A Tale of False Fortunes

Japanese literature

Enchi F

A Tale of False Fortunes
is a masterful translation of Enchi Fumiko’s (1905–1986) modern classic
Namamiko monogatari
. Written in 1965, this prize-winning work of historical fiction presents an alternative
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account of an imperial love affair narrated in the eleventh-century
ale of

umiko

romance
A Tale of Flowering Fortunes (Eiga monogatari).
Both stories are set in the Heian court of the emperor Ichijò (980–1011) and tell of the ill-fated love between the emperor and his first consort, Teishi, and of the political rivalries that threaten to divide them. While the earlier
F

work can be viewed largely as a panegyric to the all-powerful regent
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alse Fortunes

Fujiwara no Michinaga, Enchi’s account emphasizes Teishi’s nobility and devotion to the emperor and celebrates her “moral victory” over
ale of

Enchi Fumiko

the regent, who conspired to divert the emperor’s attentions toward his own daughter, Shòshi.

The narrative of
A Tale of False Fortunes
is built around a fictitious
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historical document, which is so well crafted that it was at first
alse Fortunes

believed to be an actual document of the Heian period. Throughout the book, Enchi’s innovation and skill are evident as she alternates between modern and classical Japanese, interjecting her own commentary and extracts from
A Tale of Flowering Fortunes
, to impress upon the reader the authenticity of the tale presented within the novel.

Subplots abound involving servants, ladies-in-waiting, and, most importantly, female mediums, whose spiritual possession—both feigned and real—propels the momentum of the story toward an unexpected resolution.

Roger Thomas’ accomplished translation makes available for the first time in English what is considered the finest work by one of Japan’s modern masters of prose. It will be enthusiastically received by readers and scholars of modern and classical Japanese literature and stands as a major contribution to Japanese studies.

Roger K.Thomas is associate professor at Illinois State University, where he teaches Japanese language and culture.

University of Hawai‘i Press

isbn 0–8248–2187–4

Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96822–1888

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http://www.hawaii.edu/uhpress/

Translated by Roger K. Thomas

A Tale of

False Fortunes

A Tale of False

Fortunes

Enchi

Fumiko

Translated by Roger K. Thomas

University of Hawai‘i Press,
Honolulu
Namamiko Monogatari
by Enchi Fumiko © 1965

English translation rights arranged with the Estate of Enchi Fumiko through The Wylie Agency, Inc.

English translation © 2000 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America 04 03 02 01 00

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Enchi, Fumiko, 1905–

[Namamiko monogatari. English]

A tale of false fortunes / Enchi Fumiko ; translated by Roger K. Thomas.

p.

cm.

ISBN 0–8248–2135–1 (cloth : alk. paper) —

ISBN 0–8248–2187–4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

I. Title. II. Thomas, Roger Kent, 1953–

PL826.N3 N313 2000

895.6'35 21—dc21

99–046525

Publication of this book has been supported by a grant from the Kajiyama Publication Fund for Japanese History, Culture, and Literature at the University of Hawai‘i.

University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.

Printed by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group
Contents
c

Introduction / 1

Genealogy:
Historical Figures in
A Tale of False Fortunes
/ 8

A Tale of False Fortunes

Prologue
/ 9

Chapter One
/ 16

Chapter Two
/ 39

Chapter Three
/ 60

Chapter Four
/ 75

Chapter Five
/ 99

Chapter Six
/ 120

Introduction
c

Enchi Fumiko (1905–1986), noted for her translation of
The
Tale of Genji
into modern Japanese and for her encyclopedic knowledge of Japan’s classics, commented in her later years that “the women of the Heian aristocracy all seem to be cast in the same mold” and that she did “not particularly like them,” but that she was “rather fond of Fujiwara Teishi, the consort of Emperor Ichijò,” whom she found to be “vivid and fresh” (“Teidan,” 31). That her admiration of Teishi was genuine is amply evinced by her 1965 work,
A Tale of False Fortunes
(Namamiko monogatari),
in which she not only crafted an innovative form of historical fiction but also created a new image of womanhood through her portrayal of Teishi.

A Tale of False Fortunes
is unquestionably Enchi’s most ambitious work of historical fiction and, as winner of the fifth Women’s Literature Prize (Joryû Bungaku-shò) in 1966, also arguably her best. In it, the author creates a textual foil to
A
Tale of Flowering Fortunes (Eiga monogatari),
the panegyric to Fujiwara no Michinaga (966–1028) written mainly by Akazome Emon, a lady-in-waiting to Michinaga’s principal wife, Rinshi.

Michinaga assumes almost god-like stature in Akazome’s narrative, which describes a time when Fujiwara control of the throne was at its zenith. By making sure that every empress—

and every dowager empress—was from a ranking Fujiwara family, the emperor was easily manipulated by male maternal relatives who, since early times in Japan, had exercised greater customary power than paternal kin. Moreover, emperors were pressured to retire young in order to prevent the experience and cumulative wisdom of age from defying the de facto power of the regency. In Enchi’s recreation of Michinaga’s machinations
Introduction
c
1

to realize his ambitions, a challenge comes from an unforeseen source and in an unexpected form.

Throughout
A Tale of False Fortunes
a fictional document is cited as the “source” of Enchi’s portrayal of Teishi and of the events surrounding her life at court. This document, which Enchi professes to have perused often enough in her youth to have committed lengthy portions to memory, is cited throughout in extracts rendered in a convincing Heian-style prose, the production of which itself constitutes no mean achievement for a twentieth-century writer. (Apocryphal stories have circulated of attempts to find the lost “manuscript” cited in her story soon after its appearance.)

