A Warbler's Song in the Dusk: The Life and Work of Otomo Yakamochi (718-785)

By Paula Doe

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Apr 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520327610

Paula Doe

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A Warbler’s Song

in the Dusk

Published under the auspices of

The Center for Japanese Studies

University of California, Berkeley

PAULA DOE

A Warblers Song in the Dusk

The Life and Work of Ötomo Yakamochi (718-785)

University of California Press • Berkeley • Los Angeles • London

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England ©1982 by The Regents of the University of California

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Contents

Notes on Illustrations

Preface

ONE Family Background: Yakamochi as an Ōtomo and a Masurao

TWO Growing up in Dazaifu: Chinese Poetry and Literary Experimentation

THREE Yakamochi as a Young Courtier: Learning the Court Poetic Tradition

FOUR The Etchū Years: The Accomplishments of a Mature Poet

FIVE The Final Years: Alienation and Silence

Appendix:

Selected Bibliography

Finding List for Poems

Index

Notes on Illustrations

LINE DRAWINGS

Cloisonné mirror back. Like the rest of the objects illustrated, this eighth-century mirror preserved in Todaiji’s treasure house, the Shōsōin, probably belonged to Emperor Shomu. viii

Dancers and musicians painted on a bow used to snap a ball in a game. Shōsōin. 2, 76, 77, and 205

Detail from painting of hunting scene on lute plectrum guard.

Shōsōin. 19

Ornamental gilt bronze piece in phoenix pattern. Shōsōin. 30

Roof tile from a government office building built in Emperor Shomu’s reign. 65

From a series of screen paintings of women standing under trees, originally covered with feathers. Shōsōin. 82

Ceremonial hall from the Nara palace complex, given by Empress Koken to the Tōshōdaiji, where it still stands as that temple’s lecture hall. 104

The imperial seal. Shōsōin. 189

MAPS

Eighth-century Japan 3

The Nara region 9

The capital city of Nara (Heijo) 11

Etchu province (detail) 147

Preface

THIS BIOGRAPHY of the eighth-century Japanese poet Ötomo Yakamochi includes a major portion of his extant work, an unusual procedure dictated by the nature of the material. Yakamochi’s poems are the reason we remember him a thousand years after his death. Their headnotes provide a major source of biographical information, while the poems themselves are a crucial record of his inner life and the development of his art—primary concerns in the treatment of the life of any poet. The reader’s familiarity with Yakamochi’s work, or even ready access to it in other sources, can hardly be assumed as it might be in a biography of a major English poet. To talk about Yakamochi we must read his poems.

Not only is Yakamochi’s poetry central to a treatment of his life, but knowledge of his life also illuminates his poetry. The brief poems were composed for a small and homogeneous audience of friends and fellow poets who readily recognized conventions, references, and implications no longer obvious a millennium later. Knowledge of the literary and historical context of these works enables us to understand the poems and to appreciate the poet’s accomplishment. It is this context of Japan’s early poetry that I have tried to bring to life through the particulars of Yakamochi’s career and concerns as a poet.

Poems in the text are cited by their Man'yōshū book and poem number, and are translated from the Iwanami Shoten Nihon koten bungaku taikei edition of the anthology, edited and annotated by Takagi Ichinosuke, Gomi Tomohide, and Ôno Susumu (1957—1962). This NKBT text is based on the late Kamakura period Nishi Honganji manuscript, the earliest extant version of the thirteenthcentury scholar Sengaku’s authoritative edition of the Man'yōshū.

I have not always translated a line of Japanese as a line of English. The thirty-one syllable tanka verse form is usually written in one continuous line in Japanese, though composed of five groupings of either five or seven syllables each, arranged in the fixed pattern 5-7-5-7-7. These short syllable-count groupings often consist simply of a single word or a prepositional phrase and do not seem particularly comparable to the usual line of English verse. The Japanese verses also usually contain one or more major breaks of grammar and meaning, dividing the tanka distinctly into several sections. These longer phrases seem to me to be more equivalent to a natural line of English verse, and I have thus followed them in translating Yakamochi’s poems. The apparent casualness and variety of this approach seems entirely appropriate to the nature of the original verses. I have translated the traditional fixed epithets and decorative modifiers fairly literally in an attempt

to preserve their ambiguity and suggestion, and have sometimes left punctuation ambiguous in a similar attempt to suggest the original range of meanings. No attempt has been made to approximate eighth-century pronunciation with the romanizations; the poems are transcribed as they are commonly read today for the convenience of the reader who knows Japanese. In the romanized transcriptions of long poems, a five-syllable group and a seven-syllable group, separated by a caesura, are set on one line in the interests of space and aesthetics.

