[In the following essay, Keene examines two diaries: the Kaidoki, written by an unknown author, and Abutsu's Utatane, which he finds superior to her more celebrated Izayoi Nikki.]

KAIDōKI

The travel diaries of the Japanese medieval period most often had their origins in the writers' desire to visit places that were either of a specifically sacred character or were familiar because of frequent mentions in poetry. A special reason for travel during the Kamakura period was the presence of the government in Kamakura, a long distance from Kyoto, the site of the emperor's court. The inhabitants of Kyoto, long accustomed to thinking of their city as the focal center of all aspects of Japanese life, were dismayed that this was no longer true. They were also intrigued by reports they had heard about the splendid new city of Kamakura. Many journeyed there out of curiousity, to see the shogun's capital for themselves. Others made the journey in order to place lawsuits before the court in Kamakura.

Naturally, the famous places along the way were not ignored even by people who were in a hurry to reach Kamakura. None of the diarists failed to mention, for example, Yatsuhashi, the eight bridges poetically described in The Tales of Ise. Mt. Fuji and Mt. Hakone were other sights that inspired travelers to compose poetry and prose in emulation of travelers of the past.

The journey itself, which had taken 91 days when the author of the The Sarashina Diary traveled in 1020 (mainly because of lengthy stops at various places), was normally made in 12 to 15 days by 1223, the date of Kaidōki. There were inns (and houses of prostitution) along the way to cater to the needs of travelers, though in the past it had sometimes been necessary for travelers to build shelters for themselves. It was also possible to travel more lightly, since food, which earlier travelers had always carried with them, would be available at inns.

Of the diaries that describe the journey between Kyoto and Kamakura, my favorite is Kaidōki (Account of the Seacoast Road), though others are even better known or more smoothly written. When one takes up Kaidōki after having read the diaries of the Heian court ladies, one is immediately made aware of the great change that had occurred in Japanese prose style. The typical diary in Japanese of the Heian period contained extremely few words of Chinese origin, but Kaidōki has not only many such words but is crammed with allusions to Chinese poetry and history. Some passages even read like awkward translations from the Chinese. The most notable stylistic feature is the parallelism characteristic of Chinese poetry and prose. A typical example is found in the description of Hashimoto, a post station on the shore of Lake Hamana: “The light of the fishing torches sinks to the bottom of the waves and startles the fish; the oarsman's song on the nocturnal boat rises upward to waken the guest from sleep.”

A similar use of parallelism is found in the famous essay Hōjōki (Account of My Hut), written in 121 by Kamo no Chōmei, where it is much less ponderous. Stylistic and other similarities between Kaidōki and Account of My Hut probably account for the long-standing attribution of Kaidōki to Kamo no Chōmei, an attribution which explains why Bashō named Chōmei among the great diarists of the past. Nobody accepts this theory of authorship any longer, if only because Chōmei died in 1216 and the journey described in Kaidōki took place seven years later. But Kaidōki, regardless of who wrote it, is a masterpiece of its kind, and it is worthy of being attributed to the great Chōmei.

PERSONAL TROUBLES

Although the unknown author of Kaidōki provided extremely few clues to his identity, his travel diary is intensely personal. He discussed at the outset his reasons for making the journey to Kamakura, and gave a glowing account of the city based on what he had heard from people who had actually visited it. This description is also typical of his sinicized style: “The county of Kamakura in the province of Sagami is the armory of Sakra transported to the world of men, the Yen-chou of the Chinese poets erected in our country. Soldiers are numerous as trees in a forest; their glory flowers like a myriad blossoms. Brave warriors flourish along the roads; unerring archers shoot willow leaves at a hundred paces. …” Although he had not yet actually seen Kamakura, the reports he heard carried him to compare the city with strongly fortified places of the Buddhist paradise and the Chinese classics. The author, who had never traveled far from Kyoto, was impressed not only by what he heard of the majestic appearance of Kamakura and the military discipline that prevailed there but by testimony that the shogun's government honored the rituals and etiquette prescribed in the Confucian texts. For a long time he had supposed that Kamakura had nothing to do with himself and had never even considered making the journey to see its glories, but a good opportunity to visit Kamakura arose, and he decided on the spur of the moment to go.

