Twice ToldYasutomi-ki, Bun'an 6 (1449), 5th month, 26th and 27th days
- Language
- Japanese
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 18 October 2026
The Yasutomi-ki is the diary of Nakahara Yasutomi (1399 to 1457), an official of the court’s clerks’ office, kept from 1408 to 1455. The two entries stand in the lower columns of the right-hand page and the top of the next; each opens with a bold day heading (廿六日乙巳, 廿七日丙午) and a weather note. The edition prints Japanese reading marks as small signs between the characters, which are left out here. A small phonetic gloss シロ stands beside 白 in 白比丘尼 on the 26th. Old forms are kept as printed (國, 歲, 說, 號).
廿六日乙巳 晴、或云、此廿日比、自若狹國、白比丘尼トテ、二百餘歲ノ比丘尼令上洛、諸人成奇異之思、仍守護召上歟、於二條東洞院北頰大地藏堂、結鼠戸、人別取料足被一見云々、古老云、往年所聞之白比丘尼也云々、白髪之間白比丘尼ト號歟云々、官務行向見之云々、而不可然之由有巷說之間、今日下向若狹國云々、
廿七日丙午 晴、或說云、自東國比丘尼上洛、此間一條西洞院北頰地藏堂、致法花經之談義云々、五十バカリノ比丘尼也、同宿比丘尼二十人許在之云々
Translation
26th (kinoto-mi), clear. Someone says that around the 20th of this month a nun known as the white nun came up to the capital from Wakasa, a nun of more than two hundred years. Everyone found it extraordinary. For that reason, perhaps, the governor summoned her. At the Great Jizo Hall on the north side of Nijo Higashi-no-toin they set up a “mouse door” (a low wicket) and let people see her, taking a fee from each person, it is said. An old man says: this is the white nun we heard of in years past. She may be called the white nun because of her white hair. The Kanmu went to see her, it is said. But since street talk says it cannot be so (or, in the other reading, that it is not proper), she went down to Wakasa today, it is said.
27th (hinoe-uma), clear. Someone says that a nun came up from the eastern provinces. Lately she has been giving talks on the Lotus Sutra at the Jizo Hall on the north side of Ichijo Nishi-no-toin, it is said. She is a nun of about fifty, and about twenty nuns lodge with her.
Notes
The entry on the white nun is hearsay twice over: it opens 或云 (“someone says”) and every clause ends 云々 (“it is said”). The age it gives, 二百餘歲 (more than 200 years), is not the 800 of the other two diaries. 不可然之由有巷說 has two possible readings, “street talk says it cannot be so” (doubt) and “street talk says it is not proper” (disapproval); the entry does not say which, and the translation gives both. 官務 (Kanmu) is a court post; the entry does not name the man who went to look. 守護 is a provincial governor, and the entry does not say which one; 召上歟 ends in the doubting particle 歟, so the summons is Yasutomi’s guess (“perhaps”). 結鼠戸 is read as “set up a mouse door”, a small low door through which people enter one by one; this sense is ours and the phrase may mean something close to it. 料足 is the money fee and 人別 means per person. 大地藏堂 is “the Great Jizo Hall”; the entry names no temple. On the 27th the page image has 地藏堂 without 大, and 致 where Togashi Akira’s quotation of the same entry (Kokugakuin Daigakuin kiyo 54, p. 172) prints 到; we followed the page. Dates are as the source writes them (Bun’an 6); no Julian conversion was made.