''Utatane no Sōshi'' (転寝の草紙) is a Japanese ''

otogi-zōshi are a group of about 350 Japanese prose narratives written primarily in the Muromachi period (1392–1573). These illustrated short stories, which remain unattributed, together form one of the representative literary genres of the Japanese med ...

'' from the

Muromachi period The is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate (''Muromachi bakufu'' or ''Ashikaga bakufu''), which was officially established in 1338 by t ...

Genre, authorship and date

''Utatane no Sōshi'' is a work of the ''

'' genre. Tradition attributes it to a daughter of the 15th-century courtier and poet Asukai Masachika. One of the surviving manuscripts, an ''

emakimono or is an illustrated horizontal narration system of painted handscrolls that dates back to Nara-period (710–794 CE) Japan. Initially copying their much older Chinese counterparts in style, during the succeeding Heian (794–1185) and Kamak ...

'' (illustrated hand-scroll), was contained in a box whose inscription crediting two mid-15th-century men as responsible for the manuscript:

Tosa Mitsunobu was a Japanese painter, the founder of the Tosa school of Japanese painting. Born into a family that had traditionally served as painters to the Imperial court, he was head of the court painting bureau from 1493 to 1496. In 1518, he was appointe ...

is credited with the illustrations and Iio Mototsura (飯尾元連, 1431–1492) with the calligraphy. Although this dates the manuscript, the work itself may be older, as its depiction of courtly life evokes the

Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japanese. ...

more than the chaos of the

Sengoku period The was a period in History of Japan, Japanese history of near-constant civil war and social upheaval from 1467 to 1615. The Sengoku period was initiated by the Ōnin War in 1467 which collapsed the Feudalism, feudal system of Japan under the ...

Plot

The work opens by quoting a '' waka'' poem of Ono no Komachi, ''utatane ni / koishiki hito wo / miteshi yori / yume chō mono wa / tanomi someteki'', which portrays the poet longing for her lost lover coming to believe in her dreams as they are the only place where she can meet him. The female protagonist, a lonely young noblewoman, receives a romantic gift in a dream, but is unable to identify her dream suitor. When she next sleeps, she dreams that she meets the young man, described as fairer than Shining Genji, but she is still unable to learn his identity before he says he must leave. Distraught, the lady determines to visit Ishiyama-dera and pray to Kannon, and sets out on foot in a fashion that mirrors Tamazakura from '' The Tale of Genji''. At the temple, she encounters a man, named Sadaishō, who has the same voice as the figure in her dream, and listens in on his conversation with another man. She overhears the man say that he has seen a beautiful woman in his dreams and longs to meet her in reality. The lady decides that it would be unseemly to reveal herself to the man, choosing to place her faith in Kannon instead. Later, while visiting an associate, she falls off a bridge into a river. Shrieking for help, she is saved by a boat that happens to be passing by. On the boat is Sadaishō, who is overcome by her beauty; she forgets her embarrassment, and the two are united. There descendants are said to prosper.

References

Works cited

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Utatane no soushi Otogi-zōshi Muromachi-period works