Konohana Sakuya-Hime ~ Most Honorable Lady of Mt. Fuji

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To the right along the wall of the main staircase of the Torrance Civic Center Public Library that leads to the children's section hangs a painting of three young Japanese girls standing side by side in kimonos, carrying parasols and eating what look like snowcones. On their slightly pigeon-toed feet they each wear a pair of wooden geta sandals. This painting has been hanging there since I was about three years old when my mother began taking me to the library every other Wednesday evening.

Obviously not the painting, but the three girls remind me of these three Maiko

For whatever reason, I'd always been absolutely fascinated with this painting and even as an adult, when I've gone back to visit the main library in Torrance, I've always made a point of stopping on the staircase to look at it. When I was a child it captured my interest so much that I began drawing Japanese girls with parasols, geta sandals and ornament adorned hair on every available scrap of paper I could find. All the end papers of every book I had as a little girl were covered with Japanese girls in kimonos, shuffling along the front and back pages in flapping silk procession while eating snowcones.

When I was 5 years old there was a dress shop for little girls in downtown Torrance. It was owned by a beautiful Japanese woman, Mrs. Matsumo. My mother frequented the shop often, so I'd already heard about the woman's daughter, Renée, prior to meeting her. Her mother mentioned her often while chatting with my mom every time we stopped by. Mrs. Matsumo said her daughter was my age and would be going to the same school I was going to be starting in the fall of 1974. I was beside myself with excitement! I was determined to meet Renée and make her my new best friend. 

The kindergartners were split up into two classes. I was in Mrs. Guys' class. Sure enough, Renée was in the same class and we did become inseparable best friends. We decided we were twins because we had the same first name. Obviously we looked nothing alike and had different moms but when you're 5 little details like this simply aren't important. 

Like me, she liked to draw too. Her style was different than mine though - very influenced by the Japanese Anime genre and aspects of her culture. I was fascinated by the her artwork and would ask her to draw all sorts of things for me so I could take each stroke of her pencil in step by step in an attempt to emulate her style - because even at 5, Renée did have a style all her own.

Spending the night at Renée's house was always a treat for me, causing me to nearly pee my panties with excitement every time our mothers would consent to a sleep-over. For me, entering her home was like entering a totally different world. The decor was traditional Japanese. The food they ate was traditional Japanese. Renée had a collection of her own chopsticks and I coveted them like crazy because each set was so ornate and colorful with elegant designs unique to her culture. Never mind that I didn't know how to use them. I just wanted them because they were so pretty! Renée also had several pairs of geta and when I visited her home, she'd always let me wear a pair. They made me feel so exotic and soooo Japanese!

A pair of geta just like Renée Matsumo had

In her room she had a collection of gorgeous porcelain Hinamatsuri dolls. Hinamatsuri is the Japanese doll festival and all Renée's dolls, arranged neatly on three shelves, one over another on one of her bedroom walls, were only taken down and put on display elsewhere in their home during festival time each Spring. We weren't allowed to play with them. I could only sit and gaze up and admire them, but that was fine by me. 

Each doll was adorned in a colorful kimono, many of them with their hair done up in the style of the Geisha - the beautifully adorned "Women of the Arts" in Japan. Some of them held painted rice paper fans or parasols while others held traditional Japanese instruments like flutes, the samisen, a kind of banjo-looking three stringed guitar, and the biwa, an instrument that resembles a medieval lute. 

The Emperor and Empress are placed on the First Tier

Hinamatsuri dolls

Renée explained how the dolls had to be placed in a certain order on the shelves; a doll hierarchy of sorts. Royalty dolls, usually an emperor and an empress, went on the top shelf. Ladies of the court went on the second. Musicians on the third. I would later learn there could be as many as seven tiers to the doll placement but Renée only had three.

