Female Readers and Early Heian Romances: The Hakubyō Tales of Ise Illustrated Scroll Fragments

Female Readers and Early Heian Romances: The "Hakubyō Tales of Ise Illustrated Scroll
Fragments"
Author(s): Joshua S. Mostow
Source: Monumenta Nipponica , Summer, 2007, Vol. 62, No. 2 (Summer, 2007), pp. 135-
177
Published by: Sophia University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/25066496
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Female Readers and
Early Heian Romances
The Hakuby? Tales oflse
Illustrated Scroll Fragments
Joshua S. Mostow
In the post-World War II era, Japanese scholars reached the consensus that
the keyword to the early court romance The Tales oflse (Ise monogatari &
fS^?fp) is miyabi &~PZS.1 Miyabu is to perform or conduct oneself in a man
ner appropriate to a miya S, or court?especially the court of the sovereign?
suggesting the translation "courtliness." Miyabi, however, was not limited to the
imperial court, and its possession was in fact a matter of contestation, being
claimed as well by aristocratic groups that had been politically marginalized by
the emergence of the Fujiwara regency in the tenth century. Scholars such as
Watanabe Minoru MH^ and Katagiri Y?ichi >tffi??? thus see Ise as intended
to demonstrate the "courtliness" of Ariwara no Narihira ffiJ^H^P (825-880) and
his associates, such as his father-in-law, Ki no Aritsune IH?f?r? (815-877), espe
cially after their candidate for emperor, Aritsune's nephew Prince Koretaka fi
iHIBI (844-897), was passed over in favor of his younger brother, who was the
grandson of Fujiwara no Yoshifusa HJ^SB! (804-872) and who ascended the
throne as Emperor Seiwa if ft^M (850-880, r. 858-876).2
Although it has occasioned little comment, Watanabe specifically contrasts
Ise's emphasis on courtliness with the perspective found in works of so-called
"court women's literature" (?ch?jory? bungaku EE^ftiaM3C?), such as The Diary
ofMurasaki Shikibu (Murasaki shikibu nikki ^?n?BfB, ca. 1010). As is well
known, the Diary includes a whole section assessing the character of various
The author is professor of Japanese literature and art in the Department of Asian Studies at the
University of British Columbia. Research for this study was supported by a grant from the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
1 See Mostow 2000; and in Japanese, Mostow 1999a. For the somewhat dubious pedigree of
the concept of miyabi, especially in the 1930s and 1940s, see Mostow 1999b.
2 Watanabe 1972 and 1976; Katagiri 1975. In English, see Marra 1991. For the Fujiwara
response to he and its appropriation of miyabi, see Mostow 2004.

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136 Monumento Nipponica 62:2
other ladies-in-waiting, such as Sei Sh?nagon ?n'PW? (966?-after 1017) and

Akazome Emon ^%%?^ (fl. 976-1041). According to Watanabe, such character
assessment is not concerned with individual, discrete words or deeds, but is a
synthesizing evaluation based on observation over a period of time. In contrast,
the episodic Ise is interested only in discrete, individual actions and in assessing
whether they qualify as "courtly" or not.3 Since the authors of Ise are presumed
to have been male, Watanabe's contrast is a gendered one. And indeed, as we
shall see below, Ise focuses resolutely on its male protagonist(s), with women
by and large simply providing the occasion for the display of "courtliness."
The question then arises, how did women read Ise] It will be my argument
here that by at least the beginning of the eleventh century we can discern a mode
of reading Ise that is oriented to the women of the tale and their character, a mode
of reading that brings this early monogatari much closer to concerns typical of
women's autobiographical writing of the period?what might be called a "fem
inine" mode of interpretation. I will further argue that this interpretive strategy
is evident in the fragments of the oldest surviving Ise illustrations, Hakuby? Ise
monogatari emaki Q?a?^f^!o!e#, and was intimately connected to the hakuby?
("plain ink") genre.
The Texts of Ise monogatari

It is widely accepted that The Tales of Ise came into existence over a considerable
period of time and with the help of many hands. The three-stage theory devel
oped by Katagiri Y?ichi has found general approval:4 the genesis of Ise is to be
found in a relatively small collection of poems written and compiled by Ariwara
no Narihira, necessarily before his death in 880. Then, sometime around the mid
tenth century, the text was significantly expanded, and the names of historical
figures known to have been associated with Narihira were incorporated. The
focus on miyabi was introduced at this stage. Finally, sometime around the
compilation of the third imperial anthology, the Sh?i waka sh? ?nili?nilftA (ca.
1005-1011), a final group of episodes was added, typically episodes that resem
bled ones already contained in the text, in a kind of theme-and-variation devel
opment.
Ise reached its definitive state under Fujiwara no Teika WW.feM (1162-1241).
Teika collated and copied the text a great number of times during his lifetime.
The three copies most influential for later readers were those that came to be
known as the Rufu-bon iMJu^, the Takeda-bon ?BEI^, and the Tenpuku-bon ^
|?^: all comprised 125 episodes (dan gfc), differing in small but substantive ways.
The Rufu-bon ("popular version"), as its name suggests, was the text that ap
peared in woodblock-printed editions in the Edo period and became the most
widely diffused. In the Muromachi period the Takeda-bon, named after its one
time owners, the warrior Takeda house of Wakasa province, was highly re
3 Watanabe 1976, p. 143.

4 But not unanimous, see Fukui 1965; Yamada 1972; and, most recently, Watanabe 2000.

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Mostow: Female Readers and Early Heian Romances 137
garded. Today, the preferred text is the Tenpuku-bon, completed by Teika in

1234, or Tenpuku 2. The last known copy made by Teika, this manuscript was
once owned by Sanj?nishi Sanetaka H^H^P? (1455-1537). Sanetaka sold the
manuscript, and it was ultimately lost to fire in the Edo period, but Sanetaka's
copy of Teika's manuscript, now in the possession of Gakush?in University, is
universally accepted as closest to the original.5 Interestingly enough, Teika's
colophon states that the copy was meant for his granddaughter, making it clear
that Ise was considered important reading material for women.
There are, however, a variety of "old texts" (kohon ^?f) that differ signifi
cantly from the Tenpuku-bon. These are divided into two large categories:
"short" or "abbreviated texts" (ryakuhon B?^) and "extended texts" (k?hon iK
^). Short texts, as the name indicates, include fewer than 125 episodes, and they
appear to have a common ancestor in the extended texts. The oldest extant man
uscript of this line is presently owned by the Honma Art Museum ^PelUffifif and
is usually referred to as the Den Minbu-ky? no tsubone hippon ?KplWM?f^ or
the Nurigome-bon ?fi^. "Extended" texts have more than the 125 episodes of
the Tenpuku-bon, are extensively annotated, and often include appendices. The
extended texts are believed to have been produced by scholars of the Rokuj? 7\
^k family (Teika's competitors), based on a text collated by Kensh? ?@BS (ca.
1130-ca. 1210). Katagiri divides these texts into three subgroups:
1) ?shima-bon j\th^>
2) Awa no Kuni Bunko-bon M\}$M~%)^Lif, Tanimori-bon QM^, Jing?
Bunko-bon #K^tH^
3) Sensh?-bon H;!H^
Katagiri's careful analysis shows that the Hakuby? emaki text is closest to the
extended texts and particularly to the second group. In fact, the oldest extant
texts of Ise are the fragments contained in the Hakuby? emaki.6
Hakuby? Painting and Women 's Autobiographical Writing in the Heian Period
The written record provides ample indications that drawing was a polite ac
complishment for both the men and women of court. Some of the earliest and
best evidence comes from The Kager? Diary (Kager? nikki ?H'fo^BfB) of
Michitsuna's Mother (Michitsuna no Haha MWKDM, 9367-995?), written in the
mid-970s. The appended poetry collection includes several poems by her on
paintings, including one "written when her father brought back to the capital
5 Katagiri points out that to refer simply to a "Teika-bon" of Ise, as is often done, is inappropriate
since Teika copied out the complete Tales of Ise at least six times in the course of his life: in
Kennin gt_ 2 (1202), J?ky? *^ 3 (1221), J?? ?JS 2 (1223), Karoku J5?? 3 (1227), Kangi %
H 3 (1231), and finally Tenpuku 2 (1234). The Tenpuku-bon contained significant emendations
from previous versions. Katagiri 1970, p. 10. See also Katagiri 1975, pp. 24-29; and the discussion
of texts by McCullough 1968, pp. 189-91.
6 Full transcriptions of all surviving textual fragments of the Hakuby? Ise may be found in
Katagiri 1970.

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pictures he had painted of the interesting places in Michinoku."7 And in book 3

she writes: "As for me, usually on spring nights, or in the idleness of autumn,
rather than spend my time in brooding thoughts, I paint pictures, thinking they
may be looked upon as mementos by the people left behind."8 Scholars have
long thought that this passage must refer to some kind of "picture-diary," or e
nikki le B IB, and today, Ii Haruki ###1tf points out, it is generally accepted that
Michitsuna no Haha fashioned The Kager? Diary from raw material that in
cluded both pictures and a picture-diary.9 In other words, the present Kager?
Diary may well be a prose elaboration of an originally preponderantly visual
text. In this context Ii also discusses what he believes were two prevalent prac
tices of the period: readers illustrating romances as they read and copied them
and the recording of events of daily life by means of pictures (e ni yoru kiroku
While formats presumably existed for the rendition of landscapes such as

Michitsuna no Haha's father drew, paintings by largely sedentary women likely
relied even more heavily on standardized compositional formats for the depiction
of their frankly circumscribed lives and literary romances' predictably repetitive
motifs. Ikeda Shinobu ft&EHS has argued that it is just such pictures that are called
onna-e icf?, or "women's pictures," in Heian-period documents.10 And, in fact,
The Kager? Diary provides the earliest known appearance of the term onna-e:
The assistant director [her son] is at the beck and call of the director, day or night;
he is always over there. As there were some interestingly drawn women's pic
tures [onna-e] over there, he took them, put them in his pocket and brought them
home. I looked at them and saw that one was the painting of a woman leaning
on the balustrade of a building called a fishing pavilion, gazing at the pines on
the little islands in the middle of the pond. . . . On another picture, ... a bache
lor leaves off writing letters and with his chin resting on his hands seems sunk
in brooding thoughts. . . n
The formats here are essentially that of a person in a room gazing at the gar
den outside. And we find examples of precisely such compositions in the oldest
extant examples of illustrations for romances, the twelfth-century The Tale of
Genji Illustrated Scrolls and the Hakuby? Tales of Ise Illustrations. As Akiyama
Terukazu %k\hJt%W wrote years ago:
Though admittedly we have only meager remains of early secular painting to go

on, especially as regards the art of illumination from the ninth to eleventh cen
tury, there are grounds for believing that the Genji style first arose in the tenth
century in the cultivated, art-minded circles of the aristocracy, particularly
among the noblewomen of the day who, desiring to illustrate their favorite novels
7 mmmiz, zfrLfruttztzziizo*. mizfrgx, fiT???oTitfcj?>?nn

Kager? nikki, p. 396; trans. Arntzen 1997, p. 387.
8 Kager? nikki, p. 339; Arntzen 1997, p. 317.
9 Ii 1990, p. 118. See also Mostow 1993, for more examples of e-nikki.
10 Ikeda 1984.
11 Arntzen 1997, pp. 349-51; Kager? nikki, pp. 370-71.

