Portrait of Lady Ise, from Nishiki hyakunin isshu azuma ori, an illustrated text of Hyakunin isshu by the eighteenth-century artist Katsukawa Shunshō.

Courtesy L. Tom Perry Special Collection, HBLL, Brigham Young University.

 

Chapter 2

LONG POEMS AND SHORT POEMS

LADY ISE 伊勢, Iseshū 56: “Written as a poem by Emperor Xuanzong, when the Teijiin emperor had people write poems for a standing screen on various elements of The Song of Everlasting Sorrow”

Not yet swept clean,	kurenai ni
the ground of my garden court	harawanu niwa wa
has gone to crimson—	narinikeri
covered over with the leaves	kanashiki koto no
of my lamenting words.	ha nomi tsumorite

CONTEXT: The daughter of a provincial governor of Fujiwara lineage, Lady Ise (fl. 904–938) served in the court of a consort of Emperor Uda’s (867–931). More than twenty of her poems appeared in Kokinshū, the first imperially commissioned anthology of Japanese poetry, and she would be well represented in many other such collections in the centuries to come. This poem is from a group of five poems on the same Chinese theme in her personal anthology. Standing screens (byōbu) were standard furnishings in noble dwellings, used for decoration, to subdivide spaces, for privacy, and as windbreaks. At first, single-panel screens were the rule, but in time multiple-panel folding screens also developed. Unfortunately, no screens from the Heian period survive, but based on later examples we can surmise that Lady Ise’s poems for Emperor Uda accompanied illustrations in the yamatoe style of the story of Emperor Xuanzong (685–762) of the Tang dynasty, whose infatuation with a low-ranking lady named Yang Guifei led to political unrest and her death. Lady Ise’s poem would have been written on a square of paper that was then pasted on the screen as a cartouche.

COMMENT: The story of Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei as told in “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow” (“Chang hen ge,” p. 93) by Bai Juyi (772–846) also figures in the background of the first chapter of The Tale of Genji, in which Emperor Kiritsubo is similarly infatuated with a woman, although with consequences less dire. We cannot be sure of the content of the painting, but Ise’s poem alludes to lines by Bai Juyi describing the state of the palace when the emperor returns home after putting down the rebellion.

With such sights before him, how could he not shed tears?

Peach trees blooming in the winds of spring,

Parasol trees shedding leaves in autumn rain.

Autumn grasses grow in West Palace and in South Court;

Fallen leaves cover the stairway, crimson not swept away.

Ise’s poem obviously reworks the material of Bai Juyi’s original. He employs a third-person narrator, but the headnote to Lady Ise’s poem tells us that she put her words in the mouth of the emperor himself. Thus her speaker addresses us from inside the story and “inside” the painting, adapting the perspective rather than simply mimicking the original. Since tears of sadness are often figured as bloodred in hue, the suggestion is that the garden court is covered not only with fallen leaves but also with the emperor’s tears.

ŌSHIKŌCHI NO MITSUNE 凡河内躬恒, Kokinshū 1005: “A long poem on winter”

The Tenth Month begins,	chihayaburu
when the mighty gods are gone.	kannazuki to ya
And that must be why—	kesa yori wa
why this morning first showers fall	kumori mo aezu
with the autumn leaves,	hatsushigure
from skies that though not clear	momiji to tomo ni
are not thick with clouds.	furusato no
From now on, as the days go by,	yoshino no yama no
winds will blow colder	yamaarashi mo
from the mountains of Yoshino,	samuku higoto ni
where once a palace stood.	nariyukeba
Hailstones will scatter all ’round,	tama no o tokete
so many jewels	kokichirashi
sprung from a broken necklace,	arare midarete
while frost freezes	shimo kōri
to make harder and harder	iya katamareru
the garden grounds—	niwa no omo ni
those grounds where winter grasses	muramura miyuru
growing in clumps	fuyukusa no
that show through here and there	ue ni furishiku
will lie beneath white snow,	shirayuki no
falling deeper and deeper still.	tsumori tsumorite
And thus a New Year	aratama no
I will add on to my store—	toshi o amata mo
one of many I have lived through.	sugushitsuru ka na

CONTEXT: Ōshikōchi no Mitsune (d. ca. 925) was a court official. By his time, those wanting to write longer poems had cast the chōka aside in favor of Chinese poetry. This poem is one of only six chōka included in Kokinshū, for which Mitsune served as a compiler.

