Musashi Plain

Utagawa Hiroshige, Musashi Plain, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, 1852 I have been reading A Tale Unasked, Penguin's new Meredith McKinney translation of Lady Nijō's Towazugatari, a court and travel diary completed around 1307. After her expulsion from the palace she became an itinerant nun, travelling to famous shrines and checking out utamakura on the way. I have discussed utamakura, places important in Japanese poetry, before (see, for example, my 2008 post on Mount Fuji seen from the Beach at Tago). I enjoyed the following passage but then turned to one of the most depressing endnotes I have read recently, which I've added below in brackets. The eighth month had begun. A desire to wait until I could see the famous autumn scenery of Musashino had kept me here all this time, and I now decided to return that way. The temple of Asakusa was said to have a miraculous Eleven-Headed Bodhisattva Kannon which I longed to see, and I made my way towards it across a wide plain…