Fudoki (51 page)

Fudoki,
which may be translated as “records of wind and earth,” were eighth-century documents collecting information about individual provinces for the imperial court. They included descriptions of natural features and population centers, local resources and products, bits of folklore and history—anything that the compilers thought might be of interest back in the capital. I adopted the word as the closest parallel to my cats’ shared reality.

Harueme writes her notebooks in the year 1129, during the reign of her great-grandnephew, Sutoku. While she is fictional, she shares some characteristics with Shirakawa’s real sisters, Atsuko and Reishi. She has somewhat more in common with the noblewoman in the tale-fragment, “The Woman Who Loved Vermin.”

Favorite primary sources for this book were:
The Emperor Horikawa Diary
(tr. Jennifer Brewster), and the war-tales
Mutsuwaki
(tr. Helen Craig McCullough), and
H
gen monogatari
(tr. William R. Wilson). Secondary sources I found useful were
Insei
by G. Cameron Hurst III, and the second volume of the Cambridge History of Japan, edited by Donald H. Shiveley and William H. McCullough. Favorite material on feral cats included Paul Leyhausen’s
Cat Behavior,
Claire Necker’s
The Natural History of Cats,
and especially Jack Couffer’s
The Cats of Lamu
.

Karl F. Friday proved a generous and invaluable resource. His book,
Hired Swords,
was a fascinating and useful exploration of Heian-era military power. In addition, he very kindly answered even my stupidest questions with patience and clarity, and allowed me to see unpublished material on Heian combat technique. I can never fully express my gratitude for all his help.

I wish to thank the following for their assistance: Irene Michon for her insights into the writing process; writers Walter S. Williamson, Melissa Shaw, Louise Marley, and the Kilomon-keys (Wolf Baur, Ted Chiang, Jeff Grubb, Bridget McKenna, Marti McKenna, Chris McKitterick, and Lorelei Shannon); formerly feral cats Baby, Bro, Meerkat, Helen, Tatsuko, and Sanj
; and especially Peg Kerr and Chris McKitterick. Mistakes in this book are entirely my own.