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with their own hands, devised this simplified representation of figures . . . this
style was gradually matured and refined in the more skillful hands of the pro
fessional painters who adopted it.12
Amateur painters used the onna-e format and could then commission a profes
sional to render it in colors.13 Readers might also copy a professionally done
illustrated scroll, reproducing the text and the pictures as well in black ink. There
was thus a movement back and forth between black-and-white and polychrome
forms of illustration.
Illustrations to The Tales of Ise

Documentary evidence attests that illustrations to Ise existed by the end of the
tenth century, at the latest: The Tale ofGenji mentions illustrations to Ise twice.14
Unfortunately, no examples of Ise illustration survive from the Heian period.
The Hakuby? fragments are one of three sets of illustrations of Ise dating to the
thirteenth century. The second, the Kubos?-bon !KfflE&, now mounted as one
scroll, constitutes the slender remains of what must have been a multiscroll pro
ject.15 The work is polychrome tsukuri-e f?Df?, and the calligraphy has been
traditionally attributed to Emperor Fushimi f^Jl^M (1265-1317, r. 1287-1298).
While there is ample grounds for doubt that the text is in Fushimi's own hand,
it is in his style, and the project can be reasonably attributed to the Jimy?-in it
Wit faction of the imperial house.16
The third thirteenth-century work exists only in a nineteenth-century copy and
is now known as Ihon Ise monogatari emaki mohon i^f^f^lnl?^ti^: (Copy
of the Variant Tales of Ise Illustrated Scrolls).17 As the name suggests, the text
for this work diverges from the standard Tenpuku-bon; it includes only twenty
four episodes, in an order significantly different from that found in Teika's text.
The style of illustration, too, is different from that of either the Hakuby? or
Kubos? version and has more in common with that typical of illustrated scrolls
depicting the founding and history of famous shrines and temples (shaji engi
emaki ?t#?g|e#).
12 Akiyama 1961, p. 74.
13 In The Pillow Book, among "Depressing Things" is the following: "One needs a particularly
beautiful fan for some special occasion and instructs an artist, in whose talents one has full con
fidence, to decorate one with an appropriate painting. When the day comes and the fan is delivered,
one is shocked to see how badly it has been painted. Oh, the dreariness of it!" Makura no s?shi,
pp. 96-97; Morris 1967, vol. 1, pp. 23-24. Likewise, in the "Suma" chapter of Genji, Genji him
self is doing sketches of the shoreline. One of his retainers remarks: "How nice it would be to call
in Chieda and Tsunenori, who they say are the best artists of our time, and have them make these
up into finished paintings." Royall Tyler in a note explains: "Genji's paintings (in ink only) would
serve these artists as shitagaki (sketch designs) for finished paintings in color." Genji monogatari,
vol. 2, pp. 191-92; Tyler 2001, p. 244.
14 In the "E-awase" chapter, and in Niou's conversation with his half-sister, the First Princess.
The latter passage is quoted below, p. 147.
15 Now owned by the Izumi City Kubos? Memorial Art Museum ?D^Tl?îX^fE^HS?f?. Re
productions are widely available, including in It? 1984 and Chino 1991.
16 Tamura 1972; Aihara 2002, pp. 12-13.
17 Now owned by the Tokyo National Museum. Reproduced in It? 1984 and Chino 1991.

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No illustrations to Ise remain from the late thirteenth century to the late
Muromachi period. The next oldest extant illustrations are the Ono-ke-bon /MF
W&, in the so-called Nara-ehon ^?l?^ style and probably dating from the latter
half of the Muromachi period.18 A number of examples date from the following
Momoyama period, many of which seem to share much of the basic iconography
found in the Ono-ke-bon}9 Finally, the unknown artist of the illustrations for the
1608 Saga-bon (?ffi^ printed edition of Ise also followed the iconography
emerging from the Ono-ke-bon line. This edition, sponsored by Suminokura
Soan M?^M (1571-1632), in movable type (ko-katsuji ?7S?), with calligra
phy modeled on that of Hon'ami K?etsu ffl^lE (1558-1637) and the text
edited by Nakanoin Michikatsu ^Kill? (1556-1610), contributed to the preva
lence of the Ono-ke-bon iconography.
The Hakuby? Pictures

The Tale of Genji also gives us an idea about how illustrated texts circulated:
The long rains were worse than most years, without a break, and in their idleness,
the ladies amused themselves with picture-tales and such, morning and night.
The Akashi lady was skilled at these kinds of things as well and made up a variety
of them to send over to her daughter.20
Ladies read tales; they also copied them, and when the tales were illustrated, as
they mostly were, they copied the pictures, too. As noted above, sometimes the
pictures they copied and shared among themselves would have been professional
productions, with rich colors and pigments. When they copied these, however,
the ladies would render them as line-drawings.
Scholarly consensus places the Hakuby? Ise in the mid-thirteenth century, that
is, about one hundred years later than the Genji Scrolls. As we shall see in more
detail below, however, evidence suggests that the Hakuby? pictures are actually
copies of an earlier, polychrome work that dated to the mid-twelfth century, that
is, around the same time as the Genji Scrolls. Several scholars have argued, in
fact, that the style of the Hakuby? illustrations represents a stage of development
anterior to the Genji Scrolls.21
In its present condition, the Hakuby? Ise?presumably originally a complete
illustrated version of Ise, or at least a selection of many scenes, in one or more
scrolls?survives as a number of widely dispersed fragments, including nineteen
images or image fragments (see figure l).22 At some point in time, the work was
imprinted front and back with a woodblock of a short text of a dh?rani, or sacred
spell, known as the K?my? shingon t^?H, or "Bright Luster True Words"
18 Privately owned. Reproduced in It? 1984 and Chino 1991.

19 Again, see It? 1984.
20 Genji monogatari, vol. 3, p. 202. The translation is mine.
21 Ikeda 1987, p. 36; Watanabe 1995; Kat? 2001; It? 1984, "Kaisetsu," pp. 10-39; Chino 1991,
p. 28.
22 Three episodes exist only as textual fragments (25, 47, and 69); the illustration for episode 1
is in two fragments, as is that for 65a. See Sayre 1979, vol. 1, pp. 91-94; vol. 2, pp. 2-16; It? 1984,
"Kaisetsu," pp. 10-39, esp. chart pp. 38-39; and most recently, Ikeda 1987, p. 33.

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Figure 1. Extant fragments (twenty-eight) of Hakuby? Ise monogatari emaki
Dan Name Text Picture Owner Figure

Kasuga Village partial Itsuo 2,3
partial private
Hijiki yes formerly Furuya
Western Wing yes Itsuo 25
Returning Waves partial Tokyo Geidai
9a Yatsuhashi partial Itsuo
9b Mt. Utsu yes yes Yamato 28
Bunkakan
23a Well-curb yes yes Yamato 23,24
Bunkakan
23b Kawachi-goe Cf. item 16
10 24 Azusa Bow yes none Tokiwayama
11 none partial Toyama
12 25 Autumn Fields yes Hosomi
13 27 Water Basin yes yes Yamato
Bunkakan
14 45 Fireflies yes yes Kuboso 29
15 47 Sacred Wands yes private
16 49* Young Grass partial Itsuo 10
17 58 Nagaoka partial private 27
18 yes none private
19 65a Misogi partial {on 'yoji) formerly Yasuda
20 partial Itsuo
(nusa & chigo)
21 65b Flute yes Itsuo
22 yes Goto
23 69 Ise Virgin partial formerly Furuya
24 partial Goto
25 partial Tsujisaka
26 95 Dividing Barrier yes Hosomi 30
27 100 Forgetting Grasses yes private
28 Nurigome 1 Cupped Hands yes Tokiwayama 14
identified by Ito Toshiko as 9a, "Yatsuhashi."
* identified by It? Toshiko and Chino Kaori as 23b, "Kawachi-goe."
(figure 2).23 Such conversion into a religious object was believed to aid the spir
itual progress of the deceased owner of the secular piece.24 This Buddhist text
gives the work the other name it is known by, Bonjiky? satsu hakuby? Ise mono
gatari emaki ??SJiS'Jaffi#*f^!?!e#, or "Hakuby? Tales of Ise Illustrated
23 Manabe 1970; Sayre 1979, vol. 1, pp. 91-93; Bowring 1992, pp. 446-48.
24 The best-known example of this practice is the Menashi ky? g M?E, an incomplete secular
emaki produced by Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa ?t?Sf and a nun that was used for copying
sutras after Go-Shirakawa's death in 1192. See Akiyama 1990. When the Hakuby? emaki was
stamped is also a matter of debate. Although Kawase Kazuma ji[$6^1? suggested that it was done
some time in the late Edo or Meiji periods, Katagiri believes it was done shortly after the pictures
and texts were executed, an opinion generally shared today (Katagiri 1970, p. 9).

