But he’d never tried seppun, the exotic practice of touching mouths that had been introduced to Japan by the banished foreign barbarians. (p. 123)

Being naturally a trusting sort, I took this at face value and assumed the Japanese hadn’t kissed before the Portuguese arrived in 1542. But more recently, I read an interesting passage in the Tosa Journal, written around 935 by a courtier.^(CJP:77)

People simply kissed the lips of pressed salted trout. (I.e., nibbled at their heads.) Do you suppose the trout found it romantic?

Is this evidence of pre-Western-influence romantic kissing? Certainly looks like it. But absent other evidence, I had to wonder what exactly was in the original and if anything had been added in translation. Looking at the original, several things are clear. The expression here is “kuchi wo sufu”¹, literally “suck lips”, which does seem to specifically be an idiom for kissing. The romantic bit turns out to be “omofu yau ara n ya”, something along the lines of “perhaps they helplessly have longing”, omofu having among its various possible interpretations ‘think of’, ‘recall fondly’, ‘long for’, ‘love’, and ‘cherish’. I think we can fairly say, then, that my doubts of Dr. McCullough’s translation were unmerited. As for Westerners having introduced romantic kissing to the Japanese, as we say in the biz, “Myth Busted!”

I have also posted a complete translation of these two sentences.

Many thanks to Mister Bean (ミスター　ビーン), whose analysis and translation of this passage into modern Japanese was quite helpful.

Here we have a simple 5-feather mon from the Muromachi-period collection of provincial samurai mon.^(KJ:7) It shows the more free-form nature of earlier mon by being notably wider than it is tall, which became rarer as mon became more formalized.

This even earlier mon, used by the Kikuchi family in the 14th century,^(SH:14) is interesting for its use of a half feather, an unusual way of creating a distinctive mon. The same family would later use other mon incorporating an even two feathers.^{(en.wp:Kikuchi_clan)}

Here are three tomoe crests, each using three tomoe, the most popular number. From left to right, a crest used by Maeda Toshiie at the Siege of Suemori in 1584,^(SH:F4) one used by Kobayakawa Takakage at the Battle of Pyokje, Korea in 1593,^(SH:60) and one used by Itakura Shigemasa at Shimabara in 1638.^(SH:J9)

Three tomoe mon

Here are two folding fans from our collection of 15th century provincial samurai mon.^(KJ:7) The one on the left is a cypress fan, which was part of the traditional court costume, with the number of slats used indicating the status of the holder.^(Dower:110) The one on the right is of feathers. It’s stylistically related to the hemp palm mon, and is associated with tengu, the mythical “bird goblins” who would trick mountain travelers with illusions, and from there mountain asceticism and certain temples and shrines.^(Dower:111)

Provincial samurai fan mon

A simple folding fan design with the sun-circle motif was used by Satake Yoshinobu at the Battle of Imafuku in 1614, in the early Edo period.^(SH:H9,62) This style of papered fan, optionally with design, became the standard version of the folding fan for mon. This particular version is interesting because it breaks the standard two-color rule for mon, which would soon become inviolate, by using three distinct colors: black, white, and red.

Around the same time, we have a three-fan design used by Matsudaira (Okochi) Nobutsua, who we mentioned last week, at the Shimbara Rebellion in 1638.^(SH:63) Making circles of fans is similar to the way circles would be made of some plants in mon.

Modern fan mon are very similar to these early Edo designs, but with more realistic handles that hearken back to the earlier fans we have here.^(IEJFC:52.2)

Mon were initially associated with the court nobility and the Imperial family, and were used as decorations on clothing, carriages, and furniture rather than on banners and other stand-alone identification.^{(ja.wp:家紋)} Still, they were a means of identification, and various court nobility families selected distinctive mon. In addition to geometric designs like this one, flowers, birds, and leaf patterns were common.^(TM:45) Meanwhile, while warriors used distinctive banners for battlefield identification, these were of a simpler design. The first evidence of mon used for battlefield identification is in the Gempei War at the close of the Heian Period.^(SH:10) We’ll look at some of these mon next time.

