The Changelings: A Classical Japanese Court Tale

by Rosette F. Willig

English, Japanese (translation)

Genres: Japan, LGBT, Japanese Literature, Classics, Fiction, Asian Literature

248 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1983

Reviews

[Carola · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a truly remarkable book. This late Heian period court tale (estimated to be written between 1100 and 1170, maybe) is very much about gender and gender roles (and society), with two siblings behaving outside of the norm and switching gender and the accompanying societal roles. Without putting specific labels on it, I won't hesitate to call the whole ordeal queer.

(Don't worry, it's also very much about all the other things typical to Heian court tales: love, infidelity, who's who in court, mistaken identities, and poetry.)

I found much of the story (especially the first two books) surprisingly touching. What struck me most was that Saisho is the one who most wants (and benefits from) Chunagon to continue living on in a female role after their affair, but also seems to be one of the few (if not the only one) who most realises why she possibly wouldn't want to: to continue living in society and court as a man, instead of in seclusion as a woman. I have mixed feelings on the ending, but all things considered I think the unknown author gave the siblings the best ending he or she could conceive of.

I am grateful for Willig's inclusion at the end of the book of the relevant parts of the Mumyō Zōshi (written between 1200-1202), where it comments on both the old and new Torikaebaya. Especially the understanding for the two main characters, and the criticism of Saisho's behaviour towards the female Chūnagon (hiding her away and confining her), are moving to read across all these centuries. I also highly recommend reading more about the story's reception throughout the centuries on Wikipedia.

My review here is based solely on Willig's translation (of what is probably a version inbetween the 'old' and 'new' one mentioned above). I have a lot of questions about the translation. Translating classical Japanese isn't easy, not to modern Japanese nor to yet another language, as is easy to see when (at a glance) comparing this translation to Michael Stein's German translation: Die vertauschten Geschwister. Ein höfischer Roman aus dem 12. Jahrhundert.
Gender especially is hard to translate from Japanese, classical or not. I'd love to see how much gendered language there really is in the original, but that's a (slightly ambitious) project for the future...

[Irit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very important and relatively overlooked book. If you are interested in gender performance and gender representation in classical Japan, it's a great place to start. They are obviously not changelings, since no magical transformation occurs. The protagonists clearly choose to perform conforming to a particular gender role, according to their inclinations. Unlike Iphis and Iante there is no divine intervention, just character pecularities, social conventions and life circumstances.

It is not The Tale of Genji, with its intricate plot and sophisticated poetry, but with so few surviving medieval monogatari it's a shame that this book rarely if ever mentioned when Japanese classical literature is discussed.

[Greta · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's time for me to review this 'novel' since I'm writing my master's thesis on it and to be honest it's taken so much of my time I wish it could count as ten books instead of one, lol. It's a very hard task to review the story itself, given its literary and historical value: we don't even have the entirety of it since a few pieces are missing and this version, dated in the latter half of the 12th century, is based off an even older one from a century before, which we completely lost. And we don't know who the author was, making it difficult to fully understand its historical context (but that's what I'm trying to do in my thesis, haha).
I first approached this monogatari because everyone told me it was the "first transgender story" in Japanese literature and I was like, wow cool, let's check it out. To say that it's about being trans, or that its main characters are trans, makes however a very superficial understanding of it - not only because we are applying contemporary labels to characters who had no idea what that concept meant, but especially because it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what the story tries to convery to its reader, meaning, a woman faces a life with many more struggles than a man does. It may be obvious for us 21st century readers but it was not for people back then. Women have long tried to tell the hardships they face in court life (Heian literature is full of women writers: Murasaki shikibu, Sei shonagon, Michitsuna's mother, lady Sarashina, Izumi shikibu, Akazome emon, and many others) - however, to read about female fictional protagonists who had full agency in their life we have to wait until later literature, such as Yoru no nezame and Torikaebaya monogatari itself (translated "The Changelings" - a quite poor, but understandable, translation, since it evokes supernatural creatures that do not exist in Japanese folklore, but the "change" between the siblings is justified by the work of the supernatural tengu). The point is that the female character ("Chunagon") understands her loss from the freedom of the life a man could live only when she's trapped in the stasis of the life of a woman. This is the point of the story - her comparing her previous happy life with her current miserable one, not because she "feels like a man", but because being a man meant being free to walk, to love, and to act in a society that was very restrictive towards its women. And on the other hand if we observe the male protagonist ("Naishi") he has a change of heart as soon as he realizes he can start acting like a man: he never misses the life he lead as a woman, because that was only constrictive to him.
I don't want to talk about the story too much because I've read way too much about it (especially the incredibly insightful commentary by Ishino Keiko), so I'll just state that this story had a very important role in showing how women in the late Heian period were starting to raise their voices about their struggles, and it's sad to see how their voices were silenced by the establishment of the bakufu (military regime) especially after the 13th century.
The translation itself is my problem and the reason why I'm only giving it two stars. It's a very defective one because it completely ignores any cultural and historical reference to ease the English reader's experience, over-simplifying the story and glossing over many of its details. For example "Chunagon" 中納言 is just one of the many titles the female character is given, and to be honest she spends more time being called Taisho 大将. I don't understand why basically all the notes Willig gives are intertextual references to the waka tradition and to Genji monogatari, instead of making it clear for the reader what each title meant, where the characters lived, and even interesting little bits from the original text that make it easier to understand when the author was serious and when she clearly had a humorous intent. While the story is "translated", the translation itself has no literary value, since many words keep being repeated, characters speak in a monotonous manner and the register does not change at all in any given situation despite there being differences in how honorary language (keigo) is used.
Now I understand that this translation is quite old now (dating 1983) and that research has much expanded since then. But I saw news that Willig's translation is being re-published in 2026 and I just don't understand why since it's just not a very good one and the story deserves to be given much more depth of commentary (like other monogatari do). Is it because it covers queer themes, thus making publishing houses more willing to adapt it to the general public and ignoring academia? I do not know, but I find it disappointing. But anyways.