The author, who was about 50 years old, apparently became a Buddhist priest shortly before he set out on his journey, but it was not religious devotion—the motivation of many other travelers of the age—which induced him to leave Kyoto. He declared that his life had been a failure, that he had been unable to accumulate wisdom or a knowledge of the arts. This may sound like oriental modesty, but his despair was real enough for him to have seriously considered suicide. But, though he would have had no regrets about giving up his life, he lacked the courage to throw himself into a pond and drown. Travel seems to have been an escape.

He does not reveal what personal factors caused such depression nor why he became a priest so late in life, but there is a clue perhaps in the statement about a promise he made before he left the capital: He assured his aged mother he would see her again, though he realized that this promise was necessarily conditional. Leaving behind his mother, who had returned to second childhood, gave a somber tone to his departure. Later, after he had reached Kamakura, he confessed that he felt obliged to rush back to Kyoto to rejoin his mother, who was waiting for his return: “I have an old mother in the capital. She has returned to infancy and longs for her foolish son.” His Buddhist faith was insufficient to provide the certainty of rebirth in a paradise where he would rejoin his mother; if he had possessed this faith it could have sustained him even during a long separation. He was instead afraid that she might suppose he had abandoned her and hate him for it.

His relations with his mother constantly preyed on his mind. He asked rhetorically what effect his prayers to the buddhas and gods could have if he failed to serve his parents day and night. He wondered if his neglect of his mother was the result of some sin committed in a previous existence: “In my prime, long ago, I trusted in the future, but now, in my declining years, I think of the retribution from former lives and I hate myself.” He hoped that at least his having taken Buddhist orders would help his mother to gain paradise.

The emphasis on his relations with his mother makes me wonder if the author did not take the journey to Kamakura to escape for a time the heart-rending spectacle of seeing her reduced to senescence. When he reached Kamakura, however, he recalled his action with shame and could not linger. This is only a guess, but the manner of narration, so unlike that of other travel diaries, suggests a powerful grief that the writer can neither fully describe nor totally suppress.

Despite the troubles weighing on the author's mind when he set out for Kamakura, Kaidōki is filled with a vivid appreciation of everything he saw. At times he was so carried away by delight in his experiences that he quite forgot the grief that had inspired the journey. Here is his account of crossing the Bay of Narumi: “Although I did not see the blessed isles of paradise, nor did I obtain the elixir of immortality, I thought that the pleasure of floating over this sea was the joy of a lifetime, the real meaning of prolonging life.”

AN UNCONVENTIONAL STYLE

The author disclaimed any intention of creating a work of literature: “This was not primarily intended as a literary composition, nor was it inspired by poetry. All I have done is to record the moving qualities of things that have aroused my interest.” All the same, he took such great pains with the expression that he created the most complex style of any travel diary of the period. There is a crabbedness in the expression that suggests the author was trying to create a new kind of Japanese which might be more effective in conveying his emotions than the mellifluous Heian Japanese. He failed in the sense that he was not widely imitated by later writers, but his attempt compels admiration.

One of his characteristic stylistic devices is personification. He addressed a bridge, some shrimps, an old horse as if they could answer him. The words he directed to the horse are particularly touching: “Old horse, old horse. You are wise, so you are surely aware not only of what lies underneath the snows on the mountain road but even of the essence of the water at the bottom of the river.” This passage contains a somewhat pedantic allusion to the Chinese classic Meng Ch'iu, but the personification—the attribution of great wisdom to an old horse—originated with Kaidōki.

Another stylistic device, one influenced by Chinese usage, was his habit of violating normal Japanese word order by opening sentences (rather than ending them) with a verb: “We do not know, are you an incarnation of the bodhisattva who benefits mankind searching for your husband? Again, we do not know, were you created by the Great Teacher Entsū's vow that led him to save prostitutes?”

