Hamamatsu Chūnagon Monogatari

Hamamatsu Chūnagon Monogatari (浜松中納言物語^?), also known as Mitsu no Hamamatsu (御津の浜松^?), is an eleventh-century Japanese monogatari that tells about a chūnagon who discovers his father has been reborn as a Chinese prince. He visits his reincarnated father in China and falls in love with the Hoyang Consort, consort to the Chinese Emperor and mother to his reborn father. It is told in six chapters, but the first has been lost to antiquity.

The tale was written by a female author who employed several exotic locations in the work. The author considers the love between a parent and a child to be "deeper, lasting and more tender" than a romantic love between a man and a woman, which follows traditional virtues of filial piety.

Hamamatsu Chūnagon Monogatari is the tale of a chūnagon who lost his father when he was very young. His mother marries a widower with two daughters and he fell in love with the older daughter, Taishō no Kimi. The Chūnagon learns in a dream that his father has been reborn as the Third Prince of the Emperor of China, and he sets out on a three-year trip to meet his father. Taishō no Kimi conceives a child with him as he leaves for China and upsets her father's plans for a good match for her, becoming a Buddhist nun instead. The Chūnagon becomes the darling of the Chinese court, and falls in love with the mother of his father's rebirth, the half-Japanese Hoyang Consort. She bears him a son, whom he brings back to Japan to live with the Hoyang Consort's mother, the Yoshino Nun. After the Yoshino Nun passes away, Chūnagon takes her daughter, the Yoshino Princess, into his care, although a seer urges him to avoid marriage with her. Chūnagon dreams of the Hoyang Consort being very sick, and soon he is told by a spirit that she died and is now in the Buddhist heavenly realm called Trayastrimsa. The Yoshino Princess is kidnapped by the Crown Prince and impregnated by him. The Hoyang Consort appears to Chūnagon in a dream, and tells him that she has been reborn within the Yoshino Princess's unborn child. The Yoshino Princess is returned to Chūnagon.

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