[S. B. Letham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was excited to read this book as a rare piece of Japanese transgender history. If you're looking for a light read for pleasure, you will likely find this dry, but if you are interested in snapshots of international perspectives about sex and gender in history, this book could be quite valuable to you. Willig has done a fine job of making the text as readable as possible.

[zey ✧ · Rating 2 out of 5]

saisho açgözlülüğün yüzünden tüm okuma hevesim tadım tuzum kaçtı sana saydırdığım belaların küfür kıyametlerin haddi hesabı yok defol ya. zuka adaptasyonunu izledim bitirdikten sonra ve o bile çok daha zevkliydi, en azından sinirimi bozacak karakterler yoktu da iki farklı bir şeyler hissettim izlerken

[Aurora Demasi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great contribution of English translation of a Japanese classic. However there are some inaccuracies in the introduction and in the text

[CA · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an interesting look at gender and gender roles in the Heian court.

The translation is serviceable, but the writing felt a bit lackluster - though I did wonder a few times how much that was the translator and how much that was the original. There were a couple of scenes where characters or events seemed to appear from nowhere, which was confusing, and there's a lot of places where the characters just tell you their emotions in very plain terms for a paragraph. And the constant descriptions of how beautiful everyone is are often vague and even more over-the-top than they are in Genji.

However, for the two siblings at the heart of the tale, who spend much of the story acting in roles contrary to their birth sexes, Willig did make the excellent decision to use pronouns that refer to their social personas. So the AMAB sibling, who is shy and goes to court as a woman, is referred to as 'she' while officially in that role. The AFAB sibling is still referred to as 'he' even after giving birth to a child but before officially swapping social roles with the other sibling.

For a modern reader, this does make it even easier to read the story as a tale of two transgender siblings who try and ultimately fail to live as their true selves, and from that perspective, it's a painful but interesting read. The two of them manage well for a while, but not without some difficulties due to their birth sexes (for instance, the AFAB sibling has marital difficulties due to being unable to sleep with the bride that are the root of a lot of the romantic drama of the book).

While their situation is certainly looked upon as an unfortunate fact - their father repeatedly worries and rues that they are like this - at the same time, they encounter sympathy. Their father allows them to have the coming-of-age ceremonies correct for the social roles they have taken on, their mothers seem supportive of both their original interests and their role swap, and a prince-turned-monk who finds out is quietly understanding. Both siblings also experience difficulties in returning to the roles of their birth sexes. Although I think the ending was supposed to feel happy and like it was a good thing the siblings returned to their 'natural' roles due to the influence of Buddhism - the AMAB sibling attains extremely high rank, and both of them have lots of children - to me, it felt like the AFAB sibling, in particular, was never happy in the cloistered female role demanded at the time.

There's also a lot of love drama, including a love triangle that spans most of the book. While it was tedious at times, I did like that the instigator, who sleeps with/rapes the AFAB sibling while in the male role, never find out what happened after the siblings switch roles again. He was a jerk, and it was satisfying that he was left in the dark, while their child together does discover the truth. The cast list was also constrained enough that I was able to keep everyone and their dramatic relations straight without too much trouble, unlike with Genji!

The book was overall clunky and a bit dry, but worth finding and reading as someone interested in these themes and time period.

[Lulu]

between 1100–1170 - Tsukuri monogatari