COMMENT: Mitsune’s poem on the dai (topic) winter is in fact about advancing age. The narrator, writing in the first month of winter (the Tenth, when the gods leave their own shrines to assemble at Izumo Shrine), imagines images to come: first rain showers and falling autumn leaves, then storm winds, hail, frost, and snow. Although beginning and ending his poem with makurakotoba (chihayaburu kami, the “mighty” gods, and aratama no toshi, “new” or “rough-hewn” year), his diction is unadorned, a conventional rehearsal of seasonal progress that reads like a metaphorical preface (jo) for his last three lines of lament. He refrains from affecting a public voice, and gone are the various rhetorical amplifications of poets like Hitomaro. Storied Yoshino, for instance, does appear, but only as a source of storm winds and with no overt hint of its grand history.

KI NO TSURAYUKI 紀貫之 and ŌSHIKŌCHI NO MITSUNE, Teijiin uta-awase 13, 14 (Spring: “The Second Month”)

Left [winner]

Not truly cold	sakura chiru
is the wind that now scatters	ko no shita kaze wa
the cherry blossoms;	samukarade
and never has the sky known	sora ni shirarenu
snowflakes to fall like these.	yuki zo furikeru
Tsurayuki

Right

Quite overcome	waga kokoro
by spring on the mountain slopes,	haru no yamabe ni
my heart tarries on:	akugarete
staying today, a long, long day,	naganagashi hi o
till dusk again makes its end.	kyō mo kurashitsu
Mitsune

CONTEXT: Ki no Tsurayuki (872?–945) and Ōshikōchi no Mitsune were both minor court officials who served as compilers for Kokinshū and were known primarily as poets. Teijiin uta-awase (Retired Emperor Uda’s poem contest, 913) was sponsored by two princesses, each leading a team (called left and right, following the standard pattern), and the event involved music, fine costume, and the display of “landscape trays” as well as poems. The contest was a social and ritual event held at rooms in the imperial palace, where the poems—eighty of them, in forty rounds—were recited aloud in formal fashion by appointed ladies and final “judgments” (han no kotoba or hanshi) were rendered by Emperor Uda himself. The broad topics for the event were spring, summer, and love.

COMMENT: Tsurayuki’s poem plays against the technique of “confusion of the senses” by challenging conventional metaphors in the light of real experience, using a transparent conceit to do so. For we must notice, he proclaims, that the wind blowing through the blossoms in spring is not a cold winter wind; and do we not see that blossoms scattering against a spring backdrop are quite unlike snow flurries in the pallid skies of winter? The poem is a superb example of the rhetorical polish and playfulness associated with the Kokinshū style, which was heavily influenced by the witty poetry of the Six Dynasties era in China (220–589). It is also an example of a poem that went through recycling, appearing in the spring book of the third imperial anthology, Shūishū (Collection of gleanings [1005–1007]; no. 64).

Poetry contests—one of the first modes of “publication” in the early days of the tradition—were often spectacles first of all, where the win was awarded on the basis of technical mastery rather than artistic excellence. In this case, a note tells us that the judgment went against Mitsune because of his use of the somewhat archaic phrase naganagashi hi (literally, “a long, long day”), which we are told made the “reader” shrug her shoulders and mumble when reciting it. Such things were called yamai, poetic “ills” or “faults.”

