1 The question of versions ordered differently from the Teika-bon is not considered. The edition used is Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei (NKBT 9), comm. by Ōtsu Yūichi 大津有一 and Tsukishima Hiroshi 築島裕. Transliteration is in a modified rekishi kana-zukai. Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own and intended to make clear the intertextual aspect under discussion. References to Zhuangzi are to the edition by Kanaya Osamu (KO) 金谷治, Sōshi 荘子 (Iwanami bunko, 1994 (1971)), 4 vols, conferred with Akatsuka Tadashi 赤塚忠, Sōshi (Shūeisha, 1974 (=Zenshaku kanbun taikei 16–17) and Fukunaga Mitsuji 福永光司, Sōshi, 3 vols (Asahi shinbunsha, 1966). The English translation is Watson's, Burton (BW), The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968)Google Scholar and, occasionally, Graham's, A. C. (ACG), Chuang-tzu: The Inner Chapters (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981)Google Scholar.

2 Some preliminary results of that enquiry were presented at the Oxford-Kobe Seminar on Linguistics, September 2004, in Lone Takeuchi, “Nasake: a Daoist notion in mid-Heian wabun”, in Frellesvig, Bjarke et al. (ed.), Current Issues in the History and Structure of Japanese (Kurosio shuppan, 2007), 319–38Google Scholar.

3 The problem of the coherence has been defined by Bowring, Richard, “The Ise monogatari: a short cultural history”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 32/2, 1992, 405Google Scholar as “… a series of … passages expressed in largely abstract terms with few obvious links …”.

4 Several recent studies have more topical perspectives on Chinese intertextuality than what is proposed here, e.g. Kōsuke, Taniguchi 谷口孝介, “Monogatari no shōyō: Ise monogatari 67-dan kara Genji monogatari e”, Dōshisha kokubungaku 38, 1993, 44–55Google Scholar; Li, Ding 丁莉, “Ise monogatari Kari no tsukai no tassei: Yingyingzhuan (鶯鶯伝) wo dodai ni site”, Ningen bunka ronsō 7, 2004, 1–7Google Scholar; Hideo, Watanabe 渡辺秀夫, “Ise monogatari: kanshibun to no hibikiai”, Kokubungaku (Gakutōsha) 43/2, 1998, 17–24Google Scholar; Noriko, Izumi 泉紀子, Ise monogatari ni okeru wa to kan: sono jūsōsei”, Higashi Ajia hikaku bunka kenkyū 1, 2002, 20–32Google Scholar.

5 I believe that the engagement with Zhuangzi would have been with the original text. All the same, extracts from Zhuangzi in circulation in different ideological contexts might, of course, have been instrumental in suggesting themes, cf. the discussion of section 1.

6 At least one contemporary account describes how kanshi (Sino-Japanese poetry) composition based on Chinese prose sources, Shenxianzhuan 神仙伝 or Liexianzhuan 列仙伝 and other Chinese collections of anecdotes, was used to celebrate the fiftieth birthday in 895 of Minamoto no Toshiari 源能有 (845–897) Montoku tennō's son, great councillor and waka poet. This was a collaborative effort: Sugawara no Michizane 菅原道真 (845–903) composed poems on the passages selected by Ki no Haseo 紀長谷雄 (845–912), and the court painter Kose no Kanaoka 巨勢金岡 painted the illustrations (Kanke bunsō 386–90, NKBT 72: 410–14), cf. Hisao, Kawaguchi 川口久雄, Hana no utage: Nihon hikaku bungaku ronshū (Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1980), 260–3Google Scholar, and Bowring, “The Ise”, 409–10.

7 It is claimed that the sections belonging to the oldest stage exhibit particular linguistic characteristics, e.g. in their use of the deictic categories. For an account of the theories of the production of IM, see Klein, Susan Blakeley, Allegories of Desire: Esoteric Literary Commentaries of Medieval Japan (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002), ch. 4Google Scholar.

