T is for Tale of Sumiyoshi (Women's Epics A to Z)

This year my theme for the A to Z Blogging Challenge is Women's Epics. My goal was to read 26 traditional epics from around the world that have women as their heroes. Because epics like this do exist, and they are fascinating! Read the intoduction post here.

Sumiyoshi Monogatari (The Tale of Sumiyoshi)
Japan

Monogatari literature is the Japanese equivalent of western narrative epics, with strong ties to the oral tradition (sometimes the word is translated as 'romance', as in 'medieval romances'). This story was written down in the 10th century by an unknown author, and exists in more than 120 manuscripts. It is also referenced in many later monogatari works. I read the first English translation from 1901 (see here). In translation, it is about 90 pages long.

There is also another, similar monogatari that follows the Cinderella trope.

What is it about?

TL;DR: It is often mentioned as a Cinderella tpye story. A noble girl's reputation is besmirched by her stepmother, so she flees and lives with a nun. Eventually, a young man who is in love with her manages to find her and bring her home.

A high-ranking official has two lovers: one is the daughter of a mighty samurai, and the other a daughter of a former emperor. He takes the latter for his wife eventually, and they have a beautiful daughter, Himegimi. However, when the girl is eight years old, her mother falls ill and dies. The father marries his other former lover, the samurai's daughter. Himegimi is put into the care of a kind foster-mother.

When Himegimi turns ten, her father takes her to his new home to meet his two new daughters, Naka-no-Kimi and San-no-Kimi. Himegimi is accompanied by her best friend Jiju, the foster-mother's daughter who is two years older than her. The girls get along very well, but the stepmother is jealous. The father wants to introduce Himegimi at court, but doesn't dare bring up the subject.

A few years later, a young and dashing major-general of the Emperor's bodyguards (and brother-in-law to the Emperor) is looking for a lady to marry. Intrigued by news of such a lovely maiden as Himegimi, he sends her a love letter. Himegimi blushes at the letter, but doesn't reply; the general keeps sending her letters, trying to solicit an answer. Eventually, the stepmother intercepts the messenger, and finds out what's happening. She comes up with the idea to substitute her own daughter, San-no-Kimi, for Himegimi. The mother tells the unwitting daughter that the letter is for her, and San-no-Kimi begins a correspondence with the suitor. Eventually he visits her, and since she is also quite pretty (not as much as Himegimi, though), he doesn't suspect anything, and they begin to court. Soon, the general stays over (with the mother's permission) in San-no-Kimi's room.

However, at night the general hears music played by Himegimi, and is enchanted. He asks San-no-Kimi who is playing, and she naivelly tells him about her older half-sister. The general realizes that he has been deceived (since he heard that Himegimi is a great musician). He goes to Himegimi's pavilion and gives a letter for her to Jiju. The girls read the letter, but Himegimi still refuses to reply, saying that it would ruin her reputation.

Some time later in the spring the three sisters go on an outing together. The general hears about this and hides himself out in the woods to spy on them. He manages to catch sight of Himegimi and see how lovely she is; she also notices him among the trees and feels attracted to him. However, the girls flee into their carriage from the strange man, and only converse with him in poems.

The general is now madly in love with Himegimi, who doesn't respond to his advances. He keeps visiting San-no-Kimi just to be near the family's house and Himegimi's pavilion. Eventually Himegimi's foster-mother (and Jiju's mother) dies, and the two girls are grieving for her in their pavilion when the general overhears them. Through the latticework, they talk all night, and Jiju manages to convince Himegimi to respond to his poems.

Meanwhile San-no-Kimi is missing her suitor, and she asks him to return to her. Taking pity on her, he realizes he can't leave her, even though he still loves Himegimi. At this point they are considered married. Meanwhile, the father wants to offer Himegimi to the emperor (as a handmaid, but maybe as a concubine by implication). Her stepmother, however, pushes for her being married to a nobleman instead, jealous that Himegimi might rise above her own daughters in station. When the father insists on taking Himegimi to court, the stepmother decides to ruin her reputation.

The stepmother, in cahoots with an old wise woman, sets up a ruse to convince the father that Himegimi has been sleeping with a lecherous priest. The father, disappointed, reproaches Himegimi, and gives up his plans to take her to the Emperor's court. Jiju and Himegimi figure out that he has been deceived, but they don't know how to fix the situation. The father decides to marry her off to an illustrious suitor, the son of an imperial court official.

