Hachi-no-ki: How the Tokiyori Provincial Circuit Legend Was Born

On a snowy night, at Sano in Kōzuke Province. A traveling monk seeks a night's lodging at a poor house.

The master of the house is the former warrior Sano no Genzaemon Tsuneyo. With no firewood, Tsuneyo cuts his prized potted pine, plum, and cherry trees and burns them in the hearth, receiving the traveling monk.

Before dawn, Tsuneyo speaks of his circumstances — he had lands in Kamakura but lost them by slander, and if he is summoned from Kamakura he is prepared to hurry there at any time.

The traveling monk left in silence. Months later, a summons comes from Kamakura.

When Tsuneyo hurries to attend, the one he faces is the shikken Hōjō Tokiyori. His former lands are returned, and three new domains named for pine, plum, and cherry are added.

Such is the plot of the Muromachi nō play 'Hachi-no-ki' (The Potted Trees).

The 'Tokiyori Provincial Circuit Tradition' — that Tokiyori toured the provinces in the guise of a monk to observe popular conditions directly — has no description in the contemporary Azuma Kagami.

The legend developed in Muromachi-period nō plays, kōwaka-mai, and otogi-zōshi, and became a national tale through the wide circulation of 'Hachi-no-ki' in the Edo period.

There is thin documentary support for Tokiyori actually having toured the provinces.

The provincial circuit legend is likely a later invention.

But it is an interesting question why Tokiyori was chosen as the protagonist of the provincial circuit legend.

That Tokiyori was concerned with popular administration and implemented policies to relieve gokenin hardship (improvements to litigation systems, tokusei orders for debt relief) is corroborated in contemporary sources.

His young tonsure in 1256 and Buddhist name 'Dōsō' also left a clean image with later generations of stepping down from power and entering the path of religious seeking.

The elements of the historical Tokiyori — concern with popular administration, young tonsure, refuge in Zen — crystallized in later stories as the ideal image of 'a ruler in the guise of a traveling monk touring the provinces.

'Hachi-no-ki' has been loved across the ages — Muromachi nō, Edo kabuki, Meiji moral-education textbooks, modern children's literature.

The phrase 'Iza Kamakura' (Kamakura, now!) — derived from Tsuneyo saying that if summoned from Kamakura he would hurry there — has become fixed in the Japanese language as an idiom meaning the loyal heart that hurries to answer a summons in time of need.

The process by which the historical Tokiyori was overlaid by the legendary Tokiyori is a rare case in cultural history that reflects what the Japanese people sought in a ruler.