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Once upon a time in Toba, there lived a young lady who was the daughter of the Takayanagi Captain and the object of a kitsune's affections. Though the fox wished to be with her, he knew sealing a lover's bond would condemn the young lady to hell for violating the bestiality taboo. And so, in order to save her soul, he foreswore carnal relations and instead turned into a woman, committing himself to serving at his lady's side forevermore.
The road to hell is, indeed, paved with good intentions.
As the years went by, the fox – who had entered the world as a filial adoptive daughter and a loyal maid-in-waiting – elevated both her parents and her mistress beyond their ordinary means. Her erudition and way with words were matched only by her kindness and wisdom, and with the fox's whispers in her ear, the young Takayanagi lady wrote such poetry that it caught the attention of the Emperor. She was summoned to court.
Unable to conceive watching her beloved mistress take to the Emperor's side – so close, and yet soon to be twice as unreachable as before – the fox made up her mind to take her leave. In a letter, she told her mistress her tale – the tale of Tamamizu-no-mae. She spared no detail of her dedication to her adoptive human family and her love for the Takayanagi lady; this letter she sealed up in a box.
'I beg you to take this,' Tamamizu said to the young lady, 'but also not to open it. Wait until you are ready to retire from this world, at some point when I am far from your side.'
The Takayanagi lady took the lacquered box in her hands. 'Why would you ever be far from me? Are you leaving me, when you swore you would stay always by my side?'
'I am not leaving you,' Tamamizu said; it was a white lie.
'I shall not open the box before it is time,' the Takayanagi lady promised, a lie just as pristine.
Amidst the hustle and bustle of the Takayanagi lady's procession from Toba to the capital, Tamamizu slipped away unnoticed. Had Tamamizu gone ahead? Had Tamamizu been left behind? By the time the lady was fully settled in court, it was clear that Tamamizu had taken herself away and that she could no longer be found.
While she grieved the loss of her companion, for a while the Takayanagi lady was very busy, for she was constantly at the Emperor's side. The Emperor demanded most of her attention, as emperors tended to do, and although he had as many women as he had jewels, there was something about the lady's poetry which bewitched him; her words were pearls to his ears.
In truth, even the lady was surprised by her own elocution, for though she had a fair hand for composition, she had never had much brilliance before meeting Tamamizu.
After many weeks at court, the Takayanagi lady eventually found a moment alone. Seated in her chambers, she took the lacquered box in her hands and, unable to bear it any longer, opened Tamamizu's letter. She wept as she read the letter: how pitiful Tamamizu had been! How great his depth of feeling! At its conclusion, the letter reiterated Tamamizu's hope that the young lady had not opened the box until she was ready to leave the world behind.
But whether the lady wished to leave the world behind or not was now moot: she had opened the box, and now it could not be shut again. The power of a promise does not vanish when the promise is broken: it simply shifts, and these shifts are manifested as worldly consequences.
The strength of Tamamizu's devotion had been kept sealed in that box: thus contained, it had fed the Takayanagi lady's creative genius like a spring. Now the rest of it had been set loose, and the lady's knowledge of it changed everything.
How shallow the Emperor suddenly seemed! How strangely unlearned! When he talked with her about this or that one particular way by which one might seek enlightenment, it was obvious that he knew nothing about the Middle Way. To the enlightened mind, nothing was not in keeping with Buddhist Law! How foolish of the Emperor to pander now to exoteric thinkers and then later to esoteric teachers when both were true teachings: delusion and enlightenment were simply like water and ice; a voice and its echo.
When once the Takayanagi lady had enjoyed all music, now she could only hear how discordant most performances were – how unknowledgeable were the many court musicians on the sojo, oshiki, and ichikotsu modes that voiced joy, and the hyojo and banshiki modes that gave voice to sorrow.
When once the Takayanagi lady had spent idle evenings writing poetry that seemed to bubble forth from within, now she realised her own deep insensitivity towards waka, and became ashamed. How had she been blind to how poetry was in truth a facilitator of the Three Bonds and Five Virtues? For was it not a way to discern yin and yang and not merely a way to pass pleasurable time?1
Everywhere the Takayanagi lady looked, there was ignorance. She could not see without spotting something awry; she could not listen without hearing something out of tune. Whenever the Emperor asked the lady one question, she now had ten answers to give him. Her deep intuitions pierced his mind with their complexity and correctness: soon the Emperor would not let the Takayanagi lady stray even an inch from his side.
Eventually, the Emperor's advisors grew fearful and resentful of the Takayanagi lady's influence on his majesty, for she was always saying learned things that put them all to shame. When the Emperor chanced to fall into a long sickness, the courtiers plotted together and summoned forth the head of the Bureau of Divination.
'I discern that Your Majesty's illness has become very grave,' said the onmyoji, who had learned the magical techniques of Abe no Seimei2 – or so he and all geomancers everywhere claimed. He worked his divinations and then pointed at the Takayanagi lady. 'It is the doing of that creature in human guise, the Takayanagi Lady. If His Majesty rids himself of the she-devil, his illness will be cured at once!'
All who heard the proclamation were aghast, but then the courtiers began one by one to speak.
'I hear that in the province of Shimotsuke, there is a place called Nasu where a fox has lived for eight hundred years...'
'Yes, I hear that it manifests in countries where Buddhism flourishes, sometimes as a consort or lady-in-waiting, always drawing close to the emperor and working to destroy the Buddhist ways...'
'In China, was it not a fox who manifested as the consort Bao Si, who then destroyed King You?'
And so on it went.
The Takayanagi lady, hearing this, cursed them all. 'Is this what counts for enlightenment among men?' she demanded of them. 'If so, it is the enlightenment that men will receive!' And so saying, the lady fled from the court as if on the wind, and no one could find her.
The road to hell is, indeed, paved with a good education.
The lady's return journey had none of the fanfare of her procession to the capital. When she had once been feted for her beauty and aesthetic sensibilities, now she was turned away from every door, for no one would house a woman travelling alone for fear of her character and fearful forwardness. Sans palanquin, she travelled on her own two feet, so ignored by the world that she might as well have already been a ghost.
Some time later – her fine silks bedraggled and muddied, her orchid perfume now overpowered by the stench of mud – the Takayanagi lady finally stepped foot back in the land of Toba. There, Tamamizu was waiting for her.
The fox, once again a lady, took in her mistress' state and wept. 'What have they done to you, my lady?' Tamamizu cried, wetting her sleeves and fussing at the Takayanagi lady's attire.
'Call me my lady no more,' said the Takayanagi woman, lifting her dirty sleeve to Tamamizu's eyes. Her own eyes were ablaze. 'They have called me a fox, so that is what I shall be. Now show me your true self – you who have been kinder to me than any man!'
Tamamizu turned back into a fox. The Takayanagi woman shed her clothes and was, a moment later, a fox also.
'What shall we call you?' he asked her, his voice full of old, enduring love but pity also. That the Takayanagi lady had chosen to forsake the human realm and fall down to the animal one grieved him, even though he understood the root of her anger.
'Call me Tamamo-no-mae,' she said, her voice full of vengeance.3
It is the name she is still remembered by to this day: the sublime and perfect Lady Tamamo, she who enthrals emperors and topples dynasties with nothing but the virtue of good advice.