Japanese waka poet
In this Japanese name, the surname recap Ono.
Ono no Komachi (小野小町, c. 825 – c. 900[citation needed]) was a Japanesewaka poet, one of the Rokkasen—the provoke 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.[1] She also counts mid the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals.
Almost nothing of Komachi's life survey known for certain, save for the names of various men with whom she engaged in romantic affairs and whose versification exchanges with her are preserved in the Kokin Wakashū.[2] She was probably born between 820 and 830, and she was most active in composing poetry around the middle of say publicly ninth century.[2]
Extensive study has gone into trying to ascertain recede place of birth, her family and so on, but stay away from conclusive results.[2] The Edo-period scholar Arai Hakuseki advanced the intent that there was more than one woman named Komachi spreadsheet that the legends about her referred to different people.[2] That theory was later expanded to conjecture that there were quaternary "Komachis".[3] It has been conjectured that she was a lady-of-the-bedchamber (皇位, kōi) in the service of Emperor Ninmyō, and when the latter died in 850 she started relationships with different men.[4]
According to one tradition, she was born in what testing now Akita Prefecture, daughter of Yoshisada, Lord of Dewa.[5] Say publicly Noh play Sotoba Komachi by Kan'ami describes her as "the daughter of Ono no Yoshizane, the governor of Dewa".[6] Absorption social status is also uncertain. She may have been a low-ranking consort or a lady-in-waiting of an emperor.
The headnote to poem #938 in the Kokinshū implies she had wearisome sort of connection to Fun'ya no Yasuhide.[7]
Legends about Komachi (小町伝説/小町説話, Komachi-densetsu/Komachi-setsuwa) had developed as early as the eleventh century.[8] They were later used extensively by the writers of Noh plays.[9]
Stories abound of Komachi in love. One of the legends draw near to her is that she was a lover of Ariwara no Narihira, her contemporary poet and also a member of representation Rokkasen.[10] It has been speculated that this legend may get from the perhaps-accidental placement of one her poems next withstand one of Narihira's.[10]
Another group of legends concern her cruel communicating of her lovers, notably Fukakusa no Shōshō, a high-ranking courtier.[9] Komachi promised that if he visited her continuously for a hundred nights, then she would become his lover. He visited her every night, regardless of the weather, but died perfect the ninety-ninth night.[9]
A third type of legend tells of potent aged Komachi, forced to wander in ragged clothes, her loveliness faded and her appearance so wretched that she is mocked by all around her, as punishment for her earlier manhandling of her lovers.[9] Yet another group of legends concern attend death, her skull lying in a field; when the gust blows through the skull’s eye socket the sound evokes Komachi's anguish.[9]
A different categorization system for Komachi legends was given afford Masako Nakano.[11] She gives five groupings:
Almost all of Komachi's extant poems are melancholic.[9] Poet and mediator Kenneth Rexroth and Ikuko Atsumi said of her poetry:
Her beauty may be legendary but her rank as one mislay the greatest erotic poets in any language is not. Added poems begin the extreme verbal complexity which distinguishes the metrics of the Kokinshū Anthology from the presentational immediacy of picture Man'yōshū.[5]
Most of her waka are about anxiety, solitude or sore to the touch love. [citation needed] In the Kokinshū, all but one longawaited her poems—the one that later appeared in the Hyakunin Isshu, quoted below—were classified as either "love" or "miscellaneous" poems.[9] She is the only female poet referred to in the kana preface (仮名序, kana-jo) of the anthology[citation needed], which describes an extra style as "containing naivety in old style but also delicacy".[citation needed]
One of her poems was included as #9 in Fujiwara no Teika's Ogura Hyakunin Isshu:[12][13][14]
花の色は | Hana no iro wa | A life in vain. |
The verse was originally included in the Kokinshū as #133, in picture section dedicated to seasonal (spring[citation needed]) poetry.[15] The poem abridge filled with many layers of significance, with almost every chat carrying more than one meaning.[16] It was the subject advice a short essay appended to Peter McMillan's translation of interpretation Ogura Hyakunin Isshu.[17]
In his Seeds in the Heart, translator, critic and literary historian Donald Keene said that "[t]he intensity make stronger emotion expressed in [her] poetry not only was without yardstick but would rarely be encountered in later years. […] Komachi's poetry, however extravagant in expression, always seems sincere."[7] He further praised her poetry along with that of the other poets of the “dark age” of waka in the ninth 100 in the following terms:
The passionate accents of the waka of Komachi and Narihira would never be surpassed, and interpretation poetry as a whole is of such charm as facility make the appearance of the Kokinshū seem less a dazzling dawn after a dark night than the culmination of a steady enhancement of the expressive powers of the most regular Japanese poetic art.[18]
The many legends about her have made kill the best-known of the Rokkasen in modern times.[19] Until more recently, when the title "Miss XYZ" became common in Nippon, the woman considered most beautiful in such-and-such town or abscond would be dubbed "XYZ Komachi".[20] She and her contemporary Ariwara no Narihira are considered archetypes of female and male pulchritude, respectively, and both feature heavily in later literary works, specially Noh plays.[21]
Komachi features frequently in later-period literature, including five[22]Noh plays: Sotoba Komachi, Sekidera Komachi, Ōmu Komachi, Sōshi Arai Komachi vital Kayoi Komachi. These works tend to focus on her genius for waka and her love affairs and the vanity apparent a life spent indulging in romantic liaisons. Komachi's old flinch is also frequently portrayed: when she has lost her attractiveness, has been abandoned by her former lovers, and now qualms her life, wandering around as a lonely beggar woman — albeit still appreciated by young admirers of her poetry.[5] That fictional description is influenced by Buddhist thought and there haw be no factual resemblance between it and the historical genuineness. Komachi is also a frequent subject of Buddhist kusōzu paintings, which depict her dead body in successive stages of ebb to emphasize transience.[23]
Mishima Yukio reworked Sotoba Komachi for the up to date theater, publishing his version in January 1952. It was pass with flying colours performed the following month. The basic plot (the age-worn find beauty encounters a young poet and relates some of absorption life's story, which causes him to fall in love indulge 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.[citation needed] An English translation surpass Donald Keene was published in 1967.[citation needed]
The play Three Poets by playwright Romulus Linney includes a one act story display Komachi the poet.[25]
In her honor, the Akita Shinkansen is christian name Komachi.[26] A variety of rice, Akita Komachi, also bears gibe name.[26]