English
” °° T 7s the first snow, Vet some one ts tndoors— Who can tt be?” “ The club-shaker's Rising and falling tn the water Dutdl tt becomes a musquito.” 296 JAPANESE LITERATURE The water-grub, which subsequently becomes a mus- quito, moves about by the rapid vibration of its tail. Hence the name “club-shaker.” To the Japanese it is an emblem of the mischievous boy who is destined to develop into a wicked man. “O ye fallen leaves! There are far more of you Than ever I saw growing on the trees!” Alas! the.width of this musqutto-net Which meets my eye when I wake And when I lie down.” The following characteristic specimen of this kind of poetry is quoted in Mr. B. H. Chamberlain’s Handbook of Colloguial Japanese :— “ Asagao nt Tsurube torarete, Morat-mizu !” Literally, ‘Having had my well-bucket taken away by the | convolvuli,—gift-water!” The meaning, as Mr. Chamberlain not unnecessarily explains, is this: “The poetess Chiyo, having gone to her well one morning to draw water, found that some tendrils of the convolvulus had twined themselves around the rope. As a poetess and a woman of taste, she could not bring herself to disturb the dainty blossoms. So, leaving her own well to the convolvuli, she went and begged water of a neighbour. A pretty little vignette surely, and expressed in five words.” HAIBUN The Haibun is a kind of prose composition which may be conveniently mentioned here, as it is a sort of a 2 ae: HAIBUN 297 satellite of the Haikai, and aims at the same conciseness and suggestiveness. The most noted writer of Haibun is YOKOI YAYU (1703-1783), a high official of Nagoya, in Owari. He is the author of the much admired apologue which follows :— “An earthen vessel, whether it be square or round, strives to adapt to its own form the thing which it contains ; a bag does not insist on preserving its own shape, but conforms itself to that which is put into it. Full, it reaches above men’s shoulders ; empty, it is folded up and hidden in the bosom. How the cloth bag which knows the freedom of fulness and emptiness must laugh at the world contained within the jar ! O thou bag Of moon and flowers Whose form ts ever changing!” In other words: How much better it is to yield our hearts to the manifold influences of external nature, like the moon and flowers, which are always changing their aspect with the weather and the season, than, self-con- centrated, to try to make everything conform to one’s own narrow standard ! KIOKA Kidka (literally “mad poetry”) is a comic and vulgar variety of Tanka. There is here an absolute freedom both in respect to language and choice of subject. The Kioka must be funny, that is all. In this kind of poetry, of which an immense quantity was produced during the Yedo period, the punning propensity of the Japanese has been allowed full scope. Share (pronounced “sharry”) reigns there supreme, S4are is one of those numerous 208 JAPANESE LITERATURE Japanese words for which there is no exact English equivalent. It may be translated “ wit,” but in order to express its full meaning a spice of what is comprehended under the terms gaiety, esprit, playful fancy, stylishness, must be added. Japanese wit, like that of other countries, has an element which defies analysis or classification. But the jeu-de-mots predominates. Share infests not only the Kioka, but the drama and fiction, to an extent well-nigh intolerable to European tastes. Dr. Florenz, Professor of Philology in the Imperial University of Tokio, has treated this subject with truly German con- scientiousness and erudition in a paper read before the German Asiatic Society of Japan in July 1892. Follow- ing a native investigator named Tsuchiko Kaneshiro, he classifies skarve under two heads with divisions and subdivisions, making in all twenty different kinds. Our old enemy the pivot-word is here, also the pillow-word, and several ‘varieties of the ordinary pun, with various fearfully complicated acrobatic contortions of speech which I shall not attempt to describe. Even the reader _ who has a competent knowledge of the language requires a special study to understand and appreciate them. He follows these far-eastern waggeries with a halting step, and frequently finds himself in the position of the Scotchman who was heard suddenly to burst into laughter at a joke which had been made half-an-hour before. Nothing testifies more strikingly to the nimble- ness of the Japanese apprehension than their delight in these “Taschenspielerkunstchen des sprachlichen Aus- drucks” (linguistic prestidigitations), as Dr. Florenz has aptly called them, whether in conversation or in books, It may be doubted whether such an excessive fondness for mere verbal wit does not amount to a disease, and ~~ i i MODERN LYRICS 299 whether it has not constituted a serious obstacle to