Thread by @AnneLouiseAvery

The poet Ono no Komachi 小野 小町 praying for rain.
Attributed to Torii Kiyomitsu
ca. 1765
@metmuseum

Once, during a drought, Ono no Komachi inscribed a poem on a slip of paper & placed it in a little boat, which she then set sail on a pond in the Shinsen-en Garden to pray for rain. Her poem was so powerful that the rain began to pour, continuing for three days.

Another version by Utagawa Toyokuni II. Ono no Komachi was a very popular subject in the Edo period due to her legendary beauty, with numerous prints, often parodies (mitate-e) of contemporary beauties, depicting instantly recognisable scenes from her life, such as the rain poem.

And here's an extremely elegant & fashionable parody from around 1793 by Utagawa Toyokuni I – "A Modern Version of Komachi Praying for Rain (Tôsei yatsushi Amagoi Komachi)".

Scenes from her life were often gathered together into a series known as Nana Komachi (Seven Komachi), here by Kunisada, including a 99-year-old Komachi sitting on a grave post, about to trounce a priest with her understanding of the Buddhist notion of impermanence or mujokan.

Yoshitoshi's study of the poet under a thin, bone moon is one of my favourite interpretations of this Komachi, who wrote:

This body

grown fragile, floating,

a reed cut from its roots. . .

If a stream would ask me

to follow, I’d go, I think.

(Trans: Hirshfield/Aratani)