Thoughts from Episode 24: Whither the weather?

This chapter covers the immediate aftermath of Sara’s sudden disappearance: his friends are confused, Shi no Hime feels ashamed, Suiren sees Sara in her dreams, and Marumitsu is so upset he can’t contain himself, even in front of the Emperor. Even we don’t see any sign of Sara, apart from in Suiren and the Emperor’s imaginations. Suiren writes to Yoshino no Miya, who doesn’t know where he is either.

But Suiren doesn’t have time to mope, because she has to accompany Togu into the mountains to perform prayers. On the way, the rain picks up and the men in the party slip and drop Togu’s palanquin – luckily Togu gets out just in time! While they go to recover it, Suiren and the ladies walk with Togu through the mist until they come across a shrine, where Suiren and Togu are temporarily left alone together. Togu wants Suiren to check her leg for swelling, which soon ends in tension and blushing, before the party regroups and Togu becomes oddly distant.

Elsewhere, Kakumitsu is frantic about his missing son-in-law, irritating his daughter Umetsubo, Sara’s leading hater. In fact, she’s so annoyed that she decides to cause problems by revealing the gossip about her sister Shi no Hime. Stunned, Kakumitsu runs off to see his granddaughter Yukihime, and realises that sure enough, she doesn’t look like Sara but does look like Tsuwabuki.

Suiren carries Togu in the mist.

Panel from volume 5, page 135. ©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

Episode 24 kicks off a section in the story where we mainly spend time with Suiren for a few consecutive chapters. The chapter title is “Obscured by Mist”, originally 霧の迷い (kiri no mayoi). It’s an expression that can be used literally – a situation where one can’t see through the mist – or figuratively, referring to emotional conflict or anxiety.

And in the context of this chapter, I also feel like it carries a bit of a double meaning. One storyline sees Suiren and Togu lost in the mist, developing feelings for each other, but at the same time, this expression also seems to fit the way Sara vanishes without a trace. Marumitsu considers whether Sara might’ve been whisked away by a supernatural entity – using the term 神隠し (kamikakushi) that you might know from a film and which happens to be associated with beings like tengu. And Sara’s sudden disappearance accompanied by a weather metaphor in the chapter title also reminds me of The Tale of Genji, where the hero’s death is represented by a chapter that consists only of the title “Vanished into the Clouds” (雲隠, kumogakure) after which the story continues with his descendants instead.

So today, I’d like to say a little more about the weather in Torikae baya. Our attention is mainly drawn to the weather when it is bad, and particularly when that causes a problem in the story. For example, inclement weather derails the outing in this week’s chapter as well as leading Sara and Suiren to their dramatic meeting with Yoshino no Miya much earlier. It is also the reason for Sara’s recent work, where he had to manage river flooding.

On the other hand, sometimes bad weather has more convenient results. Sudden gusts of wind accompany the Emperor on multiple occasions, granting him opportunities to see people otherwise hidden. The then-Togu prays for rain to hide the ominous eclipse. In a chapter after this one, a storm provides helpful background noise to prevent eavesdroppers from hearing an intimate conversation. Similarly, it rains heavily outside during the scene where Sara confronts Tsuwabuki about his affair with Shi no Hime and Tsuwabuki ends up getting a hint about Sara’s own secret; it isn’t made clear that the rain stops people from listening in on this conversation, but the connection is there.

And as with the title of this chapter, there are metaphorical examples too. I said before that Shi no Hime compares Sara to spring (this association came up again much more recently too) and Tsuwabuki to autumn, but she doesn’t only mention seasons. Sara’s affection is like gentle sunlight, while Tsuwabuki’s is a storm. Sara, without whom “it was as if a light had been extinguished in the palace”, is compared with the sun at other points too, his bright demeanour contrasting with Suiren’s. That last point links also to yin and yang, but I’m afraid that as I said the last time I brought that up, exploring that route better will have to wait for another day!

Thoughts from Episode 23: The Flower Festival

The cherry trees are in full bloom on Sara’s last day of work at the imperial court, and he is making a point of going around talking to everybody. By now, he’s clearly getting tired quite quickly, so he has help from Aguri’s daughter Torako and son Toramitsu, whom he’s known since childhood. The palace is in party mood, with Togu asking to see Sara and Suiren together – prompting tears of joy from their father – and court officials reciting Chinese poetry (唐歌, karauta as they call it in the manga). Sara’s recitation is so moving that the Emperor sends him a robe as a gift and later requests a musical performance from him and Suiren as the day comes to an end. Sara instead plays the flute alone and thinks back on his time as a court gentleman.

Soon, the Emperor decides Sara deserves a promotion to General (右大将) of the Imperial Guards, but Sara is nowhere to be seen. Unbeknownst to everyone present, he’s already leaving under cover of darkness, with Torako and Toramitsu leading him to an ox-drawn carriage. There, much to his displeasure, he finds Tsuwabuki – as it turns out, Aguri revealed the plans to him and he insisted on helping. In the end, Sara is too exhausted to keep fighting, and the group heads off for Tsuwabuki’s villa in Uji.

