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.