there is a subtle charm about japanese poetry peculiarly its own. i recall with pleasure the unforgettable hours i spent in reading mr. yone noguchi's the pilgrimage. i was compelled, through sheer delight, to read the two volumes at a sitting. it is true that mr. noguchi is very much under the influence of walt whitman, and it has left its impress upon his work; but that only tends to heighten the effect of the purely japanese element. a brief, haunting phrase of mr. noguchi has far more charm than an imitation of his american master's torrential manner. japan has no need to imitate as far as her poetry is concerned. in the old days one of the characteristics of that country's poetry was its almost entire freedom from outside influences, not even excepting that of china, from whom, in other directions, she borrowed so much. i have mentioned mr. yone noguchi because his work forms an excellent starting-point for the study of japanese poetry. this charming poet, writing in english, has given us for the first time an intimate knowledge of the very spirit of japanese poetry. when a book is written on comparative poetry, that of japan will take a very high place.
it is far easier to describe what japanese poetry is not than what it actually is. to begin with, there are no japanese epics, such as the iliad and odyssey, the kalevala, and the mahabharata, and their phrase naga-uta ("long poetry") is to us a misnomer, for they have no really long poems. philosophy, religion, satire are not themes for the japanese poet; he even goes so far as to consider war no fit subject for a song.
[pg 381]
the tanka and hokku
where, then, are the charm and wonder of japan's pegasus? the real genius is to be found in the tanka, a poem of five lines or phrases and thirty-one syllables. in many ways the tanka shows far more limitation than an english sonnet, and our verbose poets would do well to practise a form that engenders suppression and delicately gives suggestion the supreme place. it is surprising what music and sentiment are expressed within these limits. the tanka is certainly brief in form, but it frequently suggests, with haunting insistency, that the fragment really has no end, when imagination seizes it and turns it into a thousand thousand lines. the tanka belongs as much to japan as mount fuji itself. one cannot regard it without thinking that a japanese poet must essentially have all the finer instincts of an artist. in him the two arts seem inseparable. he must convey in five lines, in the most felicitous language at his disposal, the idea he wishes to express. that he does so with extraordinary success is beyond dispute. these brief poems are wonderfully characteristic of the japanese people, for they have such a love for little things. the same love that delights in carving a netsuke, the small button on a japanese tobacco-pouch, or the fashioning of a miniature garden in a space no bigger than a soup-plate is part of the same subtle genius.
there is an even more lilliputian form of verse. it is called the hokku, and contains only seventeen syllables, such as: "what i saw as a fallen blossom returning to the branch, lo! it was a butterfly," butterflies were no mere flying insects in old japan. the sight of such a brightly coloured creature heralded the approach of some dear friend. on one occasion[pg 382] great clouds of butterflies were thought to be the souls of an army.
the hyaku-nin-isshiu
those who are familiar with the hyaku-nin-isshiu[1] ("single verses by a hundred people"), written before the time of the norman conquest, will recognise that much of the old japanese poetry depended on the dexterous punning and the use of "pivot" and "pillow" words. the art was practised, not with the idea of provoking laughter, which was the aim of thomas hood, but rather with the idea of winning quiet admiration for a clever and subtle verbal ornament. no translation can do full justice to this phase of japanese poetry; but the following tanka, by yasuhide bunya, may perhaps give some idea of their word-play:
"the mountain wind in autumn time
is well called 'hurricane';
it hurries canes and twigs along,
and whirls them o'er the plain
to scatter them again."
the cleverness of this verse lies in the fact that yama kaze ("mountain wind") is written with two characters. when these characters are combined they form the word arashi ("hurricane"). clever as these "pillow" and "pivot" words were, they were used but sparingly by the poets of the classical period, to be revived again in a later age when their extravagant use is to be condemned as a verbal display that quite overshadowed the spirit of the poetry itself.
love poems
there are japanese love poems, but they are very different from those with which we are familiar. the[pg 383] tiresome habit of enumerating a woman's charms, either briefly or at length, is happily an impossibility in the tanka. there is nothing approaching the sensuousness of a swinburne or a d. g. rossetti in japanese poetry, but the sentiments are gentle and pleasing nevertheless. no doubt there were love-lorn poets in japan, as in every other country, poets who possibly felt quite passionately on the subject; but in their poetry the fire is ghostly rather than human, always polite and delicate. what could be more naïve and dainty than the following song from the "flower dance" of bingo province?
"if you want to meet me, love,
only we twain,
come to the gate, love,
sunshine or rain;
and if people pry
say that you came, love,
to watch who went by.