I don’t normally do this, but the title of today’s blog post, The Flower Festival, is the same as the chapter title for Episode 23. In Japanese, it’s hana no utage (花の宴), which, like several other chapter titles, is also the title of a chapter in The Tale of Genji. I made an exception this time because it’s particularly apt: not only does the chapter revolve around a flower viewing party in the palace, but it’s also full of meaningful references to flowers.

Title page of Episode 23 from volume 5, page 79.

©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

In Episode 12, Sara’s personality was compared to spring. Fittingly, on the day he bows out from court service, he’s given the theme of “spring” in the poetry recital. He tastefully recites two consecutive poems by Heian blorbo Bai Juyi from the “last day of the third month” (that is, the end of spring) section of the Wakan roeishu, a famous anthology of Japanese and Chinese poetry. The way this is presented in the manga is as he recites it, not in Chinese but using kanbun kundoku, a traditional of not exactly translating the original poem but converting it to (classical) Japanese grammar. And that’s how we get this:

春 留むるに 春 住まらず

春 帰って 人 寂漠たり

風を厭うに 風 定まらず

風 起って 花 蕭索たり

And this:

竹院に 君 静かにして 永日をけすならん

花亭に 我 酔うて 残んの春を 送る

Now, I can’t just read Chinese as-is, but it does have something distinctive about it, so in my translation, I wanted it to sound a bit different from how I’ve translated the Japanese poems so far. With that in mind, I again took advantage of the fact that we’re shown a classical Japanese and a modern Japanese version. While my translation of the modern Japanese gave me a chance to flesh it out and explain it more, in the first versions I tried to stick quite closely to order of the characters in the original Chinese poems and avoid too many extraneous words in an effort to express their structure. So the first poem ended up like this:

Hold back spring, but it will not stay.

Spring leaves; we are all alone.

Despise the wind, but it will not abate.

Wind rises; flowers are desolate.

(Even if one tries to hold onto spring, it will not remain.

Spring goes away and people reflect quietly on their solitude.

Even if one hates the wind that scatters the flowers, it will not die down.

The petals falling as the wind blows are all the more saddening.)

And the second one (my personal preference!):

You, serene, in a house with bamboo, as the long day dwindles.

I, drunk, in a hut with flowers, watch spring leave.

(In a quiet manor house, surrounded by bamboo,

you spend this long day as spring comes to an end.

In a small house, surrounded by flowers,

I become drunk and gaze out at what little remains of spring.)

Something you’ll notice is that these both make reference to flowers. The first feels particularly significant in Episode 23, with the idea that the wind sadly blows all the blossoms away aligning with some of the other imagery in this chapter. They also share a melancholic description of the passing away of spring. We can think of spring as representing Sara in the eyes of those who care about him, and also in his eyes as the life he’s led so far – something to be missed as it imminently departs.

Other touching references to flowers come up throughout the day, like early on when Sara speaks to a lady who says the flowers are “at their very peak of beauty today” (今日が満開の美しさですわね) and at sunset when Sara laments the end of the day and an official tells him “this is when the blossoms look best” (桜が一番きれいに見える時ぞ). On the surface, these are about what is literally happening, but in the overall narrative, they’re obviously about Sara too.

And the clearest such connection comes at the start, when Sara tells us, “Today is the day I disappear” (今日は 私が散る日). He used the word 散る in Chapter 22 as well, when deciding that he would go out with a bang: “Brilliantly, colourfully, just like a flower, I will fall” (華々しく煌らかに 花のように 散ってみせよう)*. I find myself translating this word differently each time – and it does come up again after this too – because of its double meaning. On the one hand, it is literally “to fall” or “to scatter” as petals might, but it also means “to die nobly”. Sara intends to do as Yoshino no Miya advised him, and “die” so he can live again.

Sara’s repeated use of 散る in reference to himself also calls to mind his name. The sarasoju (沙羅双樹), or sal tree, or natsutsubaki (not all necessarily the same plant!) is known for its briefly blooming flowers, and is associated both with the death of the Buddha and with the opening lines of The Tale of the Heike, a story full of noble death. Frankly, I think I’d better write an entire post just about his name one of these days!

But basically, 散る is just about the most evocative way Sara could describe his departure from the Heian court. And it casts a different light on all the mentions of flowers throughout this flowery chapter!

*I particularly love this line because it feels like a twist on “Let’s live our lives heroically, let’s live them with style” (潔く、格好良く生きて行こう– the similarity is clearer in Japanese!)

Thoughts from Episode 22: A busy New Year

After a stunned silence following Sara’s bombshell reveal last time, Tsuwabuki becomes quite excited about the prospect of them having a baby together. He tells Sara to “go back” to being a woman (😬) and suggests they get married. Sara, realising that Tsuwabuki is dreaming of a scenario where he can take both his pregnant partners as his wives, then claims that the story about the pregnancy was just a test, and departs.

A new year begins, and with it comes many important court ceremonies. Sara’s interactions with the Emperor inspire him to persevere as a court official, until one Buddhist ritual where a monk announces that something unclean is present. It turns out a dog has entered the hall, but this doesn’t quell Sara’s worries that if he remains at court, it could have disastrous karmic effects.

