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future.
    But I should like to make just one request: I do not want them to work as mediums. I do not have them serve at this shrine because of this vow.
    For years now, I have been a mouthpiece for the gods Chapter One c 23

    that have possessed my body, and I have pronounced words affecting important affairs of society as well as personal fortunes. But of course, I myself have never been conscious of any of those pronouncements. When I am possessed, a horrendous power weighs down on me and I become unable even to breathe, as if a huge rock were crushing me. At length I become unconscious of anything, and I never recall a single word I utter while in a trance.
    When I think about it, though, from time to time there have been frightening oracles from the gods: to do battle, or to take a person’s life. I possessed no understanding of such matters, but I would realize later that important events to which I had never given thought had occurred as a result of the god’s oracle through my mouth, and that has at times filled me with apprehension. At any rate, I am resigned to this as my own fate, but I do not want my daughters to follow in my path. Therefore, after Ayame enters your service, Your Lordship would be gravely mistaken to think that she possessed some knowledge of necromancy. I humbly beg you not to use her for work having to do with gods or spirits.
    Behind Toyome’s earnest entreaty to Kaneie was a secret that had been plaguing her.
    Strictly speaking, shrine women were supposed to have remained virgins while in service to the gods, but in reality there were surprisingly many love affairs. It is perhaps reasonable to view the requirement of chastity as rooted more in a belief that the gods preferred a woman who was free to respond to a man’s demands rather than in an abhorrence of female impurity.
    In the “Emissary of Falconry” section of The Tales of Ise, the man appearing as Narihira called at the household of the Ise Virgin to pay his respects. While he was being entertained, he began to seek her affections. In the middle of that same night a woman accompanied by a serving girl appeared outside the bamboo blinds of his chamber. He invited the woman to enter, and who should come in but the virgin herself? Narihira made 24 c A Tale of False Fortunes a pledge of love that night, but he set out early the next morning without being able to arrange another tryst with her. The serving girl brought a letter to him. He opened it to find only a poem written in the virgin’s hand.
    Kimi ya koshi
    Did you come to me,
    Ware ya yukikemu
    Or was it I who went to you?
    Omòezu
    I cannot say—
    Yume ka utsutsu ka
    Was it dream or reality?
    Nete ka samete ka.
    Was I asleep or awake?
    What we see here, then, is a noblewoman—an imperial princess and the virgin of the Ise Shrine, the highest-ranking shrine maiden in all the land—visiting Narihira’s bedchamber of her own accord. Now of course The Tales of Ise are from the earliest stage of the Monarchical Age, and a good deal of rusticity even in the behavior of the nobility remained from the Nara period. Even allowing for that, an aggressiveness like that of a noblewoman in service to the gods calling on a man in his bedchamber is practically unheard of in other tales. Perhaps in the final analysis, although shrine maidens were not officially sanctioned to have affairs with mortal men aside from their devotions to the gods, such liaisons were tacitly permitted.
    Viewed from one angle, a shrine maiden’s state while possessed by a god also follows a course through extreme tension between body and mind, passing through ecstasy and finally to saturation. Through this course, the sex drives are naturally satisfied. In other words, a shrine maiden in a divine trance is performing a sort of sexual act. These women can be said to be liberated by the deity rather than confined by it. In this regard, there would seem to be a fundamental difference between the asceticism of