Arboreal Unicorns and Other Megaflora: On Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s Film Charisma

The narrator of Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow Book (Makura no sōshi, c. 1000) often distinguished trees according to whether they blossomed or not. In one passage, the blossoming trees she appreciated with a poet’s gaze were the red plum, the cherry, the wisteria, and the orange. She mentioned the pear tree, though with far less enthusiasm, until she recalled that the tear-streaked face of famed courtesan Yang Guifei had been likened in Chinese verse to a “spray of pear blossom, swathed in the spring rain.” This intertextual reference proved a good reason for the narrator to elevate the pathetic pear tree to a worthier status. Intertextuality played an essential role in creating a poetic regard for the pear tree, which finds its way into her masterpiece only by virtue of an elaborate system of reference or honkadori. In this form of classical poetry, natural elements remembered in verse collectively form a cultural canon upon which poets have drawn for centuries....