MIBU NO TADAMINE 壬生忠岑, Kokinshū 625 (Love): “Topic unknown”

Since that parting	ariake no
when I saw your cold rebuff	tsurenaku mieshi
in the late moon’s glare,	wakare yori
nothing is more cruel to me	akatsuki bakari
than the moment of dawn.	uki mono wa nashi

CONTEXT: Mibu no Tadamine (fl. 905–950) was a courtier who wrote an influential poetic treatise and served as one of the compilers of Kokinshū. His poem is a classic variation on the “morning-after” (kinuginu) subgenre, the speaker being a man who is now complaining either about being rebuffed altogether or about a tryst that ended too soon. The poem was later included (as poem no. 30) in Ogura hyakunin isshu (One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets, ca. 1235) and many other collections.

COMMENT: Love as a poetic dai is generally portrayed as fraught with yearning (in the beginning) and resentment (later); little attention goes to joyful consummation. Tadamine’s conception employs personification, relying on the metaphor of the cold visage of the remaining moon—the so-called ariake no tsuki, which rises late in the latter half of the lunar month and remains in the sky at dawn—as a symbol of rejection. To express his idea, Tadamine employs a central pivot structure that an English translation can only suggest: the phrase tsurenaku mieshi (appearing distant, cold, unresponsive) modifying both “the moon” as a predicate and “parting” as an attributive clause. Thus we imagine a man on his way home at dawn (a dominant trope in love poetry) looking up at the moon, only to see reinforcement of his unhappiness in its cold light.

It was probably the metaphor of the dawn moon gesturing toward the complex but unarticulated feelings of rejection over time that made the author of Teika jittei (Teika’s ten styles)—an influential text of uncertain date attributed to Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241), probably falsely, we know now—single Tadamine’s poem out as one of only several poems from Kokinshū that qualified as examples of the ideal of yūgen, or “mystery and depth” (p. 362). Interestingly, one of the others (Kokinshū, no. 691) on that same list for that same category (p. 364), by the monk Sosei (d. 910?), is similar to Tadamine’s.

Because you pledged	ima komu
that you would come at once,	to iishi bakari ni
I waited all night—	nagatsuki no
in the end greeting only	ariake no tsuki o
the moon of a Ninth Month dawn.	machiidetsuru kana

Here rather than the man going home on the morning after a tryst, we have a woman waiting for a man who never shows. It is common in Japanese poetry for a man to speak as a woman, or vice versa. Classical Japanese poems present no linguistic gender marking, nor do they use honorific or humilific language that would reveal class relationships. Ironically, this made it easier for a man to speak as a woman, or vice versa.

ANONYMOUS, Kokinshū 1027 (“Haikai” chapter): “Topic unknown”

You, scarecrow,	ashihiki no
standing in a rice paddy	yamada no sōzu
in foot-wearying hills:	onore sae
what a bother to be wanted	ware o hoshi chō
by even such as you.	urewashiki koto

CONTEXT: Kokinshū is made up primarily of thirty-one-syllable, formal waka, but its last two books contain a few chōka, folk songs, and haikai no uta, or “eccentric poems.” We know nothing of the specific circumstances of the rather rustic poem here. One imagines a young woman as the speaker—someone so popular that she mistakes a scarecrow for a man in pursuit. Personification and apostrophe were prominent Kokinshū-era techniques.

COMMENT: Half the haikai poems in Kokinshū are anonymous, but we also have haikai by prominent poets such as Tsurayuki, and we can assume that most poets occasionally produced humorous works. The humor in early haikai no uta tends to be light and usually involves mainstream images, as is the case with the following poems on cherry blossoms from Goshūishū (Later collection of gleanings, 1203–1209; nos. 1201 and 1207) by the courtier Fujiwara no Sanekata (d. 998) and a monk named Zōki (also known as Ionushi).

