Recommended listening: Traditional Japanese Folk and Work Songs
Story
As the days grew longer and spring turned to summer, the people of Yamashiro Province prepared for one of the most important moments of the year. It was time to transplant the rice seedlings, moving them to wet paddies where they could flourish and grow. The job was laborious and back-breaking, requiring women to walk backwards while transplanting every individual seedling in orderly rows. The preceding spring was usually brutal, with famine sweeping through rural communities every few years. This left people weaker and hungrier at the beginning of summer when it was time to do some of the year's hardest work. But work they did, for what other choice did they have? Not only did the people farm to feed themselves, but they paid taxes in rice to feed the provincial governors and the wealthy aristocrats of the capital. The nine-fold palace of Heian-kyo, modern-day Kyoto, was part of Yamashiro Province, but the elites who lived behind its walls were almost completely insulated from the realities of life outside it.
Occasionally, however, these worlds briefly came together. The Kamo Shrine, one of the most important Shinto shrines in Heian Japan, was only an hour's walk north of the capital. Every year at the beginning of the fourth month, it was the site of an extravagant festival. Led by the Kamo High Priestess, an imperial princess charged with the care of the shrine, it was also a highly anticipated social occasion. Aristocrats all made the pilgrimage to the shrine in order to park their carriages along the processional route. Their palm-leaf carriages were drawn by oxen and festooned with sprigs of hollyhock. Noblewomen spent weeks preparing their outfits for the occasion, which they would show off to onlookers by draping their meticulously planned sleeves out the front of their carriages. The rest of them would be hidden, but they would watch the proceedings from behind the blinds of their carriage, eagerly comparing their own fashion to that of the other notables who gathered for the festival. Men who admired the sleeves of a woman would sent flirtatious poems back and forth to the carriages, paying little attention to the religious pageant except to have their servants lower the front of the carriage in respect as the High Priestess passed by.
In the year 1000, the Kamo Festival fell on one of the first days of summer. Knowing what traffic lay ahead of them, some aristocrats set off early to ensure they got a good spot to watch the High Priestess's procession. One of these was Sei Shōnagon, a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Teishi. The Kamo Festival was one of her favourite events of the year. She spent ages agonizing over the colours of her carriage's blinds and of her tastefully layered robes. One of her favourite aspects of the festival was getting to hear the call of the hototogisu, or lesser cuckoo. The hototogisu played an important role in Japanese poetry of the time as a herald of summer. It was considered so important to hear its cry at this time of year that Sei Shōnagon and a number of the empress's gentlewomen once went on a special expedition just to find one singing so that they could write poems about the experience.
But as she wound her way along the road to the Kamo Shrine, she passed a group of working women to whom the hototogisu held an entirely different significance. She wrote about the experience in The Pillow Book, her account of life at the imperial court:
On the way to the Kamo Shrine, women are out planting the rice fields - a large group of them are standing there singing as they work, wearing hats that look just like newly-made serving trays. They walk backwards doubled over, doing something invisible with their hands. You watch them, fascinated to learn what they're up to, and then you're distressed to catch the words of the song and realize that they're actually singing something very rude about the dear hototogisu:
'Yah! You there!
Hototogisu!
It's your chanting
sets us planting!'
Sei Shōnagon was shocked to hear the beloved hototogisu so denigrated. In her lofty world of the palace, the poetic associations of the bird's beautiful song with the coming of summer far outstripped any practical concerns. The labour of peasants was only interesting to her insofar as it complemented the aesthetics of the changing seasons. But to the women planting, the season of the bird's song was inseparable from the hard work they had to perform at that time. Singing playful songs together was crucial for getting them through the gruelling labour. Like many people across the world, they used music to bolster their spirits during hard work. Making music together in a group built solidarity between the labourers and helped them to push through pain and exhaustion in order to do what had to be done. While Sei Shōnagon could hardly appreciate these aspects of their music, her scandalized record of their song is a rare preservation of work song from so long ago.
Everything that Sei Shōnagon cherished about her life of luxury in the capital was completely dependent on the hard work of these women in the fields. The world of Heian Japan was one of profound economic inequality, with a tiny group of people at the top living in opulence at the expense of the vast majority of the rest of the country. Sei Shōnagon never concerned herself with the unfairness of these inequalities, instead seeing everything and everyone as having its properly ordained place in the hierarchy of the world. But as we peer with her through the blinds of her carriage window, we catch a glimpse of the lives of the women of Heian Japan whose lives went almost entirely unrecorded. A few lines from their planting song are all we have left of their voices.