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Figure 2. Hakuby? Ise monogatari emaki (13th c), episode 1 ("Kasuga Village").
Original format, overlaid with printed Sanskrit letters. Itsuo Bijutsukan.
Figure 3. Iwama Kaori. Reconstruction of Hakuby? Ise monogatari emaki,

episode 1 ("Kasuga Village"). From It? 1984, "Kaisetsu," p. 12. Images from It?
1984 courtesy of Kadokawa Shoten.
Scrolls Imprinted with Sanskrit Letters." Throughout this article I will be using
reproductions executed by Nakamura Gakury? 4???SS (1890-1969) and Iwama
Kaori ?R8# (b. 1953) that have removed the Sanskrit text printed over the pic
tures and have recombined detached fragments (figure 3).
There are only four instances where pictures have remained attached to their
respective textual passages, assuring accurate identification of the scenes. In five
cases images are now attached to passages for which they are clearly inap
propriate. The remaining pictures have no text attached to them, making the iden
tification of the scenes in some cases a matter of debate. Depending on the

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Figure 4. Nakamura Gakury?. Reconstruction of Hakubyo Ise monogatari

emaki, episode 27 ("Water Basin"). From It? 1984, "Gravure," pp. 14-15.
Figure 5. Genji monogatari emaki (12th c), "Azumaya I." Tokugawa

Bijutsukan.
scholar, the fragments are believed to include illustrations to seventeen or eigh

teen episodes. The present whereabouts of some of the fragments are unknown.
Ikeda Shinobu has demonstrated that the compositional format of the Hakuby?
illustrations is quite similar to that seen in the twelfth-century The Tale of Genji
Illustrated Scrolls, comparing, for example, the illustration for episode 27 ("The
Water Basin") of Ise (figure 4) with "The Eastern Cottage I" ("Azumaya I" J?CS
I) illustration from the Genji scrolls (figure 5), or that of episode 100 ("Forgetting
Grasses"; figure 6) with "The Bell Cricket I" ("Suzumushi I" i$5fe I; figure 7).
In both cases the painter has used a trapezoidal format parallel to the picture

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144 Monumenta Nipponica 62:2
Figure 6. Iwama Kaori. Reconstruction of Hakuby? Ise monogatari emaki

episode 100 ("Forgetting Grasses"). From It? 1984, "Gravure," pp. 28-29.
Figure 7. Genji monogatari emaki. "Suzumushi I." Goto Bijutsukan.
frame, in contrast to one perpendicular to the picture frame, which was a distin
guishing feature of later Heian- and Kamakura-period illustrated scrolls.25
Ikeda further asserts that some of the brushwork suggests the work of a copyist
She points to the treatment of the lines of the clothes in the illustration to episode
1 (figures 2 and 3) as evidence of copying. In the case of the woman to the left
gazing out from behind the blinds, for instance, the lines of the edges of her right
sleeve cuffs do not meet, and the relationship between her left sleeve and shoul
der is unclear. The flow of her bangs, cut off at her shoulder, is likewise awk
25 Ikeda 1987, pp. 35-40.

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ward. The connection between the shoulder and the arm of the reclining figure
facing the viewer is also obscure. Such points suggest copying by a relatively
skillful amateur, presumably of what was originally a professional polychrome
work.26 Katagiri dates the calligraphy of the textual passages as unmistakably
mid- to late Kamakura.27
Hakuby? Painting
Before examining the emaki in detail, we should briefly consider the term
hakuby? (Ch. baimiao), which I believe is something of a misnomer for this
work. The first master of the baimiao style in China, written with the characters
"white" and "depict," translated as the "ink-outline" technique or, better, "plain
ink drawing," seems to have been Li Gonglin $?? (ca. 1041-1106) of the
Northern Song dynasty, as exemplified by his Five Tribute Horses (Wuma tu 5
JS0, which was in a Japanese collection prior to the Second World War) and his
handscroll of the Classic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing ^p&g; figure 8) in the New York
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Richard M. Barnhart writes that: "Li did not invent
the technique of painting in black ink, but he elevated to an art the earlier practice
of sketching and making preliminary drafts in ink alone."28 In other words, we
need to distinguish between "plain-ink drawing" as a descriptive term and as a
genre category. In the Chinese context the term typically refers to a specific
genre, whose lineage may be traced back to Li Gonglin.
In Japan, the corresponding term hakuby? is applied to a bewildering variety
of extant works?the term itself was not in general parlance until the late Edo
Figure 8. Li Gonglin, Classic of Fil

ial Piety, illustration to chapter 5. Ex
coll.: C. C. Wang family, from the P.
Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Family
Collection, gift of the Oscar L. Tang
family, 1996 (1996-479a-c); image
? The Metropolitan Museum of Art
26 Ikeda 1987, pp. 33-35.
27 Katagiri 1970, p. 9.
28 Barnhart 1993, p. 18.

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Monumento Nipponica 62:2
Figure 9. Takafusa-kyo tsuya kotoba emaki (13th c).

National Museum of Japanese History, Sakura.
period.29 As a genre of illustrated scrolls, however, its acme is usually taken to

be three works of the late thirteenth to early fourteenth centuries: Takafusa-ky?
tsuya kotoba-e BIMSPKP?f? (late thirteenth to early fourteenth centuries; figure
9), Toyo no akari s?shi-e UBjmKf? (beginning of the fourteenth century), and
Makura no s?shi-e tt^T^ (early fourteenth century). The contrast between
these works and Li's Classic of Filial Piety is instructive. Li's work is believed
to have been created for a small group of close friends, all male intellectuals and
poets, at a time when the very concept of wenren-hua ~SCAM9 or "literati painting,"
was being formulated in contrast to a professional court style. Li's work is also
believed to contain a number of subtle moral messages?messages that are further
reinforced by the "plain-ink drawing" style that emphasizes the pingdan ^Pgf?, or
"flat and pale," aesthetics of restraint championed during the Northern Song.30
In contrast, the Japanese hakuby? style remained within the court and was asso
ciated more with women than with men, though like baimiao the hakuby? style is
often seen as "amateurish" rather than professional. The literary texts illustrated
in this style tend to be court romances, not Confucian moral classics. And rather
than an aesthetics of restraint, the peak of the hakuby? style presents a dynamic
contrast between the monochrome palette and the proliferation of surface detail.
The Ise Hakuby? illustrations are probably too early to be seen as "plain-ink
drawing" in the generic sense. This is especially true if we take them to be copies
of polychrome works. Nonetheless, they are the earliest examples of what would
become the hakuby? emaki genre in sensu stricto and share with those later works
their romantic subject matter.
29 Shinbo 1970, p. 18.
30 Barnhart 1993, p. 87.

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Identifying the Ise Hakuby? monogatari Scenes
While there is general agreement today concerning the identification of the large
majority of the extant Hakuby? Ise illustrations, this has not always been the
case. There are still two pictures, moreover, about which debate continues. By
examining the arguments scholars have used in making their identifications, we
will be able to see some of the methodological problems surrounding this work.
Shirahata Yoshi S?lcfcb originally identified figure 10?showing a woman
(barely visible at the far right) and her lady-in-waiting looking at a man sitting
in front of their veranda?as illustrating episode 49 ("Young Grass").31 An illus
tration for this episode is described in The Tale ofGenji as follows:
... One dull day of hard winter rain he [Niou] went to call on the First Princess.
She and the few women with her were looking at pictures together. They talked
from either side of a standing curtain. ... By way of distraction he had a look at
Her Highness's pictures, which were scattered here and there. They were
amusing "ladies' paintings." ... There were illustrations of Tales oflse, and one
showed a man teaching his sister the kin and saying, "Alas, that it should go to
another [hito no musubari]."
The sight prompted him for some reason to draw a little closer to her and to
whisper, "People in the old days used to see each other face-to-face, when it was
proper for them to do so, but you always put such distance between us."32
Figure 10. Iwama Kaori. Reconstruction of Hakubyo Ise monogatari emaki, episode
49 ("Young Grass"). From It? 1984, "Gravure," p. 13.
31 The following discussion is based on Sayre 1979, vol. 1, pp. 94-96.

32 Trans. Tyler 2001, pp. 899-900; Genji monogatari, vol. 5, pp. 293-94. The First Princess
was Niou's half-sister.

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The identification of the Hakuby? fragment with episode 49 was challenged,

however, by It? Toshiko. The Tenpuku-bon version of this episode, she noted,
does not mention a kin or koto:
Once a man, stirred by the beauty of his younger sister, composed this poem:
Ura wakami How regrettable it is

neyoge ni miyuru that someone else
wakakusa o will tie up
hito no musubamu the young grass,
koto oshi zo omou so fresh and good for sleeping
She replied,
jSrSttSa
Hatsukusa no Why do you speak of me
nado mezurashiki in words novel as the first
koto no ha zo grasses of spring?
ura naku mono o Have I not always loved you
omoikeru kana quite without reserve?33
It? turned her attention to the fourteenth-fifteenth century Ono-ke-bon. Its illus
tration for episode 49 (figure 11) shows the brother and sister in a room, but she
thought the picture for episode 23b ("Kawachi-goe"; figure 12) looked very sim
ilar to the Hakuby? fragment identified by Shirahata as episode 49, with the man
squatting in the garden and the presence of a koto. This part of episode 23 reads:
Figure 11. Ono-ke-bon Ise monogatari

emaki (15th c.?), episode 49 ("Young
Grass"). Ono family. Photograph cour
tesy Shibund?.
33 Trans. McCullough 1968, p. 103; here and below the format for rendering the poems has been
slightly modified. The Japanese transcription follows Kobayashi 1975, pp. 75-76. All further cita
tions from the Ise Tenpuku-bon will be from this edition.

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Figure 12. Ono-ke-bon Ise monogatari emaki, episode 23b ("Kawachi-goe").