PREFACE

Complete names are given in the Japanese order, family name first. Once introduced, people are referred to the way they are familiarly known in Japan, usually by their given name. All dates are converted from the lunar calendar to the Western equivalent. Ranks generally follow the system in Robert Reischauer’s Early Japanese History (1937; rpt. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1967), with some revisions for the sake of clarity and simplicity.

Oxford University Press and the American Oriental Society have kindly allowed me to quote from translations by James Hightower and Roy Andrew Miller.

I am grateful for the support of the Japan Foundation for the dissertation research upon which this study is largely based. My work in Japan in 1977 benefited from the kind assistance of Okuda Isao, Goto Shoko, and Ono Hiroshi. Akira Komai greatly aided the beginnings. John Dower and Susan Matisoff generously took the time to offer many useful suggestions at a later stage. James O'Brien of the University of Wisconsin and Aoki Takako of Japan Women’s University tirelessly shared their wide knowledge and stimulating ideas, and continually provided cogent advice. Their help has been invaluable.

ONE

Family Background:

Yakamochi as an Ōtomo

and a Masurao

T

WELVE hundred years ago, when a Northumbrian poet had just completed Beowulf and when Charlemagne was still young, Ōtomo Yakamochi kept a poetic journal chronicling the day-to-day concerns of a courtier and a poet in eighth-century Japan.

This period was the first great age of Japanese culture. Under the influence of the splendors of T'ang dynasty Chinese civilization, the arts began to flourish in Japan in the 600s and 700s. The capital city of Nara (or Heijo, as it was then called) was built on the model of the Chinese capital at Ch'ang-an, with wide, willow-lined boulevards and dozens of government offices with white walls, red pillars, and tiled roofs in the continental fashion. Numerous grand temples housed masterpieces of gracefully realistic Buddhist sculpture, dominated by the famous five-story-high Buddha that still attracts tourists to the vast temple complex of Tōdaiji. The opulence of the imperial court is well attested by the magnificence of its everyday objects, now preserved in the Shōsōin—glass and silver goblets, flowered felt carpets and Persian-style bird-headed ewers imported from distant places along the central Asian silk routes; lacy silver incense burners for scenting clothes; rich brocade pillows and armrests. Literature also flourished at the Nara court. The poetry of the age includes some of the masterworks of the language, preserved in the monumental Man'yōshū (The Collection for Ten Thousand Ages), the first major work of literature in Japanese, and one of the fundamental classics of that cultured tradition.1

Ōtomo Yakamochi is one of the few figures from this intriguing early period of whom we know anything, and we know about him in remarkable detail—his love affairs, his enjoyment of hawking, his anger at his servants, his pride in his family name, his worries about his future. Such a personal glimpse into the life of almost any figure at the eighth-century Japanese court would be of interest, but Yakamochi was no ordinary person. He was the major poet of his day, the most prolific contributor to the great anthology, and its

reputed compiler. He has ranked among Japan’s best-known literary figures for over a thousand years, and some of his poems remain among the masterworks of the language. Yakamochi is also the earliest Japanese poet we can study in any detail, for he is the first for whom we have not only appreciable biographical information but also an extensive extant body of poetry—his collected works, so to speak, instead of merely a few anthology pieces.

Through these materials there emerges from the shadowy realm of early Japanese literature a clear picture of a distinct individual

EIGHTH-CENTURY JAPAN

and his world. It is precisely this individuality and this literary and historical context that make Yakamochi’s poetry interesting. He is a transitional figure, the last artist of the grand old native tradition of communal ritual song, yet the forerunner of the sensitive subjectivity that characterizes Japanese poetry in the ages to come. The tensions between the old and the new, the individual and the group, lead to his unique accomplishment. He has a modern interest in his inner world, in his individual feelings as different from those of Other men and worthy subjects for poetry, but he looks to the poetry of the past to find means of expressing these new concerns. The very individuality that makes possible his masterful poetry eventually results, however, in an alienation from his society and a sense of isolation that become more than he can manage and more than he can stretch the old poetic tradition to encompass.