I begged my mom to buy me some Japanese dolls like Renée had so I could arrange them just as she had done but I don't think she quite understood. She just heard "doll" and totally negated the "Japanese" bit. Thus began my own elaborate porcelain doll collection... although all my dolls - which are all now kept in their boxes downstairs in my storage area - are along the lines of both Queen Elizabeth I and II, Queen Victoria, Eliza Doolittle from My Fair Lady - both as a Hackney flower seller and in costume for the Ascot Races, Cinderella, The Snow Queen, a Gibson Girl... you get the picture. Not a single one of them is a traditional Japanese Hinamatsuri doll.

To this day, my love of certain aspects of the Japanese culture and traditional fashion persists. I have numerous books on the Maiko and Geisha. I still want a pair of my very own wooden geta and a genuine porcelain Hinamatsuri doll. I never get tired of doing research on styles of kimono and Kabuki theater costumes. And I couldn't wait to draw a Japanese goddess for this book, which is why I chose Konohana Sakuya-Hime as the second goddess illustration.

Mt. Fuji

The word for "cherry blossom" in Japanese is sakuya. Kono means "this" and hana means "flower petal". Hime is the title given to a princess or a woman of high ranking birth. Thus, Konohana Sakuya-Hime literally translates to "This Cherry Blossom Petal Princess". She symbolizes living a delicate earthly life, much in the same way cherry blossom petals are delicately fragile and fleeting but oh so beautiful to behold.

According to the Kojiki, the great 8th century CE compliation of Japanese mythology, Konohana Sakuya-Hime was the daugher of the mountain god, Oho-yamatsumi. She met and fell in love with a god by the name of Ninigi at the seashore. He, in turn, asked her father for her hand in marriage. Oho-yama proposed his older daughter, Iha-Naga the rock princess, instead, but Ninigi had his heart set on Konohana. Oho-yama reluctantly agreed and Ninigi and Konohana were married soon after. 

It is said that because Ninigi refused the older sister, human lives were destined to be short and fleeting like the cherry blossom rather than long-standing and enduring like stones a marriage to Iha-Naga would have ensured they be.

On their wedding night Ninigi and Konohana made love and the following day she announced she was pregnant. This made Ninigi extremely suspicious and he wondered if, perhaps, she'd had a lover prior to their marriage. Konohana was enraged at her husband's accusation. To prove her fidelity, she enclosed herself in a small hut and set fire to it, declaring, "If my baby is truly your child I will be able to endure the smoke and flames and deliver this child safely!" Miraculously, Konohana gave birth to a son, unscathed by the smoke and surrounding flames. The fire ceremony at Fuji-Yyoshida recalls this story as a means of protecting the town from fire and promoting easy childbirth among women. 

A shrine to Konohana Sakuya-Hime in Sakuragawa, Japan

In 806 CE, a local official built a shrine to another goddess, Kaguya-Hime - She Who Lights Up The Area - near the foot of the great volcano known as Mt. Fuji, to keep it from erupting. The priests assigned the task of pacifying the mountain goddess apparently neglected their duties because Fuji erupted with great violence in 864, causing much damage in a nearby province. The governor of that province blamed the priests for failing to perfrom the proper rites and constructed another shrine in his own territory, where he could make sure everything was done correctly. Kaguya-Hime, the fiery goddess of the volcano, became the more peaceful Shinto goddess, Konohana Sakuya-Hime. Mt. Fuji is surrounded by thousands of cherry blossom trees and it was the hope of the governor that the volcano would be influenced by the gentle delicacy that Konohana represented. 

Now, if I had been a stickler for accuracy, I would have designed my version of Konohana adorned in the robes of royal women of the Nara Period (710 to 784 CE) of Japanese history. This is time frame of when the story of Konohana is said to have originated. But I couldn't seem to help myself and wound up illustrating her in a costume more along the lines of the Kamakura period (1185 to 1333 AD) style of dress as these are more along the lines of costumes worn by many of the dolls my childhood friend, Renée, had in her bedroom. 

Renée Matsumo's mom closed her little girl dress shop and they moved away when I was about 7 years old. I've never saw or heard from Renée again but obviously her memory lives on very strongly in my heart, my aesthetic interests and even a wee bit of my artistic style. 

This illustration of Konohana Sakuya-Hime is dedicated lovingly to her.