Ono family. Courtesy Shibund?.
. . . Some years later the wife's father died, leaving her without support, and the
husband, tired of living with her in poverty, took to visiting a woman in the district
of Takayasu fiiS; in Kawachi province. The wife saw him off with so little apparent
resentment that he began to suspect her of having a lover. One day, pretending to
set out for Kawachi, he hid in the shrubbery and watched her. After making up her
face with meticulous care, she recited this poem, staring into space:
Kazefukeba When the wind blows,

okitsu shiranami the white waves rise (tatsu).
Tatsutayama Shall you be crossing
yowa ni ya kimi ga Tatsutayama
hitori koyuran quite alone by night?34
The irony here is that the Tenpuku-bon text for episode 23 does not mention
a koto or kin either, the absence of which was the precise reason It? rejected
Shirahata's identification of the Hakuby? image with episode 49, despite the fact
that Genji provides evidence that illustrations for this episode featuring a kin did
exist in the Heian period. As has been pointed out in other contexts, moreover,
the man's poem includes words that can be taken as puns for the koto, its strings
(o H) and the sound (ne eF) that it makes.35 Certainly the fact that the man in the
picture is clearly visible?not hiding behind bushes as in figure 12?and is being
looked at by the lady's maid, argues against the identification of the picture with
the "Kawachi-goe" episode. Given what we will see to be the proactive stance
of the women in many of the episodes chosen for illustration in the Hakuby? ver
sion, it seems to me every bit as likely that the Hakuby? fragment in figure 10
depicts the scene between the man and his sister and was not designed for the
"Kawachi-goe" episode.
34 Trans. McCullough 1968, p. 88, emended; Kobayashi 1975, p. 49.

35 Katagiri 1975, pp. 128-31; Mostow 1992, pp. 330-32.

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Heian Ancestor emaki
Kamakura Hakuby? Kuboso Ihon
Muromachi Ono-ke
I I I
Momoyama Chester Spenser Nak
British Mus
Beatty book
Edo Mitsunori Saga

Figure 13. Ise-e genealogy as posited by Ito Toshiko (from Ito 1984, "Kaisetsu," p.
119).
This example also calls attention to some of the hermeneutical problems

involved in identifying which episode a fragment illustrates. Some art historians
appear to believe that more-or-less straight lines of descent can be drawn between
works such as the Hakuby? Ise and much later works such as the mid-fifteenth
to mid-sixteenth-century Ono-ke version, or even the seventeenth-century
printed Saga-bon edition. In this genealogy, the Hakuby? becomes the example
of the "first" or "original" Ise-e, and later works are judged as "reviving" those
forms or departing from them, as seen in figure 13, which reproduces a chart
constructed by It? Toshiko. To the contrary, I would argue, we should see the
Hakuby? Ise simply as the first extant visual appropriation of Ise, not as some
thing normative. It? herself admits that the Ono-ke version has taken imagery
from the Hakuby?'s Nurigome illustration (figure 14)?that is, an illustration to
an episode ("Cupped Hands") that is found only in the variant Nurigome-bon
texts?and applied it to the Tenpuku-bon*s episode 28 ("Unleaking"; figure
Figure 14. NakamuraGakury?.

Reconstruction of Hakuby? Ise
monogatari emaki, Nurigome
bon episode 7. From It? 1984,
"Gravure," p. 17.

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Figure 15. Ono-ke-bon

Ise monogatari emaki,
episode 28 ("Unleak
ing"). Ono family. Photo
graph by the author.
15).36 There is no logical reason why the same could not be said about the
Hakuby?'s episode 49 and Ono-ke-bon 's episode 23; that is, that the artist of the
Ono-ke-bon has adopted imagery found in the Hakuby?'s episode 49 (figure 10)
to illustrate episode 23 (figure 12). Using works that postdate the Hakuby? to
help identify its iconography can thus be problematic.
This is not to say that we cannot find some evidence of standardization of
iconography fairly early. Despite the difference between the thirteenth-century
Kubos?-bon illustration for Episode 1 ("Kasuga Village"; figure 16) and the
Fig?relo. Kubos?-bon Ise monogatari

emaki (13th c), episode 1 ("Kasuga
Village"). Izumi City Kubos? Memorial
Museum.
36 Once a fickle woman left a man. He wrote,
Nad?te kaku Why is it now

au go katami ni impossible for us to meet?
nariniken we who are bound together
mizu morasaji to like the strands of a close-woven basket
musubishi mono o impermeable to water.
Trans. McCullough 1968, p. 92, emended; Kobayashi 1975, p. 56.

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Hakuby? version of the same scene (figures 2 and 3), we can see that in terms
of posture and the disposition of robes there is some similarity between the mid
dle figure of the former and the left-hand figure of the latter. Still, this similar
ity is much weakened in the Muromachi-period Ono-ke-bon (figure 17). In short,
we cannot be sure there was any significant standardization of the iconography
of Ise before the late Muromachi period.37
The development of Ise iconography, in fact, presents a fascinating paradox.
On the one hand, the text proved highly amenable to visual shorthand. Over the
centuries a distinctive iconography took shape around particular episodes that
makes them immediately recognizable through the barest of clues. The most
obvious such examples are the image of a man carrying a woman on his back,
which represents episode 6 ("Akutagawa" ^JH), wherein Narihira abducts the
future Nij? Empress, or the depiction of irises, as in the famous Iris Screens of
Ogata K?rin MM??ff? (1658-1716), to represent the section of episode 9 where
Narihira and his traveling companions reach the bridges of Yatsuhashi Afl? and
he is challenged to write an acrostic poem on the word kakitsubata, or irises.
On the other hand, as Chino Kaori ^Pif #^ notes, many of the episodes and
scenes of Ise are fundamentally generic: it is precisely for this reason that Ise
became the archetypal court romance?it is a veritable handbook of typical
courtly romantic situations. The Ono-ke-bon illustration to episode 49 (figure
11), for instance, could represent almost any instance of a man taking his leave
of a woman. This circumstance facilitated the adaptation of images from one
episode to another. It further left artists free to invent new images, or to treat the
standard images in a novel fashion.
This means that it may well be impossible to establish which episodes some
of the surviving pictures illustrate. Given the generic nature of many of the epi
sodes, we must expect that in many cases the illustrative method entailed no
more than matching the textual episodes to rather standardized images of
Figure 17. Ono-ke-bon Ise

monogatari emaki, episode
1 ("Kasuga Village"). Ono
family. Courtesy Shibund?.
37 This point is also made by Ikeda 1987, p. 43.1 am excluding from the present discussion the
Ihon Ise monogatari emaki, whose iconography is also believed to date from the thirteenth century.

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romantic encounters, the "patterns" (kata M) that, according to Ikeda, define
onna-e.3S We should remember, too, that the original work would have had the
text directly preceding the illustration, rendering any guessing unnecessary. As
I have emphasized in another context, pictures such as these were not designed
to be open to identification without an accompanying explanation.39 A number
of scholars have nevertheless expended much effort in trying to do just this.
A case in point is the scene depicted in figure 18, which shows a nobleman
sitting on a mat, with another man sitting perpendicular to the man's left, with
a pair of shoes in front of him. Shirahata Yoshi originally identified this as a frag
ment of an illustration to the riverside purification ceremony from episode 65,
imagining that the full composition would have included the exorcist and sacred
streamers often depicted (different fragments portraying this scene were in fact
later discovered, but were unknown to Shirahata at the time).40 Almost four dec
ades later, It? Toshiko argued instead that figure 18 illustrates episode 9a ("Yatsu
hashi"). The relevant section from that episode reads:
Since none of the party knew the way, they blundered ahead as best they could,
until in time they arrived at a place called Yatsuhashi in Mikawa province. (It was
a spot where the waters of a river branched into eight channels, each with a bridge,
and thus it had come to be called Yatsuhashi?"Eight Bridges.") Dismounting to
sit under a tree near this marshy area, they ate a meal of parched rice. Someone
glanced at the clumps of irises that were blooming luxuriantly in the swamp. "Com
pose a poem on the subject, 'A Traveler's Sentiments,' beginning each line with a
syllable from the word 'iris' [kakitsubata]" he said. The man recited,
AÂÔÂnfctoSb*noo5??^&5A:?>*U?-S
Karagoromo I have a beloved wife,
kitsutsu narenishi familiar as the skirt
tsuma shi areba of a well-worn robe,
harubaru kinuru and so this distant journeying
tabi o shi zo omou fills my heart with grief.41
Chino Kaori, in turn, writing a few years after It?, held that the image belonged
with episode 7 ("Returning Waves"), which reads:
Once a man set out toward the east because of certain problems that had made life
in the capital uncomfortable for him. Gazing at the foaming white surf as he crossed
the beach between Ise and Owari provinces, he composed this poem:
Itodoshiku How poignant now

sugiyuku kata no my longing
koishiki ni for what lies behind?
38 Ikeda 1987, p. 41; Ikeda 1984, p. 36.

39 Mostow 1988, pp. 166-67.
40 Shirahata 1948, pp. 50-51. The two fragments now held to illustrate the r
ceremony are reproduced in It? 1984, "Gravure," p. 23.
41 Trans. McCullough 1968, pp. 74-75; Kobayashi 1975, p. 21.

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urayamashiku mo enviable indeed
kaeru nami kana the returning waves.42
Chino's identification of the Hakuby? image with episode 7 draws from the
iconography for this scene found in the later Ono-ke-bon and 1608 Saga-bon
(figures 19 and 20). Examined from this perspective, and in comparison to the
* > A Ai."
Figure 18. Iwama Kaori. Recon

struction of Hakuby? Ise mono
gatari emaki, episode 7 ("Returning
Waves"). From It? 1984, "Gra
vure," p. 6.
Figure 19. Ono-ke-bon Ise monogatari emaki, epi

sode 7 ("Returning Waves"). Ono family. Courtesy
Shibund?.
42 Trans. McCullough 1968, pp. 73-74; Kobayashi 1975, p. 18.

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Figure 20. Saga-bon Ise monogatari
(1608), episode 7 ("Returning Waves").
New York Public Library.
Figure 22. Saga-bon Ise monogatari,

episode 9a ("Yatsuhashi"). New York
Public Library.
Figure 21. Ono-ke-bon Ise monogatari emaki, episode 9a

("Yatsuhashi"), detail. Ono family. Courtesy Shibund?.