What can we learn about their lives from this snatch of song? We can say that they had a sense of humour, and that they sang sardonic songs together in order to get through the intense labour of transplanting rice at the start of the summer. Like the aristocrats of the capital, they were attentive to the way the changing behaviour of birds signalled the changes of the seasons, and they even made their own form of poetry about this - even if they came to the opposite conclusion about the hototogisu. With the hot sun beating down on their backs, they made something beautiful out of challenging circumstances and shared it with each other in laughter and song.
Occasionally, however, these worlds briefly came together. The Kamo Shrine, one of the most important Shinto shrines in Heian Japan, was only an hour's walk north of the capital. Every year at the beginning of the fourth month, it was the site of an extravagant festival. Led by the Kamo High Priestess, an imperial princess charged with the care of the shrine, it was also a highly anticipated social occasion. Aristocrats all made the pilgrimage to the shrine in order to park their carriages along the processional route. Their palm-leaf carriages were drawn by oxen and festooned with sprigs of hollyhock. Noblewomen spent weeks preparing their outfits for the occasion, which they would show off to onlookers by draping their meticulously planned sleeves out the front of their carriages. The rest of them would be hidden, but they would watch the proceedings from behind the blinds of their carriage, eagerly comparing their own fashion to that of the other notables who gathered for the festival. Men who admired the sleeves of a woman would sent flirtatious poems back and forth to the carriages, paying little attention to the religious pageant except to have their servants lower the front of the carriage in respect as the High Priestess passed by.
In the year 1000, the Kamo Festival fell on one of the first days of summer. Knowing what traffic lay ahead of them, some aristocrats set off early to ensure they got a good spot to watch the High Priestess's procession. One of these was Sei Shōnagon, a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Teishi. The Kamo Festival was one of her favourite events of the year. She spent ages agonizing over the colours of her carriage's blinds and of her tastefully layered robes. One of her favourite aspects of the festival was getting to hear the call of the hototogisu, or lesser cuckoo. The hototogisu played an important role in Japanese poetry of the time as a herald of summer. It was considered so important to hear its cry at this time of year that Sei Shōnagon and a number of the empress's gentlewomen once went on a special expedition just to find one singing so that they could write poems about the experience.
But as she wound her way along the road to the Kamo Shrine, she passed a group of working women to whom the hototogisu held an entirely different significance. She wrote about the experience in The Pillow Book, her account of life at the imperial court:
On the way to the Kamo Shrine, women are out planting the rice fields - a large group of them are standing there singing as they work, wearing hats that look just like newly-made serving trays. They walk backwards doubled over, doing something invisible with their hands. You watch them, fascinated to learn what they're up to, and then you're distressed to catch the words of the song and realize that they're actually singing something very rude about the dear hototogisu:
'Yah! You there!
Hototogisu!
It's your chanting
sets us planting!'
Sei Shōnagon was shocked to hear the beloved hototogisu so denigrated. In her lofty world of the palace, the poetic associations of the bird's beautiful song with the coming of summer far outstripped any practical concerns. The labour of peasants was only interesting to her insofar as it complemented the aesthetics of the changing seasons. But to the women planting, the season of the bird's song was inseparable from the hard work they had to perform at that time. Singing playful songs together was crucial for getting them through the gruelling labour. Like many people across the world, they used music to bolster their spirits during hard work. Making music together in a group built solidarity between the labourers and helped them to push through pain and exhaustion in order to do what had to be done. While Sei Shōnagon could hardly appreciate these aspects of their music, her scandalized record of their song is a rare preservation of work song from so long ago.
Everything that Sei Shōnagon cherished about her life of luxury in the capital was completely dependent on the hard work of these women in the fields. The world of Heian Japan was one of profound economic inequality, with a tiny group of people at the top living in opulence at the expense of the vast majority of the rest of the country. Sei Shōnagon never concerned herself with the unfairness of these inequalities, instead seeing everything and everyone as having its properly ordained place in the hierarchy of the world. But as we peer with her through the blinds of her carriage window, we catch a glimpse of the lives of the women of Heian Japan whose lives went almost entirely unrecorded. A few lines from their planting song are all we have left of their voices.
What can we learn about their lives from this snatch of song? We can say that they had a sense of humour, and that they sang sardonic songs together in order to get through the intense labour of transplanting rice at the start of the summer. Like the aristocrats of the capital, they were attentive to the way the changing behaviour of birds signalled the changes of the seasons, and they even made their own form of poetry about this - even if they came to the opposite conclusion about the hototogisu. With the hot sun beating down on their backs, they made something beautiful out of challenging circumstances and shared it with each other in laughter and song.
