Teito Monogatari:
The Tale of the Imperial Capital
Part 2: Supernatural Babylon
Author: Hiroshi Aramata
Part 3: Solvers of Mysteries
Chapter 14: Shigeyuki Reads the Legend of Abe no Seimei
July, 1910 (Meiji 43). It was a day of pleasant weather. Kōda Shigeyuki, pen name Rohan, lay on his stomach on a cool rice mat floor and flipped through the pages of an old Japanese‑bound book. Earlier that morning, an errand boy from a used bookstore in Kanda had delivered the volume he had ordered.
Having resolved to go fishing in the evening today, Shigeyuki decided to spend the balmy morning and a few languid hours of the afternoon leafing through old books.
It had been a long time since he had felt like reading. In April he had lost his wife, Ikumiko, and his eldest son, Naritoyo—barely three years old. He had spent more than a hundred days without the mental leeway to read.
He let his eyes run over the titles until he came upon words that caught his interest. It was an old book volume from the Sengoku period, or perhaps the early Edo period.
“Oh, The Wife of Shinoda, is it?” Kōda picked up the book and started turning pages.
The Wife of Shinoda is a masterpiece depicting the childhood of the famous Abe no Seimei. The story of a small child who cried every night longing for his fox spirit mother struck Shigeyuki as oddly poignant in his present state. A similar tale is related by the Kabuki play Ashiya Dōman’s Internal Mirror by Takeda Izumo, but that piece is too polished, and its flavor as a tale involving Eastern sorcery has faded over time. Besides, plays were meant to be seen, not read.
And so, for the reader’s amusement, let us briefly retell the contents of the old book that so engrossed Kōda Shigeyuki on that summer morning.
The Wife of Shinoda
This strange tale starts with the appearance of Abe no Yasuna, a descendant of a family that had built an estate between Shitennō Temple and Sumiyoshi Grand Shrine. By chance, a man called Ishikawa Akuemon, the younger brother of the renowned great sorcerer of the capital, Ashiya Dōman, also lived in this area.
When Akuemon’s young wife was stricken with a mysterious illness, his elder brother Dōman’s divination declared that she must be given the raw liver of a vixen to drink. Thus ordered, Akuemon began hunting young vixens in the forest of Shinoda. Abe no Yasuna, who happened to be in the forest of Shinoda, saved a young vixen that was about to be killed.
The price of saving the fox was great, for the enraged Akuemon killed Abe no Yasuna’s father in retaliation.
Several years later, Yasuna took a woman as his wife and was blessed with a baby boy. As the boy grew, he began to cry and wail that his mother appeared to him as some strange, monstrous being.
The woman who had become Yasuna’s wife was, in truth, none other than the fox he had once saved. The vixen-wife pondered the situation. Now that the truth had been discovered by her son, she could not remain in the human world. She left behind a farewell poem and returned to the forest of Shinoda. That poem is the famous tanka:
If longing for me you wish to seek me out,
then come and see the forest of Shinoda
in distant Izumi,
where the leaves lie deep in shadow.
The boy, who carried demonic blood, eventually grew into a youth. One night, Manjushri Bodhisattva appeared at his bedside in a dream and revealed a prophecy to him: “You shall become a master of sorcery.” When he held the jewel his fox-mother had given him to his ear, he found that he could understand the voices of crows.
He heard several crows who had flown in from the capital gossiping about the emperor’s grave illness. The cause, apparently, was a snake and a frog buried under a foundation stone when the imperial palace was built. Abe no Yasuna and his son went to the capital and reported this to the emperor. When the indicated stone was dug up, a snake and a frog appeared, locked in combat. More astonishing still, the emperor’s illness vanished instantly. Overjoyed, the emperor bestowed the name Seimei upon the boy.
Ashiya Dōman was displeased by this course of events. He was a sorcerer of some renown himself. He entered the palace at once and argued that the emperor’s recovery was due prayers he had been offering for some time. It was not easy to determine which claim was true, and so the two resolved to settle the matter with a contest of sorcery.