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Ono-ke-bon and Saga-bon renditions of episode 9 (figures 21 and 22), her

hypothesis is plausible. On the other hand, It? Michito &W?A has raised various
objections to it. He argues that whereas the man in the Saga-bon picture (figure
20) rests his cheek on his hand, seemingly lost in reverie, the man in the Hakuby?
(figure 18) is raising his sleeve to his face?a standard depiction of crying. The
Saga-bon version, moreover, does not include the mat the man is sitting on. It?
points out that Chino herself is unable to explain the shoes in the Hakuby? ver
sion, which do not appear in the Ono-ke-bon or other Muromachi-period works
such as the Hokuni Bunko ??AIKA version.43 In that the text for episode 7
states that the man "gaz[ed] at the foaming white surf as he crossed the beach
between Ise and Owari" (Ise Owari no awai no umizura o yuku ni, nami no ito
shiroku tatsu o mite), one would expect him, It? holds, to keep his shoes on while
sitting down just for a moment, as in figure 19.44
But similar objections can be made about It?'s assertion that figure 18 is in
stead an illustration of episode 9, as posited by It? Toshiko. Among other things,
for instance, he fails to explain the absence of the lunch boxes mentioned in the
text and a standard element of all other versions of the Yatsuhashi episode. Ulti
mately this line of interpretation thus shows diminishing returns. Further, the
debates over identification have largely distracted scholars from addressing the
most important issue: what are the Hakuby? illustrations doing? How do they
receive, interpret, and appropriate the Ise text, and for whom? It is these that
seem to me the truly significant questions, the ones to which I will now turn.
The Hakuby? Ise monogatari emaki and Female Readers

Let us begin our consideration of the way in which the Hakuby? illustrations
appropriate the text of Ise by examining more closely the implications of the
imagery for episode 1 ("Kasuga Village"; figures 2 and 3). Since the Hakuby?
text for this passage no longer survives, to compare the illustration to the text,
we will use the standard Teika Tenpuku-bon version:
In the past a man came of age, and, having property in the village of Kasuga at the
old capital of Nara, he went there to hunt. In that village there lived two very charm
ing (namameitaru) sisters. The man spied in on them. Since it was so incongruous
for them to be, completely unexpectedly, in the old capital, his feelings were thrown
into confusion. The man cut off a piece of cloth from the hem of the hunting-robe
he was wearing, wrote a poem, and sent them in to the women. The man was, in
fact, wearing a hunting-robe with a fern-pattern print.
Kasuga no no Like the tangled-patterned

waka murasaki no printed robe, stained with young
surigoromo purple from the fields of Kasuga,
shinobu no midare the confusion of my secret longing
kagiri shirarezu can know no limit!
43 The Hokuni Bunko version is reproduced in Ito 1984, "Gravure," pp. 64-95.
44 It? 1992, pp. 1-7.

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This is indeed what he said, and he sent it in to them on the spot. Wouldn't he/they
have thought it an amusing course of events (tsuide omoshiroki koto to mo ya
omoikeri)!
Michinoku no Whose fault is it

shinobu mojizuri that my feelings have begun to
tare yue ni like the tangle-patterned print
midare somenishi from the distant north?
ware naranaku ni Since it is not mine, it must be . . .
His poem is the same sentiment as this poem. Men of the past did indeed perform
such impetuous acts of courtliness as this.45
This episode tells us of a young man from the new capital, Heian-ky?, who
goes hunting one day in the former capital of Nara. By this time, Nara was largely
abandoned and run-down, yet, quite unexpectedly, the young man catches sight
of two charming young women who would seem more at home in the new capital
than in the backwater that is now Nara. The young man is so struck by their
beauty that he casts all discretion to the winds and sends a love-poem in to them.
In the Heian period, it was typical to attach such verses to flowers appropriate
to the season, but the young man sends his poem in with a piece of fabric he has
cut from the robe he is wearing. This is marvelously appropriate as he "happens"
to be wearing an outfit made of material dyed in a "tangled-fern" pattern, which
allows him in his poem to compare his feelings of confused longing to the con
fused printed pattern of his robe. Significantly, no reply-poem from the sisters
is included. This fact led Watanabe Minoru to insist that the young man's poem
is about neither love (ren'ai WS?) nor marriage; rather it is a poem in praise of
the opposite sex (isei sanka ?tt?Uft): "What happens between the man and the
sisters is not the subject of the first episode; the subject of the first episode is
what the man does in reaction to the women."46 The focus of the episode is com
pletely on the young man and the "courtliness" of his actions.
We can recognize the layers of Ise's development in the present episode: the
second poem and final editorial comment seem to have been added by a later
redactor, amplifying an earlier version of the text. What this textual history
means is that The Tales oflse was already fairly old by the eleventh century and
that it was formed by many hands. It should not be surprising, consequently, that
many sections of the text are obscure and open to differing interpretations, or
that this was true even in the Heian period. We know that by the Kamakura period
there were several distinct textual lineages and several contending schools of
interpretation.47
In the translation I have given of episode 1, the reader will note that I have
indicated one such place of indeterminancy, the sentence tsuide omoshiroki koto
45 Kobayashi 1975, p. 7.1 provide my own translation here to be able to highlight certain aspects
of the text.
46 Watanabe 1976, pp. 141-42. English translation from Mostow 2000, p. 114.
47 See Bowring 1992 and Klein 2002.

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to mo ya omoiken, or "Wouldn't he/they have thought it an amusing course of

events?" Modern interpretations follow that of Ichij? Kaneyoshi ? ^^S: (1402
1481), who in his Gukensh? ?M?> (1460-1474), takes the thoughts to be those
of the young man: "It means that it seems that the Middle Captain [Narihira]
thinks, 'this is an amusing turn of events,' and performs this romantic gesture."
A minority opinion follows the interpretation found in Sh?monsh? ^M?>, by
Botanka Sh?haku ttfl-T?^tffi (1443-1527), where this phrase is taken to refer to
the second poem, which was actually by the famous poet Minamoto no T?ru M
M (822-859)?in other words, the young man thought it interesting or clever to
base his poem on one by T?ru.48
The earliest extant commentary, Chikensh? H??i?>, written before 1260, how
ever, offers a quite different perspective:
Question: What does "the course of events was amusing" mean?

Answer: These women, since they were of an amorous nature, looked at the man,
and fell in love with him. Nevertheless they were embarrassed to go out to him.
Since he had returned home with no message, when he later sent them this kind
of message from his home, they were happy, and "the course of events was amus
?49
ing. 4y
Here the women are called "amorous," or irokonomu mono V^^KDtrfe?).

Nonetheless, they are also shy or embarrassed (hazukashi H^?^ L). In any event,
the commentator believes that the narrator is speculating on what the women
thought, not the man.
If we were to ask the same question about the meaning of omoshiroki koto
with the Hakuby? illustration in front of us, I would suggest that the point of
view inherent in its composition would make us far more likely to take the sen
tence as referring to the women?didn't they think this charming? Indeed, for
most of its history, readers of Ise could not believe that the women did not
manage a reply-poem, and the dominant reading, as seen in Ketsugish? Pl?#,
by Hosokawa Y?sai IHJflft? (1534-1610), was that the sisters used Tom's poem
as their own reply-poem.50 Analogously, although the text tells us specifically
that the man "peeped in" (kaimami, which means literally "to peep through the
fence") on the women, the Hakuby? illustration has managed to reverse matters
and has the lady-in-waiting peeping out through her blinds, making the man the
"object of the gaze." Further, the viewer enters the composition from the right
and quite low?just about at the same level as the women?and thus is able to
follow the lady-in-waiting's gaze across to the young man, who is absorbed in
the writing of his poem.
In contrast, the thirteenth-century Kubos?-bon (figure 16) has a much higher
perspective on the women's interior space (resulting, for instance, in the near
elimination of the lady-in-waiting sitting near the blinds). Due to the fact that
48 Takeoka 1987, pp. 51-54.

49 Takeoka 1987, p. 51.
50 Takeoka 1987, pp. 56-57.

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the width of this illustration is about half that of most of the other extant illus
trations from this set, many scholars believe that it has been trimmed and that
the figure of the peeping man originally appeared on the right.51 If so, the viewer
would be following the man's gaze, peeping with him on the apparently unsus
pecting women. As I have suggested elsewhere, these two illustrations were
clearly designed for two very different kinds of readers. While the gold-encrusted
Kubos? version, created under the sponsorship of the Jimy?-in faction, is making
a statement about the latter's cultural authority, the Hakuby? seems more attuned
to a reading attentive to the female characters of the Tales and their feelings.52
The "Feminine Re-Guard,f

Elsewhere I have discussed what I have called "the feminine re-guard" in Heian
period prose and painting, that is, a female gaze that can be identified in both
verbal and visual texts. The "feminine re-guard" sums up a complex of issues
that includes: 1) evidence, as found in phrases such as "it looked just like a pic
ture" (e no gotoshi), for a "female gaze" directed at men in classical visual and
verbal texts that visually objectified males; 2) textual evidence for the relative
instability of this gaze, and its consequent "boomerang effect" back on the
woman herself; and 3) the use of figures in illustrated scrolls that gaze out of the
picture-frame, back at the viewer, disrupting the viewer's absorption in the fic
tion presented and, thus, putting her "on guard" concerning her fascination with
romantic fantasy.53 It is the tradition of this feminine re-guard that explains, I
believe, the frequent depictions of women gazing at men in the Hakuby? scrolls.
Of the nineteen episodes represented in the extant pictorial fragments, five, we
may note, depict women gazing at men (episode 1, "Kasuga Village"; episode
23a, "The Well-Curb"; episode 49, "Young Grass"; episode 95, "Dividing
Barrier"; and episode 100, "Forgetting Grasses").54
The most charming example is the illustration to the first part of episode 23,
"The Well-Curb" (figure 23). The text passage, fortunately, is also extant for this
section of the Hakuby?. As it not only differs in a number of places from Teika's
Tenpuku-bon, but also offers unique readings, let us start with a fairly literal
translation:
In the past, the children of men who were posted from time to time to the coun
try used to come out and play next to a well, and when they became adults,
although both the man and the woman were embarrassed, the man thought, "I
will have this woman indeed"; yet while the woman continued to think "That
man indeed," her parents betrothed her to another?but she would not hear of it.
This came from the house of the master next door:
51 For example, Chino 1991, p. 24.

