Ariwara no Narihira
Ariwara no Narihira was a Japanese courtier and waka poet of the early Heian period. He was named one of both the Six Poetic Geniuses and the Thirty-Six Poetic Geniuses, and one of his poems was included in the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu collection. He is also known as Zai Go-Chūjō, Zai Go, Zai Chūjō or Mukashi-Otoko.
There are 87 poems attributed to Narihira in court anthologies, though some attributions are dubious. Narihira's poems are exceptionally ambiguous; the compilers of the 10th-century Kokin Wakashū thus treated them to relatively long headnotes.
Narihira's many renowned love affairs have exerted a profound influence on later Japanese culture. Legends have held that he had affairs with the high priestess of the Ise Grand Shrine and the poet Ono no Komachi, and that he fathered Emperor Yōzei. His love affairs inspired The Tales of Ise, and he has ever since been a model of the handsome, amorous nobleman. Narihira was considered an avatar of.
Biography
Birth and ancestry
Ariwara no Narihira was born in 825. He was a grandson of two emperors: Emperor Heizei through his father, Prince Abo; and Emperor Kanmu through his mother, Princess Ito. He was the fifth child of Prince Abo, but was supposedly the only child of Princess Ito, who lived in the former capital at Nagaoka. Some of Narihira's poems are about his mother.Abo was banished from the old capital Heijō-kyō to Tsukushi Province in 824 due to his involvement in a failed coup d'état known as the Kusuko Incident. Narihira was born during his father's exile. After Abo's return to Heijō, in 826, Narihira and his brothers Yukihira, Nakahira and were made commoners and given the surname Ariwara. The scholar Ōe no Otondo was also a brother of Narihira's.
Political career
Although he is remembered mainly for his poetry, Narihira was of high birth and served at court. In 841 he was appointed Lieutenant of the Right Division of Inner Palace Guards, before being promoted to Lieutenant of the Left Division of Inner Palace Guards and then Chamberlain. In 849, he held the Junior Fifth Rank, Lower Grade.Narihira rose to the positions of Provisional Assistant Master of the Left Military Guard, Assistant Chamberlain, Provisional Minor Captain of the Left Division of Inner Palace Guards, Captain of the Right Division of the Bureau of Horses, Provisional Middle Captain of the Right Division of Inner Palace Guards, Provisional Governor of Sagami, reaching the Junior Fourth Rank, Upper Grade. By the end of his life he had risen to Chamberlain and Provisional Governor of Mino.
Literary historian and critic Donald Keene observed in his description of Narihira as the protagonist of The Tales of Ise:
Romantic affairs
Narihira was known as a great lover; a third of his poems included in the Kokin Wakashū describe his various romantic affairs, and after his death the national history Nihon Sandai Jitsuroku said of him: "Narihira was elegant and of handsome appearance, but he was unrestrained in his self-indulgence."The Tales of Ise portrays Narihira as falling in love with Fujiwara no Takaiko, a consort of Emperor Seiwa, and it is hinted that this was one of the reasons for his leaving the capital and travelling east. It has been speculated that this romantic affair with the consort of the emperor was the reason why the Sandai Jitsuroku describes his rank as going down from Junior Fifth Rank, Lower Grade to Senior Sixth Rank, Upper Grade, before again rising to Junior Fifth Rank, Upper Grade the following year. However, it has also been speculated that this may be an error in the Sandai Jitsuroku as a result of binding changing the order of events. Furthermore, Fujiwara no Takaiko reputedly had an affair with the monk Zen'yū, which may have formed the core of the otherwise fictional legend that she also had an affair with Narihira. Whether the affair was historical or not, the Reizei family's commentary on The Tales of Ise speculates that Emperor Yōzei was a product of this union, and not the previous emperor.
One of Narihira's most famous affairs—the one that gave The Tales of Ise its name—was said to be with, high priestess of the Ise Grand Shrine and daughter of Emperor Montoku. The Tales of Ise describes the protagonist, presumed to be Narihira, visiting Ise on a hunt, and sleeping with the priestess. However, a passage in the Kokinshū describes the meeting ambiguously, in a manner that implies Narihira did not sleep with the priestess herself but rather another woman in her service. The 12th-century work Gōshidai and the 13th-century work Kojidan claim that the product of this union was Takashina no Moronao, who was later adopted by Takashina no Shigenori. Japanologist Helen Craig McCullough stated there was "no evidence" the affair between Narihira and Yasuko was "more than a romantic myth".
A headnote to poems 784 and 785 in the Kokinshū connects Narihira to the daughter of. Medieval commentaries call her Narihira's wife, and some modern scholars, such as Katagiri, do the same, although the only early source that explicitly names her is the note in the Kokinshū. In the classical Noh play Izutsu, an adaptation by Zeami Motokiyo of from The Tales of Ise, portrays Narihira and Ki no Aritsune's daughter as childhood playmates who eventually marry; Narihira is unfaithful to his wife, and her pining spirit appears to a monk after their deaths.
