Matsura Sayohime

Matsura Sayohime, according to the oldest account[6] related in the poem collection Man'yōshū (8th century), was the wife of Ōtomo no Satehiko (or Sadehiko). In order to bid farewell to her husband, who was on a ship bound for Korea for a military campaign, she climbed atop a certain mountain peak.[1] So deep was her sorrow: she seemed "gut-wrenchedly" chagrined and darkened-hearted as if her "soul had vanished".[7][lower-alpha 3] Finally, she managed to remove her own scarf and wave it, drawing others around her inevitably to tears.[5][6][8]

Ōtomo no Satehiko was known historically to have been dispatched on two military expeditions to Korea, and the setting of the legend concerns his first trip which occurred in the year 537;[5] though it is the other Fudoki version of the legend described below which supplies the detail which leads to narrowing down this date.[10]

The Matsura region, Sayohime's alluded place of origin, spans the current-day Nagasaki and Saga Prefectures.[11] However, the specific mountaintop that had been dubbed Hirefurinomine (領巾麾嶺, "Scarf-Waving Peak"), as attested in the Man'yōshū,[5][8] has been identified as the summit of Mount Kagami, on the eastern edge of the city of Karatsu, Saga.[5][12][lower-alpha 4]

In the alternate version of the old legend preserved in the Hizen fudoki (8th century), the Lady Otohi (or Otohihime)of Shinuhara or Shinohara (篠原)[lower-alpha 5] village appears as the name of the famed farewell-bidding wife of Ōtomo no Satehiko.[5][13][4]

"Otohi" may indeed be the woman's proper name,[15] however, it may also be a descriptor, with the word otohi having some meaning that is an extension of the oto ("youthful, innocent") element, or possibly meaning "those of younger age".[lower-alpha 6][14] The Lady Otohi is also referred to as otohime ("younger [sister] lady") in the poem inserted in the Fudoki account.[lower-alpha 7][5]

This version recounts that the lady dropped a mirror given by her husband at a ford, or river crossing, and thenceforth the place was named Kagami-no-watari (鏡の渡り, "Mirror Crossing").[5][16][17]

This version proceeds to tell the aftermath since the day the woman parts with Satehiko (waving her scarf at the Peak): she received visits from a look-alike of her husband for five nights in a row. Resolving to discover this man's true identity, she tied a "hemp" thread to the hem of his clothing and tracked him, thereby learning his true form: a snake residing at the marsh on the Scarf-Waving Peak. She was subsequently reported missing, and a search led to her skeletonized remains in the marsh.[5][13]

A tale presenting this thread/yarn motif has been called the clew-of-yarn type (苧環型説話, odamaki-gata setsuwa) by Japanese scholars, and in the so-called Miwa-san setsuwa (三輪山説話, "Mt. Miwa Story"), Ikutamayori-hime (Lady Ikutamayori) employs the same trick to discover the true form of the snake god Ōmononushi.[18][19][lower-alpha 8]

Fujiwara no Norikane wrote a commentary on waka poetry entitled Waka dōmōshō (和歌童蒙抄) (c. 1145) which probably due to a misreading of the Fudoki, states that the lady, grasping the mirror given to her, sunk into the waters of the Kuri River (later called Kagami River, now Matsura River[23]).[lower-alpha 9][24]

Matsura Sayo-hime. Caption refers to the petrification[lower-alpha 10]

—by Utagawa Kuniyoshi. Series: Kenjo reppuden or "Stories of Wise and Strong Women".

According to one version of this legend, she prayed with such fervour that she was transformed into stone.[25] This petrification lore of Sayohime appears to be of later development, with its earliest attestation identified as renga poet Bontōan's Sodeshita shū (c. Ōei era, late 14th to early 15th century).[26] This lore of Sayohime's petrification is thought to have developed from a misunderstanding: a misreading of Jikkinshō (13th century), which ponders on the Sayohime legend and makes reference to the petrification motif taken from an old Chinese work called the Youminglu.[27][28] Sayohime's petrification is also mentioned in Nihon meijo monogatari (1670).[29]

Sayohime Shrine

Her supposed petrified remains, an example of a bōfuseki (望夫石, "rock that contemplates the husband"),[30] is housed as the shintai ("body of the kami") at the Sayohime Shrine, an undershrine of Tashima Shrine on Kabe Island.[31][2][32] The claim regarding her petrification on this island is given in a late account of the origin of this undershrine, preserved in the 19th century document called the Matsura komonjo (松浦古文書) (written during the Bunka era).[33] It states that the lady did not stop at the Scarf-Waving Peak bidding farewell, but she continued to a spot[lower-alpha 11] from whose vantage point she beheld an island nearby. She then hopped on a fishing boat to that island, called the Himekami-jima (姫神島) island (present-day Kabe Island[35][36]) where she climbed a "bit elevated spot" and there, out of sorrow, she turned intorock.[33] Commentators identify this elevatation as the Tendō-dake (天童岳) or Dentō-dake (伝登岳).[35]

