君が代や厄おとしに御いせ迄 kimi ga yo ya yaku o otoshi ni o-ise made under our ruler people go to far Ise Shrine just for purifications Tr. Chris Drake This hokku is from the end of the 11th month (December) of 1813, the year Issa finally received half of his fathers house as his own. The end of the year is nearing, and some here and there people are planning to make a long trip to the big Ise Shrine, where the female sun god Amaterasu is worshiped. She was believed to be the founding ancestor of the imperial family, but in the medieval period the emperor became a powerless figurehead, and the Ise Shrine became less popular. In the peaceful Edo period (1603-1868), however, the shrine again became extremely popular again, especially during the time Issa was alive, due largely to the spread of Ise Shrine divinatory calendars, which were sold all over the country, and most commoners hoped to visit o-Ise once in their lifetime. Ise pilgrimage associations (kou) sprang up, and each year two or three winners of the association lottery received enough money to travel to Ise, a trip that usually took about two weeks one way for a group of pilgrims who tended to combine worship with sightseeing. Most pilgrimages took place in warm months, but at the end of the year people who would be a certain dangerous age in the new year (for women 19, 33, 37; for men 25, 42, 61), would visit a Shinto shrine for special purifications to guard them from bad energy in the coming year. Normally people went to local shrines, but in Issas time, it had become very popular to make long, expensive pilgrimages to Ise even at the end of the year. Ise pilgrimages were popular among almost most commoners, with the important exception of members of the True Pure Land school of Buddhism, to which Issa belonged. Apparently this school felt that belief in power of Ise purifications was a superstition that distracted people from relying completely on Amidas love and grace. Issa himself shows this attitude in the hokku following the above hokku in his diary: waga ie ya yorizonshitaru yaku-barai in my house no one will go near purifications Issa wasnt married yet, but his half brother and his mother must also have been members of the True Pure Land school, as well as his relatives in nearby villages (house also means family or clan), and many people in his hometown were also believers, so the popularity of the Ise pilgrimages seems to have been a little hard for Issa to understand. Issas first hokku above seems to be cool if not skeptical and wryly humorous in tone, and it doesnt appear to be an expression of nationalism. Far from it. And it has virtually nothing in common with the emperor worship that arose during modernization after 1868. The term kimi ga yo in the first line was used in numerous ancient waka sung or written to praise a local lord or the highest lord of all, the emperor/empress. In Issas time, however, the term was a contested one, since for courtiers in Kyoto kimi still referred to the figurehead emperor, while in Edo and other big cities the term more often than not referred to the actual ruler, the current shogun and his tenure or to the long-lasting shogunate. In Issas time the term was used in so many contexts that the context of each use needs to be looked at on its own. In the first hokku above, the implied meaning may be something like in our craze-filled age, since visiting Ise had reached the level of a trendy fad. The hokku may even be using under the present ruler ironically, as Issa does elsewhere. For example, in this hokku from 1804: kimi ga yo ya kakaru kokage mo bakuchi-goya under our ruler even the shade of trees filled with gamblers In the first hokku above, people under the present ruler are no longer satisfied with paying a few pennies to a wandering Shinto priest at the gate or visiting a nearby shrine to have prayers said to protect them against danger in the coming year. Now they spend a month or more and go all the way to Ise Shrine to hear the right words chanted. Issa seems to be wondering where deep spirituality has gone in his age. Chris Drake haikutopics.blogspot.jp/2010/08/kimigayo-anthem.html
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 00:33:45 +0000
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