This doesn’t work all that well in English, but let’s give it a try anyways. Let’s say I’m writing a tanka about vampires. I might want to say “The kindred dread dawn’s swift coming.” Making ‘dread’ a kakekotoba, I can just say “The kindread dawn’s swift coming.”, saving one crucial syllable, and more importantly impressing my peers with my poetic cleverness. A slightly better example is “The sisters pine incense fills the air.”²

Kakekotoba work better in Japanese than in English for several reasons. Firstly, Japanese has a lot of homophones. Having a more limited set of syllables to build words from increases your chance of collision a lot; part of the reason the Japanese writing system is so complicated is to tell homophones apart. Secondly, phonetic spelling: if two words sound the same, they’re (most of the time) written the same way in hiragana,³ so you don’t have spelling conflicts like I did with ‘kindread’. Finally, Japanese grammar rules are a little more flexible about word placement, so it’s easier to get the proper juxtaposition.

Here’s a Japanese example from the Kokinwakashū (dating to 914, in the Heian Period). It uses one of the classic examples: the word “matsu” can either be the verb “to wait” or a pine tree. Here, the tree interpretation is actually the first part of the name for a specific kind of insect.

The first text has the kakekotoba rendered phonetically, in hiragana, so the possibility of multiple interpretations is more obvious, which was common for kakekotoba.^{(en.wp:Kakekotoba)} (The second text uses the kanji for “pine”, hiding the wordplay; since the poem would be agrammatical without it, this isn’t necessarily a good thing.)

While they can make things more challenging for a modern reader, kakekotoba were a common way of adding extra layers of meaning to a poem, and they’re fun to try to figure out. Can anyone think of any kakekotoba in English that you might be able to stomach actually putting in a poem?

These divinations weren’t limited to cardinal directions; 24 directions were used, associated with animals in the Chinese zodiac, the 10 calendar signs (each in turn a combination of one of the 5 elements² and yin or yang), and one of the eight trigrams of the I Ching.^{(ja.wp:干支)} These associations were often mapped out with ornate compasses along the lines of the following.


(Image by Locoluis.)

When a direction was inauspicious, a noble would not travel in that direction at all for fear of misfortune; either he would delay until the direction was no longer inauspicious, or he would find an intermediate location to stop at on his way. For example, if you needed to travel north, you could visit a friend whose house was to the northeast, and then travel northwest to your final destination. These intermediate visits seem generally to have involved staying the night, and conceptually overlap with the measures taken to avoid starting a journey on an inauspicious day.

Examples of inauspicious directions being taken seriously abound in Japanese literature. An entry in The Gossamer Journal dated 968 describes the author stopping for a night at a temple to avoid traveling in an inauspicious direction.^(CJP:151) Conversely, the Kagerō Diary of 974 recounts an auspicious direction being an important consideration when secluding oneself for childbirth.^(TJL:227) Sei Shōnagon complains in her Pillow Book (~1005) of friends who she visits to avoid inauspicious directions not doing anything to entertain her,^(TJL:257) though I can understand their feelings. Later, in the 13th-century Journal of the Sixteenth-Night Moon, the nun Abutsu recounts hearing of the inconvenience of the Empress and her entourage having to move en masse to avoid traveling in an unlucky direction, showing that these considerations were still respected, if complained about.^(CJP:362)

From the Heian period, concern about directions became a famous pretext for romantic interactions and other social trickery. A noble secretly spending the night a lady could explain that he was visiting a particular house by his need to avoid traveling in an inauspicious direction. Similarly, inauspicious directions provided a convenient excuse for not visiting someone. Since the characteristics of directions differed from person to person, it wasn’t even necessary for these excuses to always reflect actual divinations. An example is in another entry in The Gossamer Journal, where the author recounts her husband using a favorable direction as a pretext for riding past her house with his first wife, showing his preference while having a covering excuse.^(CJP:116)

While my research has yet to reveal the mystic secrets behind how these directions were determined, this directional divination was historically an important part of Japanese high society. And if you ever need an excuse to go or not go a particular way, I won’t tell anyone that you’re making it up.