“Topic unknown”

Perhaps a few blossoms	mada chiranu
have not fallen yet, I think,	hana mo ya aru to
and set off to see.	tazunemin
But we best be quiet a bit—	anakama shibashi
we mustn’t let the wind know!	kaze ni shirasu na

“Composed when the winds began to blow after blossoms had fallen in his courtyard”

I had thought	ochitsumoru
to go see blossoms piled up	niwa o dani tote
in my courtyard.	miru mono o
How heartless of the storm winds	utate arashi no
to be sweeping them away!	haki ni haku kana

Seven of the twenty-one imperial anthologies include small sections of eccentric poems. Later, in the medieval period, poets would produce comic poems involving bawdy subject matter—what we refer to as kyōka—although the term haikai no uta persisted. In common parlance, the term haikai now usually refers to the Edo-period precursor of haiku.

MURASAKI SHIKIBU 紫式部, “Matsukaze” (The wind in the pines) chapter of The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari 2: 393–94)

At dawn, as departure loomed ahead, there was a chill in the autumn wind and insects were busily crying.… Wondering how he would fare alone, the monk was unable to control his feelings.

As we part ways,	yukusaki o
I stop and look down the road	haruka ni inoru
with a hopeful prayer.	wakareji ni
Yet still I am an old man	taenu wa oi no
who cannot stay his tears.	namida narikeri
The Akashi Monk
Will we both live on	ikite mata
to someday meet again?	aimimu koto o
And if we do—when?	itsu tote ka
For now, I can only trust	kagiri mo shiranu
in a future yet unknown.	yo o ba tanomamu
The Akashi Lady

CONTEXT: Murasaki Shikibu (precise dates unknown), lady-in-waiting to an empress, wrote all the poems in The Tale of Genji herself, always from the dramatic perspective of the characters in her stories. In this case we have poems exchanged by the Akashi monk and his daughter. The occasion is her departure for the capital to enter Genji’s household, which means leaving her father behind. The most common form of exchange poem (zōtōka) was a “morning-after” poem (kinuginu), referring to a message sent by lovers after a night together, but many other occasions also elicited poems.

COMMENT: Corresponding through poetry was a requirement of life for both men and women at court. Here we have an exchange from The Tale of Genji involving not lovers but a father and child. Although the old man had always dreamed of his daughter’s joining high society, there is inevitably sadness as they part—she to begin life as one of Genji’s consorts in the city, he to dedicate himself to Buddhist devotions that he has postponed too long.

The imagery of the poem is what we might expect: without the mediation of a natural image, we see two people looking down the uncertain road ahead. Conceptually, the “parting of the ways” of the first poem is balanced by “meet again” in the second. Fittingly, we note the prayer of a father followed by a daughter’s avowal of faith in the future. The old man’s prayers for her future had been realized in Genji’s advent in Akashi, after all; why should the gods not continue to smile on her in Kyoto? The speakers could not know what readers would learn: that one day the child that was the product of Genji’s time in Akashi would become empress, or that, as both feared when writing their parting poems, the monk and his daughter would indeed not meet again.

FUJIWARA NO KINTŌ 藤原公任, Senzaishū 1203 (Buddhism): “Like floating clouds”

We liken ourselves—	sadame naki
our bodies, frail and vagrant—	mi wa ukigumo ni
to floating clouds.	yosoetsutsu
And all along, in the end,	hate wa sore ni zo
that is what we shall become.	narihatenu beki

CONTEXT: Fujiwara no Kintō (966–1041) was a poet and court officer who was also one of the most honored scholars of his day. His poem appears in the seventh imperial anthology, Senzaishū (Collection of a thousand years, 1188), in the chapter dedicated to Buddhist poems (shakkyōka), a subgenre that remained important for centuries. Earlier we encountered Buddhist concepts and paradigms at work in a number of poems, those by Murasaki Shikibu, most obviously. The category had first been separately designated in poetry collections at the end of the eleventh century. At first such poems were included under the heading “Miscellaneous” but later appeared in a separate chapter of their own.