The stepmother is still not satisfied. She makes a plan with the wise woman to have Himegimi kidnapped by a horrible scoundrel. A friendly handmaid wants Jiju and Himegimi in secret about the plan. The two girls decide to flee into the wilderness and become nuns together. They reach out to the former foster-mother of Himegimi's mother, who is already a nun at Sumiyoshi. She agrees to take care of them, so the two girls flee in the night.

Winter sets in. The sisters mourn for Himegimi, and she feels guilty and homesick. Eventually she sends a letter to her father with a poem expressing her sorrows, and that she had no choice but to flee from being ruined. San-no-Kimi tells the general about the letter, but nobody knows what place it was sent from.

Months pass. The general gets promoted (to lieutenant-general) but he is still grieving for the missing maiden. One day he goes to worship to the temple of Hatsuse... and meets Himegimi there. She tells him she is staying at Sumiyoshi, then vanishes. The general wakes from the dream, and realizes it must have been a sign, so he sets out alone to find her. Meanwhile at home Himegimi wakes up too, and confesses to Jiju that she dreamed about the young man and revealed to him where she is.

The young general reaches Sumiyoshi after a long and hard journey, and meets Himegimi. The nun convinces the girl to overcome her worries about reputation. Soon, the young couple decides to return to the capital together and get married. The general passes Himegimi off as a "country maiden". Himegimi wants to reach out to her family, but her husband is worried it would trigger revenge from her stepmother.

In time, the couple has two children, a boy and a girl. They keep their family secret, even though the husband quite often meets Himegimi's father at court, and sees him grieving. Eventually, when the boy is seven and the girl is five, the couple decides it is time to reveal themselves. They invite the old father to a family celebration, and show him an old dress of Himegimi, before revealing Himegimi herself. Everyone rejoices, and Himegimi tells her whole story.

The old man goes home and calls his wife on her wicked deeds. Then he packs up, and moves into the old home of Himegimi's deceased mother; the young general sends his own aunt to keep him company. The friendly maid moves in with Himegimi to be part of her household. Naka-no-Kimi and San-no-Kimi turn from their mother, hating her for her deeds. Naka-no-Kimi is also angry that her own reputation is besmirched by her mother's wickedness; Himegimi invites her into her own home to fix her reputation - because now it is generally known who the "country bride" really is.

All is well if it ends well. Himegimi's children become powerful people; Jiju becomes head of the household and also later an attendant to the Emperor. The stepmother lives her days in infamy, and the woman who helped her becomes a beggar.

The highlights

I loved it that in this story, the stepsister was neither ugly nor evil. She was deceived by her mother, and innocently dragged into the plan. When the general found out that she was not the real lady he wanted to court, he felt "that pity which is kin to love" for her. Similarly, when the girls encountered the general out in the open, it was Naka-no-Kimi who helped Himegimi overcome her shyness and respond to his poems. When Himegimi fell into despair after being accused of an affair, and planned to flee, her half-sisters came to her to comfort her and support her, with kindness in their heart. On her way to exile, she missed her "tender-hearted" sisters. The girls labeled their mother "cruel and hard" for treating Himegimi badly. All in all, this was a Cinderella story with a set of kind, loving stepsisters. Even the father, who believed Himegimi had ruined her reputation, was a caring figure full of sadness, instead of the raging and cruel (or absent) fathers of folktales. Before she returned, he already realized that she could not have done the things she had been accused of.

I also liked the close friendship between Jiju and Himegimi. Jiju took good care of her friend, and when her mother died Himegimi took care of her in turn. I liked the part where Jiju helped Himegimi compose her poems in response to the general. It was good to see a strong female friendship in this story.

I loved the description of Sumiyoshi and the nun's home. It was full of rich descriptive detail; I especially liked the mention that he house extended over the incoming tide from the shore, so fish could be seen when one looked down between the floor boards. In the winter, "reeds withered by the rime were all matted fast together, and among them the waterfowl in pairs were preening the frost from the coverts of their wings." There were other vivid descriptions in the text too: Himegimi is often compared to the tender flower-buds of the lespedza, and the flowers of the golden lace. I also loved the descriptions of colorful dresses when the three sisters went on an outing - red and purple, yellow and green, and (for Himegimi) cherry blossom pink.

THIS STORY SHOWS DIVERSE POSITIVE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN WOMEN.

What can this tell us about other Cinderella type stories? Or women's stories in general?