These and similar stylistic features make Kaidōki harder to understand than travel accounts written in clear Japanese, but this diary is far more ambitious than any other of the period. It is the account of a man's attempt to discover who he is and why he exists in a world in which he seems to have no place. At the end of the diary he gave his reason for writing it: “I have written this because, ever since I ‘left my house’ and entered the True Path, people have felt sorry for me. I have written this down, ignoring the mockery of other people, in order that I might express my feelings. I have not written for the amusement of other people.”

The author's style mirrors his unconventionality, the most impressive feature of the diary. Most travelers indiscriminately praised every famous place they visited, but the author declared: “Famous places are not necessarily enjoyable. Places one has often heard about do not necessarily appeal to the eye.” He remarked, with a touch of cynicism, that the pleasures to be had in a curtained bed within the palace do not differ from those available at a cheap whorehouse in the countryside. He showed his skepticism by questioning the delights of immortality: “The medicine bestowed by the Buddha in heaven is of no use to people in the world below.” He even had a bad word for Kaguya-hime, the popular heroine of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, whom he described as a “poisonous transformed woman.”

SYMPATHY FOR A REBEL

The most affecting parts of Kaidōki refer to the ill-fated Jōkyū Disturbance. This rebellion of 1221, staged by the Retired Emperor Gotoba and his adherents against the Hōjō regents, was unsuccessful, and most of the participants were either killed or sent into exile. The author of Kaidōki, despite his professed admiration for the shogunate, did not hesitate to express commiseration with those who had died in the attempt to destroy it.

He recalled in Kaidōki how he had stopped at the post station of Kikugawa because his horse was tired. On a pillar in a house there he found some lines of poetry written by a participant in the rebellion, Middle Counselor Muneyuki, which contrasted the kikusui (chrysanthemum water) of China, said to prolong life, with Kikugawa (Chrysanthemum River) in Japan, whose name was similar but which was likely to mean death for him. The author, moved by these words, recounted Muneyuki's tragic life. He had been born to an illustrious family and risen to high position. He had been the cynosure of the Retired Emperor Gotoba's court, outdoing everyone else in the magnificence of his appearance. People near and far had craved to bask in his glory. Could anyone have imagined that he would suffer such a fate?

Here is the description in Kaidōki of the outbreak of the rebellion: “In the middle of the sixth month of the third year of Jōkyū the winds blew fiercely over the whole country, and within the seas the waves broke in reverse. The soldiers who started the rebellion rushed forth from the capital, and their antagonists in battle emerged from the barbarian provinces for the battle. Wild lightning flashes tore through the clouds; the light of the sun and moon was hidden; common soldiers overran the country; bows and swords displayed their might.” The writing is poetic rather than historical, but one cannot miss the contrast between kaiki (“flower region,” used for the capital in Kyoto) and ikoku (“barbarian country,” used for Kamakura). Even more direct criticisms were made of the fighting: “The brocade curtains and jade-decorated beds had lost their masters and turned into hostelries for military clients.” This was an elaborate way of saying that the houses of the aristocrats had become billets for warriors.

When Muneyuki was captured no one, not even his most trusted retainers, could help him. Everyone, whether noble or baseborn, had been doomed by participation in the ill-fated rebellion and was now in the “pit of hell.” The author imagined Muneyuki, surrounded by guards, writing his message on a pillar, expressing his sorrow over impending death. The author composed this waka:

kokoro araba
sazo na aware to
mizukuki no
ato kakiwakuru
yado no tabibito
Travelers at this inn
Who search for traces
          of the past,
If you have hearts
Surely you will look
          with pity
At the words his brush
          has left.

Muneyuki was not in fact executed at Kikugawa. Later on his journey, the author discovered another waka by Muneyuki, this one expressing the realization that he had at last reached the place where he would die. Again, the author imagined what had passed through Muneyuki's mind and wrote a waka:

miyako woba
ika no hanabito
haru taete
azuma no aki no
ko no ha to wa
          chiru
The flower of men
Have fled from the
          capital,
The spring is no more;
Must they fall then like
          the leaves
Of autumn trees in the
          east?

