More thoughts from Episode 30: A sarasoju by any other name

I’m back! There was no blog post last week because at the time I’d normally write it, I was in Torino, at the InTO MANGA: Critical Paths in Manga Studies conference. It was a privilege to be on a panel and get to talk about part of my project alongside such clever people! In my presentation, I focused on something I touched on a bit in this post from last August, using Episodes 15 and 16 as an example of how Saito expands on smaller plot points, adds cliffhangers, etc in service of telling the story of Torikaebaya monogatari the way she wants to tell it. And apart from that, I had a lot of fun throughout the conference, and I was really struck by the variety of subject matter – people had so much to say about manga from all kinds of angles!

Now that I’ve returned, I actually want to stick with Episode 30 just a wee bit longer, as it offers a good jumping-off point for another topic I wanted to return to. A couple of months ago, I wrote about the significance of the word 散る (chiru – to fall, to scatter, to die nobly) in relation to Sara’s departure from the court and in relation to his name. So just as I foretold back then, today I’ll say some more about the meaning of sarasoju!

Page from volume 6, page 154.

©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

Episode 30 opens with flowers falling from a tree. Before Tsuwabuki comes rushing to Uji to learn of Sara’s miscarriage, Sara narrates:

庭に花をつけていた

沙羅双樹の花が――

散った――

Sara uses the word 散る again, referring specifically to the flowers of the 沙羅双樹 (sarasoju) tree. The images and words parallel the opening of Episode 23 – the one in which Sara leaves the capital – where we see a blooming cherry tree in the court and Sara tells us he will disappear (also 散る). Both of these moments use seasonal flowers as a metaphor for death or departure.

Later in this chapter, the word 散る comes up once more. Before going to see Shi no Hime and help with her childbirth, Tsuwabuki vows to cherish Sara always, but Sara knows better, and thinks:

言葉だけが．．．

私たちの間を

舞い散るばかり

Page from volume 5, page 80.

©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

This time, he’s saying that Tsuwabuki’s words are falling between the two of them. The word used for “fall” is 舞い散る (maichiru), a variation on 散る meaning to fall down softly, as if dancing, particularly when talking about flowers, petals, etc. This time, of course, the subject is words rather than flowers – but “word” (言葉) itself contains 葉 (leaf)! So with that in mind, I see this as a clear evocation of the same imagery as all the previous uses of 散る, suggesting something fleeting, inconsequential. In an effort to preserve this link, I chose to foreground the botanical theme in my translation:

Mere words…

flutter down like leaves

between you and me.

And now finally, what’s so significant about sarasoju? I mentioned way back that Sara is named after a tree that was growing nearby when he was born. Sarasoju is the Japanese name for the Indian sal tree. The “soju” part (双樹 – two trees) specifically references the story that the Buddha died under a pair of sal trees which then spontaneously bloomed out of season. The tree’s short-lived flowers thus represent impermanence, and their most famous appearance in Japanese literature is the opening lines of the Tale of the Heike, which use the sal flower as a reminder that all good things must come to an end.

Not the most cheerful thing to be named after, and the then-Emperor thinks so too when Sara enters court service early in Torikae baya. He relates the story of the Buddha’s passing and says, “It's an odd name for a vivacious young lad like you.” Sara is familiar with the story, and with the fact that the flowers are known for blooming in the morning and falling by the evening. But as eloquent as ever, he concludes:

Gracefully living one's life to the full for only one day.

I believe that is a beautiful way to live.

I am proud to bear such a name.

Apart from showing that Sara is suave and discerning enough to deserve an instantaneous promotion, this foreshadows the life Sara ends up having in Heian-kyo: bright, but sadly brief. 🥲

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“Sarasoju” trees and fallen flowers at Torin’in in Kyoto.

By the way, the flowers that fall in the garden of Tsuwabuki’s Uji villa are actually not sal flowers – or at least, they’re not the same flowers that appear in Buddhist teachings. That’s because in Japan, sarasoju also refers to a different tree. Japan doesn’t have the right climate for real sal trees to grow, but rather than give up on the idea, temples opted to use an unrelated but visually somewhat similar briefly-blooming tree in its place. And so the term is used both for the original tree found in India and for the natsutsubaki or “summer camelia” (incidentally not really a camelia either).