Sara goes to Aguri, his old wetnurse, to tell her about his situation and request her assistance. He plans to quit his job, have the baby, then decide on what to do in the future, but doesn’t want either Tsuwabuki or his parents to know. Then, when Sara returns to court to begin his final weeks as a nobleman, he’s so uncharacteristically flashy and charming that Tsuwabuki is convinced something is out of the ordinary, and goes to seek answers from Aguri himself.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a little overview of the forms of marriage (and divorce) available to Heian aristocrats. That comes up briefly in this chapter too, when Tsuwabuki casually proposes to Sara. The situation he wants to create – whether he’s consciously aware of it or not – is what I called the third type of marriage, where the lucky man installs his wives in his own residence. In the afterword where Saito explains the different types of marriage, she also specifies that this is what Tsuwabuki longs for. It’s the kind of setup that the protagonist eventually enjoys in The Tale of Genji, tying in with what we know about Tsuwabuki’s efforts to live up to that particular ideal of masculinity.

Now, apart from marriage, another area of Heian court customs that shows up in a big way in this chapter is seasonal ceremonies. New Year is important in the palace calendar, and this is true today as well, even if it’s now based on the Gregorian calendar instead. A series of rituals took place over the first few weeks of the year, keeping everyone at court busy, especially the Emperor himself.

Several court ceremonies following New Year.

Panels from volume 5, page 55. ©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

How these events are presented in the Torikae baya manga varies somewhat. Sometimes, as with a few of the ceremonies in this chapter, Saito provides a representative moment along with a heading giving the name of the event. For more plot-significant examples, we’re treated to many more views of the ceremony taking place, and there may be a sidenote explaining what it was about – one case of this is the Komahiki ceremony back in Episode 2.

Sometimes, Saito goes a little further, not just showing the event taking place and giving its name, but also providing lengthier narration to explain what the ceremony entailed and why it mattered. She does this with, for example, the Iba-hajime, an archery contest in Episode 19, as well as the Go-saie, the big assembly of monks and priests where Sara begins to panic this time around.

Here's how I translated the explanation of the Go-saie:

The Go-saie was a vital ceremony where important monks of the six Buddhist sects

met to discuss and give sermons.

Except on occasions where an Empress reigned,

only men were permitted to take part.

Now, the story would work just as easily without this explanation. We’re told that the Go-saie is a no-girls-allowed event, but the way the scene pans out, that becomes pretty clear anyway. But having those explanations does add something! The inclusion of the seasonal events themselves gives a sense of the passage of time and a flavour of Heian court society, and it shows the degree of background research involved in writing the manga in the first place. By also giving these occasional descriptions of ceremonies – as well as things like the afterwords that go into more detail about specific cultural details like marriage customs – Saito reveals more of that research, and brings in an educational dimension too. She had to learn a lot to put Torikae baya together, and in reading it, we can learn a lot too!

Thoughts from Episode 21: You only live twice

At the end of the previous chapter – and volume – Sara had what seemed horribly like morning sickness. This time, he goes to see his former wetnurse Aguri, whom he used to visit for a few days every month until very recently, to subtly ask about the typical symptoms of pregnancy. He soon concludes that it is just as he feared, then takes a week off from work to go and see Yoshino no Miya, the only person he can think to confide in.

Sara tells Yoshino he wants to die, but Yoshino tries to change his mind. He suggests that Sara has the ability to “die” once and then live a second life, implying that he has done something similar himself. In the end, Sara is inspired to persevere, but remains unsure of what to do.

Meanwhile, Tsuwabuki is indiscreetly snooping, and in his attempts to find out where Sara is, he ends up speaking to Shikibu-kyo no Miya, who reveals that Sara had just returned to speak to him. In fact, Sara is listening right at that moment, and isn’t too pleased about Tsuwabuki’s loud mouth. Afterwards, they have an argument, Sara collapses, and when Tsuwabuki insists on fetching a doctor, Sara blurts out the truth about his pregnancy.

Since early in the story, fate has been an important recurring theme in Torikae baya. Sara and Suiren’s peculiarities and their troubles are attributed to karma from their past lives, and when things go wrong, it can feel a lot like they’re helpless to make it better. But at the same time, the issue of fate is an area where the manga actually challenges the source material a bit: a topic that came up when I spoke to Saito was that the original story has quite a stern Buddhist outlook and that she wanted to make her version more “positive”.

That’s something that comes across strongly in this chapter. When Sara realises what has happened and questions what to do, he believes there’s no way he can go on living. He thinks of the tengu that supposedly cursed him and Suiren – the most prominent representative of fate in the manga – and asks if it is a shinigami, coming to take him away.

Panel from volume 5, page 24.

©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

Immediately afterwards, he visits Yoshino no Miya, whose mysterious power to predict the future also reflects the significance of fate. Indeed, Yoshino is associated with the tengu, but an important difference is that he emphasises Sara’s power to make his own decisions. Sara, despairing, wants to be told what to do, and he responds:

I will not tell you whether to have the baby,

or whether to join the priesthood!