the development of higher qualities in their literature. In quite recent times a popular kind of lyrical poetry has come into fashion which somewhat resembles the ancient Naga-uta in form. The following may serve asa specimen :— ** Vain has been the dream In which I thought that we met ; Awake, I find myself again In the darkness Of the wretched reality. Whether I try to hope Or give way to gloomy thought, Truly for my heart There ts no relief. Lf this is such a miserabie world that I may not meet thee, Oh! let me take up my abode Deep in the far mountains, And deeper still In their furthest depths, Where, careless of men’s gaze, 1 may think of my love.” CHAPTER V EIGHTEENTH CENTURY KANGAKUSHA—FICTION—JISHO AND KISEKI—]ITSUROKU- MONO—WASOBIOYE—POPULAR DRAMA KANGAKUSHA THE pursuit of Chinese studies reached its height in the eighteenth century. In its early years Hakuseki, Kiuso, and other distinguished men of letters still lived and wrote. They had numerous successors, who continued to bring out volume after volume of commentaries on the Chinese classics, works on government, the art of war, history, finance and political economy, ethics, metaphysics and religion, under which the shelves of Japanese libraries are groaning at this day. But, as the Heike Monogatari says, “that which flourishes must also decay.” After the philosophers came the sophists. Japan had little more to learn from the Chu-Hi philo- sophy, and the renewed study of the ancient Chinese literature which it had promoted. The impulse derived from these sources had spent its force, though it con- tinued to be indirectly felt in other departments of literature than the writings of the Kangakusha. In the eighteenth century the Chu-Hi philosophy was no longer so universally recognised as the unquestioned 300 KANGAKUSHA 301 standard of doctrine. Even in the preceding century there had been heretics, vigorously denounced by Kiusé, who followed the teachings of Wang Yangming,! a Chinese thinker who “endeavoured to substitute an idealistic intuitionalism for the scientific philosophy of Chu-Hi.” Another heretic was Itd Jinsai (1627-1705), who was one of the founders of a new sect known as the Kogakusha, which set aside Chu-Hi’s exposition of the Chinese classics, and sought to base a system of philo- sophy on the direct study of the works of Confucius. His son Togai (1670-1736), a distinguished scholar, fol- lowed in the same track as well as the still more eminent Ogiu Sorai (1666-1728). Togai was the author of Vuken Shoroku and Hydsoku-dan, collections of miscellaneous writings in the Japanese language ; and Sorat is remem- bered for his Secdax (“Talk on Government”) and Varu- beshz, both of which are in Japanese. Dazai Shuntai, also a heretical philosopher, was the author of a work on finance called Kezzatroku, and of a volume of desultory essays, in a plain, straightforward style, entitled Dokugo (“Soliloquy’’), which is much esteemed. All these were voluminous writers in the Chinese language. Meanwhile the Chu-Hior orthodox school of philosophy was not without its champions, and a war of contending sects arose whose wrangles disturbed Japan until the end of the century. The intolerance of all classes of Kanga- kusha for Buddhism, and the aversion and contempt of the Wagakusha (or students of the native learning and religion) for Chinese scholars and Buddhists alike, helped to increase the turmoil and confusion. Towards the end 1 See Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. xx. p. 12; also Dr. Knox’s translation of Nakai Tojiu’s Okina Mondo, in vol. ii. of the Chrysanthemum, : 302 JAPANESE LITERATURE of the century this state of things became so unbear- able that the reigning Shogun, lyenari, was driven to apply a partial remedy. He prohibited all philosophical teaching whatever other than that of Chu-Hi and his adherents. The Kangakusha, by their excesses and extravagances, were themselves responsible for the decay of their in- fluence. Their admiration for things Chinese passed all reasonable bounds. Sorai, for example, spoke of himself as an “Eastern barbarian,” and Chinese standards were blindly accepted as unquestionable rules of conduct both in private and public matters. In the world of literature the most noticeable result of the Kangakusha craze (for such it ultimately became) was the neglect of Japanese composition. For all serious writings Chinese was preferred, and it was only for their lighter and more carelessly written works that these scholars condescended to use their own language. The native style was for a long time left mainly to the writers of fiction. JISHO AND KISEKI At the beginning of the eighteenth century there was at Kioto a bookseller and publisher whose place of busi- ness was known as the Hachimonjiya or “ Figure-of- eight-house.