COMMENT: Shakkyōka were written in many different contexts: on visits to temples, at gatherings associated with religious services, or for votive sequences, to name a few. Although we lack background information about Kintō’s poem, scholars point out a relevant passage of scripture in the Vimalakirti Sutra (ca. 100 CE) that lists metaphors for the body, including clouds but also other insubstantial things—dreams, reflections, bubbles on water, echoes, and so on. So common is that kind of metaphor that one might hesitate to cite a particular source were it not for the headnote, which indeed reads like a quotation. Writing poems on passages from scripture was common practice.

As a general context for the poem one must remember that at the time bodies were usually cremated. There were several sites on the outskirts of Kyoto, most notably Toribe Fields, where bodies were burned, thus quite literally becoming “clouds” of smoke. Cleverly, Kintō makes this the overt theme of his poem, which is how a metaphor we often use to describe the frail nature of our bodies and the uncertain qualities of human existence will “in the end” emerge as a literal truth, consonant with the concept of ephemerality, the most basic of all Buddhist teachings. From the beginning, our bodies are fated for decline and death, prey to illness, accident, old age, and ultimate mortality, thus being sadame nashi, “impermanent”; and after our mortal frames have been reduced to smoke, leaving only a few bones behind as relics, nature seems to be giving us a lesson by converting our remaining energy into a cloud to be tossed on the wind, briefly, before being absorbed into the “nothingness” of the sky. (The same Chinese character is in fact used for both “nothing” and “sky”—the first variously read as kara, aki, munashi, and kū, and the second as sora—producing an ironic lexical situation in which the idea of “empty” is “full” of connotations.) Here the word “sky” does not appear, but it is inevitably in the background whenever the “cloud” is used, being the final destination for all the insubstantial elements of worldly existence.

ANONYMOUS, Wakan rōeishū 571: “House in the paddies”

Wasn’t it yesterday	kinō koso
we transplanted our seedlings?	sanae torishi ka
And yet already	itsu no ma ni
the leaves of the rice plants rustle	inaba mo soyo ni
in passing autumn wind.	akikaze no fuku

CONTEXT: As already noted, Chinese poetry was composed in Japan from the earliest times. The first three imperial anthologies produced at the Japanese court, dating to early in the ninth century, in fact consisted of Chinese poems exclusively. A later anthology, Wakan rōeishū (Songs in Japanese and Chinese, ca. 1018) offers a contrast by including Chinese poems (kanshi) written by both Chinese and Japanese poets, along with waka by the latter as well. Rather than full Chinese poems, however, Kintō, who put the work together, excerpted just a few lines (usually two), while in contrast quoting waka in full. All the poems in the book, whether in Chinese or Japanese, were evidently sung, whether privately or in groups, according to melodies then known in literate society that we can only guess at now. Most of Kintō’s poets are canonical figures, from the works of the late Tang dynasty in China and the ninth and tenth centuries in Japan. The poem here actually appeared first in Kokinshū (no. 172), as did many of the poems in the anthology.

COMMENT: Kintō often recontextualized poems—i.e., put them under subject categories that do not correspond to their original contexts. The poem included here, for instance, appears in Kokinshū among poems on the conventional dai of “autumn wind,” rather than under the dai “house in the paddies.” A slight difference, one might say; and perhaps assuming anything about an anonymous poem with no headnote is risky. Yet the fact remains that the new heading directs our mental gaze to farmers living in shacks in the fields rather than the more “elegant” themes of the breezes blowing over the leaves on the rice plants and the imperceptible passage of time. Two Chinese lines (Wakan rōeishū, no. 566) by Miyako no Yoshika (834–879) included under the same heading make the contrast even more clear.

Guarding the house, a dog barks at a visitor;

grazing in the fields, cows lead their calves to rest.

As a doctor of letters at the imperial court, Yoshika wrote poems in proper Chinese, with proper Chinese themes and images. Among them were dogs and cows, thought to be too rustic for courtly treatment in waka. Many of the poems in Wakan rōeishū appear under subject headings not unlike those found in Japanese anthologies—plum blossoms, travel, pines, year’s end, and so on. Others, however, resonate more with Chinese traditions—pleasure girls, friends—or neighbors, as we see in a few lines (no. 573) by Bai Juyi, who is credited with more poems than any other poet in the anthology.