52 Mostow 2003b and, in English, Mostow 2003a.
53 Mostow 1995; and in Japanese, Mostow 1997b.
54 This topic has also been addressed by Kat? 2001, in a comparison of the Hakuby? composi
tional format with that of the Tokugawa-Got? Genji Scrolls. Kat? notes that the Hakuby? almost
invariably presents the male figure in an oblique frontal pose, in contrast to the much greater

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Figure 23. Nakamura Gakury?. Re

construction of Hakuby? Ise monoga
tari emaki, Episode 23a ("Well-Curb").
From It? 1984, "Gravure," p. 10.
Tsutsuitsu no My height, that we

itsutsu ni kakeshi used to measure against
maro [ga] take the well's well-curb,
suginikerashi na seems to have surpassed it, too,
imo mizaru ma [ni] while I could not see my dear!
The woman's reply:
Kurabekoshi My parted hair, too,

furiwakegami mo that we used to compare,
kata [su]ginu has passed my shoulders.
kimi narazu shite If not you,
tare ka agu beki who should put it up?
They sent messages back and forth like this, and at last they fulfilled their original
desire.55
The most conspicuous difference of this version from the Tenpuku-bon is the
greater complementarity of the man's and woman's interior speech. Where the
Tenpuku-bon has "otoko wa 'kono onna o koso erne' to . . . onna wa 'kono o toko
o' to," the Hakuby? version reads: "otoko wa 'kono onna koso erne' to . . . onna
variety in the Genji Scrolls. She argues that while the former's composition gives the viewer a
sense of proximity to the male character, the near-exclusive focus on the man is often at variance
with the focus of the text, as for instance, in the illustration that she identifies, along with It?
Toshiko, as 23b, "Kawachi-goe" (figure 10; see the discussion of this identification above). Kat?
attributes these characteristics to the "clich?d" (j?t?ku ^?^), "purimitivu," and "na?vu" nature
of the Hakuby? (again, in contrast to the greater sophistication of the Genji Scrolls). While there
are several problems with Kat?'s analysis, the most basic one stems from a lack of consideration
of a gendered gaze.
55 Transcription from It? 1984, "Kaisetsu," p. 17. Brackets indicate kana supplied from the
Tenpuku-bon (Kobayashi 1975, p. 47).

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wa 'ano otoko o koso' to." Here, the woman's words are close to being as direct
as the man's, his emphatic particle koso matched with her own. The change from
"this man" (kono otoko) to "that man" (ano otoko) is also interesting, perhaps
suggesting the point of view of the female protagonist, rather than that of the
narrator.56 The narrator's presence is clearer in the Hakuby? text, perhaps in
conjunction with the natural diegetic nature of the visual medium; in the con
cluding phrase the Hakuby? text thus adds a deictic: "they sent messages back
and forth like this" (kaku ii-iite tsui ni).51 Reflecting this emphasis on the wom
an's perspective, in the illustration, the smaller girl, with her bushy eyebrows,58
fixes the boy rather intently with her gaze (figure 24).
Such direct expression of female desire, however, seems to have engendered
some anxiety, and in several of the illustrations we see the female gaze being
displaced from the central female character to a lower-ranking lady-in-waiting.
This is the case in the first episode, as well as in figure 10, variously identified
as section two of episode 23 ("Kawachi-goe") or the incestuous episode 49
("Young Grass"). Regardless of which episode the latter picture represents, a
distinctive feature of the Hakuby? rendering (as compared, for instance, to the
Ono-ke versions of these episodes, figures 11 and 12) is the inclusion of a serv
ing woman. Further, it is she who is exercising the gaze. We see this same tech
nique in literature, most obviously in the Cinderella-like The Tale of the Lady
Figure 24. Hakuby? Ise monogatari emaki, Episode

23a ("Well-curb"). Original format, detail. Yamato
Bunkakan.
56 Katagiri 1970 transcribes the text as "kono" rather than "ano," but this is clearly an error.
57 On deictics in poem-pictures (uta-e), see Mostow 1988, pp. 34-42; and Mostow 1992, pp.
329-30.
58 The unshaved eyebrows of young girls were thought to be particularly childish. See the men
tion of them in Genji monogatari in Mostow 1999c; and, in Japanese, Mostow 1997b.

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Ochikubo (Ochikubo monogatari ^?I#jin, last quarter of the tenth century),

where all agency is given to the lady's maid, who is the one to go out and find a
husband for the lady and encourage him to rescue her.59
Another episode in the Hakuby? where a lower-ranking attendant assumes the
active role is episode 100 ("Forgetting Grasses"; figure 6). The Tenpuku-bon text
for this episode reads as follows:
One day as a man was walking along the corridor between the K?r?den WEM
and the Seiry?den iWuW?, a hand thrust out a sprig of greenery from inside a high
ranking lady's apartment. "Can forgetting-grass be called 'herb of remem
brance'?" a voice asked. He took the plant and replied,
Wasuregusa Though the fields may seem

ouru nobe to wa o'ergrown with forgetting-grass,
miruramedo this is the herb of remembrance?
ko wa shinobu nari and remembering,
nochi mo tanoman I look to the future.60
The picture has, according to It? Toshiko, been trimmed on the left, wh
"high-ranking lady" would have been sitting. Her lady-in-waiting is the o
ing out from between the blinds, with her right hand actually outside th
suggests that this is to represent the line idasase tamaerikereba, "when
[her poem to the man] thrust out"). Here again, the desire is the lady's,
manifestation is transferred to her servant. Such a bifurcation seems to have
necessary to permit the expression of female sexual desire.
The Hakuby? illustrations to episodes 1 and 100 (figures 3 and 6) p
images of a man absorbed in writing a poem, "absorption" being, as Mi
Fried has shown, that state necessary to happy voyeurism; that is, the one vi
should not be aware that he or she is being gazed at.61 In other words, w
see in the Hakuby? illustrations is the specularization of the male as an o
the female viewer's visual pleasure. When we consider the illustrations wi
concept in mind, it becomes much clearer how other male figures amo
extant fragments must have been designed primarily for the viewing ple
women, as in episode 4 ("The Western Wing"; figure 25), where we see th
composing a poem about how changed the world seems since his love lef
59 See the excellent study on Ochikubo by Simone Mauclaire, who writes: "Il est essen
souligner que notre Cendrillon n'est pas un produit de la fiction parce que sa r?ussite peut
presque irr?alisable dans le contexte historique du 10e si?cle. La dame Ochikubo est un ar
social: elle est la personne dot?e de saiwai qui peut r?ussir en d?pit de toutes les cont
mat?rielles qui semblent s'y opposer. Ce qui est significatif donc, au niveau de l'?labor
litt?raire du monogatari, est le fait que tout y est mis en oeuvre pour nous presenter C
comme une personne passive, qui ne peut ?tre tenue en aucun cas responsable de sa d
heureuse." Mauclaire 1984, p. 289. For an English translation of Ochikubo, see Whiteho
Yanagisawa 1965.
60 Trans. McCullough 1968, p. 138; Kobayashi 1975, p. 152.
61 Fried 1980; for an application of this concept to Heian painting, see Mostow 19957

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Here again, comparison to the Kubos?-bon illustration (figure 26) is instructive.

The latter illustration seems to invite the viewer to join with the male protago
nist, looking over his shoulder with him at the landscape and sharing his con
templation of the moon and blossoms. The Hakuby? (figure 25), on the other
hand, gives us a full frontal view of the man, allowing the viewer to appreciate
the man's longing for his absent love. The contrast could hardly be greater.
In its orientation to the female viewer's visual enjoyment, the Hakuby? even
includes an illustration of a scene where the sexual aggression of court women puts
the man at a loss (figure 27). No other extant medieval illustrated version of Ise of
which I am aware chose to depict this episode (episode 58; "Nagaoka Village"):
A man who was a great gallant once built himself a house at Nagaoka and took up
residence there. Several very attractive ladies were in service at a neighboring
Figure 25. Iwama Kaori. Reconstruction of Hakubyo Ise monogatari emaki,

episode 4 ("The Western Wing"). From It? 1984, "Gravure," p. 4.

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episode 58 ("Nagaoka Village"). From It? 1984, "Gravure," pp. 22-23.
imperial establishment, and one day some of them caught sight of the man as he
was superintending the rice harvest in his fields?it was after all a rural spot. The
assembled ladies bore down upon him (atsumarite irikikerebd), calling, "Isn't this
a rather odd occupation for a famous lover?" The man fled (nigete) in confusion to
the privacy of an inside room, whereupon one of his tormentors recited this poem:
Arenikeri Poor neglected house!

aware ikuyo no No doubt it has seen
y ado nare ya many generations pass
sumiken hito no and thus its former resident
otozure mo senu no longer cares to come here.
They had by then assembled and seated themselves (atsumariki ite) at the man
sion itself. The man sent out this reply:
?< 6^nx&ntz^^t(D?nrc^\t^?izhîz(Drrc<f^???
Mugura oite The fiends who swarm around
aretaru yado no at the least opportunity?
uretaki wa they are what is disagreeable
kari ni mo oni no about the ruined house
sudaku narikeri choked with weeds.
"Would you like us to pick up the gleanings for you?" the ladies next ask
retorted,

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Uchiwabite If I were to learn
ochibo hirou to that poverty impelled you
kikamaseba to pick up fallen ears,
ware mo tazura ni I should be most happy
yukamashi mono o to join you in the fields.62
Takeoka himself describes the ladies as "extremely impudent" (zuibun bushi

tsuke ???)v$<b*3tf) and "brazen" (atsukamashii ?fe^^S LU) and as "putting the
man to shame" (otoko kaomake ?BMM W*), but he notes that their behavior appears
to have been within the acceptable norms of the time, at least as found in early
Heian fiction.63 The Hakuby? illustration likewise would seem to be designed to
allow the viewer to savor the man's discomfiture. We presumably would follow
the man's gaze, to the left as the scroll was unrolled, to find an assembly of
women bearing down on him. The small structure at the top of the hill is a guard
hut, made for the protection of the grain, but it also seems to symbolize the small
space into which the man will flee and around which the women will "assemble
and seat themselves."
Other illustrations that emphasize the specularization of the man include
episode 9b ("Mt. Utsu"; figure 28); episode 45 ("Fireflies"; figure 29), where the
man composes two poems for the spirit of a girl who had died of love for him;
and, following Chino, what I take to represent episode 7 ("Returning Waves";
figure 18), where the man envies the waves that can return to the capital where
his love is, although he himself cannot. All these scenes, hardly coincidently,
are compositions that allow the viewer to contemplate a man composing poems
Figure 28. Nakamura Gakuryo. Reconstruction of Hakubyo Ise monogatari

emaki, episode 9b ("Mt. Utsu"). From It? 1984, "Gravure," pp. 8-9.
62 Trans. McCullough 1968, pp. 106-107; emended; Kobayashi 1975, pp. 81-82.
63 Takeoka 1987, p. 857.