For the aristocrats who had abandoned the capital to join in the rebellion, there would be no more springs. They would fall in the east, like autumn leaves.

Much in Kaidōki deserves to be quoted. It is a profoundly moving work, marred only by a pedantic style that keeps the reader at arm's length. But this style, so tedious and even irritating at first, contributes to the total effect of a work that is not merely the account of a journey but of a troubled man's attempt to discover himself.

UTATANE

In the 19th century, it was common for critics to write about the characters in plays by Shakespeare as if they were real people, rather than creations of his genius. For example, the author of The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines imagined what Ophelia, Desdemona, Cordelia, and the others were like as little girls. No attempt was made, however, to describe the little Lady Macbeth. Did she dismember her dolls or poison the family cat? It is hard to imagine that she was ever young. When I first read Izayoi Nikki (Diary of the Waning Moon) about 30 years ago, I had equal trouble imagining what the author, the nun Abutsu, was like as a young woman. Obviously, she could not always have been so relentlessly determined to have her own way. Nor could she always have been so prepared to respond with an appropriate poem whenever she passed some site that had inspired earlier poets.

Recently, on reading Utatane (Fitful Slumbers), the diary written by Abutsu about 1240, when she was 17 or 18, I learned for the first time what this woman, so formidable when fighting for the rights of her son and so authoritative in her opinions, was like in earlier days. Utatane is an extraordinarily moving work, one of the finest examples of the Japanese diary, in every way superior to her more celebrated Izayoi Nikki. It opens with a long sentence that establishes the mood: “It brings no comfort, I know, to brood over things, but I have become accustomed on sleepless nights to leave my door ajar and wait for the moon to rise, intending to make it my companion. As I gaze outside, alone as always, I notice the autumn dew on the withered garden, and I hear the plaintive cries of insects, and each sight or sound becomes something to wound me. Checking the tears that well confusedly in my heart, I reflect for a time on what has happened and what is to come, and I reproach myself again and again, wondering why I should be obsessed in this way with so demeaning and so hopeless an affair.”

LOST LOVE

The writer was a young woman who had had her first affair with a man in the spring of that year. She fell desperately in love, but now it was autumn and his visits had become infrequent. Realizing the hopelessness of ever recapturing his love, she lay awake at night, brooding over her unhappiness, though she knew that brooding could do her no good. Even things that normally gave her pleasure—the moonlight, the garden dew, the singing of insects—now caused her pain. The author was young and vulnerable, and she was writing this diary in the vain hope that describing her suffering would bring relief.

Abutsu's lover was a married man, a member of a social class so much superior to her own that, even after his wife died, she could not hope he would ever marry her. She was in fact so keenly aware of their difference in social status that she did not dare to offer condolences on the death of his wife. She nonetheless continued to wait for a secret visit at the time the man customarily appeared. She was ashamed of this yearning and wondered what would become of anyone so helpless as herself.

To her great joy, a letter came from him, and one night, so long past his usual hour that she had gone to bed, despairing of a visit, she heard his soft knocking on the gate. She went outside to meet him, but the moonlight in the garden was so bright that she felt embarrassed lest she be seen. She hid behind the fence, but he caught sight of her and teased her with an allusion to the passage in The Tale of Genji where Genji glimpses another man who has come to court the same lady as himself, only to recognize the man as his closest friend. As Abutsu's lover approached in the moonlight she was stunned by his beauty, which she thought comparable to that of the Shining Genji himself.