Basic to this central tension in Ōtomo Yakamochi between the old and the new are his newly self-conscious pride in his old family name, and his anachronistic concern with the old-fashioned warrior values, once associated with the Ōtomo family, that set him increasingly apart from other men and from his rapidly changing society. The eldest son of the head of an illustrious old military clan, and the descendant of generations of famous generals and government leaders, Yakamochi was extremely conscious of his family background. And the old Ōtomo clan was indeed one with which a young man could proudly identify. Members of the clan figured prominently inte legends of Japan’s past. The founder of the family had reputedly come down from heaven with the first ancestor of the Japanese imperial line. According to the tales in the early chronicles, the Kojiki (712) and the Nihonshoki (720), this first ancestor of the Ötomos served as military aide and commander of the troops of Ninigi, offspring of the heavenly deities, who was sent down to rule Japan. The name Ōtomo, in fact, means great attendant or great escort. This Ōtomo ancestor preceded Ninigi to earth with a splendid array of weapons, enumerated in considerable detail—a heavenly stone quiver, sacred waxwood bow, and, depending on the version, a knob-hilted sword and sacred deer arrows, or an awesomely resounding armguard, great snake arrows, and eight-holed whistling arrows.2

Years later, when Ninigi’s great-grandson fought his way from the southernmost Japanese island of Kyushu across the country to Yamato, the Kyoto-Osaka heartland, and established himself as Jimmu, the first emperor of Japan, the legend recounts that another ancestor of the Ötomos was at his side as an elite military retainer. This early ancestor of Yakamochi’s successfully led the wandering imperial party out of the mountains on their trek to Yamato, for which Jimmu praised his loyalty and bravery and granted him the name Michi no Omi, The Retainer of the Way. Michi no Omi continued his heroics as the group fought its way on across Japan. Sent to deal with the treacherous Ukashi of Uda, who planned to kill Jimmu and his men, Yakamochi’s ancestor forced Ukashi into his own carefully prepared floor trap, then sliced up his body for good measure, and held a great party in celebration. On another occasion Michi no Omi destroyed a band of enemies of the imperial house by the ruse of inviting them to a party. Once the guests were drunk and off their guard, he and his men attacked and slew the entire troop. When Jimmu assumed the throne as first emperor of Japan, Yakamochi’s ancestor was the first of his followers rewarded, accorded special favor for faithful service and granted a house near the palace at Unebi. Through later generations the name of Michi no Omi, ancestor of the Ötomos, was repeatedly cited in the chronicles as the exemplary faithful and virtuous minister.³

Other Ötomos consistently appear as military and government leaders in the legendary history of the succeeding centuries. One Ōtomo general reputedly accompanied the legendary hero Yamato Takeru on his campaign against rebellious tribesmen in the East and was rewarded with command of the guild of quiver bearers, a troop of imperial guards composed of the sons of the great families of the provinces. Though the episode seems fictional, the Ötomos did later traditionally command the quiver-bearing imperial guard, sometimes called the Kume-be. Ötomos reputedly served as government ministers in the reigns of Emperor Suinin (first century A.D.) and Emperor Chai (late second century).⁴

The accounts of the distant age of the gods and the beginnings of the imperial line in the chronicles are legends, not reliable history. Scholars disagree on the extent to which the eighth-century compilations reflect earlier Japanese history, but it does appear likely that the Ötomos were closely associated from an early time with the clan that eventually became the imperial family. When the chronicles were edited in the early eighth century, the Ötomos were clearly an important military family close to the center of power, who thus deserved, indeed required, attribution of ancient and lofty origins.

From the late fifth century through the sixth, when the chronicles become more dependable sources, the Ötomos were at the height of their power. Specific historical Ötomos, direct ancestors of Yakamochi’s, were extremely powerful figures, much of their influence being based on their clan’s military strength. In the late fifth century, Otomo Muruya served as Emperor Yûryaku’s great minister (ômuraji). The two were also hunting companions, and Muruya handled such personal tasks for the emperor as punishing women unfaithful to him. When Yuryaku died, he left the country in the hands of Muruya and a cominister, who determined the succession by armed force. Their own candidate ascended the throne as Emperor Seinei, and not surprisingly reconfirmed Muruya as great minister. Muruya and his guard of quiver bearers were also given charge of the gates of the palace, a duty that long remained an Ōtomo responsibility. The main palace gate, the south-central one later known as the Suzaku gate, was even originally called the Ōtomo gate. In numerous later records, we see an Ōtomo leading the palace guards to open and close the gate for court ceremonies, a role logically developing from the family’s traditional function of providing the leader of the emperor’s troops.⁵