8 Kokinshū 616, 747, 645–6, respectively.

9 This does not exclude other textual sources. Kōsei, Ishii 石井公成, “Aimai-gonomi no genryū: Ise monogatari to bukkyō”, Bungaku 5/5, 2004, 191–207Google Scholar provides convincing evidence from Buddhist sources, such as Yuimakyō 維摩経, for an epistemology not dissimilar to what is discussed below. I am grateful to Iyanaga Nobumi for having pointed out this article to me and for providing a copy.

10 On sexual/textual politics and IM, see Okada, H. Richard, Figures of Resistance: Language, Poetry and Narrating in The Tale of Genji and other Mid-Heian Texts (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1991), ch. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 An account of the historical background for the ideological engagement with Zhuangzi cannot be undertaken here, but a couple of points should be noted. There was no shortage of texts in late ninth-century Japan: Nihonkoku genzai sho-mokuroku 日本国現在書目録 (Bibliography of (Chinese) books [still] in existence at present in Japan), compiled in 891 by Fujiwara no Sukeyo 藤原佐世 (847–898) included forty-three items with Laozi or Zhuangzi in the title (Zoku gunsho ruijû 884, 40, under the heading dōke (道家)). Sugawara no Michizane 菅原道真 used references to Rōsō 老荘 in scholarly debates (e.g. Zisin wo wakimafu 辯地震, Kanke bunsō 菅家文草 no. 567) and recommended free(r) study and discussion of texts, and his poems contain allusions to Zhuangzi (e.g. ibid. nos 153–72, 234–8), cf. Borgen, Robert, Sugawara no Michizane and the Early Heian Court (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1986), 107, 131–2 and 143–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, respectively. Obituary notes in Montoku tennō jitsuroku 文徳天皇実録 (879) and Sandai jitsuroku 三代実録 (901) noted people reading Laozi and Zhuangzi and allow extrapolations that these texts were becoming a defining part of the tradition of particular families such as the Shigeno house 滋野家 (Shin'ichirō, Masuo 増尾真一郎, “Nihon kodai no chishikisō to Rōshi: Kajōkō-chū no juyō wo megutte”, in Tetsurō, Noguchi (ed.), Dōkyō to Nihon, 2: kodai bunka no tenkai to dōkyō (Yūzankaku shuppan, 1997), 120Google Scholar). There may be several reasons for increasing interest at the time. What cannot be ignored is that the most successful ideological hegemony in the ninth century, Kūkai's construction of the Goshichinichi Mishihō in 831 and the ascent of Fujiwara-financed esoterism, was articulated in a discourse that undermined conventional signification, cf. Ryūichi, Abé, The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Discourse (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 343 ff.Google Scholar This could have motivated the choice of Zhuangzi and Laozi as texts with which to articulate alternative political discourse(s). Note incidentally that Kūkai's knowledge of Zhuangzi and Laozi was second to none in Japan, cf. Jien, Shizuka 静慈圓, Kūkai mikkyō no genryū to tenkai (Ōkura shuppan, 1994)Google Scholar. The Akō dispute (âkō no fungi) in 887 could have hastened ideological assertions and repositioning in circles of officials and poets perhaps in more ways than one, cf. Akio, Gotō 後藤昭雄, Heian-chō kanbungaku ronkō (Ōfūsha, 1981), 79 ff.Google Scholar, on the recurrent antagonism among officials between the Confucianists (儒家派) and the “useless” poets (詩人派). There may also have existed competing ideological positions around waka production. Wiebke Donecke has suggested that the Daoist tradition and especially Laozi was used in the Japanese preface to Kokin wakashū to construct a Japanese “Way of Poetry” which took precedence over the Sino-Japanese historical tradition (“Writing history in the face of the other: early Japanese anthologies and the beginnings of literature”, Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 76, 2004, 96 note 63).

12 Such as Cook Ding's ease with carving meat, Zhuangzi 3, Yangshengzhu 養生主 (The secret of caring for life), KO I, 92–5, BW, 50–51.