The young Abutsu lived in two worlds, that of reality and that of The Tale of Genji. Her intensely romantic feelings for a man who considered her to be of only passing interest probably reflected the unconscious hope that he would prove to be like Genji, who never forgot or deserted any woman he had once loved. However, at the end of the year Abutsu's lover ceased to visit her altogether. She recalled on the seventh day of the 12th month that it had been exactly one month since his last visit. But although her memories were vivid, she discovered that she had trouble recalling his features. A recent commentator has opined that in those days, when there were no photographs, it was difficult to remember the faces of people one had met only at night, but surely that is not what makes Abutsu's remark so affecting. The more you love a person, the more difficult it is to remember that person's face with clarity, if only because love prevents you from seeing the other's face as objectively as you might see a stranger's. Utatane owes its moving quality to its psychological truth and its universal intelligibility.

Abutsu related that even as she tried to recall her lover's face, tears came to her eyes, blotting out the moonlight, and at that moment she had a vision of Buddha. The vision induced her to consider the desirability of leaving the world and becoming a nun. One calm spring evening, a month or so later, as she was tearing up and throwing away drafts of her poetry, she found letters from her lover mixed among the manuscripts, arousing feelings of desolation at the thought that they might never again meet. She recalled the course of their love, from early spring when plum buds first colored the boughs to the desiccation of winter, when their love died. That night, when others in the room had all fallen asleep, Abutsu crept out silently. She had already made preparations for the step she was about to take. Scissors and a box were ready for the symbolic gesture of cutting her hair and becoming a nun. Naturally, she did not shave her head but, in the manner of Heian court ladies, she cut her hair to shoulder length. She wrapped the hair in paper, put the packet in the box, and wrote this farewell poem: “In my grieving, though I throw myself to the depth of the rapids, I will wander unknowing—how sad to have such a fate!”

This was a strange poem to have written under the circumstances. One might have expected a girl of 17, driven by despair to renounce the world, to write a simpler, more obvious expression of her grief and of her trust in Buddha, but this poem contains complicated puns (nageki and nage, mi wo and mio) and allusions to The Tale of Genji and The Tale of Sagoromo. Probably this involved manner had become so much a part of Abutsu that she did not even sense it was artificial. It is curious all the same that, instead of expressing her hopes for salvation, she expressed fear that even after her death her soul would wander as aimlessly as she had wandered in life. The poem suggests not so much entering a religious life as anticipating suicide, and this impression is reinforced by her appended comment, “Did I intend to drown myself, I wonder?”

REFUGE IN A CONVENT

Once Abutsu had cut her hair and composed this farewell poem, she set out for a convent in a distant part of the capital. She probably had never walked so far before. It was dark, and she had only a general idea where the convent was, but she could not ask directions because she was afraid of being brought back to the palace for a reprimand. It started to rain, and soon her clothes were sopping wet, but she persisted, a sign of the indomitable determination that one associates with the mature Abutsu.

She trudged on in the rain until dawn. She had lost her way, she was exhausted, and so soaked that she compared herself ironically to the women who dive for shellfish at Ise. She took shelter for a while under a pine where she heard the voices of young women nearby. They were from a village, as she guessed from their countrified speech. They noticed her, and one cried out, “Who do you suppose that is? Oh, the poor thing! Have you run away from somebody, dear? Or have you had a quarrel with somebody? What brings you into the mountains in the pouring rain? Where have you come from and where are you going? I've never seen the likes.”

This passage, with its suggestion of the actual speech of the village women who took pity on Abutsu, is striking. Abutsu grew up at the court and had probably never before been addressed by such humble people. Perhaps she did not even consider them to be fully human beings. But at this most desperate moment of her life, when she felt close to death of weariness and exposure, kindness from this unexpected quarter saved her. The women brought her safely to the convent.

People in the convent were startled by Abutsu's bedraggled appearance, but they took her in, and she was soon accepted as a nun. The silence of the place suited her, and the regular activities of the nuns at their daily chores—the offerings at dawn and dusk of holy water, the tinkle of prayer bells—had so soothing an effect that Abutsu shuddered to think that she might have died without finding this sanctuary. The impetuous girl who had braved the danger of leaving the palace alone seemed to have found surcease from her grief.

