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 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 12: The seasons in Torikae baya

I took a break from posting last week because I just had too much happening – more on that in a future post! – but I’m back today to talk about Episode 12 and to say a bit more about a topic that I’ve touched on previously.

In this chapter, Tsuwabuki and Shi no Hime’s affair continues. Tsuwabuki finds out the sad story about Shi no Hime’s scar, but to her surprise, it doesn’t faze him. She wonders whether his passion for her is a stronger love than she has with Sara, whom she now suspects might love somebody else instead, and wishes she and Sara could connect in the same way.

One day, as she feeds the birds Sara rescued in Episode 10, the long-suffering Saemon points out that Shi no Hime hasn’t had a period in three months. Cut to Kakumitsu’s excitement at her pregnancy! This comes as quite a shock to Sara, who had no involvement and who wonders who the father could possibly be. The news quickly spreads, and eventually Sara breaks down in tears in front of his father Marumitsu. Sara tells Marumitsu and his mother Nishi that he might either break up with Shi no Hime or tell her the truth and try to continue as before, but Nishi is opposed.

Meanwhile, it turns out that Togu is going on a trip to Yoshino and that Sara will be part of the entourage. On the way there, Togu comments on Sara and Suiren’s physical similarity and tells them about her remarkable relative, Yoshino no Miya, a man she believes can predict the future.

A few weeks ago, I tried to go over Torikae baya’s timeline, and today I want to say a bit about the seasons and their significance in the narrative. In that previous post, I mentioned that details like seasonal events and flowers give some indication of the time of year and the passage of time more generally. This week’s chapter in particular makes thematic use of this.

Not much time has passed over the last few chapters, but notably it’s been spring throughout, as indicated mainly by the presence of cherry blossoms and wisteria. Episode 10 drew attention to the season in its title, A Spring Night’s Moon (春の夜の月). Because of the original phrasing, I’m inclined to think that this title is an intentional reference to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is just one example of something we’ll see more of: deliberately unseasonal references.

Episode 12 also refers to the season in its title, with The End of Spring (春の終わり). It’s a literal description of where we’ve got to in this busy year, but it’s also metaphorically apt. Sara and Shi no Hime’s marriage began in winter and has figuratively blossomed during the spring, but Shi no Hime’s pregnancy signals the end of that.

During this chapter, Shi no Hime muses that Sara’s kindness towards her is like “dappled sunlight in spring” – matching the season where she has come to know him. This is in contrast with Tsuwabuki’s intense love, which she describes as “like an autumn storm is relentlessly blowing me off my feet”, complete with autumnal visual imagery. The “autumn storm” in this case is 野分, the name for a typhoon in the early autumn (and a chapter in The Tale of Genji). So while she is comforted by the seasonally appropriate affection of Sara, Tsuwabuki’s unseasonal passion comes as a shock and a thrill.

There will be more moments like this later too! We’ve had instances of late-blooming cherry blossoms already, and there is another major one in a future chapter, which itself is called 野分. But I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until later to hear more about that!

Thoughts from Episode 10: Tsuwabuki, no!

A little bit of time has passed since the previous chapter, and now we see that Sara and Shi no Hime are getting along better: Sara brings her a nest of orphaned chicks to raise, they watch the moon together, and Shi no Hime calls Sara “se no kimi” (背の君), which Saito helpfully notes as a term of endearment for one’s husband. At night, though, Sara worries that he isn’t doing enough, while Shi no Hime worries that he might not really love her.

Elsewhere, Tsuwabuki tests his new theory that he might be into men, by hugging his work buddies and seeing what happens. Just as he’s driving them nuts with his behaviour, the Emperor’s brother-in-law Shikibu-kyo no Miya appears and offers to teach Tsuwabuki about the joys of loving men, causing him to run off in a panic.

One evening, when Umetsubo is visiting her father Kakumitsu (remember that Shi no Hime is another of his daughters), Tsuwabuki suddenly appears and wants to see Sara. While Sara goes to deal with him, Umetsubo insinuates that Sara might not treat Shi no Hime “like a husband should”, eliciting a VERY defensive response. Sara and Tsuwabuki have a rowdy drinking session together, and when Tsuwabuki wakes up after passing out, Sara has already left for night watch duty. Tsuwabuki pathetically sniffs Sara’s coat until he hears someone playing the koto – Shi no Hime, the woman he coveted for so long! After hearing her recite an oddly sad poem for a happy newlywed, he decides to go and introduce himself… the only way he knows how.

Title page of Episode 10 from volume 2, page 149.

©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

This is the final chapter of the second volume, giving us a cliffhanger just as things really start going wrong. Tsuwabuki has recognised that he has feelings for Sara, but still hasn’t quite given up on trying to explain them away, with worse and worse results.

The thing I want to take a closer look at today is the chapter’s title page. I mentioned in an earlier post that the Episode 3 title page has some interesting details, portraying the then-Togu dressed like a Buddhist deity. There are many other wonderful title pages, showing off the major characters in a variety of flashy and often meaningful outfits. They’re often good examples of how Saito embeds symbolic details in the artwork, as I discussed a couple of weeks ago.

The title page this time shows Tsuwabuki, looking sad and thoughtful as he holds a coat (or an outer robe, but there aren’t always great equivalent terms for all the items of clothing they wear) close to himself. There are some decorative wisteria flowers in the background, and the coat he’s holding has a wisteria motif too. The image of Tsuwabuki holding the coat evokes the scene later in the chapter when he finds that Sara has left his coat as a blanket for him, while the flowers give us some sense of when this is taking place.

At first, I thought it was Sara’s coat in this image, but then I realised the pattern was different. I was happy enough at that point to say that the wisteria pattern just matched the flowers in the background, until I went through the chapter once again. In the scene when Tsuwabuki awkwardly hugs his friends, several men are taking wisteria branches to put in their caps, and Shikibu-kyo no Miya gives one to Tsuwabuki, lamenting that he no longer decorates himself with his trademark tsuwabuki flowers. And on top of that – when Shikibu-kyo no Miya appears, he is wearing the coat from the title page.

This adds more complexity to the coat situation, as if it weren’t bad enough already (Tsuwabuki even puts Sara’s coat on, so he’s trying it on with Shi no Hime in her husband’s clothes*). Now, the title page isn’t just a nice brooding picture of Tsuwabuki with a reference to the scene with Sara’s coat. By replacing the garment with Shikibu-kyo no Miya’s coat, it ties that scene to the worries Tsuwabuki has elsewhere in this chapter about his own sexual/romantic preferences.

And besides the significance of this particular image in this particular chapter, it’s good just to keep in mind (again) that for the translation, the visuals matter as well as the text!

*his other sins in this chapter include watching Shi no Hime through some blinds – just like he did with Suiren – and then introducing himself using the exact same words (“I am the Chancellor Colonel” – 宰相の中将にございます) as he did with Suiren…………