What you do with the rest of your life

is something you must decide for yourself!

As much as Yoshino uses divination to claim that Sara is destined for a bright future, he also suggests that it’s up to Sara to shape that destiny. He tells Sara he’s reached a fork in the road (分かれ道 – this is also the title of the chapter!) where he needs to decide on a new course of action. And in Yoshino’s idea about living one life and then another, there is the suggestion that even one’s ultimate fate needn’t be truly final.

And so, even though the siblings still go through plenty of hardship in Saito’s version of the story, they’re portrayed as having the agency to control how their lives pan out. They ultimately make their own decisions, for better or for worse.

Thoughts from Episode 20: Sara tries (and fails) to leave his wife

After making way last time so that Shi no Hime and Tsuwabuki can be a regular couple, Sara concentrates fully on his Kamogawa rerouting job. The workers expect an aloof nepo baby, but are amazed to see him getting hands-on as he tries to push his worries from his mind. He returns after a few weeks (I think!), is congratulated on the efficacy of his work, then goes to his parents to declare his intent to divorce Shi no Hime.

Sara’s mother anticipates Kakumitsu pulling some trick, and sure enough, he isn’t interested in hearing Sara’s explanations. During a carriage ride to Kakumitsu’s residence, Sara tries inventing plausible reasons for wanting a divorce, but his wily father-in-law deflects them all, and when they arrive, we learn why: it turns out Tsuwabuki’s done it again, and Shi no Hime has another baby on the way! This is proof, in Kakumitsu’s eyes, of Sara and Shi no Hime’s undying love.

They have a celebratory feast, and just as Sara is about to have a serious face-to-face talk with his wife, the smell of alcohol turns his stomach and he runs out to the balcony. Moments later, Shi no Hime runs out too, due to morning sickness, leading Sara to have a terrible, terrible realisation.

Sara’s talk of leaving Shi no Hime during this chapter and the previous one might make you wonder quite what their marriage situation actually is. If you cast your mind back to Episode 7, readers got quite a clear impression of how a marriage was formalised in the Heian period. Sara had to visit Shi no Hime for three nights in a row and have their union acknowledged by her father, Kakumitsu. But what next? What does their marriage – and others – look like? And what would it mean for them to split up?

Saito evidently also thought this would be confusing for readers, as she includes an afterword in Volume 6 about Heian period marriage customs. She reiterates that a marriage was declared not through a bureaucratic registration but through three consecutive visits and a feast. This is followed by an explanation of three marriage types:

1.      kayoikon (通い婚) or “duolocal” marriage, where the man and woman continued to live separately after marriage. This was the most common arrangement, and such relationships would continue on the basis of the couple still liking each other.

2.      shoseikon (招婿婚) or “uxorilocal” marriage – also called mukoirikon (婿入り婚) – where the groom, especially one with less wealth or status, joined his bride’s household. This is the situation for Sara and Shi no Hime in Torikae baya.

3.      shosaikon (招妻婚), a subtype of “neolocal” marriage (meaning that the couple live in their own new home), where the fabulously wealthy man has his wife or wives come to live in his mansion. This is normal for the Emperor, but we also see it in the case of Marumitsu, which is maybe modelled after the many wives in Genji’s Rokujoin residence in The Tale of Genji.

So, as we’ve established, Sara and Shi no Hime’s marriage is the second type. Sara is effectively part of her family (well, they were already first cousins*, but I mean part of her household). That is where he would normally reside as long as he and his wife are having no problems, but as we know by now, they do have problems.

In that case, what can they do? Saito doesn’t go deeper into this side of things, but as I understand it, much like marriage itself, divorce wasn’t a very formalised thing. It seemingly happened quite often – Sei Shonagon of Pillow Book fame is said to have been divorced even before she began writing – but there were no forms or legal processes. Especially for marriages of the first type, it was probably sufficient for the couple to simply stop seeing each other. However, it’s a bit more complicated for Sara, as he lives with Shi no Hime. He can announce his departure and leave the house, but as a nice young man, he wants to persuade his father-in-law that this is a responsible choice. But unfortunately, even when he pretends that he’s found a new lover, all Kakumitsu does is ask him not to have more than three women at once.

Anyway, although there’s one more angle on this in the Emperor’s interest in inviting Suiren for a type-3 marriage, this is as far as I’ll go on the topic of marriage and divorce for today. So with that, I’m afraid it’s time we go our separate ways…

*this was normal!!

Thoughts from Episode 19: Fly me to the moon

Sorry about the slow posting schedule lately! To be honest, it’ll probably continue to be quite irregular, as the actual work of translating this manga is keeping me very busy. That means I’m several chapters ahead of what I’m covering on the blog, but one upside is that writing the blog posts then lets me come back to previous chapters with a bit more distance and hopefully get a new perspective.

Anyway, Episode 19 sees the Emperor continue to give Sara extra attention, now that he’s witnessed the beauty of Sara’s sister (who actually was Sara). After an archery event, Kakumitsu takes Sara to one side to question why he’s been neglecting his wife Shi no Hime (Kakumitsu’s daughter), and Sara realises that Tsuwabuki hasn’t been spending time with her either.

