This is the third set of notes I have made while reading the Onmyoji novels, and the titles have refused to settle down. The first two entries took their names from the opening stories, because those stories were what pulled me in. Then the reading ran ahead of the writing, the notes began to cover stories from more than one volume, and the old titles no longer fit. I could go back and rename the earlier entries, but I do not like doing that. A reading note records the moment it was written. I would rather add a few sentences here and let the changing titles explain themselves.
A Pregnancy That Disturbs the Capital
The twelfth story in the first volume, “A Baby’s Hand Beckons from a Knot in the Peach Tree Pillar,” begins with Minamoto no Takaakira’s mansion behaving badly. Strange things keep happening, and nothing goes smoothly. Takaakira invites Abe no Seimei, who knows both onmyōdō and feng shui, to inspect the house and find the cause.
Seimei examines Takaakira’s room and the layout of the whole estate. The trouble is not a ghost. It is Kohagi, a maid in the household, who is pregnant. The child is Takaakira’s, and the fetus’s aura has disturbed the feng shui of the entire capital, which in turn affects the mansion. Seimei offers three solutions: build a small mound in the southeast corner of the estate, something like a miniature Toribeno, to pacify the aura; send Kohagi away from the mansion to cut off the influence; or simply wait until she gives birth, when the feng shui will settle and the disturbances will stop.
This is one of those plots that works only if you accept its premises completely. A single pregnancy, even an illicit one, throwing the whole of Kyoto’s feng shui out of balance feels like a stretch. I cannot help wondering whether Seimei is performing a private exorcism in public: using the language of feng shui to discipline a lecherous lord. Japan has never been coy about sex, and the Onmyoji stories show it. If Takaakira had not slept with his maid, there would be no pregnancy, no disturbed aura, and no need for a consultation. The supernatural explanation is elegant, but the human explanation is funnier and perhaps more plausible.
Feng Shui Made Japanese
That story also opens a window onto the history of feng shui in Japan, where it is often called sōchi or sōtaku, the inspection of land and houses. The tradition came from China by way of the Korean peninsula. One of the earliest written traces is the arrival of the Baekje monk Kanroku, who presented texts on astronomy, geography, and esoteric divination to Empress Suiko in 602. In 735, Kibi no Makibi returned from Tang China with related texts, and the system became more organized.
During the Nara and Heian periods, feng shui was woven into the planning of capitals. Both Heijō-kyō and Heian-kyō were sited according to the four divine animals. Heian-kyō in particular aligned the Kamo River, the San’indō road, Ogura Pond, and Mount Funaoka with the Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Black Tortoise. The Onmyōryō, the bureau of divination, had officials responsible for such inspections. In the Edo period, feng shui spread among ordinary people and produced local schools of house and grave divination. It declined in the Meiji era, then began to recover in recent times, mostly in building siting and interior layout. The result is a tradition that is Chinese in origin but thoroughly Japanese in practice.
The White Snake at Horikawa Bridge
The thirteenth story in the first volume, “Minamoto no Hiromasa Meets a Woman at Horikawa Bridge,” turns from feng shui to rumor. Late at night, strange things keep happening at Horikawa Bridge in Heian-kyō. Ono no Kiyomaro, Minamoto no Tadamasa, and Umezu no Harunobu are each disturbed by a woman in white. Word spreads that a sorceress is haunting the bridge, and the city grows nervous.
Minamoto no Hiromasa is egged on by colleagues at court and decides to go alone. On the bridge he runs into a wall of illusion and cannot get free. In desperation he jumps off the bridge and lands near Abe no Seimei, who had already set a barrier there to investigate. Seimei reveals that the white-clad woman is a white snake who has cultivated for a hundred years. The disturbances are caused by her spiritual power. The snake explains that she is about to give birth and has been wary of humans since being disturbed by them in the past. She created the illusions only to keep people away while she delivered, not to harm anyone. By the time Hiromasa and Seimei meet, the birth has already happened. Her power withdraws, the bridge grows quiet, and two enormous beautiful white snakes and one small white snake drift downstream along the Horikawa.
What people call monstrous often hides a tenderness or an obsession no one has taken the trouble to understand. Compassion works better than suspicion. In this story, Hiromasa becomes the real protagonist: kind, upright, pure-hearted, and musically gifted. Many readers would rather sit beside him than beside the cool, uncanny Seimei. He is the sort of man people naturally want to approach.