The Ōtomo clan attained its pinnacle of power and prestige in the sixth century under Muruya’s grandson, the famous minister Ōtomo Kanamura. Kanamura served as great minister through the reigns of five emperors. Not only was he in power longer than any of the emperors he served, but he seems to have had much to do with selecting the emperors and their empresses as well, and also to have largely managed Japan’s foreign policy, sending his sons to lead the family troops to fight the country’s wars in Korea. Upon the death of Emperor Ninken (r. 488-498), Kanamura personally led a force of several thousand men, probably his own troops, to destroy a competing minister and put his own choice on the throne as Emperor Buretsu. When Buretsu died without offspring, Kanamura selected Keitai as successor—again a show of family force helped. Soon after, he selected an empress for Keitai as well. Yakamochi’s ancestor continued to serve as first minister under the emperors Ankan (r. 531-535), Senka (r. 535-539), and Kimmei (r. 539-571), until he finally overstepped his authority by ceding some Japanese lands to Korea on his own and fell from favor.6

The Ōtomo family fortunes revived in the mid-seventh century, when Yakamochi’s more direct forebears were once again among the most powerful figures in the land. Kanamura’s grandson— Yakamochi’s great-grandfather—Ōtomo Nagatoko (or Umakai) served as great minister in the reigns of Emperor Jomei (r. 629—641), Empress Kôgyoku (r. 642-645), and Emperor Kôtoku (r. 645-654).7 The Ötomos played a vital military role in the Jinshin war of succession in 672, supporting the victorious Emperor Temmu. Early in the rebellion, Nagatoko’s brother Ōtomo Fukei dealt a severe blow to the forces opposing Temmu, tricking much of their army into surrendering when he marched boldly into their camp with a few followers and pretended to be the vanguard of Temmu’s massed troops. Fukei sent his nephew Yasumaro (Yakamochi’s grandfather) to report the good news of the unexpected victory to Temmu; in his delight Temmu made Fukei commanding general of the campaign in the Yamato heartland. Fukei eventually won control of the region around the capital, assuring Temmu’s succession to the throne. The Ōtomo leader and his associates ordered the officials of the old government to surrender their posts, imprisoned the leaders of the old regime, and sent Temmu the head of the opposition candidate for the succession. Under Temmu’s rule, the Ōtomo heroes of the war that had put him on the throne naturally assumed positions of influence. When one of these warriors, Fukei’s brother Umakuta, died in 683, the emperor praised his great deeds in the rebellion and the service of his ancestors for generations, granting him a posthumous promotion and elaborate funeral rites with flutes and drums, such as were only allowed to those of the highest rank. When Ōtomo Fukei himself died a few months later, he too was given imperial praise and honors for his deeds in the war.⁸

The death of the Ötomos who had helped to put Temmu on the throne left the clan represented by the next generation, Nagatoko’s sons Miyuki and Yasumaro, who had also participated in the war, but only in junior positions. Miyuki rose to major counselor, the third-ranking position in the government. A hundred extra income households had been given him for his role in Temmu’s rise to power, and by special imperial decree his descendants were allowed to continue to receive twenty-five percent of this income. Some time after his death, in recognition of his promotion of the gold industry in Tsushima, his descendants were also granted income from an additional hundred households and considerable acreage of paddy land.⁹

With Miyuki’s death, Yakamochi’s grandfather Yasumaro became the head of the clan and the dominant Ōtomo at court. Though too young to have been a major figure in the revolt, Yasumaro was one of the very few left alive who had at least taken part, the last of the grand old men. Like his brother Miyuki and many of their forebears, he rose to the high rank of senior third, and served in important government positions. By Yasumaro’s day the early Japanese bureaucracy was well established. A brief outline of the system of ranks and offices will help make clear the Ōtomo clan’s prestigious status. There were nine basic grades of officials, starting with an unnumbered beginning rank and then progressing from eighth rank up to first rank. Each of these ranks, except the very lowest and the very highest, had four subdivisions: upper and lower grades on the junior level, and upper and lower grades on the senior level. The system thus had a total of thirty different steps, specified by their.rank number and subdivision, such as senior fourth rank, lower grade or junior sixth rank, upper grade.

