Organizer: Christina Laffin, University of British Columbia, Canada

Chair and Discussant: Joan R. Piggott, University of Southern California

Our image of Heian Japan is rooted in the capital, where life flourished to produce the period’s most prominent cultural artifacts. Yet there was actually much travel outside Heian-kyo even before the Kamakura period. While it may seem obvious that travel was essential in establishing governmental authority, there has not been much research on the actualities of travel and the types of journeys people undertook in various roles. Thankfully, travelers often left behind meticulous records of their trips from which we may reconstruct their paths. These records make us ask, moreover, what the relationship between writing and travel may have been.

In this panel, we ask not only what we can learn from these sources, but what lies behind their documentation. Drawing from historical and literary sources, we retrace journeys in their travails and wonderment. With this knowledge, we then ask how the text reflects, or refracts that actual journey. Yoshida Sanae’s paper will introduce the role that travel played in the professional life of senior Heian nobles. Aileen Gatten will present a realistic view of a journey in the late eleventh century, based on a pilgrimage to Kumano recorded by Fujiwara no Tamefusa in his journal, the Tamefusa kyô ki. Takeshi Watanabe will examine unstudied accounts of imperial pilgrimages to the Sumiyoshi Shrine in Eiga monogatari. Christina Laffin’s paper will consider Go-Fukakusa Nijô’s portrayal of her journey in Towazugatari, focusing on her representation of encounters with other travelers and her experiences as a female traveler.

Yoshida Sanae, University of Tokyo, Japan

Some of the best known examples of travel by Heian-period (794-1185) courtiers are from literary works like The Tosa Diary (935) and The Sarashina Diary (ca. 1060), or journals depicting pilgrimages to locations such as Hase and Kumano. If the focus is shifted to travel as an official courtier duty, then three types of journeys can be identified.

Firstly, all courtiers of the upper and middle ranks were required to accompany emperors and retired emperors on their journeys. The Kumano gokôki (1201) is a famous travel record of a retired emperor’s pilgrimage and other courtier diaries show what a grand affair was made of an imperial visit even if it consisted of only an overnight trip to the Iwashimizu Shrine. Secondly, middle ranking courtiers had to journey to and from the capital to fulfill their responsibilities as provincial governors. Both The Tosa Diary and The Sarashina Diary describe the journeys of provincial governors. Thirdly, courtiers were dispatched as imperial emissaries, usually to undertake pilgrimages to shrines and temples. The rank of the representative varied according to the importance of the task.

Courtiers were also commanded to undertake travel to a site for a specific reason, for example, to quell a political insurrection, but such cases were far less common. This presentation will examine the journeys of imperial representatives, focusing on the actual state of official travel undertaken by senior courtiers.

Aileen P. Gatten, University of Michigan

Fujiwara no Tamefusa’s kanbun account of his 1081 pilgrimage to the Kumano Shrines contributes much to the subject of travel and pilgrimage in the eleventh century. Kana travel accounts, such as those in Ise monogatari and Sarashina nikki, center on the narrator’s or central character’s emotional response to the route travelled, rather than provide basic information about a journey through rural Japan. Similarly, studies of the Kumano pilgrimage in the Heian and Kamakura periods tend to focus on the large, elaborate processions of royalty or of members of the high aristocracy. Tamefusa’s account is instead of a private pilgrimage by a member of the relatively lowly Fifth Rank. That he is travelling with his two oldest sons, aged eleven and nine, adds to the personal nature of the journey.

Three aspects of this account provide a vivid picture of aristocratic pilgrimage travel at the end of the eleventh century: the geography of the pilgrimage; the means and rate of travel and strategies of obtaining food and shelter; and Tamefusa’s reasons for making the pilgrimage and for bringing his sons on this arduous journey. In addition, Tamefusa’s account underscores the deliberate nature of Heian travel: astrology was a major determinant of the parameters of his pilgrimage, and careful advance planning was required to ensure access to food, shelter, and supplies while on the road.

Takeshi Watanabe, Yale University

More so than the destination, the actual journey sometimes captures one’s imagination with greater hold. In Eiga monogatari, the accounts of Jotomon’in and Retired Emperor Go-Sanjo’s separate visits to Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine, Sumiyoshi Shrine, and Shitennoji in 1031 and 1073 respectively say little about what actually happened once they arrived, but offer an evocative picture along the route, allowing us to recreate the actualities of 11^th-century travel in the context of an imperial pilgrimage.

Study of these accounts reveals, however, more than the physical details of the journey. In their celebration of Jotomon’in and Retired Emperor Sanjo, we see how such records of their pilgrimages may have been specifically written to serve as important historical documentation of their magnificence. While these records do not survive in other formats, the impulse behind them seems to coincide with the account of Emperor Sanjo’s birth in Murasaki Shikibu nikki. Such records thus suggest that Heian women were not only writing introspective memoirs, but were also involved in composing highly public records of major events, including pilgrimages, that occupied the entire court, male and female. Moreover, in recreating these pilgrimages for posterity in a poetic language based in kana, the authors uniquely enable the former Emperor and Empress to live for a thousand years, as they all no doubt prayed at the Shrines, through the imaginative space delineated within the text. The creation of this liminal space, mapped on the unfamiliar landscape along the journey, will be focus of this paper.

Christina Laffin, University of British Columbia, Canada

In 1285, having lost her position at court serving the Retired Emperor GoFukakusa, Lady Nijô set out from the capital on a journey that would take her across much of the island presently known as Honshû. Nijô documented her travels as a nun in the final two books of her diary Towazugatari. Nijô situates her journey along a continuum of poetic travel, drawing associations with poets and literary figures such as Semimaru, Genji, Saigyô, Ariwara no Narihira, and Ono no Komachi. Despite the affinity she feels with these travelers, the literary rendering of her journey often highlights the disjuncture between her actual experiences and those of her poetic predecessors. Travel poems that appear in Towazugatari frequently convey Nijô’s disappointment when famous sites (meisho) fail to live up to their poetic descriptions.

Perhaps to offset this disjuncture, Nijô appears to seek solace in the company of other travelers. In addition to pilgrims and lodgers at inns, Nijô describes encounters with female itinerant performers such as yûjo and asobi. These meetings highlight her loneliness and longing for the capital, but they also convey Nijô’s sense of a cultural awareness that she shares with these female entertainers. Despite socio-economic and class differences, Nijô focuses on the similarities between herself and the female performers she encounters at inns. Nijô’s empathy springs in part from her own experiences as a female traveler. In closing, I will consider Nijô’s particular circumstances as an aristocratic woman on the road and show how this affected her journey.