I can’t quite get my head around what role that last element would play in this big nesting doll of metaphors, but at least I got to see the flowers myself when I was in Japan! I went to Torin’in, a temple in Kyoto that has the trees in its garden, and although they were already shrivelling up on the ground by the time I saw them, it was nice to get a real feel for how quickly they come and go, and maybe get a bit better at spotting them when they keep showing up in Torikae baya…

Thoughts from Episode 30: Two for the price of one

At the end of the previous chapter, Sara was having a medical incident, and at just the same time, Suiren came to the conclusion Sara couldn’t be found in Uji. In Episode 30, Tsuwabuki rushes back to his villa to learn that Sara’s baby was stillborn. Tsuwabuki is shocked, but Sara insists that he return to Shi no Hime, who is ready to give birth herself.

Having unknowingly caught sight of Sara last time, Suiren is worked up over the fact that she can’t stop thinking about the mystery woman. After worrying about being drawn to somebody other than Togu, it finally occurs to her that Sara too might’ve changed his appearance. She takes her attendants to Uji again, and some rumours lead them to the villa. While Aguri, Torako and Toramitsu head out for ingredients to make Sara’s favourite foods to cheer him up, Suiren enters the villa, alarming the maids who think they’ve seen a ghost. Finding that Sara is already gone, she hurries outside. She finds Sara wading out into the Ujigawa, calls out to him, and they embrace happily.

Suiren and Sara spot each other in Episode 29.

Page from volume 6, page 149. ©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

And so, as Volume 6 comes to a close, Sara and Suiren have found each other again, with much having happened since their last contact. The chapter title reflects this: 魂合う (tama au) means something like “becoming one” or “understanding one another” in a soulmate sort of way. This is of course a bit tricky to translate into English given that their mysterious connection isn’t a romantic one, so what did I do about it? Wanting it to be similarly short and snappy, I decided to associate it with how the siblings describe their connection. There’s a scene in the previous chapter, when Suiren is fearing what might’ve happened to Sara, and she says:

I've felt like I’m in a trance, seeking out a lost half of myself…

And I don't know what will become of me if I can't find my other half…

So when it came to translating the title of Episode 30, I went with “Two Halves”, diverging from the original line to instead call back to Suiren’s line in a way that (hopefully!) will give readers the same sense of the siblings’ connection that 魂合う is supposed to express.

And on that note, I want to say a bit more today about that connection, as it’s a major focus of this chapter. After worrying that she’s attracted to the mystery woman in Uji, there are a couple of steps before Suiren realises that she saw Sara. First, it occurs to her that what caught her attention was the woman’s resemblance to herself; she then imagines that she witnessed another version of herself, from the past.

How could the same person be in two places at once? The maids at the villa offer one answer: they question whether the person visiting the house is a yurei (ユーレイ, a spirit of the dead, “ghost” in my translation) or an ikiryo (生霊, something more akin to an astral projection, tentatively “doppelganger” in my translation). The latter was a popular idea in the Heian period, even famously appearing in The Tale of Genji, and obviously doesn’t require the apparition to be of someone who is deceased.

The idea of Sara and Suiren as the same person aligns with the argument that Torikaebaya monogatari basically has one main character “played” by two individuals. The manga gives each sibling more time to shine, so we know they’re separate people, but as far as the people who know them are concerned, they might as well be one and the same. We’ve seen this in the way that Tsuwabuki looks at one and imagines the other, and the incident where Sara impersonates Suiren in a conversation with the Emperor.

Suiren shouts out to Sara and pictures them as children in Episode 30.

Page from volume 6, page 187. ©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

I’m also interested in the sense of Sara and Suiren as two equal parts of a whole as it relates to yin and yang. This concept was relevant to religion and philosophy of the Heian period, as seen earlier in the manga when the divination experts from the on’yoryo show up to give advice about the eclipse. The manga even prominently shows a taijitu (aka a “yin-yang symbol”) in Episode 27, when Sara is thinking about Tsuwabuki’s flighty, divided-loyalties nature. I find it really quite funny that the most explicit reference to yin and yang is a bit of a superficial application of the concept, given that it’s actually very fitting for Sara and Suiren.

Like yin and yang, Sara and Suiren are opposites with an interdependent relationship. They live in separate spheres and harbour secrets that are mirror images of each other, and when Sara disappears, Suiren feels the need to go in search of him. Notably, yin and yang are associated with the female and male principles respectively – so how does this show in Sara and Suiren? Well, Sara exhibits many of the qualities associated with yang: he’s bright and energetic, and he’s regularly compared to sunlight. Suiren, meanwhile, is more quiet and passive, and has the personal name Tsukimitsu, meaning “moonlight”. But it isn’t totally straightforward! Despite his cheery demeanour, Sara isn’t seen to be quite as outgoing as a young man should be, especially with the ladies. Meanwhile, Suiren worries in this chapter that some kind of masculine unfaithfulness has awoken in her.

