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Dogs and Japanese Classics

Dogs and cats in Heian literature: A heartless child and a dog with a human heart

Contributed by Kumiko Nagai

Associate Professor,

Today, many dogs and cats are kept as pets, but how were they treated a thousand years ago?
Associate Professor Nagai, who conducts research into classic literature from the Heian period (794-1185), including such works as The Tale of Genji, introduces some dogs and cats that appear in the Japanese literature of that time.

A heartless child and a dog with a human heart

In The Tale of Genji, Hikaru Genji meets his future wife, Murasakinoue, in a chapter titled “Wakamurasaki.” The young Murasakinoue says, “Inuki let my sparrow escape from its cage!” Inuki is the name of a girl who also appears in a chapter titled “Momijinoga,” in which she breaks Murasakinoue’s dollhouse.

While depicted as an ideal woman in subsequent chapters, in the early episodes Murasakinoue is still a girl, aged around 10, and considered quite immature by those around her. Inuki does not let the sparrow escape or break the dollhouse with any ill intent. However, as critics have long pointed out, it is these innocent acts that cause Murasakinoue to finally abandon her childish pursuits.

Inuki is depicted as a thoughtless and inconsiderate child with poor judgement, untamed and unbound by the conventions of adult emotional and intellectual expression. But it is her free-spirited, undocile behavior that puts Murasakinoue on the path to maturity, just as those around her had wished for. In this way, Inuki can be compared to a loyal dog (inu) doing its master’s bidding.

In contrast to Inuki’s careless behavior, a dog that seems to have an abundance of care appears in chapter 7 of Makura no Soshi (The Pillow Book). This dog, named Okinamaro, attacks Lady Myobu, the cherished cat of Emperor Ichijo, and is expelled from the palace as a result. Okinamaro later returns to the palace, but keeps a wary distance from everyone there, as if he understands that he has been exiled. Eventually, offered sympathy and encouragement by a group of courtiers, the dog comes and cries at their feet. As the dog has thus shown itself to be just as capable of emotional expression as a person, the Emperor forgives it, saying with a laugh, “How amazing it is to witness such depth of emotion in a dog.”

Some interpret the cat in this story as representing the Emperor’s beloved Empress Consort Teishi, and the dog that posed a threat to the cat as Teishi’s brother, Fujiwara no Korechika, who drew a bow at the former Emperor Kazan and was expelled to Dazaifu (the modern-day region of Kyushu). Korechika later returned to Kyoto, but the family was brought to ruin. The story of Okinamaro’s return to the palace in a highly emotional state may reflect the desire of author Sei Shonagon, who was a servant of Teishi, that the Empress Consort be happy again.

Watchdogs or strays

In The Tale of Genji, an actual dog appears only briefly in a chapter titled “Ukifune.” In this chapter, the grandson of Hikaru Genji, named Niou no Miya, secretly goes to Uji (near Kyoto) to visit Ukifune, who is also loved by his rival, Kaoru. Visiting her at night, he is barked at by a dog on the way to her residence. Incidentally, in Ookagami (The Great Mirror), another Heian period tale, the sound of a dog barking is expressed as hiyo (pronounced more like “biyo”). For aristocrats living in Kyoto at the time, dogs were either watchdogs kept outdoors or strays. People started to keep dogs as pets, indicated by having them wear a collar, mainly after Western dogs were imported to Japan in the Azuchi-Momoyama period (1500s-1600s).

A cat, meanwhile, appears in The Tale of Genji in Part 1 of a chapter titled “Wakana.” The cat, which has been brought over from China, pulls up a reed screen, causing the face of Onna Sannomiya, who is newly wedded to Genji, to be seen by a man other than her husband. In the years following the boom in popularity of Western dogs in Japan, the scene of Onna Sannomiya and the foreign cat began to be used as a pictorial motif, with Onna Sannomiya replaced by a contemporary woman and the cat by a dog.

Before they were tamed and kept as pets, dogs in Japan were viewed as wild animals. In the Yamai no Soshi (“The Picture Scroll of Diseases and Deformities”) created at the end of the Heian period, a dog is depicted approaching human waste, while in the picture scroll from the Kamakura period (1185-1333), a dog is shown devouring the dead flesh of a person. Dogs were thus seen in earlier times as savage or feral creatures that do not comprehend human logic, but if tamed, they could become strong allies to humans. In other words, while “thoughtless,” dogs could also show signs of being “thoughtful” in their relationships with humans.