Death at the Temple

冬枯や平等院の庭の面　鬼貫

Fuyugare ya / Byōdōin no / niwa no omo

Winter desolation—
the face of the garden
at Byōdōin

(Poem by Onitsura, written in 1690.)

The temple of Byōdōin in Uji, Kyoto, was founded by the statesman Fujiwara no Yorimichi in 1052. Within it, Hōōdō (Phoenix Hall) stands on an island in the Ajiike, which is modeled after a pond in the Buddhist paradise. The scene, appearing on the ¥10 coin, is a familiar sight for people living in Japan.

Over its long history, Byōdōin has often been embroiled in conflict. In 1180, the Genpei War opened with Minamoto no Yorimasa, then in his seventies, leading the Genji forces in an uprising against the Taira clan. After Uji became a battleground, a defeated Yorimasa laid down the war fan he used to direct his troops and ended his life by ritual suicide on the grass near Hōōdō. That place became known as the ōgi no shiba or “lawn of the fan,” and still draws visitors today.

Yorimasa’s suicide is known in Japan through the war chronicle The Tale of the Heike. The “lawn of the fan” seems to have become famous through Zeami’s nō play Yorimasa. A song from the play uses the phrase Byōdōin no niwa no omo, “the face of the garden at Byōdōin” when talking about the lawn.

Onitsura’s haiku combines this fragment from the song with the phrase fuyugare, meaning “winter desolation.” As the battle took place in summer, the lawn must have been thick and green, but Onitsura’s poem is set in the opposite season, in a symbolic expression of sympathy for Yorimasa’s ill fortune. It works as a companion piece to Bashō’s famous haiku about a “dream of warriors.”

(Originally published in Japanese. Banner photo: Hōōdō at Byōdōin in the snow. Courtesy Byōdōin.)