The Tale of Sumiyoshi

The Sumiyoshi monogatari (The Tale of Sumiyoshi) is the story of two lovers who after a long separation are reunited in Sumiyoshi, a small fishing village near modern Osaka.[1] It tells of an unfortunate stepdaughter—a popular theme in Heian and Kamakura literature—and has a Cinderella-like ending.
The beautiful young princess Himegimi loses her mother at an early age and is reared by a stepmother who has two daughters of her own, Nakano Kimi and San no Kimi. When the well-born Chūjō falls in love with Himegimi, the stepmother tricks him into marrying her younger daughter. After the stepmother frustrates her husband's attempts to make a suitable match for Himegimi, the despondent Himegimi flees to Sumiyoshi, where her deceased mother's wet nurse is living as a nun. After prayer and fasting, Chūjō searches for and finds her there. The young lovers are married, and after several days' celebration return to Kyoto.
Still wary of the wicked stepmother, the couple conceal Himegimi's true identity for seven years. During this period, she gives birth to a son and a daughter. On the happy occasion of the ceremony when one of their children is clothed in a new skirt (usually between the ages of three and seven), Himegimi's father is invited to the ceremony and learns about his daughter's marriage and return. Chūjō and Himegimi live happily ever after, while the evil stepmother ends her days in poverty and disgrace
The work of an unidentified author, the Sumiyoshi monogatari was probably written in the mid-tenth century, predating by about half a century Lady Murasaki's Genji monogatari (cat. nos. 81, 82, 87, 109, 110, 126), which is generally recognized as the world's first romantic novel. The influence of the Sumiyoshi monogatari on Lady Murasaki is widely acknowledged. In another Late Heian work, Makura no sōshi (The Pillow Book), the author, Sei Shōnagon, praises the Sumiyoshi monogatari as one of the great romantic novels of Japan.[2] It has, however, suffered many misfortunes. The original manuscript is lost, and the story as we know it appears to have been based on a version extensively modified in the Kamakura period. A small portion of the Heian original can, however, be reconstructed with the help of seven poems and their prose prefaces by the courtier-poet Nakatomi Yoshinobu (921–991).[3]
The Sumiyoshi monogatari was in an unfinished state at the end of the tenth century, when Yoshinobu was asked to compose his poems, the story having progressed only as far as Chūjō's finding Himegimi in Sumiyoshi.[4] In all likelihood the original story was quite different from that of the extant text, in which the lovers marry at this point. In his brief introduction, Yoshinobu explains that he was asked to write poems about the paintings for the Sumiyoshi monogatari "because the poems that should have accompanied some of the scenes . . . were still not there."[5] A short prose description precedes each of the seven poems and identifies the subject of that scene.
Yoshinobu's poems are interesting for what they reveal about the literary practices of the Late Heian period. Apparently a novel might be read by a number of people, and even illustrated with paintings, before it had been completed. Poems were then composed to accompany the illustrations. Thus, the three elements of Japanese fiction—prose, painting, and poetry—came together in a process that depended on their mutual enrichment.
Although Sumiyoshi illustrations existed by the late tenth century, the oldest extant example of a Sumiyoshi monogatari emaki (Illustrated Tale of Sumiyoshi) is a late Kamakura work, of which only a few fragments are preserved. The largest of these is in the Tokyo National Museum;[6] several smaller sections, including the Burke fragments, are in private hands. The fragment in Tokyo illustrates the episode in which the villagers of Sumiyoshi have gathered at the seashore to celebrate the marriage of Chūjō and Himegimi.[7] This scene continues on the Burke fragment (a), in which Chūjō and his bride are shown in their carriage, accompanied by friends on horseback, as they set off for the capital.
Here crimson maple leaves brighten the country road on a clear autumn day. A group of soldiers marches to the left behind the carriage. A light mist seems to rise from the ground, and the figures gradually fade from view. The following scene, now in the Man'no Art Museum, Osaka, shows Chūjō and Himegimi continuing their journey by boat.
Little remains of the text that originally accompanied the illustrations. A fragment of three lines (b) that relates the arrival of Chūjō and Himegimi at the capital (also in the Burke Collection) is the only known survival. It reads: Then they arrived in the capital and went to the mansion of Chūjō's father, who was upset about his son's secret marriage to an unknown country girl. Nevertheless, he built a special wing of the house for them and there established the newlyweds.
The text suggests that the scroll went on to illustrate the later events of the story, up to the reunion of Himegimi with her father.[8] The original emaki set seems to have comprised at least two or three scrolls. Most of it was lost before 1848, when Sumiyoshi Sadanobu, an artist who is otherwise unknown, made a copy of the scrolls.[9] This copy, which is now in a private collection in Japan, appears to be a faithful replica; the only section of text that it includes is the Burke fragment.
The Tokyo fragment and its companion pieces are traditionally attributed to Tosa Nagataka, who was active sometime during the thirteenth century but of whom nothing more is known. 10 All the stylistic features point to a date at the end of the thirteenth century: the agitated facial expressions of the soldiers, the stiff, angular lines of the garments, the rock defined by broad brushstrokes, and the short, gnarled trees with bent branches. These characteristics are shared by other emaki from the same period, such as the Obusuma Saburō ekotoba of 1295 and the San 'nō reigenki of about 1288.[11]
Although the Sumiyoshi monogatari was read and copied frequently during the Kamakura period, when its romantic theme was again in vogue, most of the illustrated versions of the tale have been lost. In fact, aside from the fragments discussed here, only one other Sumiyoshi emaki from the period is known. This scroll, now owned by the Seikadō Bunko Art Museum, Tokyo, dates to the early fourteenth century, but it too is severely damaged and incomplete[12] The Sumiyoshi tale continued to enjoy considerable popularity throughout the Muromachi, Momoyama, and Edo periods, and was often illustrated in scrolls and books. Extensively modified, however, these later versions bear little relationship to the illustrations produced in the Kamakura period.
[Miyeko Murase 2000, Bridge of Dreams]
[1] "Sumiyoshi monogatari" 1901.
[2] Sei Shōnagon 1958, p. 249.
[3] Reprinted in Hashimoto Fumio 1970, pp. I0l–6, 1I0–12. The poems were first discussed in Horibe Seiji 1943.
[4] Tamagami Takuya 1943, pp. 1–20.
[5] Horibe Seiji 1943, pp. 45–10.
[6] Murase 19833, no. 12.
[7] The Tokyo fragment was recently reunited with a fragment that was formerly in the Dōmoto Art Museum, Kyoto; see Umezu Jirō 1970, pp. 44–45.
[8] For the reconstruction of the original sequence of these fragments, see Murase 1980a, pp. 118–19.
[9] Umezu Jirō 1970, pp. 46–47.
[10] Kurokawa Harumura 1881–1901, vol. 7, p. 2.
[11] See, respectively, Komatsu Shigemi 1978b and Komatsu Shigemi 1984a.
[12] Komatsu Shigemi 1978c, pp. 2–37.