The chosen contest was to divine and correctly state the contents of a sealed box. First, two cats were stuffed inside, and both men named the contents exactly. Next, fifteen mandarin oranges were placed inside. Again Dōman answered correctly, but Seimei was considering a strategy to win. He said, “There are fifteen mice,” and then he chanted a spell. The mandarin oranges inside transformed into mice, and the cats from before chased them all.
Defeated in this contest of magic, Dōman’s reputation suffered greatly. He commanded his younger brother Akuemon to slay Yasuna, Seimei’s father, on Ichijō Bridge. Seimei, knowing nothing, happened to cross the bridge where his father’s dismembered corpse lay scattered in pieces.
Seimei gathered up his father’s body and immediately attempted to revive him.
Upon the purified and consecrated altar, he prayed with all his heart for the protection of every god of Japan and the world:
“Great Manjushri Bodhisattva, lend me strength and descend into me. I pray with all my heart, and with this sacred wand I offer a consecration. To all the great and small gods of Japan, I proclaim this consecration. I revere the gods: Brahma and Indra above, the Four Heavenly Kings below, all together; I revere the sacred spirits of Shinoda Forest in Settsu and all the myriad gods and buddhas of Japan. Though his life be fettered by karma, let him be revived once more. If this wish cannot be granted, then take my life here and now.”
Perhaps his wish was heard, for strangely enough, dogs and crows—thought to be transformations of heavenly spirits—returned to him, carrying his father’s scraps of flesh, arms, and legs in their mouths. As he strained his voice in further incantation, the corpse gradually returned to its former state, and at last even Abe no Yasuna’s face was restored.
Seimei’s father came back to life.
Father and son clasped hands firmly on the bridge. Yasuna confessed the whole course of events to his son. Learning of Dōman’s treachery, Seimei lost his temper. He made a request to the emperor. He wanted to confront Dōman at the palace without repercussions.
Thus the two arrived at the stage of their final confrontation. Dōman, accused by Seimei of murdering his father, threw back his head in loud laughter. “If you say I am the culprit, then revive your murdered father and make him your witness. If you do that, this head is yours to take.”
When Dōman saw Abe no Yasuna restored to life, he collapsed in fright, and his head was struck off.
This was the secret tale of the rise of Abe no Seimei, the great sorcerer and astronomer. He attained a title of the fourth rank and was known as the founder of the Tsuchimikado family.
When Shigeyuki lifted his eyes for a moment from the pages of the old book, he noticed a small boy standing on the veranda. The child was staring at him. The man of letters softened his keen gaze and smiled.
“Shigetoyo, come sit on Father’s knee.”
The little boy nodded slightly, and then clopped over to him, his wooden sandals making echoes as he moved. The bell tied in his hair rang with every step.
Shigeyuki embraced the boy as he climbed onto his knee. “You’re a good child,” he said.
“Where is mo-mother?” the boy asked.
“She is fine. Your mother is in heaven. She is watching over you always. Besides, your father is right here. Do you miss the fox of Shinoda Forest that much? Ha ha ha—you should become a sorcerer as great as Abe no Seimei.”
The man of letters laughed and hugged his son, then stood up and stepped out onto the veranda with his son in his arms.
A fragrant green scent drifted to Shigeyuki from the garden. The sunlight was dazzling; Shigeyuki took a step backward into the shade.
Come to think of it, I haven’t been writing any fiction lately, Shigeyuki thought. Had he been too absorbed in his confrontation with Katō Yasunori? He smiled—a real smile, perhaps the first real smile he’d allowed himself since his wife’s death. His son smiled at him, too, and then giggled. The warm summer sun shone upon them like a blessing.
Seimei means “pure and bright.”
The adaptation of the story that Kōda reads is in jōruri format. Jōruri is a type of dramatic recitation accompanied by a shamisen (associated with the Japanese puppet theater).
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