is a late 10th century
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
ese story. It is Japan's oldest full-length narrative.
[Kubota (2007:34)][Nihon Koten Bungaku Daijiten Henshū Iinkai (1986:170-173)]
Composition
The author is unknown.
Minamoto no Shitagō
was a mid Heian ''waka'' poet, scholar and nobleman. He was also a male-line descendant of Emperor Saga. He was the original compiler of the ''Wamyō Ruijushō'', the first Japanese dictionary organized into semantic headings. He was designate ...
is cited as a likely candidate;
however, it may have had multiple authors spanning a number of years.
The text is referenced in a number of later works such as (), (1002), and (), suggesting compilation between .
The text is illustrated in an by
Asukabe no Tsunenori, with calligraphy by
Ono no Michikaze
was a Japanese calligrapher who was a prominent ''Shodōka'' (Japanese calligrapher) during the Heian period (794–1185). One of the so-called Sanseki 三跡 (Three Brush Traces), along with Fujiwara no Sukemasa and Fujiwara no Yukinari, Michi ...
.
Title
The title of the story, ''Tale of the Hollow Tree'', is taken from an incident early in the text. The protagonist Nakatada and his mother flee to the mountains and live in hollow cedar tree.
The
ateji
In modern Japanese, principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to in Old Japanese. Conversely, also refers to kanji used s ...
宇津保 are also used.
Contents
The story is twenty volumes in length and revolves around a mystical
harp
The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has a number of individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orche ...
that passes through four generations. It belongs to the
monogatari
is a literary form in traditional Japanese literature – an extended prose narrative tale comparable to the epic novel. ''Monogatari'' is closely tied to aspects of the oral tradition, and almost always relates a fictional or fictionalized st ...
genre and is subclassified as a
denki monogatari
Denki is an interactive television and console game developer based in Dundee, Scotland. The company is the developer of over 180 console and interactive television games, covering a range of platforms. Denki has worked extensively in the di ...
.
It contains the following chapters:
The story is generally divided into three major sections:
# Chapters 1-12: Toshikage is sent to China but shipwrecks in
Persia
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
. He obtains the mystical harps and returns to Japan. He has a daughter and teaches her music. The daughter has a son, Nakatada, and raises him in hollow tree. Nakatada seeks marriage to Atemiya.
# Chapters 13-18: Various political rivalries revolving around the Nakatada household and the crown prince.
# Chapters 19-20: Nakatada passes on the family musical traditions to Inumiya
Translations
An English translation by Ziro Uraki was published in 1984 by Shinozaki Shorin under the title:
The Tale of the Cavern (Utsuho Monogatari)
Notes
References
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Late Old Japanese texts
Monogatari
10th-century Japanese books
{{Japan-lit-stub