Do not think yourself
The vanishing dew.
Think instead
Of the long-blooming
Chrysanthemum flower.
The Heian Court calendar was peppered with festivals and celebrations, many of which are still celebrated in Japan today. The go-sekku were significant festivals which ran on auspicious dates, almost bi-monthly throughout the year. The ninth day of the ninth month was the date reserved to celebrate chrysanthemums.
We can read about how the celebrations took place in the Heian Court Calendar:
The Ninth Month
Ninth Day: Chrysanthemum Festival
The Emperor and his Court inspect the chrysanthemums in the Palace gardens. Afterwards there is a banquet. Poems are composed and the guests drink wine in which chrysanthemums have been steeped. After a performance of dances, Palace Girls present small white trouts to His Majesty, and later the guests are also served dishes of white trout.
Chrysanthemums have long been associated with the Imperial Court in Japan.
Chōyō no en in September was known as the chrysanthemum festival. As we can see, after a wonderful banquet, guests wishing for a potion that would give them long life drank kikuzake, a special sake steeped with fragrant chrysanthemum petals.
On the evening prior to the festival, a custom called kisewate was performed. In order that the chrysanthemum flowers could retain their colour and fragrance, they were covered with mawata, boiled silkworm cocoons which were then teased into a texture like fluffed cotton.
The mawata was dyed in the same colours as the chrysanthemums: yellow, red, and white.
The teased candyfloss-like cotton absorbed the fragrant dew overnight.
On the following morning, the courtiers wiped their faces and bodies with the soft, dew-soaked mawata which was scented with the dew of the flowers, and they prayed for a long life and good health.
The kisewate tradition derives from a fascinating tale about Kikujidō, the Chrysanthemum Child.
Kikujidō was a favourite of Chinese Emperor Mu of the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BCE), but his enemies plotted his downfall, ensuring his exile by ensnaring him walking across the Imperial headrest. It was a shocking and unforgivable breach of palace rule.
Feeling sorry for the boy, Emperor Mu secretly gave him the headrest upon which he had written two verses from the Lotus Sutra. He taught Kikujidō to recite the sutra and pray every morning.
Up in the mountains, Jidō copied the verses onto a chrysanthemum leaf so that he might remember them, and he was astonished when the dew that formed on the leaf was efficient as an elixir of immortality. Kikujidō drank the dewdrops on the chrysanthemums and became immortal.
The concept of kikiju - chrysanthemum longevity, originates from this legend and was carried to contemporary Heian Kyoto.
The Chrysanthemum Boy and Noh
The Kanze school of Noh drama includes a performance called The Chrysanthemum Boy (Kikujidō).
The Noh drama sets the play in an earlier Chinese dynasty. Water from the base of Mount Rekken is discovered to have medicinal properties, and an imperial official is sent to investigate its source. In the mountains he discovers a strange boy living in a hut who claims he once served Emperor Mu of the Zhou dynasty, seven hundred years earlier.
The palace official suspects that the boy is supernatural, and questions him fervently.
And so, to prove that his story is true, the boy shows the official a headrest on which the emperor had inscribed passages from the Lotus Sutra.
The boy describes how he had copied the sutra lines onto fresh chrysanthemum leaves, and how the dew that then formed on them became an elixir of immortality. Because he has continued to drink the chrysanthemum-infused dew he has lived for seven hundred years.
The dew that drips from the chrysanthemum leaf has overflowed creating a pool, and this is the headspring of the medicinal water.
Kikujidō's evidence is irrefutable. The palace official and the boy share cups of the enchanted chrysanthemum water (kikusui) as if it were sake and offer prayers for the longevity of the emperor.
And then the curious Chrysanthemum Boy returns to his life of anonymity in the mountains.
The Chrysanthemum Spirit
This manuscript illustration is from a story called The Chrysanthemum Spirit.
A noble lady adores her chrysanthemums so much, she manifests the chrysanthemum's spirit into the form of a fine noble man!
This is a beloved tale from the Muromachi era, and we look at it in our earlier blog about the Chrysanthemum Festival.
But, many of the beautiful works by Heian lady writers feature the Chrysanthemum Festival too. Festivals were beloved by the court ladies, as they relieved the tedium of their secluded lives.
Murasaki Shikibu's eponymous hero in The Tale of Genji alludes to the anguish he feels at losing his true love:
The ninth month came, and on the ninth day he contemplated chrysanthemums wrapped in cotton.
Chrysanthemum dew from the mornings we both knew in life together
moistens for me these autumn sleeves that I must wear alone.
In Murasaki Shikibu's personal diary, she archly records an encounter:
On the ninth of the ninth month Lady Hyobu brought me floss-silk damp with chrysanthemum dew.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘Her Excellency sent it especially for you. She said you were to use it carefully to wipe old age away!’
And her court contemporary, Sei Shonagon records the beauty of chrysanthemums:
84. I Remember a Clear Morning I remember a clear morning in the Ninth Month when it had been raining all night. Despite the bright sun, dew was still dripping from the chrysanthemums in the garden. On the bamboo fences and criss-cross hedges I saw tatters of spider webs; and where the threads were broken the raindrops hung on them like strings of white pearls. I was greatly moved and delighted. As it became sunnier, the dew gradually vanished from the clover and the other plants where it had lain so heavily; the branches began to stir, then suddenly sprang up of their own accord. Later I described to people how beautiful it all was.
What most impressed me was that they were not at all impressed.
Aren't these Heian ladies fascinating!
Centuries later, ladies are dressing in beautiful chrysanthemum kimono for the festival (see image below).
Isn't the kikusui pattern on the kimono stunning!
I hope you have enjoyed reading about the beautiful and wondrous properties
of Heian era chrysanthemums -
thank you for reading, and see you next time!
Cathy
x
Sources
Ivan Morris, The World of the Shining Prince, (Kodansha), p.164
Library of Congress, Picture Book of Chrysanthemums, dated 1691, artist Junpo.
Bruce Hamana Sosei, 100 Beautiful Words in the Way of Tea, (Tankosha), p.84.
Izumi Shikubu, The Izumi Shikibu Nikki, (Toyo Press), p.59.
Tadamasa Ueno, The Chrysanthemum Boy, (Fuji Arts).
Met Museum: The Chrysanthemum Boy
Murasaki Shikibu, translated by Royall Tyler, The Tale of Genji, (Penguin Classics), p.776.
Ivan Morris (translator), The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, (Penguin Classics), 84.
Melissa McCormick, Harvard University (EdX), Japanese Books: From Manuscript to Print
Keio University Libraries, The Chrysanthemum Spirit (Kazashi no Hime), early Edo.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: Hishikawa Ryuukoku, Chrysanthemum Festival.
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