Tokyo nichinichi shinbun Story in briefOsuwe, the wife of Hasegawa Kumakichi of Odzuki village in Chōshū [now part of Shimonoseki city in Yamaguchi prefecture], from around the 10th month of the 7th year of Meiji [1874] had been styled as having been possessed by the spirit of Abe no Seimei and had gained a following of faithful. [They] came to [think] that would be good if she went to the capital in Kyōto to receive an official rank, and she received travel fees. She took along her husband and others on what was to be an incident-filled journey. They used up the travel expenses on sake, and even returning to [their] province [became a problem, and in the end Osuwe made a lover of an actor she had become intimate with on the way. Translated by William Wetherall |
Commentary
The translation is of a summary of the story in Chiba 2008, which also shows a transcription of the fuller story on the print (page 67).
Osuwe (おすゑ) reflects "O-Sue". Female names were commonly prefixed by "O-". The "-we" represents contemporary older orthography. The w-glides "wi" (ゐ) and "we" (ゑ) are now generally "i" (い) and "e" (え). Of interest here is that "sue" was generally pronounced "suye" and not "suwe", hence the title of John Embree's Suye Mura: A Japanese Village and "Suyehiro" as an older romanization of this place name, personal name, and famous restaurant. The older "ye" is fossilized in "yen" -- the romanized term for the denomination of currency in Japan, which is pronounced "en" in Japanese today.
Odzuki village in Choshū (Chūshū Odzuki-mura 長州小月村) is now part of Shimonoseki city in Yamaguchi prefecture (Yamaguchi-ken Shimonoseki-shi 山口県下関市), at the northwest end of Honshū (本州), Japan's main island. The village was in Toyora no koori (豊浦郡), later Toyōra-gun (豊浦郡), a district of Nagato no kuni（長門国), a province of Chōshū domain (Chōshū-han 長州藩).
Abe no Seimei (安倍晴明 921-1005) was a Heian-era practioneer of Onmyōdō (陰陽道), which means "yang-yin way" and refers to yin-yang philosophy and astrology. His good health and long life were taken mean that he possessed mystical, magical, and spiritual powers, which added to his allure as an adviser to emperors, and contributed to his becoming a legendary, larger-than-life figure in later centuries. The compound 陰陽, read "yin" (陰 dark, moon) and "yang" (陽 light, sun) in Chinese, is most commonly "onmyō" Japanese, but is also read "on'yō" or "in'yō" in reference to "yin" (陰 dark, moon) and "yang" (陽 light, sun).
province (kuni 国) refers a homeland or country, in this case Chōshū. The province, a, which prominently figured in the civil turmoil that resulted in the overthrow of the Tokugawa government and its replacement by a nominally monarchal government.