The Sarashina Diary (Sarashina Nikki)
Overview
A memoir written by the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue after she turned fifty, looking back on some forty years from the age of thirteen. It runs from the journey from Kazusa to the capital, through a girlhood lost in tales, the deaths of her sister and her nurse, service at court, marriage and her husband's death, to her longing for salvation by the Buddha. The title is said to come from Sarashina in Shinano, home of Mount Obasute, after a late poem of hers: "No moon comes out, and Obasute is lost in darkness."
Background
The author was a descendant of Sugawara no Michizane, and her father had gone to Kazusa as provincial governor. Her mother's sister wrote The Kagero Diary. It was a time, a dozen or so years after The Tale of Genji was written, when copies of tales were passed around noble houses, and for a girl living in the provinces, tales were a longing beyond reach. It can be read as the record of a woman who lived with the gap between dream and reality.
Highlights
- Setting outShe leaves home, leaving behind the life-size Yakushi Buddha to whom she had prayed, "Let me read all the tales." A girl who looks back and weeps.Read “Setting Out” →
- The singers of Mount AshigaraThree singing women appear in the dark mountains, sing beautifully, and vanish into the dark again. A scene like a dream of one night on the road.Read “Mount Ashigara” →
- The wonder of the Fuji RiverThe story of a paper that floated downstream with next year's governors written on it.Read “The Fuji River” →
- Fifty-odd chapters of GenjiShe gets the Genji she longed for and reads it day and night behind her curtain. "What would I want with being empress?"Read “Tales” →