I'll come at night / for no one censures / traveling the path of dreams

November 11, 2014 11:01 AM

We know very little about Ono no Komachi aside from that she was Japanese, female, a poet, and the subject of numerous medieval legends about her beauty and hard-heartedness, with her name becoming a metonym for a beautiful woman (much like Helen is in English). Our best guess as to her dates is "active in the 850s," and as to her background, "probably a lady-in-waiting to someone in the capital," though tradition has spun out many speculations. Based on 22 poems thought reliably attributed to her, she is considered today one of Japan's greatest woman poets, noted in particular for her passionate love poems and her technical mastery, especially at using words with multiple meanings.

This last feature makes her difficult to translate, of course, but nonetheless people keep trying -- her most famous poem, selected for the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, is one of the most-translated poems from any language. Links to several attempts at her corpus inside.

For an excellent discussion of the difficulties, illustrated by a dissection of many versions of said most famous poem, see chapter 3 (link to Google Books) of Joshua Mostow's Pictures of the Heart: The Hyakunin Isshu in Word and Image.

These translations by Thomas McAuley of the reliable attributions (part of the 2001 Waka project) go for as literal as possible, with very little poetry.

These translations by Michael R. Burch are, on the other hand, truthfully labeled "loose," but with more poetry.

Götterdämmerung.org has collected many older translations of each poem, letting you compare the variety of possible interpretations.

The easiest to find modern collection in print is The Ink-Dark Moon by Jane Hirshfield & Mariko Aritani (which also includes poems by Komachi's near-contemporary, Lady Ise).

posted by Quasirandom (19 comments total)

Does anyone know how to convert from komachies to millihelens?
posted by yeolcoatl at 11:10 AM on November 11, 2014

If we take Helen and Ono no Komachi to be equivalent, then conversion is simple: 1 komachi = 1,000 millihelens.
posted by Sangermaine at 11:18 AM on November 11, 2014

A centikomachi is the amount of beauty needed to keep a guy spending a night in front of your door.

Conversion to helens is somewhat difficult.
posted by sukeban at 11:23 AM on November 11, 2014 [3 favorites]

Given that in Japanese tradition, Helen, Komachi, and Yang Guifei are the canonical three most beautiful women in history, I think we can take them as nearly equivalent units.

sukeban: Hee!
posted by Quasirandom at 11:26 AM on November 11, 2014

A centikomachi is the amount of beauty needed to keep a guy spending a night in front of your door.

So if 1 helen = 1 komachi, then the amount of beauty needed to keep a guy spending a night in front of your door is equal to the amount needed to launch 100 ships.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:07 PM on November 11, 2014 [4 favorites]

> "So if 1 helen = 1 komachi, then the amount of beauty needed to keep a guy spending a night in front of your door is equal to the amount needed to launch 100 ships."

This should be calculable. So if a centikomachi will keep one person fascinated for 24 hours, a millikomachi would logically keep one occupied for 2.4 hours, or ten for .24 hours, a little under 15 minutes. I think 10 people working for 15 minutes sounds like about right to get a big ancient warship launched. I'll try to get verification; if so, then 1 helen indeed equals 1 komachi.

I guess we'd need to find the equivalent in lychee delivery speed to calculate a Guifei.
posted by kyrademon at 12:13 PM on November 11, 2014 [4 favorites]

I guess we'd need to find the equivalent in lychee delivery speed to calculate a Guifei.

It depends on whether swallows are involved.
posted by Gelatin at 12:16 PM on November 11, 2014

one of Japan's greatest woman poets
posted by facehugger at 12:18 PM on November 11, 2014 [11 favorites]

It depends on whether swallows are involved.

At least lychees are easier than coconuts.
posted by sukeban at 12:33 PM on November 11, 2014

(Well, my estimates were way off, but in ways that cancel out! The Greeks would have been using biremes, which can be crewed by up to 100 oarsmen ... However, it turns out that launching a ship fully crewed takes a fairly short amount of time. So rather than 10 men working for 15 minutes, it's 100 men working for a minute and a half or so. Off by a factor of 10 in both directions -- but that means that 1 helen and a komachi are still reasonably equivalent.)
posted by kyrademon at 12:34 PM on November 11, 2014 [4 favorites]

This is super-fascinating and addresses my interests.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:47 PM on November 11, 2014

Well, given the internal warfare and strife Helen and Yang Guifei are blamed for, I'd say Helen and Yang Guifei are reasonably equivalent, but not Ono no Komachi. That is, 1 komachi may be less than the amount needed to launch 100 ships. So, 1 komachi = amount needed to launch 99 ships.
posted by needled at 1:04 PM on November 11, 2014

On a more serious note, does anyone know if The Ink-Dark Moon collection includes the original Japanese along with the English translations?
posted by Sangermaine at 1:30 PM on November 11, 2014

The Ink-Dark Moon includes romaji texts in the notes.
posted by Quasirandom at 1:35 PM on November 11, 2014

Joshua Mostow is a professor at my alma mater, in the department I graduated from, and it was always super frustrating to me that I'd decided to concentrate on modern history and politics, because whenever I looked at the super rad stuff my friends were reading in Mostow's Edo Era Sexuality class, or after taking a poetry class with Professor Stefania Burk, I just thought "Let me read old, crumbling scrolls in a library until I die, please. This is the best." Sigh, good memories of the pagoda-shaped, leaky-roofed Asian Studies Library at UBC.

Anyway, the Ono no Komachi poem that made a larger impact on my 20-something brain was this one:

Iro miede
utsurou mono wa
yo no naka no
hito no kokoro no
hana ni zo arikeru

So indeed it is:
that which changes and fades,
its color unseen,
is the flower in the heart
of a man inside the world.

(trans. credit to this blogger)

I thought I might try my own translation, but then decided I was too lazy to count syllables, so I'll just add a few notes for people who are interested. The commentary on the blog I lifted this translation from has a nice explanation of the double meaning of iro/color here, in that it alluded both to the color of a flower, the expression of a face, and feelings of love and attraction. The blog also mentions something I didn't know about, which is the orthographic weirdness of the word miede/miete, and its possible double meaning. One thing the author of the blog left out is the implied meaning of yo no naka, which literally means "in the world," or "in society," in both Classical and Modern Japanese, but in in Classical Japanese had an extra meaning of "between men and women (in love)."
posted by wakannai at 9:02 PM on November 11, 2014 [4 favorites]

omg best post ever (of many on metafilter, but just now, the best thing in the world)
posted by maiamaia at 5:48 AM on November 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

Joshua Mostow is a professor at my alma mater

*is jealous of wakannai*

(I didn't include in the OP that blog post with another complete translation because it would have *cough* been self-linking.)
posted by Quasirandom at 6:59 AM on November 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

Fantastic post! Thank you :)
posted by jet_manifesto at 7:28 AM on November 12, 2014

Well, serendipitous that your post ended up in the thread anyway, Quasirandom! It was a really good post, so it would have been a shame for it to have been left out.

The Asian Studies department at UBC is full of really wonderful people, and I'm incredibly glad that I got to meet and study under the few that I did.
posted by wakannai at 3:31 AM on November 13, 2014 [1 favorite]