Sara gets Tsuwabuki and leads him away. Tsuwabuki is initially excited, until they end up visiting Shi no Hime together. During the following awkward scene, Sara and Shi no Hime seem to get along nicely, and Sara takes their daughter Yukihime away to look at the birds Shi no Hime has kept since Episode 10. He deliberately releases one of the birds, then goes off supposedly to bring it back, leaving Shi no Hime and Tsuwabuki alone to work out their… situation.

Panel from volume 4, page 145.

©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

The title of this chapter is “A Pair of Birds” (つがいの鳥), where つがい refers to a mated pair*. Of the four birds Shi no Hime had, one has died, leaving three left. Sara releases one of the three so it can find a mate in the wild; at the same time, he removes himself from the situation to let the lovers Shi no Hime and Tsuwabuki be together. It’s a sad bit of imagery that I found quite evocative, especially at this point:

SARA stands in the long grass, holding up his hand and looking up to the sky. The bird is flying in front of the moon and KAKUMITSU’s residence is visible in the background.

SARA                                    [thinking] You should leave the cage behind and live by yourself.

                                                  In the outside world,

SARA turns his head thoughtfully.

SARA                                    [thinking] maybe you can find a mate.

Meanwhile, the image of Sara walking out sadly under the moonlight at the end reminds me of some other moments in the story featuring the moon – of which there are quite a few! And this is something that also comes up a lot in the original Torikaebaya monogatari. The moonlight is often described, reminding us of something I was getting at last time, which is that life in general in the Heian court was dimly lit. Moonlit scenes stand out because it’s genuinely unusual for anything to be clearly visible at night!

The moon plays a recurring role in both literal and metaphorical forms, so just now I’ll go over a few examples of each from the manga. There are other memorable instances of characters looking forlornly at the moon: Tsuwabuki in Episode 9, Sara himself in Episode 4 and Shi no Hime in Episode 10. Watching the moon can be an enjoyable activity too, though, as we see when Sara and Shi no Hime do it together in Episode 10 and when the Emperor plans a seasonal moon viewing party in Episode 18.

References to the moon also come up as a euphemism for menstruation. Early on, Umetsubo speculates that Sara’s monthly breaks from work are evidence of tsuki no sawari, and the first sign that Shi no Hime is pregnant is that she has missed her tsuki no mono. And when Tsuwabuki and Sara do their crossdressing Yamato Takeru performance for greedy local governors in Episode 14, the lyrics feature similar lunar references.

But the reason I think the moon has symbolic significance is the way it shows up in poems. For example, I’ve already mentioned Episode 10 – which is aptly titled “A Spring Night’s Moon”. When Tsuwabuki encounters Shi no Hime in the moonlight, she recites a sad poem about how the moon reflects her emotions, and Tsuwabuki jumps in with a smooth reply (I posted translations of this pair of poems here).

The scene where Sara gazes sadly at the moon in Episode 4 is a more complicated case. There, he recites a poem (referenced again later) about how his tears should flow just as easily as Tsuwabuki’s – which comes up in a slightly different situation in the original Torikaebaya monogatari. However, this is the same scene where he first encounters Umetsubo, and at the equivalent point in the original story, he does come up with a Sad Moon Poem:

月ならば　かくてすままし　雲の上を　あはれいかなる　契りなるらん

I like the poem Saito chose to include here, but this one would’ve worked pretty well too! The sentiment it conveys – that he’s sad about being unable to operate at court quite like other young men – fits the scenario well.

In the manga, there’s at least one more Sad Moon Poem yet to come. Terrible events we’ve yet to cover here result in Sara being miserable in Uji, and he recites a lonely poem as he watches the moon over the river. And apart from that, there are a lot of other intriguing links to the moon throughout Torikae baya – the fact that the eclipse sees the sun (symbolising the Emperor) hidden by the moon, maybe some connection between sun/moon and yin/yang, the fact that Suiren’s name (being used by Sara as a court official) is literally “Moonlight” (月光)!

Altogether it’s far too much for me to cover here, and it’s something I need to spend more time thinking about, but perhaps I can get to that in a future post!

*The word つがい is also part of the title of Saito’s current manga series Hi no Tsugai, which continues her recent run of Heian period stories.

Thoughts from Episode 18: Feast your eyes on this!

Last time, Sara was tasked with sorting out the flooding of the Kamogawa. Since then, he’s been getting on with the job, and when he reports back, the Emperor wants to speak to him up close. Tsuwabuki fears that the Emperor knows something about Sara, but really, it’s because he has designs on Suiren – which is just as bad! Sara agrees to have Suiren perform music at an upcoming moon-viewing party. But after Umetsubo makes an embarrassing effort to threaten Suiren (who is in hysterics when her bullying methods are lifted directly from The Tale of Genji), Togu decides it’s too risky to attend the party at all.

On the day of the party, Sara informs the Emperor that Suiren is unwell. When the Emperor then sends a sympathy gift her way, Sara encourages her to reply with a rubbish poem to put him off. Unfortunately, the Emperor decides to show up in person, and when Suiren instinctively flees the scene, Sara is left pretending to be her while the Emperor attempts a conversation from the other side of a blind. As the Emperor leaves, a convenient gust of wind lets him see Sara – who doesn’t know who he thinks he saw.

