Were They Having Sex? A Historian Weighs In(to bed)

So, in the first decades of the eleventh century, was a novelist having sex with the most powerful courtier in Japan? 

This is a question that scholars have been arguing about since at least the thirteenth century, but it was resurrected recently when the most recent historical drama on Japanese tv had Fujiwara no Michinaga (our powerful courtier, 966-1028) sleeping with Murasaki Shikibu (970-1031), the author of The Tale of Genji.¹

Ooh lala!

But what is that based on?

I think that most of us enjoy gossip about relationships. The most famous figures of the eleventh-century are no exception. Because “it’s juicy,” as my girlfriend says. But the further we go back in time, the more difficult the source work becomes to confirm or deny, and it is easy to read between the lines and say that sex happened when it might not have. 

When I started down this did-they-do-it rabbit hole, it quickly became clear that the first explicit statement that they did it came in High and Low Lineages 尊卑分脈 (Sonpi bunmyaku), a fourteenth-century genealogy of noble families. The author, Tōin Kinsada, writes that “She was said to be the mistress of the Midō Viceroy, Michinaga.”²

There begins the opening assumption that these two famous people who existed at the same time were, in fact, boning.

When I saw this, I frowned. Medieval Japanese sources can have a lot of bad takes where women are concerned. It was medieval male writers who gave us the chicken-dinner-winner that the Monk Dōkyō was having sex with Kōken-Shōtoku, which is why she was such a bad ruler. Or there was the one who said that famous early Heian poet Ono no Komachi should be remembered as a hideous crone who was miserable in hell for all her love affairs.³

This is before we even get into the problem of this source being three-hundred years removed from Michinaga and Murasaki Shikibu. Major scholars, including Ii Haruki and Tsunoda Bun’ei have made it clear that while the High and Low Lineages is useful for certain historical projects, it also contains all kinds of miscopies, errors, and rumors. This looks like a rumor.⁴

Okay, but where did Tōin Kinsada get this idea from? He probably was not sitting around, fantasizing the sexual affairs of famous figures from a few hundred years prior. (Or, perhaps he was). 

Tōin Kinsada likely read medieval poet extraordinaire Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241), who when he was not composing hundreds of waka and getting into artistic spats with royals, somehow found the time to copy the entirety of Lady Murasaki’s diary. All current manuscript copies contain notes by Teika.

Teika had thoughts about palace drama, Michinaga, and Murasaki Shikibu. 

And despite being hundreds of years removed, maybe, Teika and Tōin Kinsada were not completely off their rockers… 

Why don’t we take a look at Murasaki Shikibu’s diary and see what’s going on. A few passages have raised some eyebrows over the centuries. One in particular describes Michinaga coming to visit his daughter, the Princess Shōshi, who Murasaki Shikibu served. When Michinaga saw that the princess had a copy of the Tale of Genji, “out came the usual comments,” writes Murasaki, but it is not clear what this means. Was it positive comments? Negative comments? Questions about when Murasaki would update the story?

He is visiting his daughter, but perhaps he is most excited to talk with his (favorite?) writer. Then Michinaga presents a poem decorated with plums to Murasaki.

He makes a move, so to speak:

If you were a courtier in the Heian period (794-1185), you did not just show up at a woman’s house and take off your clothes. As The Tale of Genji shows us, the thing to do was to send a wingman (or wingwoman) with a poem. You might, as Genji did, break off a branch of flowers and include it with the poem. The paper should be high quality, ideally scented with incense. Your handwriting should be attractive. The waka poetry, 5-7-5-7-7, utilized a longer structure than the haiku, 5-7-5. It must be seasonally based, either with references to timely flowers, leaves, or birds, etc. There must be wordplay. 

And if it’s a love poem, it must look like a love poem.  Friends exchanged poems all the time, but also passing acquaintances wishing to show off, family members, and coworkers. If you were flirting, you had to make that clear. 

And, I think even the above is very clearly a move on Michinaga’s part. The wordplay makes that clear. Michinaga has his plum-decorated paper. He wrote out his verses and handed it over.

The wordplay in the poem is interesting and suggestive. The charm of it revolves around the word suki, which can be translated as “tart,” but also is a homonym for “to like” in an amorous or erotic way. A more clumsy translation that addresses other interpretations might be:

Plums are known for their tartness
I do not think anyone who passes by would stop without picking one

Or:

You, the famous author of The Tale of Genji are renowned for your passion
I do not think anyone who sees you would pass by without making advances 

As if this were not entertaining enough, Genji scholar Nie Yūko has proposed that not only is Michinaga making a move, with wordplay going in two directions, but that it is referring to a poem in The Tale of Genji! ⁵

Michinaga did not come to mess around, I think. I am not entirely convinced of Nie’s argument, that Michinaga is referring to a poem from the “Evening Faces” (Yugao) chapter, but it is a fun theory. If true, it does make sense in the context. Murasaki Shikibu tells us that they were talking about Genji–“Out came the usual comments,” wrote Murasaki. Perhaps Michinaga thought, This is my moment, and he seized it. 

Maybe he prepared this poem in advance of the meeting. Maybe he made it up on the spot. I like to imagine that he sat around and thought about, agonizing over his wordplay and a Genji reference. 

Murasaki Shikibu responds impromptu, on the spot:

Me too, honestly. We do not hear so much about Michinaga’s wit and humor. Here it is. Murasaki Shikibu’s response is a bit self-deprecating, implying “Who could have handled the taste of a plum as tart as me?”  

We love banter. But banter does not constitute a love affair. Michinaga made his flirtatious move, but would they actually do the deed? Why did Fujiwara Teika seem to think they did? And why has this remained one of the Heian period’s most gossipy mysteries?

Subscribe and tune in next time!