Artist's Comments
This illustration took me so long to do. I ended up doing so much research for it, including rereading the entire Pillow Book! After reaching the milestone of my sixtieth illustration last time, it felt appropriate to revisit the one that started it all. This is the first time in the series I've depicted a woman twice: You can see Sei Shōnagon in the background here, looking aghast as she hears the women's hototogisu song. She's wearing seasonally appropriate robes of lavender and leaf-green, while her escorts wear lavender robes over gathered trousers of pale blue. The road is lined with hedges of deutzia: On the way back from the festival, she will have the withering branches of hollyhock on her carriage replaced with sprays of the white flowers. This is also the first time I've drawn the same event at different stages, since Sei Shōnagon is on her way to the Kamo Festival, which I drew two years ago. This picture has some parallels with the first one I drew in the series of Sei Shōnagon. While last time, she was in the foreground while the Empress looked on from behind, this time she is the onlooker, with the focus shifting instead to the women working in the fields. I used Japanese woodblock prints as inspiration for aspects of this picture.
My own PhD research is about the topic of women's work song, so this topic was very much up my alley. I research the role of music in the lives of women who worked as fish gutters and packers in Scotland's herring industry. Although it's a different time and place, I see so much in common between the role of song in the lives of the women I study and the ones that Sei Shōnagon briefly wrote about. Making music together is such an old and fundamental part of the human experience. It makes the work go faster in more ways than one. I'm glad that I got to represent it here.
I have been going through a difficult time lately. Just a month after losing our dear cat Poe, we experienced the sudden loss of our other cat Loki. Loki also sat with me many times while I was drawing. He was my sweet fluffy boy, so full of love and personality. He purred like a radiator and cuddled with a ferocious passion. I miss him so much every day. Losing him and Poe so close together has left me heartbroken. He was here when I started this picture, and it still feels like he should be here with me on my lap as I write this. He went out the same way he lived his life, so full of love for Poe that he couldn't bear to be apart from him. This illustration is dedicated to his memory. I love you, Loki. ~ October 5, 2022
My own PhD research is about the topic of women's work song, so this topic was very much up my alley. I research the role of music in the lives of women who worked as fish gutters and packers in Scotland's herring industry. Although it's a different time and place, I see so much in common between the role of song in the lives of the women I study and the ones that Sei Shōnagon briefly wrote about. Making music together is such an old and fundamental part of the human experience. It makes the work go faster in more ways than one. I'm glad that I got to represent it here.
I have been going through a difficult time lately. Just a month after losing our dear cat Poe, we experienced the sudden loss of our other cat Loki. Loki also sat with me many times while I was drawing. He was my sweet fluffy boy, so full of love and personality. He purred like a radiator and cuddled with a ferocious passion. I miss him so much every day. Losing him and Poe so close together has left me heartbroken. He was here when I started this picture, and it still feels like he should be here with me on my lap as I write this. He went out the same way he lived his life, so full of love for Poe that he couldn't bear to be apart from him. This illustration is dedicated to his memory. I love you, Loki. ~ October 5, 2022
Resources
Want to learn more about the peasant women of Heian Japan and their music? Here are some recommended resources.
Daily Life and Demographics in Ancient Japan by William Wayne Farris
This book is the most thorough examination I could find in English about what life was like for everyday people in the Heian period. Farris goes into great detail about the evidence for population growth and decline in different early medieval Japan. A shorter version of many of his arguments can also be found in his chapter "Famine, Climate, and Farming in Japan, 670-1100." Reading these works, it struck me just how exploitative the Heian aristocracy was of the majority of Japanese people, who faced constant famines and plagues while providing food for the emperor's table.
"Life of Commoners in the Provinces: The Owari no gebumi of 988" by Charlotte von Verschuer
The primary source examined here is a petition sent from a province to the capital in 988. The local officials of Owari province, just east of Kyoto, wanted to get rid of their current provincial governor because of his many abuses. There is some useful information here about how the relationship between a governor, his officials, and local peasants paying their rice tax was supposed to work - and what happened when it didn't. According to the petition, the governor's seizure of their rice for his own pleasure was becoming so bad that many peasants died of food shortages, while others abandoned their farms and fled. The peasantry were particularly angry that the governor was harassing them for extra taxes in the busiest time of the year, when they transplanted the rice seedlings.
