If there is a counterpart to Ono no Komachi in the pantheon of great Japanese poets, it’s Izumi Shikibu. She is generally considered Japan’s leading woman poet and some (like me) would consider her to be Japan’s leading poet overall.
Without further ado (my parents liked to say that and I feel a duty to keep it alive 😉), allow me to introduce her…
Izumi Shikibu was probably born around 974 and may have lived until 1034. She was the daughter of a minor lord, Ōe no Masamine, and came to the imperial court to serve a former empress. Her poems are lyrical and intimate, revealing both a profound erotic passion and Buddhist sensibility, leading to her being considered the major woman poet in Japanese history.
As I’ve pointed out before (apologies if you’ve already seen this more than once) the court she was a part of is remarkable for having both authors of the two most revered Japanese literary classics in residence (although their time at court did not directly overlap): Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji, the first psychological novel and generally considered to be the first great novel; and Sei Shōnagon, author of The Pillow Book. Other noted female poets were also at this court and (again repeating myself) this was undoubtedly the greatest gathering of literary genius ever to be found at one place and one time.
Izumi Shikibu left over 1000 poems and we know more about her than most of her sister poets. Izumi Shikibu is not her given name; it was not considered polite to record personal names, so Izumi is the province of which her husband was the governor and Shikibu is a court title held by a male relative. The life she led at court caused a scandal, for despite being married and having a child, she had many affairs, including a passionate one with a prince, Tametaka, and was his mistress, which caused her to be divorced and disowned.
This led to a famous incident in which Fujiwara no Michinaga, father of the empress and the effective ruler of Japan at that time, spied a fan belonging to Izumi in the hands of one of her lovers. Taking it, he wrote on the fan a rather pointed satirical note, “Fan of a Floating Woman.” Learning of this, and despite Michinaga being her personal patron at court, Izumi didn’t hesitate to shoot back an equally pointed, and characteristically elegant, poem telling the great man to mind his own business.
When Tametaka died, she fell deeply in love with his brother, Prince Atsumichi and became his mistress in turn. Atsumichi also died some five years later, leaving her heartbroken. She wrote over 240 poems mourning him, many of them among her most beautiful. She later returned to court, in service of the Empress Akiko (whose name means “Autumn Child”). At age 36, she remarried and left the court with her husband, who was posted to the provinces. She died there, perhaps around age 60, and her reputation grew thereafter, cementing her exalted status. She is one of both the Thirty-six Poetic Geniuses and the Thirty-six Female Poetic Geniuses.
Her daughter, Naishi, was also an accomplished poet. Sadly, she did not survive her illustrious mother.
I’m quoting two of my favorite poems of hers below (out of the many I love).
The first poem was written when Izumi was mourning the death of her daughter. A headnote, which is often used in Japanese poetry to give the poem some context, says: “Around the time Naishi died, snow fell, then melted away.”
Why did you vanish
into empty sky?
Even the fragile snow,
when it falls,
falls in this world.
Since cremation was typical in Japan at this time, her daughter had literally “vanished into empty sky.” Translator and poet Jane Hirshfield (whose translation I quoted above) provides the best explanation of this poem’s deeper meaning:
And there is the emotion itself, in this case the double-edged use of the Buddhist concept of transience: acknowledged as the true course of things (no one would ask snow not to fall, or melt), the fact of transience is still piercingly, painfully experienced (however briefly the snow falls, it can still be seen for its moment and will return; Naishi has utterly disappeared.)
I don’t think that can be improved upon.
The second poem is my favorite of hers and perhaps my favorite of poem of all time. She wrote it for Prince Atsumichi after he died. I don’t think it needs any other explanation or context:
Thinking of you the fireflies of this fen seem like sparks rising from my body’s longing. It would console me to see you again— even for the length of a flash— seen and then gone— of lightning in the dusk…
Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed hearing about the life of this most extraordinary woman.