Recreation of a famous kaimami scene at The Tale of Genji Museum in Uji.

That last scene provides today’s little topic for discussion: the idea of kaimami (垣間見). Literally “looking through a gap in a fence”, this refers to the practice of observing someone indirectly, from behind some form of partition. These acts of voyeurism were all the rage in the Heian period, when architecture didn’t create much real privacy, but inner areas were dim and dark, and members of the opposite sex – especially those of different social positions – weren’t normally supposed to see one another. And because of that, kaimami scenes show up a lot as a kind of “love at first sight” motif in The Tale of Genji and other places.

In Torikae baya, as well, we see that men are not supposed to directly look at women of high status if they aren’t married. In Sara’s early days at court, he gallantly shields the court ladies from sight when the blind hiding them falls down. When he first encounters Umetsubo, she strikes him with her fan for having the insolence to look up as she walks by. And when courting Shi no Hime, he sits outside her sleeping area and simply hopes she’ll respond when he speaks.

On the other hand, Tsuwabuki, who sees himself as a passionate romantic like Genji, is unsurprisingly the manga’s #1 peeping tom. The standout scenes are in Episodes 8-9, when he goes to pay Suiren an unexpected visit – at first he is enchanted by her looks, but her violent reaction leaves him feeling confused – and in Episode 10, when he hears Shi no Hime playing the koto and spots her from afar. In both of these incidents, the thrill of these furtive glimpses isn’t enough for Tsuwabuki; he is immediately too excited to hold himself back.

Tsuwabuki sees Suiren for the first time.

Panel from volume 2, page 114. ©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

When the Emperor in today’s episode asks Sara to arrange a kaimami, a major worry is of course that it will end the same way as those scenes with Tsuwabuki. Eventually, he speaks with Sara and believes him to be Suiren, thanks to the blind between them, but Sara is still panicking over the possibility that the Emperor will rush in after all. But when he finally gets the glimpse he was looking for, he is satisfied and leaves. Obviously, one thing doesn’t inevitably lead to the other. Sometimes kaimami is just a matter of idle nosiness. It’s not even necessarily a phenomenon of men ogling women – the moment where Sara hides the court ladies from view happens because they were so eager to get an eyeful of handsome young guys like Sara and Tsuwabuki that they knocked the blind down themselves.

Anyway, it’s very interesting to think about! Kaimami scenes appear in Torikae baya because they’re such a well-known aspect of Heian culture and therefore part of the aesthetic Saito wants to portray. But at the same time, the concept is a reminder of how the society operated and particularly how separate men’s and women’s lives were. In a way, the same cultural expectations and architectural practicalities that lead to practices like kaimami are what make it possible for Sara and Suiren to live as they do with very few people noticing anything out of the ordinary.

Thoughts from Episode 17: Remember that time when…?

I’m back after a little pause while I attended the 2025 BAJS conference last week! I enjoyed getting a chance to present on some of the interesting aspects of Saito’s adaptation, including touching on topics that I’ve explored on the blog. I also got to hear many other interesting talks about everything from Genji-inspired kimono patterns to evil smart houses. And if you happen to be reading this after having been at my talk, thank you!

Now, returning to Torikae baya, Episode 17 sees Sara go to the home of his wetnurse Aguri, filled with regret. After looking all over the capital for Sara, Tsuwabuki shows up, but Aguri throws him out once she realises that he’s involved with both Shi no Hime and Sara.

Meanwhile at court, there are concerns about flooding of the Kamogawa during the autumn typhoons, and mockery of Togu’s efforts to help. When talk turns to Togu’s naishi no kami Suiren, old man Fujiwara (remember him? he's a priest now!) hints heavily that the Emperor should have her become one of his women – annoying both Marumitsu and Kakumitsu for separate reasons. Just as the Emperor then enquires about the absent Sara, they spot an extremely unseasonal blooming cherry branch. He sends the branch to Sara, who has been at Aguri’s house all this time sending cold replies to Tsuwabuki’s constant letters. The Emperor’s gift inspires Sara to return to the palace, and his smart suggestions earn him a new responsibility to deal with the river problem.

Sara is surprised to see Aguri handing him a blooming cherry branch with a letter.

Panel from volume 4, page 67. ©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

Something we see a lot of in this chapter is callbacks to moments from earlier in the story. One of these is right in the title: 野分の桜 (nowaki no sakura). Here we have the word nowaki, referring to a typhoon, particularly in the early autumn. This word came up back in Episode 12, when – during the spring – Shi no Hime compared Sara’s gentle demeanour to spring sunlight and Tsuwabuki’s passion to a nowaki. The title of Episode 17 once again juxtaposes nowaki with an image of spring, but the out-of-season reference is reversed: while Tsuwabuki was like a nowaki in spring, the Emperor sends Sara a blooming cherry branch in autumn.