The plausibility of such a work existing among the books left to Enchi’s father by Basil Chamberlain is weighed against the implausibility of even so perspicacious a mind as hers recalling long extracts verbatim after half a lifetime. The reader’s mind is constantly engaged in making such judgments and is thus drawn into the story, alternately affirming or denying the veracity of the source document, or of Enchi’s narrative based thereon.

This fictitious document offers an alternative account to that appearing in
A Tale of Flowering Fortunes.
Enchi frequently interjects her own “suppositions” about the fictive document, lending it an aura of credibility. In mixing real historical sources with a fictive one, she thus blends “what was” with “what might have happened” in a convincing and natural manner.

Enchi herself acknowledged that she got the idea of building a narrative around a fictitious historical document from reading Tanizaki Jun’ichirò’s “A Portrait of Shunkin” (Shunkin shò; Enchi 1986, 193). Moreover, certain instances of sensual fixa-tion in Enchi’s work—like that of Yukikuni for Teishi in the latter part of the novel—are also redolent of Tanizaki’s fiction (Kamei and Ogasawara, 77). Like “A Portrait of Shunkin,” there are three levels of narrative language in
A Tale of False
Fortunes:
extracts from the alleged document, a reconstructed story based thereon, and the author’s own commentary. There are at least as many differences as similarities, however, in the way the spurious document is used in the story. First, the setting of Tanizaki’s work was close to his own time, and cannot
2
c
Introduction

be considered historical fiction. Moreover, his “commentary” is far more limited, confined for the most part to the beginning and end; Enchi, on the other hand, interjects her comments throughout, and even offers her speculations on the reliability of the source. The most important difference, however, is perhaps that Tanizaki did not use the fictitious document as an

“alternative” account to an existing historical source.

Enchi elsewhere experimented with narrative structures involving a fabricated document. “An Account of the Shrine in the Fields”—an alleged “study” that offers an alternative perspective on spirit possession in
The Tale of Genji—
is cited in full in her 1958 novel,
Masks (Onnamen),
where it provides a backdrop for the theme of shamanism in that work. Enchi herself appears as a character in her outstanding 1965 work,
The
Doll Sisters (Ningyò shimai),
in which she attempts to unravel the enigma presented by Ritsuko’s diary, likewise a fictional document that creates a tension between verisimilitude and implausibility. Rather than viewing this technique as imitative of Tanizaki, it is perhaps more accurate to see the works of both writers as telling examples of the persistent tendency in Japanese literature to balance seeming “fact” and fantasy. This tendency is idealized in Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s (1653–1724) famous dictum characterizing art as lying “in the slender mar-gin between the real and the unreal,” and is cited by J. Thomas Rimer as one of the “Four Polarities” (that of Fiction/ Fact) characterizing enduring traits in Japanese literature (Rimer, 15–20).

Readers familiar with Enchi’s fiction will recognize certain traits Teishi holds in common with other heroines in her works, whether the finally unyielding determination of Shirakawa Tomo in
The Waiting Years (Onnazaka)
(1955) or the disarming, mediumistic mystique of Kanzaki Chigako in
Enchantress
(Yò)
(1956) and Toganò Mieko in
Masks.
Like these, Teishi possesses an inner strength that proves ultimately to be an insurmountable challenge to men cast in adversarial roles.

And yet, Teishi is different from the others in some very important respects. While Chigako is preoccupied with aging and with her declining beauty, the years of illness and hardship
Introduction
c
3

only add to Teishi’s charm. Hers is purely a “moral victory,” one achieved entirely without scheming. It is not a deep resentment that fuels her strength, but rather the power of her unde-viating love for and devotion to the emperor, and her “victory” over Michinaga does not involve rancor or malice toward anyone. The contrast with Tomo’s bitterness, which in the end con-gealed into a core of resentment hard enough to “split . . .

[Yukitomo’s] arrogant ego in two” (Enchi 1971, 203), or with Mieko’s and Chigako’s calculating manipulation, could hardly be more striking. In response to Yoshida Seiichi’s comment that it was “unusual for an ideal type of woman to appear” in Enchi’s works, Enchi conceded that “most of them are rather spiteful,” but that “comparatively speaking [Teishi] is not like that” (Enchi 1986, 21).

The creation of a convincing story of true love is singularly difficult in this cynical age, and the fact that a writer often charged with misandry should have attempted and succeeded at such a feat is truly extraordinary. Enchi’s success in this daunt-ing venture no doubt is due in no small measure to the unusual narrative technique that she employed (Takenishi, 168), as well as perhaps to the fact that its setting is available to us only through the imagination. As noted previously, the narrative structure itself attempts to evoke skepticism and credibility in each of its three components. What Enchi hoped to achieve through such a technique is yet another speculation that the work is likely to elicit in the minds of thoughtful readers. A host of different answers might be offered to such a question, but one worthy of noting here is the possibility that “a mutually satisfying love relationship” like that described as existing between Teishi and Emperor Ichijò “is something that can only be imagined in a ‘false’
(nama),
classical-age
monogatari,
” and that in such a light,
A Tale of False Fortunes
“becomes not an alternative to but a supporting document for the gnarled view of relations between the sexes described in
The Waiting Years
and
Masks
” (Gessel, 384). For Enchi, true love belonged to the realm of historical imagination.