Ariwara no Narihira

Who They Were

Ariwara no Narihira (在原業平) was a Japanese courtier and waka poet of the early Heian period, born in 825 and dead on 9 July 880. Waka (和歌, わか) is classical Japanese poetry, typically in thirty-one syllables arranged 5-7-5-7-7. Narihira held a middling court rank and no great political power, yet he became one of the most famous poets in the language's history.

He is counted among the Rokkasen (六歌仙, ろっかせん), the "Six Poetic Geniuses", and among the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals (三十六歌仙, さんじゅうろっかせん) — two overlapping canonical lists of the finest poets of the age. One of his poems was chosen for the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu (小倉百人一首), the thirteenth-century anthology of one hundred poems by one hundred poets that later became the basis of a competitive card game still played on New Year's Day.

He is also remembered under several alternative names: Zai Go-Chūjō (在五中将), Zai Go (在五), Zai Chūjō (在中将), and Mukashi-Otoko (昔男, "the man of old"). His father was Abo-shinnō (阿保親王), a son of Emperor Heizei, and his mother was Ito-naishinnō (伊都内親王). Through his father he was a grandson of an emperor, which placed him at the edge of the imperial family but outside the line of succession.

Life and Career

Narihira was born in 825, in Tenchō 2 (天長二年), early in the Heian period (794–1185). The Heian period takes its name from Heian-kyō, the capital city established in 794, known today as Kyoto. As a grandson of an emperor through his father Abo-shinnō, Narihira belonged to a branch of the imperial clan that had been demoted to commoner status and given the surname Ariwara — a common practice that reduced the number of people eligible for the throne and the state stipends that came with imperial rank.

He served as a courtier, holding office in the imperial court and provincial governorships, but he never rose to the highest councils of state. His reputation rested on poetry and on his love life rather than on administrative achievement. He married a daughter of Ki no Aritsune, a member of a prominent scholarly and poetic family, and had children including Ariwara no Shigeharu, Ariwara no Muneyana, Ariwara no Yoshiko, and Takashina no Moronao.

Some 87 poems attributed to Narihira appear in the court anthologies, though scholars regard a number of those attributions as doubtful. His verse is unusually ambiguous — so much so that the compilers of the Kokin Wakashū (古今和歌集), the first imperial anthology, assembled around 905, attached relatively long headnotes to his poems to explain the situations they were thought to describe. Those headnotes helped fix the image of Narihira as a man of intense and complicated romantic experience.

Why They Matter

Narihira's love affairs became one of the great subjects of Japanese culture. Legend held that he had affairs with the high priestess of the Ise Grand Shrine and with the poet Ono no Komachi, and that he fathered Emperor Yōzei. The historicity of these stories is doubtful, but their cultural force was enormous. His amorous career inspired The Tales of Ise (伊勢物語, いせものがたり), a tenth-century collection of episodic tales built around poems, many of them his, which follows an unnamed "man of old" through a series of journeys and love affairs.

That work made Narihira the enduring model of the handsome, amorous nobleman — the template for centuries of Japanese literature and drama. He was also considered an avatar of Jūichi-men Kannon (十一面観音), the eleven-faced Kannon, a bodhisattva of compassion, which attached a religious dimension to his posthumous reputation.

The Name in Japanese

The name is written 在原業平 and read ありわら なりひら (ariwara narihira). In romaji it is usually written "Ariwara no Narihira"; the の (no) is a possessive particle linking the family name to the given name, and it is normally written in kana rather than as a kanji.

The family name, 在原, is read ありわら (ariwara):

• 在 (あり, ari) — "to exist", "to be present", "to reside". It is the same character used in 存在 (そんざい, sonzai), "existence".
• 原 (わら, wara) — "plain", "field", "wilderness". This is a common character in Japanese place names and surnames, as in 原野 (げんや, gen'ya), "open field". Note that the reading わら (wara) here is a sound change from the more usual はら (hara), a shift that occurs frequently inside compound names.

The given name, 業平, is read なりひら (narihira):

• 業 (なり, nari) — "work", "deed", "vocation", "karma". In modern compounds it is usually read ぎょう (gyō), as in 工業 (こうぎょう, kōgyō), "manufacturing industry", or 授業 (じゅぎょう, jugyō), "a class, a lesson". The reading なり (nari) is a classical verb form meaning "to accomplish" or "to bring about", and it appears in this name rather than in everyday vocabulary.
• 平 (ひら, hira) — "flat", "level", "peace", "calm". The same character appears in 平和 (へいわ, heiwa), "peace", and in the surname 平 (たいら, Taira). The reading ひら (hira) is the native Japanese reading; へい (hei) and びょう (byō) are the Sino-Japanese ones.

So the name as a whole can be glossed roughly as "the level ground that exists" — but for a Japanese reader it functions simply as a name, and the individual characters carry no active meaning in daily use. What matters for learners is the reading: ありわら なりひら, with the particle の inserted between the two elements.

Legacy

Narihira's influence on Japanese letters and art lasted for a thousand years. The Tales of Ise, built around his poems and his imagined romances, became a foundational text of classical Japanese literature, studied and imitated alongside the Kokin Wakashū itself. His inclusion in both the Rokkasen and the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals fixed his place in the poetic canon, and his appearance in the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu kept his work in front of ordinary people through the card game played every New Year.

The figure of the elegant, melancholy lover that Japanese literature and theatre returned to again and again — in Noh, in kabuki, in Edo-period fiction — descends directly from the Narihira of legend. He died on 9 July 880, and the poems, the tales, and the reputation outlived him by more than a millennium.