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Figure 29. Iwama Kaori. Reconstruction of Hakuby? Ise mono

gatari emaki, episode 45 ("Fireflies"). From It? 1984, "Gravure,"
pp. 18-19.
on his longing for a woman, as, for example, the poem for the Mt. Utsu episode,
where the man writes to his love back at the capital, complaining that she does
not even visit him in his dreams:
TZ>frteZ>o'OV>\k^<Do~D? izhtytblzhAlzfct?fafc?UV
Suruga naru Beside Mount Utsu
Utsu no yamabe no in Suruga
utsutsu ni mo I can see you
yume ni mo hito ni neither waking
awanu narikeri nor, alas, even in my dreams.64
The extant fragments of the Hakuby? also include an illustration for an ep
found in the extended texts and Nurigome-bon textual lines (figure 14):
Once there was a man who ran off with a certain lady. As they traveled they
to a place where there was fresh water. "Would you like some?" the man asked. T
lady nodded, and since he had no cup he scooped it up with his hands for her. Th
he took her to the capital. Later he died and she set out to return to her old h
When she reached the spot where he had given her water, she recited this poe
AW^^^n<D7\(.^tsrn^^&<^t?^nLA\ti^^\t
?hara ya Where is he now?
sekai no mizu o the man who scooped up
musubitsutsu handful upon handful
64 Trans. McCullough 1968, p. 75; Kobayashi 1975, p. 22.

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aku y a to toishi of Ohara's clear water,
hito wa izura wa asking, "Is it enough?"
A most affecting story.65
The picture does not illustrate the moment of the poem's composition, but rather
the earlier event. The solicitousness of the man is striking, and the episode serves
as a kind of female-oriented reversal of the famous Akutagawa episode: in the
Akutagawa episode it is the lady who dies (eaten in one gulp by an ogre!), and
the man who composes a poem of longing and mourning for her. In fact, in the
Nurigome-bon, this episode directly follows the Akutagawa episode, suggesting
that it was seen as a kind of variation on it.66
I have argued previously that the feminine re-guard is not solely voyeuristic,
but includes a self-reflexivity that is apparent in texts such as The Kager? Diary
and The Pillow Book of Sei Sh?nagon. This same self-reflexive gaze is enacted
in the illustration to episode 27 ("The Water Basin"; figure 4). Here again, we
are lucky enough to have the text (kotobagaki) among the extant Hakuby? frag
ments, and it is distinct from any other. Let us start with the emakVs kotobagaki
("T" refers to the Tenpuku-bon and "A" to the Awa no Kuni Bunko-bon to which
the Hakuby? text is related;67 my base text is taken from It? Toshiko's tran
scription; "K" indicates an alternate transcription by Katagiri Y?ichi):
In the past, a man went to a woman's house [T: for one night], and when he did not
[T: even] go again, the woman's parents [T: the woman; A: the woman's parent(s)
became angry and] took the reed-cover (nukisu Mm) off where she washed her
hands, and when she saw herself [A: crying] in the reflection of the wash-basin,
she said to herself:
Ware bakari "There is surely no

mono omou hito wa other person with worries
mata mo araji to as many as I,"
omoeba mizu no but when I think this, under
shita ni mo arikeri the water there is another!
Since she had composed this [T: Overhearing her compose this], that man who had
not come heard of it and:
Û<^\zn^^^^hj^t^^^^^(DLtz\zhh^^XJPhU
T: *>3Z:?K:&<
K: fc??uÔD
Minakuchi ni In the sluices
ware y a miyuran surely you can see me!
kawazu sae Don't even frogs
65 Trans. McCullough 1968, p. 150; the transcription of the original is taken from Ise m
gatari (NKBT), p. 182.
66 Takehana n.d.; see also Ichihara 1987.
67 Katagiri 1981, p. 23.

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mizu no shita ni mo under the water
morogoe ya shi [D] share their voices?
(T: morogoe ni naku (T: sing with voices together
K: morogokoro nari) K: have their feelings united)68
As can be seen, there is some debate about the transliteration of the text, espe
cially the last line of the poem, where Katagiri and It? differ. Apart from that,
however, the Hakuby? diverges from Teika's Tenpuku-bon in over half a dozen
places. Let us consider the more significant. First, in the standard version, the
man has come for one night?of the expected three nights of a wedding cere
mony?but does not continue after the first night. If this were an arranged mar
riage, it would be understandable why the girl's parents would be angry. Only
the Awa no Kuni Bunko-bon, however, explicitly states that the parents became
angry. Following this line of thought, Frits Vos translates the (Tenpuku-bon)
phrase nukisu o uchiyarite Mm^^^M?T as "threw away the bamboo
cover,"69 indicating that it is one of the parents who did this, presumably in anger.
The Kadokawa kogo daijiten, on the other hand, defines uchiyaru simply as
sutete oku, "to set aside in preparation [for something]," which would seem to
suggest the woman herself as the subject of the verb. The Tenpuku-bon does not
mention parents, and it is clearly the woman who takes the reed-matting off the
wash-basin. The Hakuby? text simply says that a man who came (once, or sev
eral times, we do not know) did not come again. It has "the parent(s)" (oya no),
making them seem the most logical subject for removing the cover, but nothing
about their being angry.
Two other notable differences concern the circumstances of the woman com
posing the poem and how the man hears, or hears of, it. In place of the Tenpuku
bon's to yomu o, the Hakuby? has to yomikereba, allowing for the possibility
that the man heard the woman's poem at some later time. Similarly it also has
simply kikite (he heard) rather than tachikikite (he overheard). This difference
seems of potentially the greatest significance to a pictorialization of this episode,
and yet the Hakuby? clearly has the man overhearing the woman recite her
poem?unless we interpret the male figure at the right to be her father.
The more one analyzes the episode and the illustration, the less sense they
make. How can "the man who did not come" (kozarikeru otoko) overhear
anything? (Presumably the phrase means: "who had not come [until now].")
Visually, what is he doing in the interior of the house? (Other illustrators have
him listening from outside and behind a fence, as in the S?tatsu ^? illustra
tions.70) The picture also shows the woman's maid pouring water over the lady's
hands and into the basin. Yet the very function of a nukisu was to prevent splash
ing when water was poured into the basin, so as not to dampen the user's clothes.
Why, then, would it have been "taken off" deliberately?
68 See It? 1984, "Kaisetsu," pp. 23-24; Kobayashi 1975, pp. 55-56. The last line of the final
poem is garbled. Following the extended texts, Katagiri emends it to "morogokoro nari." See
Katagiri 1970, p. 19.
69 Vos 1957, vol. l,p. 193.
70 See It? 1984, "Gravure," p. 259.

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It might help to simply consider the text, and ask: what is the point of this
episode? More particularly, what is the attitude of the man here? The typical
reading of this episode sees the man's poem as, in Helen McCullough's words,
"a polite reassurance."71 Takeoka challenges this view:
Due to his repeating the words of the woman's poem, "I"/"me" (ware) and "under
the water," a feeling of him making fun of her comes through. It is a cruel poem
that mocks the woman. Probably to the man she seemed like an ugly woman who
made him think of a frog. . . . These two poems are not exchanged; they are two
separate soliloquies.72
The mention of the parent, then, remains important?it suggests more of an

arranged marriage than one of the heart?no wonder the woman thinks there
must be no one with as many cares as she.73 The water basin (tarai), too, was an
essential furnishing in the Heian marriage ritual.74 Our first reading of this epi
sode, then, following Takeoka, is that the man is insulting the woman. Such an
interpretation would be in concordance with the rather ruthless sense of "courtli
ness" (miyabi) Ise embodies and would bring this episode in line with other
episodes that mock the male protagonist's female interlocutors (e.g., episodes
14, "Drowning the Cock"; 62, "Yesteryear's Blossoms"; 63, "One Year Short
of a Hundred").
Such a perspective, however, can hardly be expected to have appealed to
female readers. A staple of the later literary romance genre, moreover, was a
woman being forced on a socially superior man for the sake of her parents' ambi
tion. The Hakuby? illustration invites us to sympathize with the woman in such
a position, by the sympathetic look of the serving woman, but most particularly
by the unusual depiction of the woman's reflection in the basin. This picture very
much reminds one of Michitsuna's Mother examining her own face in a mirror,
contrasting her aged condition with her husband's seemingly eternal youth.75
Contrary to Takeoka's interpretation, in the Hakuby? depiction of this scene,
the poems are not soliloquies; they occur in the same space, despite the fact that
the text of the Hakuby? does not have the man "overhearing" (tachikikite) the
woman. Here again, I believe, we see the influence of a woman-centered read
ing on the reception of Ise. Although it is only the Teika line that has the man
overhearing the woman's poem?both the extended texts line and the abbrevi
ated texts line accord with the Hakuby? text?the inclusion of the image of the
man does change this episode from one of mockery to one of redeemed love.
Just as readers could not accept that the sisters of episode 1 would not have sent
a reply-poem, and committed considerable violence to the grammar of the
71 McCullough 1968, p. 215.