Image:Yoshitoshi Ariwara Narihira.jpg|thumb|upright|Ariwara no Narihira looking for the ghost of Ono no Komachi, in an 1891 print by Yoshitoshi
It has been speculated, based in part on their being considered the most beautiful man and woman of their age, that Narihira and the poet Ono no Komachi may have been lovers, but there is little evidence for this. Scholars of the 20th century such as Makane Sekitani have held up this speculation, which can be traced back at least as far as the 14th-century historian Kitabatake Chikafusa.
Chikafusa likely used Kamakura period Kokinshū commentaries such as the extant Bishamondō-bon Kokinshū-chū, which speculates that one of Komachi's poems was left for Narihira after a tryst. The Bishamondō-bon Kokinshū-chū in turn likely worked from a then-common belief that fictional Tales of Ise was a genuine historical work detailing the actual events in Narihira's life. Kamakura period commentaries on The Tales of Ise therefore tried to insert the names of real women where the original text simply said "a woman", and thus inserted Ono no Komachi into several passages of the text.
The literary scholar Yōichi Katagiri concluded, on the lack of surviving evidence, that, while it is possible that Narihira and Ono no Komachi knew each other and were lovers, there was no usable evidence to say conclusively either way.
Journey to the east
The Kokinshū, Tales of Ise and Tales of Yamato all describe Narihira leaving Kyoto to travel east through the Tōkaidō region and crossing the Sumida River, composing poems at famous places along the way. The Tales of Ise implies this journey was the result of the scandalous affair between Narihira and Fujiwara no Takaiko. There are doubts as to whether this journey actually took place, from the point of view both that the number of surviving poems is quite small for having made such a trip and composing poems along the way, and in terms of the historical likelihood that a courtier could have gone wandering to the other end of the country with only one or two friends keeping him company.Death
According to the Sandai Jitsuroku, Narihira died on 9 July 880. Poem 861 in the Kokinshū, Narihira's last, expresses his shock and regret that his death should come so soon:Burial site
The location of Narihira's grave is uncertain. In the Middle Ages he was considered a deity or even an avatar of the Buddha Dainichi, and so it is possible that some, that have been called graves of Narihira's, are in fact sacred sites consecrated to him rather than places where he was actually believed to have been buried. Kansai University professor and scholar of The Tales of Ise Tokurō Yamamoto has speculated that the small stone grove on Mount Yoshida in eastern Kyoto known as "Narihira's burial mound" may be such a site. He further speculated that the site became associated with Narihira because it was near the grave-site of Emperor Yōzei, who in the Middle Ages was widely believed to have secretly been fathered by Narihira. Another site traditionally believed to house Narihira's grave is Jūrin-ji in western Kyoto, which is also known as "Narihira Temple".Descendants
Among Narihira's children were the waka poets and , and at least one daughter. Through Muneyama, he was also the grandfather of the poet Ariwara no Motokata. One of his granddaughters, whose name is not known, was married to Fujiwara no Kunitsune and engaged in a clandestine affair with Taira no Sadafun.Names
Narihira is also known by the nicknames Zai Go-Chūjō, Zai Go and Zai Chūjō. Zai is the Sino-Japanese reading of the first character of his surname Ariwara, and Go, meaning "five", refers to him and his four brothers Yukihira, Nakahira, Morihira, and Ōe no Otondo. Chūjō is a reference to the post he held near the end of his life, Provisional Middle Captain of the Right Division of Inner Palace Guards. After the recurring use of the phrase in The Tales of Ise, he is also known as Mukashi-Otoko.Poetry
Narihira left a private collection, the Narihira-shū, which was included in the Sanjūrokunin-shū. This was likely compiled by a later editor, after the compilation of the Gosen Wakashū in the mid-10th century.Thirty poems attributed to Narihira were included in the early 10th-century Kokinshū, and many more in later anthologies, but the attributions are dubious. Ki no Tsurayuki mentioned Narihira in his kana preface to the Kokinshū as one of the Six Poetic Geniuses—important poets of an earlier age. He was also included in Fujiwara no Kintō's later Thirty-Six Poetic Geniuses.
Of the eleven poems the Gosen Wakashū attributed to Narihira, several were really by others—for example, two were actually by Fujiwara no Nakahira and one by Ōshikōchi no Mitsune. The Shin Kokinshū and later court anthologies attribute more poems to Narihira, but many of these were likely misunderstood to have been written by him because of their appearance in The Tales of Ise. Some of these were probably composed after Narihira's death. Combined, poems attributed to Narihira in court anthologies total 87.
The following poem by Narihira was included as No. 17 in Fujiwara no Teika's Ogura Hyakunin Isshu:
As the karuta "name card" of the main character Chihaya Ayase, the poem appears frequently in the manga and anime Chihayafuru, and its history and meaning are discussed.