English
” Tsurayuki, having met with a cool reception at his native place, plucks a branch of flowering plum, and exclaims— “Its people? Ah well! L know not their hearts, But in my native place The flowers with thetr ancient Fragrance are odorous.” “ The hue of the flowers Mingles with the snow, So that it cannot be seen; But their presence may be known Were tt only by the perfume.” “7 came and found thee not: Wetter far ts my sleeve Than if I had threaded my way at morn Through the bamboo-grass Of the autumn plain.” “ This night of spring, Of formless gloom, The colour of the plum-flowers Cannot, indeed, be seen; But how can their perfume be hidden?” “ What ts it that makes me feel so desolate This evening While I watt For one who comes not ? Can it be the blowing of the (chill| autumn wind?” “7 would that thy heart Were melted unto me, As when spring comes The ice thaws away And leaves no remainder” 62 JAPANESE LITERATURE “ For many a year The fire in me of love % Has not been quenched, Yet my frozen sleeve [soaked with tears] Ts still unthawed.” Tt ts J alone Who am most miserable, For no year passes In which even the‘ Cow-herd' Does not meet his love. There is here an allusion to the Chinese story, accord- ing to which the Cow-herd, one of a group of stars near the River of Heaven (the Milky Way), is the lover of a star on the other side called the Spinster. They are separated all the year round except on the seventh day of the seventh month, when magpies bridge over the River of Heaven, so as to allow the pair to meet. Both Chinese and Japanese poetry contain numberless allusions to this legend. The most convenient of the many editions of the Kokinshiu is Motoori’s Té-Kagami. It contains a modern colloquial paraphrase of the original. CHAPTER III PROSE—“ KOKINSHIU” PREFACE, “TOSA NIKKI,” “TAKETORI MONOGATARI,” “ISE MONOGA- TARI,” MINOR WORKS THE “ KOKINSHIU” PREFACE ABOUT two centuries elapsed after the Kaiki was written without any substantial addition being made to the prose literature of Japan. Some of the Norito and Imperial edicts described in a previous chapter belong to this period, but it was not until the early part of the tenth century that Japanese writers took up in earnest the practice of prose composition in their native language. K1 No TsSuRAYUKI, the poet and editor of the Kokinshiu, was the first in the field. But few details of his life have reached us. He was a court noble who traced his descent in a direct line from one of the Mikados, and his history is little more than the record of the successive offices which he held at Kidto and in the provinces. He died A.D. 946. His famous preface to the Kokznshiu was written about 922. It has to this day a reputation in Japan as the ne plus ultra of elegance in style. Later literature is full of allusions to it, and it has served as the model for countless similar essays. It is interesting as the first attempt to discuss such a pullosopaical question as the , 03 64 JAPANESE LITERATURE nature of poetry in a thoughtful spirit. I transcribe the more important passages :— “The poetry of Yamato (Japan) has the human heart for its seed, and grows therefrom into the manifold forms of speech. Men are full of various activities, among which poetry is that which consists in expressing the thoughts of their hearts by metaphors taken from what they see or hear. “Listening to the nightingale singing among the flowers or to the cry of the frog which dwells in the water, we recognise the truth that of all living things there is not one which does not utter song. It is poetry by which, without an effort, heaven and earth are moved, and gods and demons invisible to our eyes are touched with sympathy. By poetry the converse of lovers is made gentler, and the hearts of fierce warriors soothed. ““Poetry began when heaven and earth were created. But of that which has been handed down to our day, the first was made in everlasting heaven by Shita-teru-hime, and on the ore-yielding earth by Susa-no-wo. In the age of the swift gods it would seem that as yet there was no established metre. Their poetry was artless in form and hard of comprehension. It was in the age of man that Susa-no-wo made the first poetry of thirty and one syllables. And so by the varied multiplication of thoughts and language we came to express our love for flowers, our envy of birds, our emotion at the sight of the hazes which usher in the spring, or our grief at beholding the dew. As a distant journey is begun by our first footstep and goes on for months and years, as a high mountain has its beginning in the dust of its base and at length rises aloft and extends across the sky like 1 Dew with the Japanese poets suggests tears, and is associated with grief, KOKINSHIU PREFACE 65 the clouds of heaven, so gradual must have been the rise of