as the Nihon ryōiki, animals and plants were thought in this new Buddhist view to have the potential to be enlightened and achieve salvation. This idea overlapped with long-held indigenous beliefs in the spirits of trees, plants, and animals, many of which were locally worshipped or feared as gods (kami) and often served as a link to the other world. The capital-centered, waka-based, highly codified elegant view of nature and the four seasons also had a profound impact on popular narratives and drama, which became a rich mixture of both classical and provincial representations of nature.
The Muromachi and early Edo periods were a time of great destruction of the natural environment caused by extensive urbanization, expansion of new rice fields, excessive harvesting of the forest, and poor conservation. In the rural villages, this resulted in bald mountains (hageyama), forcing animals from their natural habitats and causing some of them, such as wolves, to attack humans. The many animal and plant spirits in Muromachi tales may also be interpreted as surrogates for a natural environment that was being heavily damaged. As the ecological balance between humans and animals / plants deteriorated, the spirits of animals and plants in farm villages became more prominent in the social and literary unconscious. Like many of the ghosts in noh, the spirits of plants and animals in popular narratives may be considered the voices of the vanquished. A number of plays end with a prayer for the salvation of the suffering or dead plant or animal, suggesting a need to pacify the spirit of the dead (chinkon) and the damaged part of nature, particularly animals driven from their habitats and forests cleared of their trees.
This kind of conflict is particularly prominent with regard to large trees. Japan has historically made extensive use of wood in traditional architecture: palace-style (shinden-zukuri) and parlor-style (shoin-zukuri) residences, temples and shrines, and imperial and shogunal castles. Indeed, wood is an integral part of the “natural” appearance of Japanese architecture and design, and it contributes significantly to the sense of harmony between the human and the natural. The construction in 758 of the Tōdaiji daibutsu-den (Tōdaiji Temple Hall of the Great Buddha) in Heijō (Nara), the capital, caused the first widespread deforestation in this region. The high volume of subsequent wood consumption resulted in a constant tension between the need to cut down the forest and the anxiety and fear caused by such destruction. The various folk narratives that center on the felling of large trees reveal both the resistance to and the legitimization and rationalization of such devastation.
Set against such despoliation, nature was also used as a means of protection against disaster and danger. Throughout the history of both court culture and farm-village life, nature was both feared and worshipped, but first in court culture and later in commoner culture, systematic representations of nature—in the form of poetry, visual art, and drama—were used to aid against unpredictable threats, to bring a sense of harmony to an otherwise tumultuous world.