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Notes on "Matsu--"
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yuletide Author's Notes would be posted before the story, instead of after, so I have quite effectively ruined my own story by having an enormous bunch of nattering on historical sources and whatnot. I'm asking the mods to remove that and replace it with a link here, so hopefully they'll be able to do that. :)And oh yes,
yuletide author reveals for 2007 have happened, and my story was for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
edonohana, in the Onmyoji fandom, and titled "Matsu--"You do not need to know the canon to read it. It's set in Heian Japan, Seimei is an onmyouji (a court magician) and Hiromasa is his perpetually-befuddled courtier friend, and they solve supernatural mysteries.
Many thanks to
keelieinblack for the beta!And now for the massive amount of author's notes, because there was just so much cool stuff about the Heian era that I put in (and even more that I left out!). I tried to keep the story as historically correct as possible, although Heian rank organization and politics are huge tangled messes, so hopefully nothing is obviously wrong.
Sugawara no Michizane's exile, posthumous career as disaster-bringer, and subsequent deification as Tenjin, the god of scholarship, are documented. The poem referred to in the story remonstrating the pine was most likely written after Michizane's death, as that story showed up first in a Noh play a few centuries later. Also, one of the conspirators that brought about Michizane's downfall was a former student of his who faked a knowledge of onmyodo (practitioners of which are referred to as onmyoji) and made false predictions pointing to Michizane as a traitor. I thought the onmyoji Seimei might have some snippy things to say about that, but couldn't find a good place to put them in.
The book Sugawara no Michizane and the Early Heian Court by Robert Borgen is an excellent resource on his life and the era.
The time-measuring incense board is slightly out of place: as far as I know at this time in Japan they were only used in Buddhist monasteries, but I was overwhelmed by the Cool Factor and stuck it in anyway. You can read more about incense measuring time in the paper "The Scent of Time: A Study of the Use of Fire and Incense for Time Measurement in Oriental Countries" by Silvio A. Bedini, published in 1963 as part of the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, v. 53, part 5 (available through JSTOR if you have access).
The poetry is in the pre-eminent form of the Heian era, the five-line waka, although lines are an English-language equivalent for a unit or phrase in the Japanese language. There are several forms, with different syllable (English) or unit (Japanese) counts, but I chose to ignore that and pretend they were translations that focused on the imagery more than the structure
"Nagiko" is likely the personal name of Sei Shonagon, the author of The Pillow Book, but was chosen in homage to her, rather than meant to be her.
"Matsu--," the title, is a pun in both Japanese and English. "Matsu" means both "pine tree" and "to wait," and much Japanese poetry throughout the ages has turned on that double meaning. "Pine" in English means, naturally, "pine tree" as well as "to waste away/to long for," and seemed to fit one of the themes of the story.
The bellflower symbol referred to in the story refers to the five-pointed star that the stories attribute to Abe no Seimei's creation.
Heian women of the upper class lived fairly restricted lives, appearing only behind screens and in closed ox-carts when traveling. Ideally, the only two men ever to see a woman of the time would be her father and her husband. In practice, many women took lovers, but their lovers only visited them at night, leaving before the dawn to prevent scandal (staying during the day was tantamount to marriage). Much wistful poetry refers to the dawn in sad terms. Women who served at court enjoyed a little more freedom to be in the presence of men at court with their faces uncovered, but once they left court, they were subject to the same restrictions as other women. This is one of the many reasons that poetry and calligraphy was prized so highly at the time - the only way you had of judging another person was by the elegance and accomplishment revealed in their handwriting, composition, and knowledge of the classics as referred to in poetry and prose.
I found the snake story in a collection of Japanese fairy tales. In that case, however, the snake was trapped beneath a house accidentally, but I combined that with the idea of creating an angry, vengeful dog spirit by deliberately starving a dog to come up with the idea of deliberately creating a snake spirit for a particular purpose.
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Please don't ditch me as your writer and do everything solo from now on, even though you obviously easily could.
ETA: Ignore deleted comment, I lack reading comprehension.
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I figured you'd already guessed it was me, by my not-very-well-disguised "Er, I can't talk about this really cool thing I found because my recipient might see this!" stuff on my LJ. Which included the time-measuring incense board, Michizane, Heian women in general, bitching about Heian poetry and the writing of same, Royall Tyler's collection of Japanese folktales with a few Seimei stories in it, etc.
