Many fantastic legends have grown up about the
life of Ono no Komachi, since few facts are known.
She lived in the early period of Heian Japan
(794–1185) and was a lady-in-waiting in the imperial
court around 850. She was said to be the
daughter of Yoshisada, the lord of Dewa. A later
poem supposedly written by “Komachi’s grandchild”
suggests she had at least one child.
The legends held that Ono no Komachi was
adored at court for her poetic skill and was considered
the most beautiful Japanese woman who had
ever lived. She had many passionate affairs but
spent the last years of her life in solitude and abject
poverty. Tales were told about her skull, which survived
in a field where it complained in verse about
the grasses growing up around it.
Several Noh plays written in the mid- to late-
Heian period perpetuate the figure of Ono as being
a beautiful and manipulative courtesan who ends
up abandoned and rejected. The legends may draw
partially on the themes within the surviving TANKA
poems attributed to her. Eighteen of her poems
were collected in the Kokinshu anthology (905)
compiled by KI NO TSURAYUKI. Fujiwara no Kinto
named her the sole woman among the ranks of the
Rokkasen, the Six Poetic Geniuses. The collection
of poems ostensibly written by Ono no Komachi,
the Komachishu, was compiled between 1004 and
1110. Of the 100 poems it contains, only about 45
are thought to actually be Ono’s, while the rest are
poems written by others, some addressed to her.
Ono no Komachi was one of the first female
Japanese poets to write about her love and longing
with great passion. Many of her poems speak eloquently
of unrequited love, and one much-anthologized
poem compares a man’s heart to a blossom
“whose colors, unseen / yet change.” Other poems
show the influence of Buddhism, and contain
thoughtful meditations on the nature of reality,
observing that one cannot know if love is real or a
dream
when both reality and dreams
exist without truly existing.
Stylistically, Ono’s poems are clever and graceful,
often making use of the kakekotoba, or pivotword,
which contains two different meanings that
simultaneously reflect the imagery and subject
matter of a poem. In one poem she uses the word
tsuki, which means both “way” and “moon.” In this
poem, she is waiting for a man who does not come,
and the moonless night, leaving her without a way
to see her lover, symbolically represents her fears
about the future of their relationship.
Desolation is a frequent topic of Ono’s poetry,
and one she describes with painful grace. In the
earlier poems her grief is frequently due to neglect
or abandonment by lovers. In one poem she pictures
herself in “a sad floating boat,” and says,
there is not a single day
that I am not drenched by the waves.
Other poems show a growing sense of isolation
and a feeling of disconnectedness. In one haunting
poem, Ono compares her body to “floating sad
grasses / severed from their roots,” and says, “if
there were waters that beckoned / I should go, I
think.” Her later poems express grief over the loss
of beauty and a melancholy view of old age:
—how sad this is!
—to think that my body
has become useless.
Some critics tend to describe Ono’s poetry as
“weak,” since so much of it deals with love, loss,
and longing. Yet, as scholar and translator Terry
Kawashima observes, “tropes of fleetingness and
sadness over the changing state of things are common
in waka poetry,” the tradition within which
Ono was writing. In addition, several of her dream
poems show, as Kawashima puts it, “a strongwilled
woman who goes against custom, even if
only in a dream.” Later Japanese writers, such as
IZUMI SHIKIBU, were inspired by Ono’s passionate
imagery and insight into human emotion. Her biography
continues to be the subject of plays and
studies, and her lyric poetry intrigues and fascinates
lovers of poetry around the world.
English Versions of Works by
Ono no Komachi
The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono No Komachi
and Izumi Shikibu,Women of the Ancient Court of
Japan. Translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko
Aratani. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.
Japan’s Poetess of Love Dream and Longing, Ono no Komachi:
117 poems. Translated by Howard S. Levy.
Yokohama, Japan:Warm-Soft Village Press, 1984.
Ono No Komachi: Poems, Stories, and Noh Plays.
Translated by Roy E. Teele. Edited by James J.Wilhelm.
London: Taylor & Francis, 1993.
A Work about Ono no Komachi
Kawashima, Terry.“Part II: Komachi” in Writing Margins:
The Textual Construction of Gender in Heian
and Kamakura Japan. Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2001.