13 This is in large part due to Okada, Figures.

14 What at one point is deemed as “this” before long comes to be perceived as “that”, cf. KO I, 54 ff., BW, 39 f.

15 I owe the term to Espresset, Grégoire, “À vau-l'eau à rebours ou l'ambivalence de la logique triadique dans l'idéologie du Taiping jing 太平経”, Cahiers l'Extrême-Asie 14, 2004, 61–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Note that the Zhuangzi passage that is suggested as a pretext in section 4 is from the Qiwulun chapter, just as is the Zhuangzi discussion of “that” and “this”, cf. below.

17 What at one point is deemed as “this”, before long comes to be perceived as “that”, cf. KO I, 54 ff., BW, 39 f.

18 Assuming a near-homophonous pun nafo “yet” and na wo “name” + accusative case marker.

19 Keburi may be a pun on ke-buri < ke-furi (気ふり) “changeable, breath-like”.

20 Graham, A. C., “Taoist spontaneity and the dichotomy of ‘Is’ and ‘Ought’”, in Mair, Victor H. (ed.), Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu (Center for Asian and Pacific Studies. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983), 3–23.Google Scholar Graham was also careful to stress that spontaneity in Zhuangzi was different from the Romantic ideal of “free play of impulse, emotion, illustrating the subjective imagination”.

21 In that, IM's stance seemed different from that of the Kokinshū preface, where a poetic emotional overflow could be triggered by any object, human or inanimate; this has been referred to as mono no aware in the exegetical tradition.

22 Cf. Takeuchi, “Nasake”.

23 Makura no sōshi 250, SNKBT 25: 281.

24 Hopper, Paul J. and Thompson, Sandra A., “Transitivity in grammar and discourse”, Language 56, 1980, 251–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially p. 252.

25 This section forms part of the epistemological discourse on the core notions, miru “to see” and afu “to meet” (sections 1, 69–75).

26 Kofisiku fa kite mo miyo kasi tifayaburu kami no isamuru miti naranaku ni “If you long for me, come and see me/here! For this is not a way to which the tifayaburu kami object” (IM 71, NKBT 9:152).

27 Chapter 2, Qiwulun, Akatsuka I, 86, ACG, 53, cf. BW, 40, and KO, I, 57–8, especially note p. 58.

28 Cf. Andersen, Henning, “Markedness and the theory of change”, in Andersen, H. (ed.), Actualization: Linguistic Change in Progress (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2001), 21–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Hjelmslev, Louis, Sprogsystem og Sprogforandring (Copenhagen: Nordisk Sprog- og Kulturforlag, 1972 (1934)), 77 ff.Google Scholar, for the proposal of linguistic oppositions as asymmetrical, or “qualitative inequality of lexical units” in the terms of François Rastier, “Cognitive semantics and diachronic semantics: the values and evolution of classes”, in Blank, Andreas and Koch, Peter (eds), Historical Semantics and Cognition (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1999), 110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Cf. sections 37–41 and sections 58–69. The reader's interpretation of section 41 in the former sequence relies on the more explicit characterization of nasake in the latter sequence (section 63) to enable a retrospective inference, a not uncommon feature of wabun. In both sequences, the three terms are introduced in the order in which they are given here.

31 NKBT 9: 146. This characterization recalls what Zhuangzi had to say about The True Men of old, 故其好之也一、其弗好之也一 “… Hence they were one with what they liked and one with what they disliked”, chapter 6, Dazongshi, KO I, 180, BW, 79, ACG, 85.

32 Concerning the semantic fluctuation of kaimamiru, see Jōji, Ishida 石田譲二, Ise monogatari shūshaku-kō (Chikurinsha, 2002), 77 ffGoogle Scholar.

