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 manywakapoems (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 prosehiragana(vernacular diary ornikki). 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 Nikkiis a combination of short prose sections intermingled with lyric insertions. The work blends the third-person omniscient narrator of themonogatari(the vernacular Japanese novel) with the personal revelations of thenikki.

Izumi is also a master ofwakapoetry. 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 famouswaka, written when she was quite young, is an expression of Buddhist piety:

on a dark path,

I now set out.

Shine on me,

(Rexroth 1982, 18)

■ 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.” InJapanese Poetic Diaries, 95–153. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.

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