Matsura no Kagami ('The Mirror of Matsura'), also referred to as Matsuura Sayohime [sic.] is also the title of a noh play about the character, whose authorship is ascribed to Zeami.[37][39][40] There has survived a holograph copy in Zeami's own hand entitled Matsura no Noh, dated 10th month of 1427/Ōei 24,[41][42] which closely matches the script text of Matsura no Kagami except for minor differences.[43]

The noh play, adopts the embellished legend where Sayohime drown herself in the sea while clutching the mirror, instead of just losing it.[37][16] The suicidal drowning had been claimed in literature predating the noh play, such as the aforementioned 12th century Waka dōmōshō and Priest Yua's Shirin saiyōshō (詞林采葉抄, "Commentary of Leaves from a Forest of Words", 1366).[44]

There are some 7 texts of the fairy tale or monogatari/otogizōshi version of Sayohime. The two full, or "expanded versions" (広本, kōhon) are the unillustrated "Akagi-bunko" library text entitled Sayohime no sōshi dating to the Keichō era (late 16th or early 17th century) and the illustrated book (Nara ehon) Sayohome in the possession of Kyoto University.[45][46]

The remaining monogatari texts belong to the "abridged version" (略本, ryakubon) group, and bear alternate titles such as Tsubosaka monogatari (壺坂物語)[lower-alpha 12] or Chikubushima no honji (ちくふしまのほんし, "The Chikubushima Deity in Her Original Form"[lower-alpha 13]).[46][47] The latter title (~ honji, the "original" Buddhist deity) is a reference to the tale purporting to reveal the origins of the principal goddess Benzaiten worshipped at Chikubushima Shrine in Ōmi Province, i.e., on an island in Lake Biwa.[48]

The Sayohime no sōshi (A text) and the Sayohime (K text) have their opening setting relocated to Tsubosaka in Yamato Province (present-day Nara Prefecture),[lower-alpha 14] where a wealthy man named Matsura Chōja (松浦長者, A) or Lord Kyōgoku (京極殿, K) and his wife prayed to the Bodhisattva Kannon of Hase-dera until they were finally blessed with the birth of a daughter, Sayohime. But the rich man died penniless, and Sayohime could not afford to sponsor a memorial service for him except by selling herself. Her buyer was a man named Konka no Tayū (こんかの大夫, A) (or "Gonga no Tayū"),[lower-alpha 15] who unbeknownst to Sayohime intended to sacrifice her to the snake deity of his village in place of his own daughter. When presented to the snake, Sayohime read from the Lotus sutra, enabling the deity to achieve enlightenment and shed its monstrous form. The deity then returned Sayohime to the care of her mother.[50][51]

The Kyoto text has been translated into English by R. Keller Kimbrough in Eight Buddhist Tales (2013).[52] There is actually a sekkyō-bushi (Buddhist "sermon ballad") version known as Matsura chōja (まつら長じや, "The Millionaire of Matsura", 1661)[lower-alpha 16][lower-alpha 17] which bears close correspondence to the Kyoto text of Sayohime, and thought to derive from it.[46][55][56]

The illustrations and text from the Frankfurt emaki manuscript has been analyzed and translated into German by Katja Triplett, with self-sacrifice and human sacrifice being the central themes.[57] The heroine in an act of self-sacrifice "sells oneself" (身売り, miuri) into slavery, into the hands of a human trafficker in order to achieve a deed of filial piety.[58] Needless to say, the common understanding (usual fate) of a miuri woman is that she is selling herself into prostitution, not slavery. But in the Sayohime saga we have divine intervention, and the Kasuga Myōjin deity of Nara disguised as an octagenerian priest intervenes so that Sayohime is discovered and bought by a seeker of a substitute virgin sacrifice (Gonga Tayū), rather than a brothel. Although the story is told as if Gonga from Michinoku up north is the one obtaining sympathy and help from his clan deity (ujigami) based in Nara, the readers realize that the deity is actually responding to the pleas of the girl Sayohime from Nara.[59][60]

The tales were also adapted to oku jōruri, a regional type of jōruri puppet plays.[lower-alpha 18][61]

The petrification legend was adapted by Takizawa Bakin (d. 1848) into a burlesque novel (gesaku) under the title Matsura Sayohime sekkonroku (松浦佐用媛石魂録, "The Great Stone Spirit of Matsura")[62][63]