More thoughts from Episode 62: Dear Dairi…

I have a bit more to say about Episode 62 today, because it’s just an eventful chapter! From the perspective of most of the characters experiencing it all, the biggest event is the arson attack on the palace, where they all live and/or work. And understandably, during the evacuation, there are many references to specific different parts of the palace and its surrounds. So let’s get into some more detail about the palace as it appears in Torikae baya.

The Emperor and an attendant watch as the fire approaches the Shishinden.

Panel from volume 13, page 56. ©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

In the “Atogaki baya” section at the end of volume 11, Saito provides her own plans for the palace from big to small: a vague map of Heian-kyo, then plans of the greater palace (daidairi, 大内裏), the inner palace (dairi, 内裏) and the Emperor’s quarters (Seiryoden, 清涼殿). Today, I’m mainly interested in the dairi and its immediate surroundings. Saito points out that the historical palace was moved more than 15 times due to fire – in hindsight, maybe a hint at what is to come in the final volume – and offers this as a reason for her version not to quite align with the real palace at any particular point in time, but the plan itself is pretty much the same as this one from Encyclopedia Nipponica.

The names of various buildings are given in the plan, and several are noted as where certain characters’ rooms are. In real life, some of these buildings have been recreated at the present-day Kyoto Imperial Palace, which is located to the east of the historical palace, and these recreations are clearly the reference points for the manga versions. Buildings are connected to each other by walkways, and they have nothing but blinds to keep people from seeing inside.

I paid particular attention in the previous post to the Daigokuden, a building that plays an important role for the third time, having previously been the setting for Sara’s attempt to fight his “curse” during the eclipse and later, the cunning plan to improve Togu’s reputation when the Amatsukitsune appears. There is no Daigokuden at today’s Kyoto Imperial Palace, but the version in Torikae baya, with its upper gallery section, appears to be based on the Daigokuden at the reconstructed previous capital of Heijo-kyo in Nara.

But several more locations are mentioned in Episode 62 as well! The fire begins in the Shokyoden, roughly in the middle of the dairi, which is where Sara currently stays. Sara (in Suiren’s clothes) delivers the news to the Emperor in the Seiryoden, then sticks around to direct people to get all valuables out to a carriage waiting at the Onmeimon, the nearest of multiple gates. We hear that a walkway is torn down to stop the fire reaching the Seiryoden, but it spreads southward to the Jijuden and the Shishinden, a venue for major court ceremonies. By the time we see the view from the top of the Daigokuden, just southwest of the dairi, it appears that many of those central buildings are in flames.

Meanwhile, Suiren covers quite a bit of ground. She goes with San no Hime to see Yoshino no Miya in the Shingon’in, one of the few Buddhist temples permitted within the city at that time, located to the west of the dairi. After sending San no Hime and Yoshino away to safety, Suiren is seen advising people to escape through the Taikenmon, one of the eastern gates, and avoid the trouble brewing to the south. When she next appears, she’s spotting the Emperor narrowly avoiding an attack near the Daigokuden. This all probably means that Suiren either leaves the Shingon’in, goes directly east, then backtracks west, or that she does a loop around the outside of the dairi.

Here’s a dodgy map of where I think Sara and Suiren go in Episode 62:

Edited map of the dairi and surrounding area, based on Encyclopedia Nipponica maps. The path of the fire is indicated in orange. Sara’s likely route is indicated in blue. Suiren’s likely route is indicated in green (light green is used for the two alternatives after leaving the Shingon’in).

Now, that’s a lot of places getting specific mentions – and that’s just in this chapter! Throughout the series, we get to know some of these buildings quite well, and having the plan of the palace helps make sense of how they’re all connected. The Seiryoden and Shishinden of course play a big part, but other notable parts of the palace include the Nashitsubo (also called the Shoyosha) where Togu lives and her servants work from volumes 2 to 11, the Sen’yoden where Suiren resides during her time as naishi no kami, and the Shigeihokusha where Shikibu-kyo no Miya has his quarters and Sara and Tsuwabuki’s fateful encounter occurs. There are also the Umetsubo and Reikeiden, pavilions that give their names to their notable residents, wives of the current and former Emperors respectively; the Emperor’s other ladies briefly identified in Episode 58 are named for palace buildings too.