poetry. “In the present day love has seduced men’s hearts into a fondness for ornament. Hence nothing is produced but frivolous poetry without depth of feeling. In the houses of those given to a life of gallantry, poetry is like a tree buried in the ground and unknown to men; while with more serious people it is regarded as a flowering suzuki! which will never bear ears of grain. If we con- sider its origin, this ought not to be. The Mikados of former times, On a morning when the spring flowers were in blossom, or on a night when the autumn moon was shining, used to send for their courtiers and demand from them verses suitable to the occasion. Some would represent themselves as wandering in trackless places in search of the flowers they loved ; others would describe their groping in the guideless dark and longing for the moon. The Mikado would then examine all such fancies, and pronounce this to be clever, that to be stupid. “Or else they wished prosperity to their lord, using the metaphors of pebbles? or of Mount Tsukuba. When joy was too much for them, when their hearts overflowed with pleasure, when they felt their love to be eternal as 1 A kind of grass. 2“ May our lord Live for a thousand ages, Until the pebbles Become a rock Overgrown with moss.” 3° Mount Tsukuba (which has two peaks) Has a shadow On this side and on that, But the shadow of Our Lord Has no shadow to excel tt,” 66 JAPANESE LITERATURE the smoke which rises from Mount Fuji, when they longed for a friend with the yearning of the cry of the matsumushi [a kind of cicada], when the sight of the pair of fir-trees of Takasago and Suminoye suggested a hus- band and wife growing old together, when they thought of their bygone days of manly vigour, or grudged to the past the one time of maiden bloom, it was with poetry that they comforted their hearts. Again, when they looked upon the flowers shed from their stalks on a spring morning, or heard the leaves falling on an autumnal eve, or every year lamented the snow and waves [z.e. grey hairs] reflected in a mirror; or, seeing the dew upon the grass or the foam upon water, were startled to recognise in them emblems of their own lives ; or else, but yesterday in all the pride of prosperity, to-day, with a turn of fortune, saw themselves doomed to a wretched life, those dear to them estranged; or again drew metaphors from the waves and the fir-clad moun- tain or the spring of water in the midst of the moor, or gazed on the under leaves of the autumn lespedeza, or cuunted the times a snipe preens its feathers at dawn, or compared mankind to a joint of bamboo floating down a stream, or expressed their disgust with the world by the simile of the river Yoshino, or heard that the smoke no longer rises from Mount Fuji, or that the bridge of Nagara had been repaired—in all these cases poetry it was by which they soothed their hearts.” The above are allusions to well-known poems. Tsura- yuki traces briefly the history of Japanese poetry in the Nara period, and then goes on to speak of the more recent poets whose effusions find a place in the collec- tion he had made. The following may have some interest as the earliest example of literary criticism in Japan:— TOSA NIKKI 67 “Henjo excels in form, but substance 1s wanting. The emotion produced by his poetry is evanescent, and may be compared to that which we experience at the sight of a beautiful woman in a painting. Narihira over- flows with sentiment, but his language is deficient. His verse is like a flower which, although withered and with- out bloom, yet retains its fragrance. Yasuhide is skilful in the use of words, but they match ill with his matter, as if a shopkeeper were to dress himself in fine silks. Kisen is profound, but the connection between the begin- ning and the end is indistinct. He may be compared to the autumn moon, which, as we gaze on it, is obscured by the clouds of dawn. We have not much of his poetry, so that we gain little towards understanding it by a com- parison of one poem with another. Ono no Komachi belongs to the school of Soto-ori-hime of ancient times. There is feeling in her poems, but little vigour. She is like a lovely woman who is suffering from ill health. Want of vigour, however, is only natural in a woman’s poetry. Kuronushi’s verse is poor in form. He re- sembles a woodman burdened with faggots resting in the shade of flowers.” “TOsSA NIKKI” Another work of Tsurayuki’s is the Zosa Nikkz or Tosa Diary. It was written on a journey back to Kidto after having completed his term of four years’ service as Prefect of that province. The first entry bears date the 21st day of the twelfth month, and we learn from other sources that the year was the fourth year of Shohei. This would be, according to the European reckoning, some time in the months of January or February A.D. 935.