Matsura Sayohime

('Lady Sayo of Matsura') or Matsuura Sayohime was a legendary heroine in Japanese mythology, the wife of the historical Ōtomo no Satehiko. She is referred to as Lady Otohi or Otohihime in an alternate ancient source.

The core legend was that she climbed atop a hill and so piteously waved her scarf (''hire'') at her husband's departing warship that the location afterwards was remembered as Hire-furi-no-mine or "Scarf-Waving Peak", now known as in the confines of the present-day city of Karatsu, Saga. The locale fell within the former , referred to as the "Matsuura region" in modern parlance.

However, the variant legend added that she was afterwards visited by her husband's look-alike and though she discovered the imposter to be a snake, she had gone missing and was eventually found dead. Later '' otogizōshi'' (fairy tale) versions of ''Sayohime'', which were also readapted as , i.e., Buddhist "sermon ballad" pieces under the title ''Matsura chōja'', contained an alteration of this plot where the heroine, in an act of filial piety, selling herself to be sacrificed to a serpent deity. Her life is ultimately spared in the fairy tale version.

The legend also recalled that she dropped a precious mirror which was a gift from her husband, and later it came to be believed that she had committed suicide by throwing herself into the river while clutching the mirror. This was then dramatized for the noh theatre in the early 15th century.

The motif of Otohihime/Sayohime waving her scarf from the mountaintop has been illustrated in picture books and woodblock prints.

Old legends

The legends of Matsura Sayohime (aka Otohihime) waving her scarf (''hire'', a piece of long cloth worn as part of the attire) at the warship carrying her husband are preserved in two ancient pieces of writing, written down some two hundred years after the supposed event took place in the 6th century.

Manyoshu version

Matsura Sayohime, according to the oldest account related in the poem collection ''Man'yōshū'' (8th century), was the wife of Ōtomo no Satehiko (or Sadehiko). In order to bid farewell to her husband, who was on a ship bound for Korea for a military campaign, she climbed atop a certain mountain peak. So deep was her sorrow: she seemed "gut-wrenchedly" chagrined and darkened-hearted as if her "soul had vanished". Finally, she managed to remove her own scarf and wave it, drawing others around her inevitably to tears.

Date

Ōtomo no Satehiko was known historically to have been dispatched on two military expeditions to Korea, and the setting of the legend concerns his first trip which occurred in the year 537; though it is the other ''Fudoki'' version of the legend described below which supplies the detail which leads to narrowing down this date.

Location

The , Sayohime's alluded place of origin, spans the current-day Nagasaki and Saga Prefectures. However, the specific mountaintop that had been dubbed , as attested in the ''Man'yōshū'', has been identified as the summit of , on the eastern edge of the city of Karatsu, Saga.

Fudoki version (as Otohi)

In the alternate version of the old legend preserved in the (8th century), the Lady Otohi (or Otohihime)of village appears as the name of the famed farewell-bidding wife of Ōtomo no Satehiko.

"Otohi" may indeed be the woman's proper name, however, it may also be a descriptor, with the word ''otohi'' having some meaning that is an extension of the ''oto'' ("youthful, innocent") element, or possibly meaning "those of younger age". The Lady Otohi is also referred to as ''otohime'' ("younger isterlady") in the poem inserted in the ''Fudoki'' account.

This version recounts that the lady dropped a mirror given by her husband at a ford, or river crossing, and thenceforth the place was named .

This version proceeds to tell the aftermath since the day the woman parts with Satehiko (waving her scarf at the Peak): she received visits from a look-alike of her husband for five nights in a row. Resolving to discover this man's true identity, she tied a "hemp" thread to the hem of his clothing and tracked him, thereby learning his true form: a snake residing at the marsh on the Scarf-Waving Peak. She was subsequently reported missing, and a search led to her skeletonized remains in the marsh.

A tale presenting this thread/yarn motif has been called the by Japanese scholars, and in the so-called , (Lady Ikutamayori) employs the same trick to discover the true form of the snake god Ōmononushi.

Suicidal drowning

wrote a commentary on waka poetry entitled (c. 1145) which probably due to a misreading of the ''Fudoki'', states that the lady, grasping the mirror given to her, sunk into the waters of the Kuri River (later called Kagami River, now ).

Petrification version

According to one version of this legend, she prayed with such fervour that she was transformed into stone. This petrification lore of Sayohime appears to be of later development, with its earliest attestation identified as renga poet 's ''Sodeshita shū'' (c. Ōei era, late 14th to early 15th century). This lore of Sayohime's petrification is thought to have developed from a misunderstanding: a misreading of (13th century), which ponders on the Sayohime legend and makes reference to the petrification motif taken from an old Chinese work called the . Sayohime's petrification is also mentioned in ''Nihon meijo monogatari'' (1670).

left, Sayohime Shrine
Her supposed petrified remains, an example of a , is housed as the ''shintai'' ("body of the kami") at the Sayohime Shrine, an undershrine of on . The claim regarding her petrification on this island is given in a late account of the origin of this undershrine, preserved in the 19th century document called the (written during the Bunka era). It states that the lady did not stop at the Scarf-Waving Peak bidding farewell, but she continued to a spot from whose vantage point she beheld an island nearby. She then hopped on a fishing boat to that island, called the island (present-day Kabe Island) where she climbed a "bit elevated spot" and there, out of sorrow, she turned intorock. Commentators identify this elevatation as the or .