But after getting used to the palace, we must now say goodbye to it for the time being! At the end of this chapter, the Emperor leaves the ruined palace behind, and Marumitsu offers his own home as a temporary palace (satodairi, 里内裏). Unfortunately, I haven’t yet figured out where Marumitsu’s residence is – if it even is meant to be in a particular location – but moving to a satodairi wasn’t an uncommon practice, so I haven’t ruled out the possibility that it might correspond to a historical example. Anyway, that’s where the action will take place until the main palace is rebuilt!

Finally, I’ll note that although there are some reconstructed buildings at the Kyoto Imperial Palace, none of the very flammable originals remain today. However, there are a few plaques dotted around to commemorate their original locations, and I’ve done my best to include those on my interactive map. That map, by the way, is now up to date, and probably won’t have anything else added to it unless I make a breakthrough in identifying some other locations. Please give it a look if you’re curious about the relative positions of the places that show up in Torikae baya!

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 7: Sara meets Shi no Hime, Suiren meets Togu

This chapter revolves around the implementation of decisions made last time: Sara goes ahead with his marriage to Shi no Hime and Suiren goes to court to work for the new Togu. At the end of Episode 6, we find out that Shi no Hime isn’t happy to marry somebody as low-ranking as Sara (not that he knows anything about it), and so as he initiates the proceedings by visiting her for three consecutive nights in this chapter, he faces an uphill struggle.

On the first night, Shi no Hime remains silent in her bedchamber (御帳台) and has an attendant meet him to deliver a letter saying she is ill; determined to succeed, Sara sleeps on the floor. The next night, Sara’s attempts to speak to her finally get a response, but it’s an angry one. On the third and final night, after everyone thinks he’s given up, Sara takes a leaf out of Tsuwabuki’s book and barges in on her in her bedchamber. He finds out that she blames a scar on her forehead for the fact that she won’t be marrying the Emperor after all, and tries to convey some sympathy. In the end, Sara thinks he has to sleep on the floor again, until Shi no Hime snappily implies he should join her.

Meanwhile, Suiren arrives at the palace, scared out of her wits by the throngs of people, and meets the adorable Togu. As it turns out, Togu is a nerd who immediately starts gossiping with Suiren about The Tale of Genji, and when she learns that Suiren also writes, she insists on reading her work – to Suiren’s clear embarrassment. Things go so well that at the end of an evening of reading, Togu won’t let Suiren leave, and invites her to sleep over in her own bedchamber.

Sara bowing outside Shi no Hime’s bedchamber.

Panel from volume 2, page 46. ©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

Before anything else, I’ll briefly address the use of “bedchamber”. The buildings in the palace are laid out in the shinden-zukuri style, which has presented a few difficulties in translation – ones I’m not sure I’ve adequately resolved yet! Mostly this has involved which things I should describe as verandas, hallways, corridors, etc... but this time the issue is with where people sleep. Rather than a modern bed in a modern bedroom, the michodai (御帳台) is a raised platform surrounded by curtains in a larger room. The challenge here is that it’s still fairly spacious and is totally closed off, making it somewhere in between a big bed and a small bedroom. Also, looking at the situations we’re seeing so far, I don’t think it’s always accurate to describe them as characters literally getting into each other’s beds – so at this stage at least, I’ve settled for “bedchamber”.

Of course, what I really want to talk about today is the fact that this is the chapter where Suetsumuhana is mentioned! When Togu and Suiren first meet, Togu asks Suiren for her favourite female character in The Tale of Genji. Suiren pauses and answers “Suetsumuhana”, and Togu says she agrees.

As I briefly mention here, this character doesn’t stand out for her beauty and talents. The name we know her as refers to the safflower, which is traditionally used to make red dye. Genji, the story’s lustful protagonist, compares her to the flower in a poem, alluding to her big red nose. Apart from her unfortunate appearance, Suetsumuhana is also remembered for living in a dilapidated mansion, being difficult to deal with and having old-fashioned tastes.

So I thought it was fascinating that Suiren and Togu both agree that she’s the best girl in The Tale of Genji! It’s only one passing mention, but it says something about the two characters. Both are shy and reclusive, and they both feel out-of-place in their current positions: Suiren, who was first introduced as Marumitsu’s baby son, doesn’t think she’s cut out for working at the palace as a naishi no kami, while it’s public knowledge that Togu is only in her role – usually given to a male heir of the Emperor – as a stopgap measure. It makes some sense that they might relate to a literary character who is clearly not the ideal woman.

And then I decided to use that as my handle just as a fun reference! Incidentally, the avatar is another reference, this time to Takahata Isao’s film Only Yesterday (おもひでぽろぽろ), where safflower-picking plays a big part.