33 Viz. the poetry exchange as a space of contestation.

34 It seems difficult to imagine that the overarching paronomasia, mitu “three” = mitu “has seen” (-tu perfective aspect suffix) = (san)mitu “three secrets”, would not have been appreciated by the audience at the time.

35 The phrase kari ni, indeterminate between “[going] to hunt” and “indeterminately (perhaps literally ‘shifting A for B’)” captured the cognitive shift.

36 Kaimami- defined three stages of the Life in the text; following the explicit telic action in section 1, an almost non-volitional reaction, grounded exclusively in the moment, was implied in section 63, as already mentioned, and a negation implied in wotoko's refusal to go hunting in section 123.

37 Cf. 籬 mikaki, Kazuo, Mabuchi 馬渕和夫 (ed.), Wamyō ruijushō kosha-bon shōten-bon honbun oyobi sakuin (Kazama shobō, 1973), 443Google Scholar.

38 The frequent use of the Chinese fanqie (反切) method to indicate Chinese or Sino-Japanese pronunciation, for instance in the tenth-century dictionary Wamyō ruijushō, may have inspired paronomasia that relied on analysing a syllable into an initial consonant and a vocalic nucleus.

39 荃者所以在魚、得魚而忘荃 Zhuangzi, ch. 26, Waiwu, KO IV, 34, BW, 302. KO uses荃 rather than 筌.

40 The examples of fasitanasi in Makura no sōshi defined responses as inadequate, although not necessarily intentionally so on anyone's part (Makura no sōshi 122, SNKBT 25: 164–5, Shōnagon, Sei, The Pillow Book (trans. McKinney, Meredith) (London: Penguin Books, 2006), 127–8Google Scholar, “Awkward and embarassing things”.

41 IM 1, NKBT 9:111.

42 This contrasts with Mukasi wonna farakara futariarikeri “Once there were two sisters” in section 41, NKBT 9:135.

43 Imose might in turn have connoted Ise. There are other possible interpretations, however. Confusion between someone he knew elsewhere, perhaps in the capital, and that person's sister (cf. section 41).

44 Vos, Frits, A Study of the Ise-monogatari with the Text according to the Den-Teika-hippon and an Annotated Translation (The Hague: Mouton, 1957)Google Scholar I, 165 translates as follows: “[Just like] the intricate pattern / [Of my] printed garment / [Dyed with] the light purple / From Kasuga's moor – / [Is] the disturbance of [my] yearning [heart], - / Boundless …”.

45 Kokinshū identified Minamoto no Tōru 源融 as the poet of an identical poem except that line 4 reads midaremu to (o)mofu (Kokinshū 724 (koi), SNKBT 5:220).

46 E.g. “Because of whom / Have [my] feelings begun to be confused / Like the intricate pattern / Of a printed garment / From Shinobu in Michinoku? / While it is not my [fault] … (Vos, A Study, I, 165); “In distant Michinoku / where dyes are rubbed in confused patterns / whose heart would take on such confused feelings / for just anyone? / certainly not mine” (Okada, Figures, 138); “Whose fault is it that this wild print from Shinobu in Michinoku has become disordered? Hardly mine” (Bowring, “The Ise”, 402).

47 -si is the attributive (rentaikei) of the Past suffix -ki. It is regularly interpreted as sentence-final in a question with an interrogative word tare “who?”. For a discussion of -niki, see Sandness, Karen E., The Evolution of the Japanese Past and Perfective Suffixes (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, 1999), especially p. 75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 KO I, 187 reversed the place of 受 and 伝 on the basis of Chuzi (J. Soji) 楚辞.

49 Cf. sections 15–6, 81.

50 Nihon shoki (Saimei 5 (659)), NKBT 68:338–9.

51 Zoku Nihon shoki (Yōrō 2.5 (718)), SNKBT 13:44.

52 Graham, A. C., Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature (Singapore: The Institute of East Asian Philosophies, 1986), 33 fGoogle Scholar.

