Izumi Shikibu

(fl. 1000–1030)

   Like many HEIAN female writers, Izumi Shikibu is not known by her birth name but rather by a sobriquet (or pen name) taken from a famous male member of her family. In this case she is known by the title of her first husband, the governor of Izumi. She is celebrated for her diary and her many waka poems (see below), which appeared in later imperial collections. In the second half of the 10th century, female members of the middle aristocracy serving as ladies-in-waiting at court developed the prose hiragana (vernacular diary or nikki). Izumi Shikibu’s diary, Izumi Shikibu Nikki, records her romance (begun in 1003) with Prince Atsumichi, the brother of her deceased former lover. Prince Atsumichi died in 1007, and in 1010, Izumi remarried and retired to the provinces to write poetry until her death. Izumi Shikibu Nikki is a combination of short prose sections intermingled with lyric insertions. The work blends the third-person omniscient narrator of the monogatari (the vernacular Japanese novel) with the personal revelations of the nikki.

   Izumi is also a master of waka poetry. This classical verse form uses 31 syllables in a five-line poem in a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable pattern. More than 240 of her poems were anthologized together with her prefaces, which demonstrate her individuality and distinctive voice.Her most famous waka, written when she was quite young, is an expression of Buddhist piety:

   Out of the darkness

   on a dark path,

   I now set out.

   Shine on me,

   moon of the mountain edge

   (Rexroth 1982, 18)

   Bibliography

   ■ Cranston, Edward, trans. The Izumi Shikibu Diary: A Romance of the Heian Court. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969.

   ■ Miner, Earl, trans. “The Diary of Izumi Shikibu.” In Japanese Poetic Diaries, 95–153. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.

   ■ Rexroth, Kenneth. Women Poets of Japan. New York: New Directions, 1982.

   Cynthia Ho