The Mother of Fujiwara Michitsuna, a high court
official, lived during the middle of the Heian period,
a time when Japanese literary traditions were
at its peak. She was a member of the middle-ranking
aristocracy and was 19 when she married Fujiwara
no Kaneie, from a distant but more powerful
branch of the family. The main source of information
on her life is her influential work, the Kagero
Diary, which details not only her thoughts but also
the crises and events that occurred during her life.
It is believed that she began writing her diary
around 971 as a way to preserve her life experiences
for posterity. The Kagero Diary stands as one
of the earliest and best examples of women’s autobiography
and it greatly encouraged the realistic
mode of writing adopted during the height of
Japanese literary development.
Several themes are represented in Fujiwara Michitsuna’s
mother’s writing. The foremost is the
theme of romance. Her portrayal of herself in the
diary reflects the Japanese ideal of a romantic
heroine whose expectation of romance in her marriage
falls sadly short of her ideal. In the initial exchange
of love letters between her would-be
husband and herself, she saw him as “a tall tree
among oak trees.” This image dissipated after their
marriage, when her husband began to neglect her.
Her diary records her despair:
Just as I thought would happen, I have ended
up going to bed and waking up alone. So far as
the world at large is concerned, there is nothing
unsuitable about us as a couple; it’s just that his
heart is not as I would have it; it is not only me
who is being neglected, I hear he has stopped
visiting the place he has been familiar with for
years.
Language also plays an important part in Fujiwara’s
mother’s work. The themes of self-creation
and self-consciousness develop throughout the
text. On one level, Fujiwara’s mother’s decision to
record her personal experiences and let them be
made known to the world suggests a certain degree
of self-awareness and self-recognition. On another
level, the theme of self-consciousness is effectively
reflected in her use of the first-person point of
view. Her voyage in writing poetry, interspersed
throughout the diary, can be seen metaphorically
as a voyage of self-discovery in which she realizes
her independence and identity.
A unique blend of Buddhism and Shintoism
entwines throughout the Kagero Diary. The Buddhist
premise that life is suffering pervades the
work. The author’s awareness of the transitory nature
of human life enables her to cope with various
difficult events in her life, including separations
from her husband and sister and the deaths of
those close to her. At the same time, this level of
awareness allows her to maintain a certain distance
and detachment from the suffering caused by
those events. The diary suggests the author found
no contradiction in visiting both Buddhist and
Shinto shrines.
The Kagero Diary is divided into three parts.
The first part covers the first 14 years of the author’s
married life and conveys an ambivalent
mood of wistful reminiscing and lamentation as
she relives the romantic high points of her marriage.
The second part of the diary spans the three
years of discontentment and unhappiness following
her discovery that her husband has taken another
lover. In this part, the author slowly takes on
a more philosophical view of her life, using her
mastery of prose to regain a symbolic control over
her life.
The final section of the book, covering another
three years of the author’s life, lacks the emotional
fervor that marks the first two parts.Gradually she
transcends the emotional intensity of her problems
to examine events from a more detached
point of view.
On the whole, the Kagero Diary remains an important
document about the interior life of a
woman, transcribed by her own hand and
recorded in her own voice. It provides valuable information
about the life of women in the Heian
dynasty, but aside from that, it remains a touching
account of one woman’s struggles to come to
terms with her own circumstances and make
peace with herself.
An English Version of the Kagero Diary
The Kagero Diary: A Woman’s Autobiographical Text
from Tenth-Century Japan. Translated by Sonja
Arntzen. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Center for Japanese
Studies, 1997.
Works about the Mother of
Fujiwara Michitsuna
Arntzen, Sonja. “Translating Difference: A New
Translation for the Kagero Diary.” Japan Foundation
Newsletter 21, no. 3 (December 1993):
16–19.
McCullough, William and Helen C. McCullough,
trans. A Tale of Flowering Fortunes: Annals of
Japanese Aristocratic Life in the Heian Period [Eiga
monogatari]. 2 vols. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, 1980.
Sarra, Edith. Fictions of Femininity: Literary Inventions
of Gender in Japanese Court Women’s Memoirs.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
1996.