53 Ishida, Ise, 35 ff., for a summary of the traditional commentaries. Sinobu was a small fern-like plant growing in shades, whose root was used in dyeing (purple), and which probably got its name from sinobu “(the one) to be unnoticed or undetected”. Whatever the exact process, modizuri/suri came to denote the chaotic pattern that emerged, cf. McCullough, Helen, Tales of Ise Lyrical Episodes from Tenth-Century Japan (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1968), 200Google Scholar note 2. There seems to be no contemporary evidence that sinobuzuri was actually produced in Shinobu and the reason for juxtaposing the two place names would appear to have been paronomastic.

54 Within a Chinese context, 夫 can be interpreted as a final particle that expects agreement (“is it not?”), see Pulleyblank, Edwin G., Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002 (1995)), 145Google Scholar.

55 夫 is an “introductory particle announcing a topic”, see Pulleyblank, Outline, 74.

56 Akatsuka, Sōshi, 275 ff.

57 See Orzech, Charles D., “Puns on the humane king: analogy and application in an East Asian apocryphon”, JAOS 109/1, 1989, 17–24Google Scholar.

58 Part [1] occurs as one of more than forty references to Zhuangzi in Zhiguan fuxingzhuan hongjue 止観輔行伝弘決 (Allusions to further the understanding of the concept of sikan) (T 1912 46), compiled by the Tiendai monk Zhanran 湛然 (711–82) and brought to Japan by Saichō 最澄 (767–822). Prince Tomohira 具平親王 (964–1009) included it in his Guketsu getenshō 弘決外典抄 (Annotated list of the non-Buddhist allusions, compiled in 991) to Zhanran's work, cf. Kumaichirō, Uchino 内野熊一郎, Nihon kanbungaku kenkyū (Meicho fukyūkai, 1991 (1950)), 295Google Scholar, note 41 and Guketsu getenshō, Zoku Tendaishū zensho: kengyō 3 (Shunjūsha, 1989).

59 My understanding of the function of this quotation is based on Kimiko, Kōno 河野貴美子, “Zenju senjutsu butten chūshaku-bon ni okeru Rōsō kankei-sho no in'yō”, Ajia yūgaku 73, 2006, 83–94Google Scholar. Yuishiki gitō zōmyōki (TZ 2261) is a commentary of Zhizhou 智周 (668–723), Cheng weishi lunliao yidengji 成唯識論了義灯記, which is, in turn, a commentary of Huizhao 慧沼 (649–714), Cheng weishi lunliao yideng 成唯識論了義灯. The Zhuangzi passage is among several non-Buddhist passages apparently introduced by Zenju himself (cf. T 2261 65.340b). Zenju studied under Genbō 玄昉 (?–746) at Kōfukuji, Genbō is said to have studied with Zhizhou and returned from China with many texts and a purple robe, a gift from emperor Xuanzong 玄宗 (r. 712–56).

60 Zenju associated it to another instance of the same passage, identified by Kōno as belonging in Xu huayanjing lüeshu kandingji 続華厳経略疏刊定記 by Huiyuan 慧苑, a Kegon scholar monk from the Tang dynasty.

61 Yuan Kang 元康, Zhao-Lun-shu 肇論疏 (7th c.), Dainihon komonjo, vol. 9 (tsuika 3), 260–1.

62 On -(r)u in wabun, see Takeuchi, Lone, A Study of Classical Japanese Tense and Aspect (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag), 1987, 91 ffGoogle Scholar.

63 Cf., for instance, Ishida, Ise, 40–42.

64 For a different explanation, see Ishida, Ise, 73.

65 Note that kami whose stance the poet in section 71 characterized as “non-objecting” (i.e. equivocal), are conventionally characterized as tifayaburu, a near-homophone of itifayasi.

66 Cf. NKBT 9:189, note 11, and SNKBT 17:373. Yōichi, Katagiri 片桐洋一, Ise monogatari no shin-kenkyū (Meiji Shoin, 1987), 2Google Scholar, dates the explicit association of miyabika-nari to the lexical entry for 都 in the late Heian dictionary Ruiju myōgishō. Note that miyabi does not occur in Kokinshū.

