Kazashi no Himegimi

Kazashi no Himegimi (かざしの姫君), also known as Kazashi no Hime (かざしの姫), is a Japanese Muromachi period story. It is one volume in length, and the text is accompanied by illustrations. The author is unknown.

The story belongs to the otogizōshi genre and is sub-classified as a kaikondan, a story dealing with marriage between different species, specifically in this story, with the spirit of a chrysanthemum flower, which is rare.

Story

Princess Kazashi is the daughter of the Middle Counselor Minamoto. She loves flowers, and at the age of 14 meets a man named Shōshō in a dream and they exchange marriage vows. He secretly visits the princess each night. One day the father is commanded to present chrysanthemums for a ceremony. That evening, Shōshō appears in a weakened state and tells the princess that it would be his final visit. He leaves a gift and tells her to remember him through their child and leaves. The gift was a poem and a chrysanthemum, and she realizes that he was the spirit of the chrysanthemum flower that her father had plucked. She later gives birth to a daughter, but the princess dies after childbirth. The daughter is raised by the princess' parents, and at the age of 13 becomes a lady of the court. The emperor loves her and she soon gives birth to a son and daughter.

Manuscripts

The text survives in four manuscripts located in:

gollark: I typed this with my eyes closed and it came out surprisingly not wrongly.
gollark: Wow, that was actually *right*?
gollark: You know what they say, bees approach you at 87THz and you cannot possibly hope to escape, due to the unlimited power of typing .
gollark: Ah, touch typing.
gollark: Just because you don't need 481 zero-ohm resistors on a chip doesn't mean nobody does.

References
  • Ichiko, Teiji; Osamu Akiya; Taizō Sawai; Kazuo Tajima; Kazuo Tokuda (1989). Shin Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei: Muromachi Monogatari Shū (Jō) (in Japanese). Iwanami Shoten. pp. 291–309. ISBN 4-00-240054-9.
  • Nihon Koten Bungaku Daijiten: Kan'yakuban [A Comprehensive Dictionary of Classical Japanese Literature: Concise Edition]. Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten. 1986. ISBN 4-00-080067-1.
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