This tranquillity did not last. It was not long before she started to think of her lover again, and once her thoughts turned in that direction, religion had no power to calm her “extraordinary bitterness and grief.” She had taken refuge in a convent not to find Buddha but to forget her lover, and in this she failed. Even in the convent so many things recalled him: The sound of a stream brought back memories of a night when he had secretly crossed such a stream to meet her. She wrote him, but his reply, alluding to his fear of what people might think, was cold. She composed a poem: “When I have vanished and turned to smoke, I doubt he will even glance at the cloud, for fear that others might know.” Her love for the man was now tinged with contempt.

Not long afterwards Abutsu left the convent. She explained that she was feeling unwell and did not wish to cause the convent any trouble. This may have been true, but one can also imagine that she had come to realize that the convent could not alleviate her grief. She did not inform her lover of the decision to leave the convent, but by an extraordinary coincidence his carriage passed hers at precisely the moment she was leaving. She recognized his outriders, but made no sign, and the two carriages passed without stopping. She turned back for a final glimpse. She never saw him again.

When she reached the house where she would take shelter for a while, she composed the poem: “How futile it is! This night spent on a traveler's pillow, too short for even a dream amidst fitful slumber.” Perhaps this poem occasioned the title of the diary.

A JOURNEY TO THE COUNTRY

After Abutsu recovered from her illness she did not return to the convent but went back home instead. She gave no reasons for this decision, but we can infer that she regretted her impetuosity in having “left the world.” The silence of the convent, at first so congenial, provided her with too much time to brood over her lost love. But even at home there was nothing to occupy her mind. She wrote, “I was so desperate that I thought I would go anywhere to obtain relief, if only there was water to invite me.” The last words are a quotation from the poem by Ono no Komachi: “So lonely am I / My body is a floating weed / Severed at the roots. / Were there water to entice me, / I would follow it, I think.”

The “water” took the form of an invitation from her foster father to visit his house in the province of Tōtōmi. He said that he thought the quiet life in the country would cheer her. Abutsu was reluctant to leave the capital, supposing that her foster father's house was in a cultural desert, but she went anyway, hoping that life in a new place might help her to forget her sorrow.

The journey began toward the end of the 10th month, about a year after the first entry in the diary. Abutsu passed many places mentioned in the old poetry, and she responded to each, though not in the mechanical manner of her Izayoi Nikki. The most interesting moment of the journey was at the ford of Sunomata, where Abutsu witnessed a quarrel among “mean, lower-class men.” She was startled by the display of brute force, something she had never before experienced, and the sight brought home the reality of how far behind she had left the civilized ways of the capital. When she reached Yatsuhashi, the eight bridges mentioned in Narihira's poem, she was saddened that only one was still standing and that the irises for which the bridges were famous had all withered. The journey brought no pleasure.

When she reached her foster father's house, it was hard to imagine living there. The place was big but crudely appointed, and it was so close to the sea that the thundering of the waves reverberated throughout the house. She recognized that these rustic surroundings had charm, but each passing day brought a greater longing to return to the capital. When she learned about a month after her arrival that her old nurse was ill, this provided a perfect excuse for returning home. She was frantically eager to leave, and though aware that people in her foster father's household might criticize such haste, she refused to allow such considerations to prevent her immediate departure.

The return journey, unlike the outward one, was filled with anticipation. As soon as she arrived she rushed to the bedside of the nurse, who seemed visibly comforted by Abutsu's presence.

The diary concludes with the confession that, although the author has tried to examine herself and the world around her calmly and analytically, her heart by nature is governed not by reason but by her emotions. The last words of the diary are a poem: “Though these words are certain to last longer than myself, the man who has forgotten me will surely not be moved.” It was somewhat unusual for her to have predicted that her diary would outlast her. She was correct in this belief and probably correct too in assuming that even if her lover happened to read the diary it would not reawaken his love. But even if the lover felt no sympathy we, living 700 years later, feel spiritual kinship with a woman who wrote with such honesty and passion.