Also! I found a piece of music that was written by the historical Hiromasa! Alas, I purchased it from iTunes so I cannot share, but I shall give you the info so you can get it if you want. XD ($ .99 from iTunes, or you can order the CD it's on.) The format is called "bugaku" (it's a formal court dance music thing), and the title is "Bugaku: Chogeishi", and it is included on the CD Gagaku and Beyond, by Tadaaki Ono.
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And Hiromasa' concern about his hat comes from the manga, where's there's a hysterical scene where Seimei is getting Hiromasa to hide under a large fisherman's basket one night so they can surprise the antagonist of that story, and Hiromasa complains there's not enough room for his hat. Seimei is all "Dude, you can take the hat off because you're under a basket," and Hiromasa is totally scandalized by that suggestion. And Seimei totes a jar of sake everywhere he goes in the manga.
Also: it was remarkably stress-free writing because even if it sucked, I knew my recipient would have to pretend to like it if she wanted me to continue to do manga with her. ;)
and you dont' know how many times I had to keep myself from sending you questions and ideas about plot or various other bits of it for advice and plot-noodling, aargRe: P.S.
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Anyway, I'll probably be popping up every so often with Yet Another Tidbit of Heian lore or history that I've been manfully suppressing for however many weeks so as not to tip my hand. Or something about the actual writing of it. Like how I originally wanted to tell the entire thing out of chronological order, but couldn't quite figure out how to make that work, so the only vestiges of that are the pillow book excerpts, which are in order of ... er, emotional revelation? rather than chronological. And how I had no idea how I was going to come up with poems for it until I typed in a bunch of waka and then somehow realized after that I now could easily write badly-translated waka since they were in my fingers, as long as I worked out the central images first*.
And how I knew you sometimes read
And how I tied myself up in knots trying to figure out what everyone's name should be, because they referred to each other by titles and nicknames, rather than names, until it hit me that duh, it was movie-verse Onmyouji and they all referred to each other by name. (And the Emperor was about 20-30 years older than he should have been, but hey.)
SO YOU KNOW I MIGHT MENTION ANY OR ALL OF THAT AT ANY GIVEN TIME!
* And does the bare mountain peak make you think of male-pattern baldness? XD
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It's amazing how often one spends ages researching or trying to figure out something, and then it turns out that it works better finessed anyway. I knocked myself out finding the perfect poison for the Godchild story, and then I realized that I was better off just inventing and not even naming one.
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A story idea I toyed with but discarded because I couldn't come up with anything other than the central image - the idea that Seimei's mom was a fox was put into a kabuki play. The full story from the play is that a man was in love with a woman who rejected him. He, despondent, went out into the country to live. He saved an injured white fox. Who turned out to be one of the messenger foxes of Inari and who turned herself into the image of the woman who spurned him, and impersonated her, marrying the man in order to thank him. Their son was Seimei. When Seimei is 2 or 3 years old, the real woman and her -- father? brother? - come and visit, and since the deception is revealed, the fox regains her old form, and has to leave her family. The husband and Seimei follow her and plead with her, but it's to no avail as she has to go back.
Anyway, the most touching, saddest, loveliest image from the whole thing is that while she is transforming back, she is writing a farewell poem on a screen, which she has to finish with her brush in her mouth because her hands have turned into paws.
But, I couldn't work that up into anything - and I read about that image but dind't get the full story until I ordered a book with a translation of the play. Or, rather, ONLY PART of the play, which annoyed me as it didn't say that it was only part. But that's the only English translation as far as I know. Also, you specified Seimei/Hiromasa and Seimei refused to tell Hiromasa anything about himself. XD (Although I know you enough to know that you'd probably have been thrilled even if I left Hiromasa out.)
Apparently, earlier she sees the young Seimei (he has a different name when young) eating bugs and worries that he's inherited part of her bestial nature.
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I said in my Yuletide letter that just a story about Seimei and folklore would be fine!
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I also thought a story about Seimei's mother like that would be a perfect metaphor for mental illness and how it affects a family, and that it could be written so that you're not sure whether she's turning into a fox literally, or just in her mind, but while that could be a really powerful story, I had no idea how to approach it, and I'm not sure I could write that one yet.
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Thank you! Now if I could only come up with setting, characters, and plots that weren't somehow related to media properties, I'd be in business. XD
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Hee, you read "Rose of Naamah!" My very first explicit sex scene ever, so naturally it was hardcore lesbian BDSM! I had to beg
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