Ancient Japanese Rap Battling

With all the time I have to kill while in quarantine in the den, I have been cleaning up my old blog on the Hyakunin Isshu poetry anthology. It’s been great rediscovering things, including poem 60 of the anthology, a poem composed by Lady Izumi‘s daughter, Ko-Shikibu no Naishi (小式部内侍, d. 1025).

Lady Izumi by this time had quite a reputation as a master poet, and her daughter probably had to live in her shadow. While her mother was away in the province of Tango, Ko-Shikibu no Naishi was participating in a poetry contest, a major social event among the aristocrats of capitol. These contests were serious business. The host would choose a topic, and pit poets against one another, and the right poem could really make or break one’s reputation.

As part of the contest, Middle Counselor Sadayori started trash-talking Ko-Shikibu no Naishi saying:

What will you do about the poems? Have you sent someone off to Tango [to ask your mother for help]? Hasn’t the messenger come back? My, you must be worried.

So, Ko-Shikibu comes with some poetic freestyling:

Japanese	Romanization	Translation
大江山	Oeyama	Ōe Mountain and
いく野の道の	Ikuno no michi no	the road that goes to Ikumo
とほければ	To kereba	are far away, and so
まだふみも見ず	Mada fumi mo mizu	not yet have I trod there, nor letter seen,
天の橋立	Ama no Hashidate	from Ama-no-Hashidate

The poem doesn’t translate easily into English, but according to Dr Mostow, the poem is a masterpiece because it recites three places in Tango Province in geographic order, has the following puns:

• iku in Ikuno also means to go 行く, and
• fumi means both a letter 文 and to step 踏み, and
• the bridge mentioned, Ama-no-Hashidate, is associated with “stepping” too.

… and she did all this off the cuff.

The comeback was so good, that Sadayori reportedly fled.

Pretty amazing comeback by Ko-Shikibu no Naishi, and a sign that talent runs in the family. Sadly, her life was snuffed out at a young age due to illness, and Lady Izumi never quite recovered with loss…