Incidentally, this chapter title was a bit of a tricky one to translate. I would expect readers to know what a typhoon is, but it’s relevant to the setting (and the callback to Episode 12) that the title uses a more archaic term that’s specifically associated with autumn. And that’s a lot of information to try and convey when the original title is very short in Japanese – especially if you opt for “cherry blossom” which is already two words. The translation I’ve ended up with, at least for now, is “Autumn Blooms”. This actually omits both of the specific nouns to emphasise the seasonal contrast instead, but I like that it’s short and that it can be read both as modifier-noun (meaning “blooms in autumn”) or as noun-verb (meaning “autumn is blooming”).

Another callback comes in the message the Emperor sends along with the branch. He sends the miraculous unseasonal flowers to Sara, whom he says “waits on a miracle”. This calls back to Episode 15, where the Emperor refers all the way back to Episode 3. He remembers that Sara went to confront the eclipse in order to break a curse, and that according to Sara, the curse has still not been lifted. This has the effect of reminding readers of the tengu’s curse that supposedly afflicts Sara – and in the story, it acts as encouragement to Sara to take control of his life instead of waiting for fate to take its course.

And one last point I want to bring up is the poems that Sara and Tsuwabuki exchange by letter. As I discussed several weeks ago, there are many poems in the manga that come directly from the original Torikaebaya monogatari. Here, there are several poems from the equivalent point in the original story, with Tsuwabuki insisting that he’s so worried he could die, and Sara questioning his seriousness. Finally, just like his counterpart in Torikaebaya monogatari, Sara sends this poem:

まして思え 世に類なき身の 憂さに 嘆き乱るる ほどの心を

(私の心のことも少しは考えてみてください 世に例のない身になった辛さに嘆き乱れる私の心も)

The wording calls back to one of the poems I mentioned in that earlier post, where Sara expresses his sadness to Tsuwabuki in Episode 4. In that poem, he says that he suffers in a way that can’t compare to others, and in my translation I used the phrase “my singularly wretched existence”. So of course, wanting to reflect this reference, I included that phrase again when translating the Episode 17 poem:

"Consider something worse: a singularly wretched existence and a heart wracked with woe."

(Think for a moment about how it feels for me. In my heart, I constantly lament the pain of being unlike anyone else in the world.)

Given the way that these two poems link to each other in the original story, it makes sense that Saito wanted to preserve them both in the adaptation – and I hope I made that connection clear too!

Thoughts from Episode 16: Tsuwabuki, NO!!

The plot developments in Torikae baya – especially in recent chapters – have a bit of a trainwreck quality to them. Not just in the sense that you can’t look away from the ongoing disaster, but also in the sense that as each carriage derails one by one, the situation just keeps getting worse. And if you thought everything was going wrong in Episode 15, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Last time, Tsuwabuki accidentally discovered that the colleague he’s obsessed with is a bit bustier than he expected – but he’s still not quite sure what that means. In the meantime, Sara avoids him, but wisteria-loving matchmaker Shikibu-kyo no Miya hears that they’ve fallen out and so invites them both to a poetry party on a hot summer’s night. Sara wants to just make a quick appearance and then leave, especially after Tsuwabuki’s awkwardly emotional recitation, but Shikibu-kyo insists that he perform next. The heat and stress cause Sara to faint, so Tsuwabuki rushes in to take him away before anybody investigates him too closely.

Once they’re alone (with Shikibu-kyo’s encouragement), Tsuwabuki decides he needs to know what’s going on. And when Sara awakens in a fresh change of clothes, he realises the secret is now truly out. After the two have another intense exchange, Tsuwabuki promises to keep Sara’s secret. Seconds later, though, he “can’t control his feelings”, so he does what Tsuwabuki tends to do in these situations.

Now that Sara and Tsuwabuki’s relationship has taken a terrible new turn, it seems like a good time to look at how the two compare. In particular, I’m interested in how they both relate to masculinity.

Tsuwabuki can be seen as a typical, even exaggeratedly typical, Heian romantic hero. He’s emotional and passionate, and he’s constantly thinking about romance. One of the first times he and Sara interact, he’s already trying to get closer to Sara’s sister he’s been hearing about. And he openly weeps when Sara tells him to give it a rest.

Sara, on the other hand, isn’t a typical Heian man, despite all his celebrated personal qualities. As early as Episode 4, we hear that people are gossiping about Sara’s apparent disinterest in chasing girls, and when he gets married, he just lies perfectly still next to his new wife. For that matter, he even learns about the birds and the bees from Tsuwabuki (wild foreshadowing in hindsight)!

But despite this, Sara doesn’t seem all that desperate to be more of a man. He’s willing to make an effort to fit in, but notably, when he has a vision of the tengu during the eclipse, he only wishes “to be a real man” to make life a bit less complicated. When the incident is over, he even feels relieved that his wish didn’t come true. He is who he is, and he’s more concerned about being able to continue living his existing life at court. And so, during this chapter’s disastrous sexual encounter with Tsuwabuki, he thinks:

SARA                 [thinking] There's nothing "lucky" about this.

What will become of my life as a man?

What will happen to me now?