Masuda Tarō 益田太郎 Japanese, Yokohama; Momiyama Hanzaburō 籾山半三郎 Japanese, Japan; Yoshida Tanzaemon 吉田丹左衛門 Japanese, Japan (dates unknown); Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation , New York (until 2015; donated to MMA)

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Nagoya City Art Museum. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," August 17, 1985–September 23, 1985.

Atami. MOA Museum of Art. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," September 29, 1985–October 27, 1985.

Hamamatsu City Museum of Art. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," November 12, 1985–December 1, 1985.

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New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Courtly Romance in Japanese Art," May 12–July 12, 1989.

Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. "Die Kunst des Alten Japan: Meisterwerke aus der Mary and Jackson Burke Collection," September 16, 1990–November 18, 1990.

Tokyo National Museum. "Yamato-e: miyabi no keifu," October 13, 1993–November 23, 1993.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Japanese Art from The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," March 30–June 25, 2000.

Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," July 5, 2005–August 19, 2005.

Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," October 4, 2005–December 11, 2005.

Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," January 24, 2006–March 5, 2006.

Miho Museum. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," March 15, 2006–June 11, 2006.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Storytelling in Japanese Art," November 19, 2011–May 6, 2012.

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Tsuji Nobuo 辻惟雄, Mary Griggs Burke, Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha 日本経済新聞社, and Gifu-ken Bijutsukan 岐阜県美術館. Nyūyōku Bāku korekushon-ten: Nihon no bi sanzennen no kagayaki ニューヨーク・バーク・コレクション展 : 日本の美三千年の輝き(Enduring legacy of Japanese art: The Mary Griggs Burke collection). Exh. cat. [Tokyo]: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 2005, cat. no. 21.

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