67 Especially in sections 65 and 69.

68 This understanding would be consistent with the figure of Dazongshi 大宗師 “the teacher who is the ultimate ancestor” in Zhuangzi, who was also beyond any socio-political hierarchy.

69 Three translations give an impression of the interpretational scope: Okada, Figures, 143, “neither quite awake / nor yet asleep // watching our night brighten into dawn, // I spend the day in longing gaze // at the ceaseless rains that come with spring //”, and the current translations of Kokinshū 616, Rodd, Laurel R. with Mary Catherine Henkenius, Kokinshū: A Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar “I am one with spring / neither sleeping nor waking / till night turns to dawn / each day passes in pensive / gazing endless as the long rain”; and McCullough, Helen Craig (trans. and annot.), Kokin wakashū: The First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Poetry (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985)Google Scholar “Having passed the night / neither waking nor sleeping, / I have spent the day / brooding and watching the rain / the unending rain of spring”. I agree with the last translation on the rendering of -tu, cf. Sandness, The Evolution, 67, 75 ff.

70 Note that a radical paronomastic reading interpreting akasu as synonymous with ake- “to clear (obstacles) away” and kurasu as kura-su “building a storehouse” turn akasite … kurasitu into a metaphor for building, “clearing (the land) … I have made a storehouse”, is consistent with the opening setting of the section.

71 “Aimai-gonomi no genryū”, 201–2 points out convincing Chinese textual provenance of the juxtaposition of oki mo sezu ne mo sede and on that basis identifies the construction as expressing an ambiguous action different from both. I would understand it as implying not one, but a pair of ambiguities or logical supersessions.

72 The time was the first day of the third month, cf. the association of the third month with water/rain in the Treatise on the Seasonal Rules in Huainanzi, Major, John S., Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought: Chapters Three, Four and Five of Huainanzi (New York: State University of New York Press, 1993), 230 ffGoogle Scholar.

73 This suggestion produces a sentence structure as follows: [[[[oki mo sezu ] ne mo sede] yoru wo akasite fa ] faru no mono tote] [[nagame] kurasitu]].

74 Especially, Sugawara Michizane's poem Kanke bunsō 384 (NKBT 72:409, note 8, 708) composed at the palace during the Jōwa era (834–848) at the time of flowering cherry trees in order to shift the emperor's attention to the less eye-catching evergreen bamboo and pine trees. The poem seems to suggest that 春物 faru no mono had a certain idiomacity signifying the paying of attention to less interesting objects or events. The poem lacks, however, an overall similarity to section 2.

75 ACG, 76.

76 Cf. Sunao, Ichihara 市原愿, Ise monogatari kaishaku-ron (Kazama, 2001), 214–35Google Scholar.

77 KO, 90–4, BW, 82–3, cf. also Leder, Alfred, “Frau Vorsichtig belehrt Junker Grossblumig: Entschüsselung eines Dialogs aus dem Zhuangzi”, Asiatische Studien/Études Asiatiques 61/3, 2007, 795–811Google Scholar,

78 A. C. Graham renders 獨 as “the Unique”.

79 ACG, 79–81, BW, 72–4.

80 Cf. “… he is evidently one in whom the stuff [才] is whole but the Power [徳] has failed to shape the body.” (ACG, 80).

81 ACG, 81 “Being level is the culmination of water coming to rest. That the water level can serve as a standard is because it is protected from within and undisturbed from the outside.” Graham notes dislocation in the following and reconstructs the text at this point to include description of water in other contexts.

82 These two (uta and (mono)gatari) are, of course, the constitutive formal elements of the IM text itself.

83 Note that the Zhuangzi passage relevant to section 1 and Nanbo Zikui and Nu Yu's dialogue occur in contiguous sections in Zhuangzi.