In the context of yin and yang, this apparent contradiction still makes sense. As the taijitu demonstrates with the smaller circles in each half, the interconnectedness of the two means that each contains the other. Sara and Suiren are unusual compared with the other people around them, but the fact that they each have facets of the other gives them this special bond, and we’ve seen many times – since Episode 1, in fact! – that it also makes them able to achieve things that others might not.

It might come as a surprise that this deep connection between the siblings is something that isn’t actually present in Torikaebaya monogatari! In the Heian period version, they don’t know each other very well and interact quite rarely until the time comes for them to trade places, hence the idea that they basically take turns playing the “lead” role. But there’s obviously something interesting about the dynamic of these characters following a similar but opposite path, and so it’s one of many things that the manga explores to a degree that the source material never did.

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 4: Religion in Torikae baya

This week’s chapter introduces a major new character and reveals some more about something that we got a touch of last time: organised religion at the court.

Episode 4 begins shortly after the eclipse incident, with Tsuwabuki increasingly sticking his nose into Sara’s business. According to Tsuwabuki, and reportedly others in the palace, Sara isn’t as amorous as a real young man at court should be. Tsuwabuki and his usual two buddies try to teach Sara about romance and how to seek it most efficiently, all of which sounds like a huge hassle to Sara. Especially annoying for Sara is Tsuwabuki’s continued insistence on getting to meet Suiren. It all results in Sara feeling quite forlorn about his place in the world.

Meanwhile, we meet Lady Reikeiden, the Emperor’s consort, and Lady Umetsubo, the Crown Prince’s consort. They’re also Kakumitsu’s two eldest daughters, making them Sara and Suiren’s cousins. Umetsubo is mad with jealousy over her father’s interest in the pair, and is convinced that there’s something fishy about them. Finally, she learns from a former employee at Marumitsu’s home that Sara’s mother supposedly had a baby girl while Suiren’s mother had a baby boy. This isn’t enough for Umetsubo to figure everything out, but she’s suspicious – and she’s not happy about it.

Dainichi Nyorai.

Cropped panel from volume 1, page 131. ©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

In this story, we hear a lot about fate, and particularly how people’s misfortunes are the consequence of their previous lives. This is the most obvious link to Buddhist ideas, but religion shows up regularly in lots of other forms too. Episodes 3 and 4 have introduced quite a few of these.

Last time, I mentioned the men from the on’yoryo. They introduce themselves as the Masters of Astronomy (天文博士), Chronometry (歴博士) and Divination (陰陽博士). These guys are experts in strands of what we call onmyodo, covering various forms of divination based on yin and yang, the elements, the movements of celestial bodies, etc. I think of these three as somewhere between scientists, priests, magicians and (this being the Heian court) bureaucrats. They don’t play a huge role in the story, but they provide a little taste of the varied belief systems involved in court life.

Another detail in Episode 3 was a crystal ball, which the Emperor says he once stole from his younger brother Togu. The crystal ball contains an image of Kundali, a fearsome deity with many arms holding various religious implements and wrapped in snakes. The title page for the chapter shows Togu dressed like Kundali and holding the same items: a vajra (thunderbolt) and a trisula (trident). Elements like these can be very useful for me as the translator, as some of them can be distinctive features of a particular deity, helping me figure out exactly what I’m looking at and why that matters. As one of the Five Wisdom Kings, Kundali is an originally Hindu deity with the power to repel evil, and when Togu faces the eclipse with this crystal in hand, he too displays that power.

So what sort of Buddhism are we looking at? The sects that really took off during the Heian period were Tendai and Shingon, but can we get more specific? A scene in Episode 4 gives us a bit more information on this front. When Tsuwabuki is giving Sara tips on being more manly, he suggests that temples are good places to meet people, because esoteric teachings (mikkyo 密教) are popular with the nobility. They attend a sermon, where we see a statue that appears to be of Vairocana (Dainichi Nyorai), a central buddha in esoteric sects – handily (heh) recognisable by the position of his hands.

Tsuwabuki also claims that listening to these sermons is a great way to pick up chicks – which sounds a lot more plausible when the priest starts talking about “entering a state of ecstasy through sexual intercourse between man and woman” (男と女が性の交わりによって恍惚境に入ること). It sounds like this comes from the Rishukyo (理趣経), an important scripture in Shingon, which draws from Tantric Buddhism, or Vajrayana. That’s the same “vajra” as the thunderbolt held by Kundali/Togu in the previous chapter, by the way. Overall, I’m inclined to think that the focus on these more mystical-sounding ideas is pointing towards Shingon being the fashionable branch of Buddhism in Torikae baya. There are some other details that might help pinpoint it even more closely, but I’m no expert, so at least for now, that’s as definitive as I’m willing to get!