"if you want to meet me, love,
only you and i,
come to the pine-tree, love,
clouds or clear sky;
stand among the spikelets, love,
and if folks ask why,
say that you came, love,
to catch a butterfly."
or again, the following tanka by the eleventh-century official, michimasa:
"if we could meet in privacy,
where no one else could see,
softly i'd whisper in thy ear
this little word from me—
i'm dying, love, for thee."
there is a good deal more ingenuity in this poem than would appear on the surface. it was addressed to the princess masako, and though omoi-taenamu may[pg 384] be correctly translated, "i'm dying, love, for thee," it may also mean, "i shall forget about you." the poem was purposely written with a double meaning, in case it miscarried and fell into the hands of the palace guards.
nature poems
charming as are many of the japaneses love poems, they are not so pleasing or so distinguished as those describing some mood, some scene from nature, for the japanese poets are essentially nature poets. our national anthem is very far from being poetry. here is japan's, literally rendered into english: "may our lord's empire live through a thousand ages, till tiny pebbles grow into giant boulders covered with emerald mosses." it is based on an ancient song mentioned in the kokinshiu, and, like all ancient songs in praise of kingship, expresses a desire for an emperor whose very descent from the sun shall baffle death, one who shall live and rule past mortal reckoning. there is a symbolic meaning attached to japanese rocks and stones, closely associated with buddhism. they represent something more than mere stolidity; they represent prayers. it is the nature poems of japan that are supremely beautiful, those describing plum- and cherry-blossom, moonlight on a river, the flight of a heron, the murmuring song of a blue pine, or the white foam of a wave. the best of these poems are touched with pathos. here is one by isé:
"cold as the wind of early spring,
chilling the buds that still lie sheathed
in their brown armour with its sting,
and the bare branches withering—
so seems the human heart to me!
cold as the march wind's bitterness;
i am alone, none comes to see
or cheer me in these days of stress."
[pg 385]
chomei
i often think of that twelfth-century japanese recluse chomei. he lived in a little mountain hut far away from city royal, and there he read and played upon the biwa, went for walks in the vicinity, picking flowers and fruit and branches of maple-leaves, which he set before the lord buddha as thank-offerings. chomei was a true lover of nature, for he understood all her many moods. in the spring he gazed upon "the festoons of the wistaria, fine to see as purple clouds." in the west wind he heard the song of birds, and when autumn came he saw the gold colouring of the trees, while the piling and vanishing of snow caused him to think of "the ever waxing and waning volume of the world's sinfulness." he wrote in his charming ho-jo-ki, the most tender and haunting autobiography in the japanese language: "all the joy of my existence is concentrated around the pillow which giveth me nightly rest; all the hope of my days i find in the beauties of nature that ever please my eyes." he loved nature so well that he would fain have taken all the colour and perfume of her flowers through death into the life beyond. that is what he meant when he wrote:
"alas! the moonlight
behind the hill is hidden
in gloom and darkness!
oh, would her radiance ever
my longing eyes rejoiced!"
here is a touching hokku, written by chiyo, after the death of her little son:
"how far, i wonder, did he stray,
chasing the burnished dragon-fly to-day?"
[pg 386]
the souls of japanese children are often pictured as playing in a celestial garden with the same flowers and butterflies they used to play with while on earth. it is just this subtle element of the childlike disposition in japanese people that has helped them to discover the secrets of flowers, and birds, and trees, has enabled them to catch their timorous, fleeting shadows, and to hold them, as if by magic, in a picture, on a vase, or in a delicate and wistful poem.
"the ah-ness of things"
there is a japanese phrase, mono no aware wo shiru ("the ah-ness of things"), which seems to describe most accurately the whole significance of japanese poetry. there is a plaintive and intimate union between the poet and the scene from nature he is writing about. over and over again he suggests that spring, with all her wealth of cherry- and plum-blossom, will continue to grace his country long after he has departed. nearly all japan's people, from the peasant to the mikado himself, are poets. they write poetry because they live poetry every day of their lives—that is to say, before japan dreamed of wearing a bowler hat and frock-coat, or became a wholesale buyer of everything western. they live poetry, always that poetry steeped in an intimate communion with nature. and when in july the festival of the dead takes place, there comes a great company of poet souls to see nippon's blossom again, to wander down old familiar gardens, through red torii, or to lean upon a stone lantern, and drink in the glory of a summer day, which is sweeter to them than life beyond the grave.
[1] see translation by william n. porter.