84 The dualistic signification of nideu “second ward” is underscored by its paronomastic negative te- form of ni-, nide “not being like”.

85 Section 6 brings this theme to a head with a richness of expressions, nusumu “to steal”, kakuru “to hide”, kura ni osi iru “to force into a storehouse”, kufu “to eat”. Note that the last three expressions share initial k. Note also that 蔵 denoted “to conceal” in Classical Chinese, cf. Karlgren, Bernhard, Grammata Serica Recensa (Stockholm, 1957), 727Google Scholar, g'.

86 It is surely significant, given the epistemological prominence of seeing in IM, that the poet referred to himself in terms of mi “body, position”, thereby allowing yet another visual pun on “perspective, standpoint”. This paronomasia is supported by three occurrences of mi- “seeing”, as noted by Okada, Figures, 145, in a m - k pattern of alliteration and assonance.

87 Cf. the description of Ziqi of South Wall 似喪其耦 “… as though he'd lost his companion” and 今者、吾喪我 “Now I have lost myself”. KO, I, 40, BW, 36.

88 Karlgren, GSR 705/a–d.

89 Translation from Bowring, The Ise, 408.

90 On the frequent metaphor of light, see Graham, A. C., “Chuang-tzu's essay on seeing things as equal”, History of Religions 9, 1969–70, 149CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 See Ding Li 丁莉, “Asizuri to kafinasi: Ise monogatari dai-roku-dan e no shiten, Hyōgen gakkai” 81, 2005, 14–23.

92 For a discussion of the definition of this and chinkon in Ryō no gige, see Bialock, David T., Eccentric Spaces, Hidden Histories: Narrative, Ritual, and Royal Authority from The Chronicles of Japan to The Tale of the Heike (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93 It stands to reason that a man acting within the actional paradigmatic of nasake would have responded to the woman's question, cf. Eiji, Okumura 奥村英司, “Toi to kotae no kodai-teki seikaku: roku-dan to Genji monogatari Yūgao-kan”, Tsurumi daigaku kiyō: Dai-ichi-bu Kokugo kokubungaku 40, 2003, 1–20Google Scholar, and for a more general account, Sukehiko, Takada 高田祐彦, Aware no sōkan kankei wo megutte: Kokin, Taketori, Genji e, Kokugo to kokubungaku 73/11, 1996, 43–54Google Scholar.

94 Yanagufi in turn echoes ana “alas!” and kufi “eating”. It is also the nearest thing to a flexible door hinge mentioned in the section.

95 There is a modern familiarity with visual representations of woni, but it is worth remembering that at least one Heian understanding of the word woni was as a corruption of 隠 explained as “hidden/dead” (Wamyō ruijushō).

96 樞 “hinge on gate or door” is glossed toboso in the Heian dictionaries, Wamyōshō and Ruiju myōgishō.

97 Siratama might also reflect the man's playful recasting of the woman's question pointing to her limited frame of reference, cf. that siratama “white pearls” referred to the small white stones strewn around a palace building in at least one poem by Sugawara no Michizane, Kanke bunsō 99, NKBT 72, 187–8, composed at a banquet in the palace 882 (Gangyō 6/9/9). The shining white quality of dew is well attested, e.g. 霑蘭白露未催臭/泛菊丹霞白有芳 “The white dew that moistens the orchids does not yet prompt the scent, / the red mist that hangs around the chrysanthemum has its fragrance naturally”. (Kaifūsō 90, NKBT 69, 153–4).

98 白玉 as a metaphor for the unshattered, “uncarved simplicity” (素樸), cf. “If the white jade had not been shattered, how would there be any scepters and batons?” (白玉不毀、孰爲珪璋) chapter 9 Mati 馬蹄 (Horses' Hooves), KO, II, 36 ff., BW, 105).

