Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters) · 132 of 191

[Sect. CXXV.—Emperor Nin-Toku (Part VIII.—He Loves Yata-No-Waki-Iratsume).]

The Heavenly Sovereign, loving Yata-no-waki-iratsume, deigned to send her an august Song. That Song said:

Insight

The Emperor's song to Yata-no-waki-iratsume, condoling with her on her childlessness — 'will the one sedge-stem of Yata, having no children, wither as it stands?' — uses the image of a solitary sedge on the moor as a figure for the unmarried, childless woman. The metaphor of a single plant standing alone for a person without descendants belongs to one of the deepest pattern-grooves of premodern poetry across cultures: the Hebrew Psalm 1:3 contrasts the planted-by-water flourishing tree to the chaff that blows away; the Mahabharata's Yudhishthira repeatedly likens dynastic discontinuity to a tree without saplings; the Old English elegies (Wanderer, Seafarer) use the standing-tree image with similar resonance. The pun on suga (sedge) and sugashi (pure) that the Japanese carries cannot be reproduced in English, but Chamberlain's footnote registers it: Nin-toku is calling his mistress both childless and pure in a single homophonic gesture.Kojiki CXXV (Nin-toku Loves Yata)

"Will the one sedge-stem of Yata, having no children, wither as it stands? Poor sedge-moor! Sedge-moor indeed is what I may say—poor pure girl!" 1

Then Yata-no-waki-iratsume replied in a Song, saying:

Insight

Yata-no-waki-iratsume's reply — 'even though the one sedge stem of Yata be alone, if the Great Lord say it is right, even though it be alone, it is right' — is a small piece of perfectly compressed devotion. Her contentment with childlessness is contingent solely on the sovereign's approval of her state; the bond she values is not biological continuance but the lord's regard. The same logic survives in classical Japanese aesthetic and emotional ideals — the kokoro (heart) of the beloved is held to matter more than any external consequence — and runs through the Heian court literature and into the medieval monogatari tradition. There is a Christian conceptual parallel in Mary's fiat at the Annunciation in Luke 1:38: 'let it be done to me according to thy word.' Both are women's expressions of consent that gather their dignity entirely from the speaker's acknowledged subordination to a higher will, and both have been read variously across the centuries as troubling or as transcendent depending on the reader's frame.Kojiki CXXV (Nin-toku Loves Yata)

"Even though the one sedge stem of Yata be alone, if the Great Lord say it is right even though it be alone [it is right.]" 2

So the Yata Tribe 3 was established as the august proxy of Yata-no-waki-iratsume.

Footnotes 349:1 In this Song the Emperor condoles with his mistress on her childlessness: "Will the single sedge on the moor of Yata die without leaving any offspring? Sedge, indeed! Yes, sedge is the term I use for my metaphor, but what is in my thoughts is the girl I love."—There is in the original a jeu-de-mots, not capable of translation into English, between suge or suga, "sedge, and sugashi pure."

349:2 The girl replies: "Even though I be childless. I care not if my lord cares not."

349:3 Yata-be.