Of the approximately 200,000 people who lived in the city of Nara, 10,000 worked in the offices of the palace complex. The vast majority of these were of the sixth rank and below. Those of the beginning rank and the lowly eighth rank were employed as clerks

NARA REGION

and supervisors in the various government bureaus. The seventh rank was that of a slightly higher level of bureaucrat, and also of many professionals—doctors, university professors, and specialists in such fields as yin-yang, mathematics, and astronomy. Those of the sixth rank were apt to serve as the fourth- and fifthranking officials in the major cabinet-level ministries, and headed many of the lesser government offices such as the palace weaving studio, the sake brewery, the palace kitchen, and the office of trade regulation for the city markets. Officials holding ranks up to the sixth received various allotments of food and salaries paid in cloth, and in later years partly also in coin. The annual salary range for these government workers was set by the Taihō code of 701 at eighteen to twenty-four meters of silk, one-half to two kilograms of silk or mulberry floss (for padding winter clothes and quilts), thirtyeight to sixty-three meters of hemp or ramie cloth, and five to fifteen iron hoes.

Far better off than these general government workers were the one hundred to two hundred officials of fifth rank and above, who comprised the real nobility. Those of fifth rank served as the second- and third-ranking officers of ministries such as those of the treasury, justice, and central affairs. Other fifth-rank officials headed important bureaus within these ministries—the university, the yin-yang bureau, the government accounting office, the office of taxation, and the like. Heads of the major ministries were chosen from those of the fourth rank. These elite fourth- and fifthrank officials not only received larger annual salaries than those of lesser position, but were also allotted a generous additional stipend because of their rank, paid as hundreds of meters of cloth of various kinds. Moreover, they were assigned twenty to forty servants, and the taxes collected in rice or other crops from some twenty to sixty acres of land and from up to a hundred households. Their sons could also begin their government careers at the seventh or eighth rank without taking the civil service examination.

Perhaps a dozen men at most held the lofty ranks of third and above at any one time. These were the leaders of the government— the prime minister, the great ministers of the left and right, the four major counselors, and the three middle counselors—who sat on the Great Council of State that ran the country. Not all these positions were necessarily filled at once; that of prime minister was particularly often left vacant, leaving one of the great ministers head of the government. Those few who served in these positions were

THE CAPITAL CITY OF NARA (HEIJŌ)

very richly compensated. Their annual salaries ranged up to 1,800 meters of cloth, but the real source of their wealth was the tax income allotted them from up to 300 acres of farmland and 3,600 households. Each was also assigned from 60 to 400 attendants, and both sons and grandsons got a considerable headstart in their first positions.¹⁰ Rank was largely determined by one’s family background. Many officials gained their initial posts by passing the civil service examinations, which emphasized the Chinese classics. Candidates with the very best scores might secure a first post at the top grade of the eighth rank. Any son of an official of the fifth rank or above, however, was appointed to at least the eighth rank without taking the test; those of high ranking families might begin their careers as high as the fifth rank. Officials with good marks on their annual evaluations could expect to be promoted a grade about once every six years. Thus even after a successful forty-year career, an official without the advantage of noble family background could seldom hope to rise beyond the middle grades of the sixth rank—the same general level at which the sons and grandsons of important officials were allowed to begin their careers.

Ōtomo Miyuki, a major counselor of the senior third rank on the Great Council of State, had been the preeminent member of the clan while he lived, and one of the nation’s richest and most powerful men. Not long after his death, his younger brother Yasumaro, Yakamochi’s grandfather, rose to that position. Yasumaro had already served as minister of ceremonial and minister of war. From 705 he served for almost ten years as major counselor and commanding general, rising to senior third rank. Empress Gemmei (r. 707-715) singled him out for praise for his loyal service, and expressed her hope that his descendants would continue to serve the throne. In 710 when the new capital was built at Nara, Yasumaro was allotted a sizeable parcel of land for his mansion in Sao, the prestigious northeast section of the city, near the palace, as befitted one of his important position.¹¹

On Yasumaro’s death in 714, the family house and the position of clan head passed to his son Ōtomo Tabito, Yakamochi’s father. Though a mere child during the Jinshin rebellion, Tabito came of

n. NKBTNihonshoki, 2:460-461, 475, 482; Aston, Nihongi, 2:362, 375, 380. Shoku Nihongi, Taihō 2/1/17, 2/5/21, 2/7/24; Keiun 2/8/11; Wadō 1/3/3,1/7/15, 71511.

age and began his career in a world where his relatives held positions of considerable power and prestige as a result of their distinguished military service in support of the winning side. Though he appears to have been the most distinguished Ōtomo of his generation, his own advancement was unremarkable. Not until his mid-forties did he achieve a position rating mention in the official chronicles, when he served as a commander of the guards, senior fifth rank—a position in the Ōtomo family tradition of military service, but not one of particular importance. Only in his fifties, after Yasumaro’s death, did Tabito begin to rise rapidly in rank and to hold important