Ironically, Tsuwabuki seems much more anxious about being a man than Sara is. To readers, it’s clear early on that he’s infatuated with Sara, but he keeps trying to find other explanations for his feelings. First, he assumes he must really be interested in Sara’s identical sister, and then he decides it’s actually just lingering affection for Shi no Hime. As time goes on, he gradually recognises that it really is Sara who he wants, but he fears that this would mean that he isn’t the ladies’ man he desperately wants to be. And as a sign of how important that identity is to Tsuwabuki, here’s what he thinks to himself in Episode 9, after discovering that he wasn’t really that into Suiren once he saw her in person:

Panel from volume 2, page 129.

©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

TSUWABUKI            [thinking] At the age of 18, am I already an old man?

Could I be sick?

I must get to the bottom of this.

As he and his men cross a bridge, he looks up wistfully at the moon.

TSUWABUKI            [thinking] If I don't,

my life as a man will be over!!

As always, Tsuwabuki is being terribly dramatic here, but he describes these feelings in almost the very same way Sara describes his own feelings later – and this goes to show how important Tsuwabuki’s “life as a man” is to him. Tsuwabuki causes a lot of problems in this story, and it all basically comes back to his anxiety over living up to this masculine ideal.

There might be a bit of a delay before the next post, as I’ll be presenting at the BAJS conference later this week, but once I get to it, you can see what happens next in this wild ride!

Thoughts from Episode 15: The secret’s out (sort of)

This chapter, the last one in Volume 3, sees recent plot threads come to a head. Sara has just been promoted to Middle Councillor (chunagon, 中納言), but he now strongly suspects that the father of Shi no Hime’s child is Tsuwabuki. While he attends a celebratory party, Tsuwabuki is with Shi no Hime at that very moment, and as usual seems to be thinking mainly about Sara. When Sara steps away from the party, he overhears Tsuwabuki and Shi no Hime, confirming his fears.

Some time later, once the cherry trees are in bloom, Sara speaks with the Emperor, who it turns out vividly remembers what Sara told him during the eclipse incident (now a couple of years earlier). After the Emperor says “nothing will change while you merely wait on a miracle” and a bit about acting for other people than oneself, Sara makes a big decision.

Sara invites Tsuwabuki to a tiny room and reveals that he knows the truth about the baby. In an emotional conversation, he offers to leave Shi no Hime so she can be with Tsuwabuki, but Tsuwabuki can’t accept this. Eventually, Sara gets so annoyed with his irresponsible attitude that he changes his tune and announces their friendship to be over. This is an even worse outcome for Tsuwabuki – who is in love with Sara – and so… he accidentally admits that he is in love with Sara. Confused and angry, Sara goes to leave, and in an attempt to stop him, Tsuwabuki inadvertently grabs his chest, potentially discovering Sara’s secret.

Things in the story were already going badly wrong before this point, but mostly behind closed doors. Episode 15 is where it all really starts to unravel. Aptly, the title is “Secrets” – though I’m not quite satisfied with this translation. The original title is 秘め事 (himegoto), which does mean “secret”, but it also happens to include the sound “hime”, homophonous with 姫 which basically means a girl or young lady in the context of the Heian court (for example Shi no Hime, “fourth daughter”). I feel like this double meaning is deliberate, given that it could apply to both of the “secrets” in this chapter: the true parentage of Sara and Shi no Hime’s daughter, and Sara’s hidden identity. Perhaps at some point I’ll manage to come up with a new title that reflects all of this!

Panel from volume 3, page 172.

©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

On a different note, I want to say a bit today about changes to the original story of Torikaebaya monogatari. First of all, even though Saito does a lot to make the characters sympathetic and interesting, she doesn’t change an awful lot in terms of the major plot points. Now, some of those plot points could seem quite cruel to our protagonists considering their characterisation in the manga – sorry to spoil a story that’s been out for about 800 years, but the siblings don’t get to continue living in their initial roles! – so what does Saito do about this in Torikae baya?

The main thing she does is, instead of changing where the plot ends up, she changes the way that it happens. I wrote before about the recurring tengu appearances as a great example of expanding a small point in Torikaebaya monogatari in interesting ways, and it’s similar with some of the big plot developments. Whereas the discovery of the chunagon’s secret in the original story happens very fast, the manga breaks it down and spreads it out over multiple chapters.

An important effect of this is that it lets us see more of how the characters feel. In Episode 15, Sara takes the initiative to go and speak to Tsuwabuki, making the difficult decision to end his marriage so that Shi no Hime can have a fulfilling relationship with a man who loves her. He also makes the conscious choice to tell Tsuwabuki that he knows about the affair. As the scene plays out, Sara’s cold determination gives way to anger. Finally, after a moment of shock for both him and Tsuwabuki, he flees, scared about what has just happened, but also still unsure what Tsuwabuki is actually thinking.

That’s quite a lot of material that doesn’t appear in Torikaebaya monogatari! However, the ultimate outcome is the same in both versions of the story. Saito could have changed these plot points entirely, but she didn’t, and so I would rather characterise these adjustments not as fundamental changes but as additions or expansions.

And on that note, I’ll leave it until next time, where the situation goes from bad to worse!