Literary adaptations

During the early Muromachi Period. The post-medieval narratives of exists in several variant texts of various forms, e. g., hand-copied manuscripts and illustrated books of the ''Nara ehon'' type, sermons, scripts for the '' jōruri'' puppet theater, and printed books.

Noh play

''Matsura no Kagami'' ('The Mirror of Matsura'), also referred to as ''Matsuura Sayohime'' 'sic.''is also the title of a noh play about the character, whose authorship is ascribed to Zeami. There has survived a holograph copy in Zeami's own hand entitled ''Matsura no Noh'', dated 10th month of 1427/Ōei 24, which closely matches the script text of ''Matsura no Kagami'' except for minor differences. Yamada, Yoshio (1928) "Kanze Sakon-shi zō Matsura no nō kaisetsu 観世左近氏蔵松浦之能解説" (, Koten hozonkai edition).

The noh play, adopts the embellished legend where Sayohime drown herself in the sea while clutching the mirror, instead of just losing it. The suicidal drowning had been claimed in literature predating the noh play, such as the aforementioned 12th century ''Waka dōmōshō'' and Priest 's .

Monogatari versions

There are some 7 texts of the fairy tale or ''monogatari''/'' otogizōshi'' version of ''Sayohime''. The two full, or are the unillustrated "Akagi-bunko" library text entitled ''Sayohime no sōshi'' dating to the Keichō era (late 16th or early 17th century) and the illustrated book (''Nara ehon'') ''Sayohome'' in the possession of Kyoto University.

The remaining ''monogatari'' texts belong to the group, and bear alternate titles such as or . The latter title (''~ honji'', the "original" Buddhist deity) is a reference to the tale purporting to reveal the origins of the principal goddess Benzaiten worshipped at Chikubushima Shrine in Ōmi Province, i.e., on an island in Lake Biwa.

Plot Summary

The ''Sayohime no sōshi'' (A text) and the ''Sayohime'' (K text) have their opening setting relocated to Tsubosaka in Yamato Province (present-day Nara Prefecture), where a wealthy man named or and his wife prayed to the Bodhisattva Kannon of Hase-dera until they were finally blessed with the birth of a daughter, Sayohime. But the rich man died penniless, and Sayohime could not afford to sponsor a memorial service for him except by selling herself. Her buyer was a man named (or "Gonga no Tayū"), who unbeknownst to Sayohime intended to sacrifice her to the snake deity of his village in place of his own daughter. When presented to the snake, Sayohime read from the Lotus sutra, enabling the deity to achieve enlightenment and shed its monstrous form. The deity then returned Sayohime to the care of her mother.

Buddhist perspective

The Kyoto text has been translated into English by R. Keller Kimbrough in ''Eight Buddhist Tales'' (2013). There is actually a (Buddhist "sermon ballad") version known as which bears close correspondence to the Kyoto text of ''Sayohime'', and thought to derive from it.

Self-sacrifice

The illustrations and text from the Frankfurt ''emaki'' manuscript has been analyzed and translated into German by Katja Triplett, with self-sacrifice and human sacrifice being the central themes. The heroine in an act of self-sacrifice into slavery, into the hands of a human trafficker in order to achieve a deed of filial piety. Needless to say, the common understanding (usual fate) of a ''miuri'' woman is that she is selling herself into prostitution, not slavery. But in the ''Sayohime'' saga we have divine intervention, and the deity of Nara disguised as an octagenerian priest intervenes so that Sayohime is discovered and bought by a seeker of a substitute virgin sacrifice (Gonga Tayū), rather than a brothel. Although the story is told as if Gonga from Michinoku up north is the one obtaining sympathy and help from his clan deity (''ujigami'') based in Nara, the readers realize that the deity is actually responding to the pleas of the girl Sayohime from Nara.

Puppet plays

The tales were also adapted to , a regional type of '' jōruri'' puppet plays.

Gesaku

The petrification legend was adapted by Takizawa Bakin (d. 1848) into a burlesque novel (''gesaku'') under the title

Explanatory notes

References

;Citations

;Bibliography

*
*
*
*
*
alt preview
* (English abstract)
* al
pdf
core.ac.uk
*
*
*
*
*
* Repr. from ''Minzoku'' 3 (2), Mar. 1927
*
{{refend

Japanese mythology