Ono no Komachi

In this Japanese name, the family name is "Ono".

Ono no Komachi drawn by Kikuchi Yōsai

Ono no Komachi by Kanō Tan’yū, 1648

Ono no Komachi as an old woman, a woodcut by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi

Ono no Komachi (小野 小町, c. 825 – c. 900) was a Japanese waka poet, one of the Rokkasen—the Six best Waka poets of the early Heian period. She was renowned for her unusual beauty, and Komachi is today a synonym for feminine beauty in Japan. She also counts among the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals.

Life and legends

The place of Komachi's birth and death is uncertain. According to one tradition, she was born in what is now Akita Prefecture, daughter of Yoshisada, Lord of Dewa. Her social status is also uncertain. She may have been a low-ranking consort or a lady-in-waiting of an emperor, possibly Emperor Ninmyō (r. 833-850).

As a poet, Komachi specialized in erotic love themes, expressed in complex poems. Most of her waka are about anxiety, solitude or passionate love. She is the only female poet referred to in the preface of the Kokin Wakashū, which describes her style as "containing naivety in old style but also delicacy".

Legends abound of Komachi in love. The most well known is a story about her relationship with Fukakusa no Shosho, a high-ranking courtier. Komachi promised that if he visited her continuously for a hundred nights, then she would become his lover. Fukakusa no Shosho visited her every night, but failed once towards the end. Despairing, he fell ill and subsequently died. When Komachi learned of his death she was overcome with grief.

Legacy

Komachi sometimes features in later-period literature, including five Noh plays: Sotoba Komachi, Sekidera Komachi, Ōmu Komachi, Sōshi Arai Komachi and Kayoi Komachi. These works tend to focus on her talent for waka and her love affairs and the vanity of a life spent indulging in romantic liaisons. Komachi's old age is also frequently portrayed: when she has lost her beauty, has been abandoned by her former lovers, and now regrets her life, wandering around as a lonely beggar woman — albeit still appreciated by young admirers of her poetry. This fictional description is influenced by Buddhist thought and there may be no factual resemblance between it and the historical reality.

In her honor, the Akita Shinkansen is nicknamed Komachi. A variety of rice, Akita Komachi, also bears her name. One of her 31-syllable poems was chosen by Fujiwara no Teika to be an entry in the Hyakunin Isshu anthology.

Sotoba Komachi ("Komachi on the stupa") is a Noh play reworked from the ancient original by Mishima Yukio for the modern theater. The basic plot (the age-worn former beauty encounters a young poet and relates some of her life's story, which causes him to fall in love with her, with fatal results) is retained, but the action takes place in a public park, with flashbacks to the salons and ballrooms of Meiji-era Japan. An English translation by Donald Keene was published in 1967.

Ono no Komachi is also the subject of a modern one-woman play, Call Me Komachi, produced by Lemon Tart Productions, written by Christie Nieman, directed by Miki Oikawa and starring Kaori Hamamoto. Call Me Komachi enjoyed successful seasons at various venues in Australia from 2003 to 2006. The play compares and parallels the lives of traditional Geisha with contemporary Japanese schoolgirls with sugar daddy relationships, known as enjo kōsai.

The play Three Poets by playwright Romulus Linney includes a one act story about Komachi the poet.

Plays

Sotoba Komachi recounts the tale of a 9th century historical figure, once a legendary beauty, now cursed to live on in decrepitude and possessed by the vengeful spirit of a taunted suitor. The drama begins to unfold with an encounter between two pilgrim monks and a mysterious old woman. The Noh classic by Kan'ami (1336-1383) is performed with new music and choreography, initiating an aesthetic and thematic journey into the post-modern world of Samuel Beckett.

References

• Hirshfield, Jane; Mariko Aratani (1990). The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-6797-2958-5. 
• Keene, Donald (1970). Twenty Plays of the Nō Theater. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-2310-3454-7. 
• Rexroth, Kenneth; Ikuko Atsumi (1977). Woman poets of Japan. New York: New Directions Pub. Corp.. ISBN 0-8112-0820-6.