SOURCE: Strong, Sarah M. “The Making of a Femme Fatale: Ono no Komachi in the Early Medieval Commentaries.” Monumenta Nipponica 49, no. 4 (winter 1994): 391-412.

In the following excerpt, Strong elucidates the reputation—in Japanese medieval writings, including the Tales of Ise—of the poet Ono no Komachi as a heartless beauty.

Komachi was steeped in the ways of love. Men wrote her billets doux, so many love letters, Countless as raindrops falling from a summer sky. But she sent no reply, not even an idle word. 

Sotoba Komachi.¹

With their compressed lyricism and the bold simplicity of their visual images, the medieval noh plays have made a lasting impression on the imagination of Japan and, indeed, the world. The noh version of a particular famous character is often the one that has mattered most over the centuries, supplying the defining characteristics and preoccupations by which that character has been...