72 Takeoka 1987, p. 580.
73 In fact, Shirahata's early reading of this illustration is in agreement with Takeoka's interpre
tation; see below, note 80.
74 As evidenced again in Ochikubo monogatari. See Whitehouse and Yanagisawa 1965, p. 34;
Ochikubo monogatari, pp. 110-11.
75 Kager? nikki, pp. 341-42; Arntzen 1997, p. 321. For an analysis of this episode, see Mostow
1995.

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original text to come up with a reading that conformed to their expectations, so

I suspect we can see another example of creative misreading that made Ise more
amenable to a female audience in the Teika line's "overhearing" and in the diver
gence of the Hakuby?'s illustration from its text.76
The feminine re-guard is relatively weak, and often boomerangs, so that the
gazing woman suddenly finds herself the object of the man's gaze, a situation
suggested by the illustration to episode 95 ("Dividing Barrier"; figure 30):
In the past, there was a man who served the empress of the Second Ward. For
some time he called on a woman who also served there and with whom he was
always exchanging glances. When he said to her: "Won't you allow an interview,
through a screen or something?and let me reveal to you just a little of the pains
that are weighing on me?" the lady, very secretly, met him, but kept a barrier
between them. As they were speaking, the man [recited:]
nz.\^Lizz.m?^^?^&^(Dm^rz^^^^^^^njp^xci:
Hikoboshi ni Surely my love is greater
koi wa masarinu than that of the Heavenly Herdsboy!
Amanogawa The River of Heaven,
hedatsuru seki o a barrier that divides us,
ima wa yamete y o oh, please drop it now.
Moved by this poem, she let him in.77
The illustration skillfully allows a reader to contemplate, and experience her

self, the woman's varying and conflicting feelings. The man is presumably
Narihira, the sometime-lover of the Second Ward empress herself. The image of
the man virtually oozes charm and charisma. He and the lady have been
"exchanging glances" (mikawasu), so she is clearly culpable in encouraging him.
And in fact, he has been visiting her at night for some time at her chambers at
court (yobai watarikeri, translated as "for some time he called on a woman"),
presumably passing notes and poems back and forth through one of her serving
women. The woman must be extremely cautious?there is virtually no privacy
at court, and perhaps she even has to worry about the jealousy of the empress,
her patron. But she agrees to meet with the man?face-to-face, but in fact with
a screen or bamboo-curtain between them. This is playing with fire, and she
knows it. The situation, however, allows her to get a relatively clear view of the
man. But his very proximity to the screen seems threatening, and in the illustra
tion we see the woman turning to the side and concealing her own face with her
fan. And yet, after an especially wonderful verse (of which the translation, alas,
gives not a hint), the woman herself elects to open the curtain for the man, let
76 Needless to say, such creative misreading is not limited to female readers, as the baroque
"allegorical" readings of Ise in the Reizei f?A-school tradition amply demonstrate. Again, see
Bowring 1992 and Klein 2002.
77 Kobayashi 1975, p. 146. My translation. The last line is literally ainikeri, "she met/came
together with him." Vos notes that the Nurigome-bon instead has the line kore o okashi to ya
omoiken, "Won't she have thought this charming?" Vos 1957, vol. 2, p. 143.

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episode 95 ("Dividing Barrier"). From It? 1984, "Gravure," pp. 26-27.
him into her room, and sleep with him. It seems to me that the Hakuby?'s ren
dition of this episode allows us to imagine all these thoughts and moods of the
woman, vicariously experiencing her anxiety and arousal. Both "The Water
Basin" episode and this one, then, pictorialize a kind of feminine self-reflexivity
that constructs a recognizably feminine subject-position. This attention to fem
inine subjectivity is a distinctive feature of the Hakuby? illustrations.
Certainly, then, these seem to be "pictures that appeal to womanly taste," as
Edward Seidensticker translated the term onna-e in the passage from Genji cited
above.78 As mentioned, we know from this passage that illustrations to Ise were
one of the things included in the category onna-e. In his introductory essay on
this term in the special edition of Yamato bunka ttu^t^ devoted to the Hakuby?
Ise, the literary scholar Tamagami Takuya JL?MM argues that "pictures for
women, pictures that were thought to please women, were called 'onna-e' . . .
the men who appear in 'onna-e' are men who make women their partners, men
who long for and suffer over women."79 As we have seen, the illustrations of the
Hakubyo emaki present us with just such scenes of men longing for and suffer
ing over women.80
78 Seidensticker 1976, p. 857. See above, p. 147. Royall Tyler, in the translation quoted there,
renders it as "ladies' paintings."
79 Tamagami 1970, p. 8.
80 While the scholarly consensus today is to view the Hakuby? as an example of onna-e,
Shirahata Yoshi, in her 1948 article, labels them danseiteki na monogatari-e ISttW&ftpnf?,

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Conclusion
The Tales of Ise is not a pretty text. Its valorization of "courtliness" and atten
dant disdain of all who were judged to exemplify "rusticity" (satobi MXS) or
"boorishness" (hinabi ilW) were the results of both youth and violence, as
Watanabe remarked.81 However, this male-authored text underwent consider
able reinterpretation at the hands of subsequent female readers. These readers
looked for themselves in the text, becoming the stories' subjects rather than sim
ply their objects. Illustration of Ise further emerged from an amateur practice
that was used not only for illustrating other monogatari, but for recording the
daily life of the aristocracy as well, onna-e. The surviving Hakuby? emaki frag
ments are evidence of a decidedly female-centered interpretation of Ise, one that
brings it much closer to other monogatari and women's autobiographical writ
ing.
Despite its historical priority, however, I do not want to be seen as arguing
that the Hakuby? version represents some "original" set of illustrations to Ise, or
the "correct" interpretation. Ise is a paradigmatic example of a text with no "ori
gins," but "always already" reread and rewritten. The Hakuby? pictures
represent, therefore, the earliest extant visual appropriation of the Ise text, one
already removed from the original context(s) of its formation and most likely
divorced from any "original" motivation(s) that might be attributed to the text's
process of formation. What the Hakuby? offers us is a reception and construc
tion of Ise specific to aristocratic women, one that focuses on active female desire
and sexuality and manifests that desire through a distinctly feminine gaze and a
corresponding specularization of the male. Such pictorializations aided a read
ing of the text that found in Ise subject-positions for the kind of readers/writers
who produced such texts as The Kager? Diary and The Tale of Genji.
"masculine tale-illustrations" (p. 63). It should be remembered that illustrations such as episode
58 ("Nagaoka Village") were not known to her at the time. Her identification is part and parcel,
however, of her view that the Hakuby? pictures are related to the rise of the nise-e IHf? portrai
ture genre and Kamakura "realism"?and an oversimplified belief that the Kamakura period was
"an age for men" {dansei nojidai J9tt<?>B#f?, p. 64). She believes that the style of the Hakuby?
represents a kind of "realism" and that the figures are portrayed accurately, rather than "romanti
cally," as they are in the twelfth-century Genji scrolls. Her reading of episode 27 ("The Water
Basin"), for instance, sees the man depicted as cold and sarcastic, and the woman as possibly mod
eled on an ugly woman who actually lived during the period (p. 64).
81 Watanabe 1976, p. 154; see also Mostow 2000, p. 114.

189.102.45.151 on Fri, 21 Aug 2020 19:21:00 UTC
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Female Readers and Early Heian Romances: The Hakubyō Tales of Ise Illustrated Scroll Fragments

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Female Readers and Early Heian Romances: The "Hakubyō Tales of Ise Illustrated Scroll

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other ladies-in-waiting, such as Sei Sh?nagon ?n'PW? (966?-after 1017) and

The Texts of Ise monogatari

3 Watanabe 1976, p. 143.

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garded. Today, the preferred text is the Tenpuku-bon, completed by Teika in

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pictures he had painted of the interesting places in Michinoku."7 And in book 3

While formats presumably existed for the rendition of landscapes such as

Though admittedly we have only meager remains of early secular painting to go

7 mmmiz, zfrLfruttztzziizo*. mizfrgx, fiT???oTitfcj?>?nn

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Illustrations to The Tales of Ise

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The Hakuby? Pictures

18 Privately owned. Reproduced in It? 1984 and Chino 1991.

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Dan Name Text Picture Owner Figure

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Figure 3. Iwama Kaori. Reconstruction of Hakuby? Ise monogatari emaki,

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Figure 4. Nakamura Gakury?. Reconstruction of Hakubyo Ise monogatari

Figure 5. Genji monogatari emaki (12th c), "Azumaya I." Tokugawa

scholar, the fragments are believed to include illustrations to seventeen or eigh

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Figure 6. Iwama Kaori. Reconstruction of Hakuby? Ise monogatari emaki

Figure 7. Genji monogatari emaki. "Suzumushi I." Goto Bijutsukan.

25 Ikeda 1987, pp. 35-40.

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Figure 8. Li Gonglin, Classic of Fil

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Figure 9. Takafusa-kyo tsuya kotoba emaki (13th c).

period.29 As a genre of illustrated scrolls, however, its acme is usually taken to

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31 The following discussion is based on Sayre 1979, vol. 1, pp. 94-96.

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The identification of the Hakuby? fragment with episode 49 was challenged,

Ura wakami How regrettable it is

Figure 11. Ono-ke-bon Ise monogatari

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Figure 12. Ono-ke-bon Ise monogatari emaki, episode 23b ("Kawachi-goe").

Kazefukeba When the wind blows,

34 Trans. McCullough 1968, p. 88, emended; Kobayashi 1975, p. 49.

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Kamakura Hakuby? Kuboso Ihon

Edo Mitsunori Saga

This example also calls attention to some of the hermeneutical problems

Figure 14. NakamuraGakury?.

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Figure 15. Ono-ke-bon

Fig?relo. Kubos?-bon Ise monogatari

Nad?te kaku Why is it now

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Figure 17. Ono-ke-bon Ise

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Itodoshiku How poignant now

38 Ikeda 1987, p. 41; Ikeda 1984, p. 36.

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Figure 18. Iwama Kaori. Recon

Figure 19. Ono-ke-bon Ise monogatari emaki, epi