99 Most relevant here, KO 62, BW, 42 in the Qiwulun chapter.

100 Graham, A. C., Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2003 (1978)), 170 ffGoogle Scholar.

101 Note incidentally that IM hints at a large-scale ladle-shaped landscape in Azuma of similar qualities: Mount Fuji metaphorically configured as a – hard and white – salt cone (sifoziri) (section 9) and sifogama “salt cauldron”, the bay in Michinoku (section 81), a fluid element.

102 Note also the historical (Fujiwara) actants' aggrandizement, otodo 大臣 “great minister”, Tarou 太郎 “eldest son” and dainagon 大納言 “great councillor”, which seems to imply that the interacting actant (wotoko) was “little”. In the context of siratama, it is interesting that the only example of 白玉 in Zhuangzi is as defining metaphor of the utopian early age when there was no distinction between “the great” and “the little”, cf. “men live the same as birds and beasts, group themselves side by side with the ten thousand things. Who then knows anything about ‘gentleman’ (君子) or ‘petty man’ (小人)?” (BW, 105).

103 Masanori, Kamata 鎌田正憲, Kōshō Ise monogatari shōkai (Chomei kankōkai, 1966 (1919)), 288Google Scholar. To my knowledge, this is the only specific suggestion of the use of a Zhuangzi intertext in IM up to now.

104 The encounter took place in the moonlight from the Hour of the Rat (ne no toki) which correlated Winter and Water (水気), and the durational specification from the Hour of the Rat to the Hour of the Ox (usi no toki) represented a combination (支合) that correlated with Earth (土気), cf. Yoshino Hiroko 吉野裕子, I 亥, “ni tuite Kaminatsuki-kō”, Tamura Enchō sensei koki kinenkai-hen: Higashi Ajia to Nihon shūkyō, bungaku (1987), 509–32. I have disregarded fitotu and mitu in the IM text.

105 The princess's omofoezu reiterates wotoko's in section 1.

106 Cf. the punning of sake on nasake in section 101. One is also reminded at this point of Zhuangzi's term “goblet words” (巵言 Ch. zhiyan, Jap. shigen or sakazuki no kotoba)(KO IV:37 ff., BW 304), described by Burton Watson as follows: “… words that are like a goblet that tips when full and rights itself when empty, i.e. that adopt to and follow along with the fluctuating nature of the world and thus achieve a state of harmony”.

107 The bi-vocal performance of the poem itself intensified its sexual-cosmological Yin–Yang correlative structure. In terms of the correlative sets on which the messenger's and the princess's interaction seemed patterned, sake/water once again correlated the princess with North, while the charred bit of the torch, with which the messenger wrote, could be associated with fire and correlated with South. If so, the messenger by his act of writing would seem to have repositioned himself, taking up the position of maximum yang vis-à-vis the princess's maximum yin.

108 Given the epistemological characterization of the princess, it is tempting to consider a pun on e 慧 “wisdom”, the Buddhist superseding cognition. This would be in line with the general thrust of the evidence presented by Ishii, “Aimai-gonomi no genryū”, but appears to fit less well with Zhuangzi.

109 This poetic landscape was the not uncommon ladle-shaped geo-physical space, a pond or bay next to a mountain. This landscape is found in Sino-Japanese and Japanese poetry, e.g. Kaifūsō 56, 66, 68; IM 87; Kokinshū 1001, 1004. The rituals of Toshikage's lineage in Takadono ue in Utsuho monogatari take place in a similar space defined as a garden (nifa).

110 Akatsuka, Sōshi, 275 ff.

111 Such as the preface (mana-jo) to Kokinshū, where 情 is used to characterize Narihira and Yukihira, as opposed to kokoro 心 in the kana-jo.

112 What we now know of qing 情 in the (Pre-Buddhist) Chinese tradition makes clear both the complexity and the new opportunity there is for interpretation, see Eifring, Halvor (ed.), Love and Emotion in Traditional Chinese Literature (Brill: Leiden, 2004)Google Scholar, in particular, the contributions by Christoph Harbsmeier and Michael Puett.