"Songs of Japanese Workers" by Felicia G. Bock
An oldie but a goodie, this article catalogues different types of work song in rural Japan. Of particular relevance here is her discussion of the many different types of ta-ue-uta, or rice-growing songs. The planting of rice was a major ritual part of the year, and rural people in Japan historically performed special songs and dances for the occasion as well as singing while working. The lyrics and performance of these songs are analysed here in some detail. In some rural parts of Japan, these traditions are still observed today.
"Watching Commoners, Performing Class: Images of Common People in The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon" by Jeffrey Angles
This article examines the way Sei Shōnagon discusses lower-class people in The Pillow Book. Angles argues that rather than being unilaterally disgusted by the lower classes, Shōnagon does sometimes appreciate the aesthetic beauty of something a commoner does - when it fits with her idea of what commoners should do. The incident with the rice farmers isn't discussed here, but there are lots of other interesting analyses of how her commentary about commoners reflects her worldview and the purposes of The Pillow Book. Her work has far more references to commoners than any other Heian woman's diary of the time.
The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon
Of course, I have to recommend The Pillow Book itself! I use the Penguin Classics edition translated by Meredith McKinney. It's got a fantastic and lengthy notes section at the back, plus several appendices. The one about clothing and colours was particularly useful for this illustration. I reread the entire book in preparation for this picture, making note of the many references to summer colours so that I would not offend Sei Shōnagon's memory by depicting her in an unseasonal outfit! There are lots of descriptions of the Kamo Festival too. Another useful thing here is that there are several references to people singing while working, although the one with the rice farmers is the only one where the workers' actual lyrics are preserved.
Daily Life and Demographics in Ancient Japan by William Wayne Farris
This book is the most thorough examination I could find in English about what life was like for everyday people in the Heian period. Farris goes into great detail about the evidence for population growth and decline in different early medieval Japan. A shorter version of many of his arguments can also be found in his chapter "Famine, Climate, and Farming in Japan, 670-1100." Reading these works, it struck me just how exploitative the Heian aristocracy was of the majority of Japanese people, who faced constant famines and plagues while providing food for the emperor's table.
"Life of Commoners in the Provinces: The Owari no gebumi of 988" by Charlotte von Verschuer
The primary source examined here is a petition sent from a province to the capital in 988. The local officials of Owari province, just east of Kyoto, wanted to get rid of their current provincial governor because of his many abuses. There is some useful information here about how the relationship between a governor, his officials, and local peasants paying their rice tax was supposed to work - and what happened when it didn't. According to the petition, the governor's seizure of their rice for his own pleasure was becoming so bad that many peasants died of food shortages, while others abandoned their farms and fled. The peasantry were particularly angry that the governor was harassing them for extra taxes in the busiest time of the year, when they transplanted the rice seedlings.
"Songs of Japanese Workers" by Felicia G. Bock
An oldie but a goodie, this article catalogues different types of work song in rural Japan. Of particular relevance here is her discussion of the many different types of ta-ue-uta, or rice-growing songs. The planting of rice was a major ritual part of the year, and rural people in Japan historically performed special songs and dances for the occasion as well as singing while working. The lyrics and performance of these songs are analysed here in some detail. In some rural parts of Japan, these traditions are still observed today.
"Watching Commoners, Performing Class: Images of Common People in The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon" by Jeffrey Angles
This article examines the way Sei Shōnagon discusses lower-class people in The Pillow Book. Angles argues that rather than being unilaterally disgusted by the lower classes, Shōnagon does sometimes appreciate the aesthetic beauty of something a commoner does - when it fits with her idea of what commoners should do. The incident with the rice farmers isn't discussed here, but there are lots of other interesting analyses of how her commentary about commoners reflects her worldview and the purposes of The Pillow Book. Her work has far more references to commoners than any other Heian woman's diary of the time.
The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon
Of course, I have to recommend The Pillow Book itself! I use the Penguin Classics edition translated by Meredith McKinney. It's got a fantastic and lengthy notes section at the back, plus several appendices. The one about clothing and colours was particularly useful for this illustration. I reread the entire book in preparation for this picture, making note of the many references to summer colours so that I would not offend Sei Shōnagon's memory by depicting her in an unseasonal outfit! There are lots of descriptions of the Kamo Festival too. Another useful thing here is that there are several references to people singing while working, although the one with the rice farmers is the only one where the workers' actual lyrics are preserved.