Minamoto no Hiromasa (918–980) was a mid-Heian noble and a master of gagaku, later called the god of gagaku. He was a grandson of Emperor Daigo, the eldest son of Prince Katsuakira, and his mother was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tokihira. Known in childhood as Prince Hiromasa, he later gave up imperial status and entered the ranks of subjects. He rose to Junior Third Rank and served as provisional governor of the Empress’s household, though he was not a councillor; people called him Hiromasa Sanmi. He studied several instruments with famous teachers: court songs with Prince Atsumi, koto and zither with his grandfather Emperor Daigo, biwa with Minamoto no Osamu, and transverse flute with Ōishi Mineyoshi. He was especially famous for the flute. His Shinsen Gakufu, also called the Hiromasa Tekifu or Chōshūkyō Chikufu, is Japan’s earliest flute score collection and includes many gagaku pieces. He was also a strong go player, remembered as a go saint. In official history he had no connection with Abe no Seimei. Later literature, from Konjaku Monogatari to the Onmyoji novels, turned them into close friends who solve the strange cases of Heian-kyō together.
Melons, Pipe Foxes, and the Pull of Home
The first story in the second volume, “The Melon Sage,” is generous with incident and a little loose in structure. It contains several smaller tales: Sansen’s wife is tricked and loses her five-year-old son; a warrior from the western capital searches for his brother at night and shoots an arrow at a blue-glowing rat; an old man plants watermelon seeds and gets watermelons, a sequence that clearly borrows from the Taoist pear-growing trick in Liaozhai; Seimei uses magic to hasten a butterfly’s transformation; and small demons in an old house cause trouble for Seimei and Hiromasa. The story also introduces a palm-sized fox called a kuda-gitsune, or pipe fox.
The material is vivid, but the narrative feels scattered. Still, the theme is clear: humans and yokai alike are deeply attached to their native places. A melon, a fox, a haunted house, a lost child—each becomes a way of talking about how hard it is to leave home behind.
The Iron Ring
The second story in the second volume, “The Iron Ring,” is tighter and much darker. Fujiwara no Naritoki abandons his lover Tokuko. Filled with resentment, she goes night after night to Kifune Shrine to perform the ushi-no-koku mairi, the curse ritual of the hour of the ox, praying to become a demon and take revenge. A shrine attendant tells her that if she paints her face red, wears an iron ring, and walks with anger in her heart, she can become a demon. She believes him and nails a doll bearing Naritoki’s name to a cedar at the shrine. Soon Naritoki falls gravely ill. Terrified, he turns to Minamoto no Hiromasa, who brings in Abe no Seimei.
Hiromasa then remembers something. Once, while playing his flute near Horikawa Bridge, he noticed a woman listening from inside an ox cart. They spoke through the curtain, and she never showed her face. That woman was Tokuko. Seimei does not want to meddle in a love quarrel, but Hiromasa persuades him. They set a trap. In the end Hiromasa finds Tokuko and recalls their earlier meeting. He promises that whenever she feels the urge to become a vengeful demon and hurt someone, she should come to him. He will play his flute for her and dissolve the grudge. With that promise, her resentment breaks. Naritoki’s crisis ends. For years afterward, Tokuko comes at night to listen to Hiromasa’s flute. Sometimes she stands in a corner of the room; sometimes she waits outside in the dark, hidden from the light. There is no hatred left in her, only the sound of the flute.
The story shows Hiromasa’s goodness, but it also lingers on the depth of Japanese women’s feeling. When love goes deep and meets a cold-hearted lover, affection can turn to hate. Yet at the end of hate there is still an unreasonable love for the world. Tokuko is unfortunate, but she is lucky in her misfortune because she meets Hiromasa. Through her, Hiromasa also arrives at something like self-redemption.
Several lines in the story carry a weight beyond the plot:
“Once the heart loses its way, it is very hard to turn back.”
“Anyone can think of becoming a demon. In every human heart, such a demon is hiding.”
“Water is good when it brings rain to the fields. When the rain does not stop and becomes a flood, water is evil. Water is only water. What makes it good or evil is that people divide things into good and evil.”
“The human heart is like that. No matter how you suffer, how you weep, how you worry, how you strain your eyes waiting, the human heart will not turn back.”
“When there is no longer any remedy in this world for hatred and sorrow, there is nothing to do but become a demon. And even as a demon, one is not freed.”
What stays with me after these stories is not the magic but the emotional weather: a lord’s household thrown into disorder by desire, a snake protecting her newborn, a fox tied to home, a woman with an iron ring and a grudge that will not let go. Seimei may be the one who explains the rules, but Hiromasa is often the one who makes the story bearable.