Not alone but together, we shall stay till life ends—

and leave a fence for our progeny to share.

FUJIWARA NO KIYOSUKE 藤原清輔, Shin kokinshū 1843 (Miscellaneous): “Topic unknown”

If I should live on,	nagaraeba
may I yet recall these days	mata kono goro ya
with tender feelings?	shinobaren
Those times I thought hard long ago	ushi to mishi yo zo
are fond memories to me now.	ima wa koishiki

CONTEXT: Fujiwara no Kiyosuke (1104–1177) was a prominent poet who is now remembered more for his scholarship and activities as a critic and contest judge. The headnote to this poem in his personal anthology says only that Kiyosuke sent the poem to someone “when he [Kiyosuke] was thinking about the past.” It is interesting to note, however, that the poem later went through recycling three times: first, for inclusion in his own personal poetry collection (shikashū) of more than four hundred poems, put together late in his lifetime, by the poet himself or someone working from his records; then for the eighth imperial anthology, Shin kokinshū (New Collection of Ancient and Modern Times, ca. 1205); and finally for the most famous of all small Japanese poetic anthologies, the Ogura hyakunin isshu (no. 84). Compiled by Fujiwara no Teika in 1216 at the request of a patron, the latter collection would become a primer for practitioners of the waka form for centuries to come. It has the distinction of being perhaps the most popular of all poetic texts in premodern times.

COMMENT: Natural imagery is a component of most waka, but not all. Here Fujiwara no Kiyosuke presents a logical proposition that is in no way dependent upon the “outside” world for its power. He deploys a common two-part structure, with the caesura at the end of the third line, in a riddle-like rhetorical posture, asking, “Why might I later recall the present with positive feelings?” and answering, “Because in time our troubles are covered over by nostalgia, making even the hardest times seem dear.” As readers we look first into the future, then move from the present—a time of trouble, we later learn—into another time of trial in the past, and then back to the present, but with a new understanding. Ultimately, though, what we learn is less logical than psychological, which explains why Teika jittei (p. 368) would later honor it as an example of ushin (deep feeling), a quality of affective richness that Teika felt all proper poems should display. The process described is therefore a reasoning process, while the conclusion goes beyond that to express sentiment.

In Ogura hyakunin isshu Kiyosuke’s poem is surrounded by laments, a fact that has perhaps tinted interpretations too much over the years. For, in addition to being a lament, the poem is also a pronouncement on the nature of memory. The reader must assume some kind of crisis behind the poem, either for Kiyosuke or the person to whom he sent it (a male relative, the commentaries say), which makes the poem personal on the surface. Significantly, however, we are not told the source of the sadness. A failing love affair, perhaps? Illness? Political conflicts? Disruptions in the natural order? No answer is given, perhaps purposely so. To restrict the poem’s scope by being more specific would reduce its power for readers as an insight of universal significance.

TOMOTSUNE 智経, Hirota no yashiro uta-awase 53 (round 27): “Snow in front of a shrine”

I shall not trespass	tamagaki no
the jeweled fence of the shrine.	uchi e wa iraji
Surely the god, too,	furu yuki o
would resent any footsteps	fumimaku oshi to
on this newly fallen snow.	kami mo koso mire

CONTEXT: Tomotsune is identified as a priest in an early document. He probably was associated with Hirota Shrine, which still stands today in Hyōgo Prefecture, near the city of Nishinomiya (literally, “western shrine”). According to legend, the shrine was established by the decree of Empress Jingū in the 300s, upon command of the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu. It was one of the Twenty-Two Shrines of the Home Provinces to which offerings were sent by the imperial court at a festival held during the Second and Seventh Months to pray for a good harvest. Shinto shrines were as important as Buddhist temples in the world of medieval Japan and were often located in old-growth groves that were themselves considered sacred, serving as the earthly abodes of deities. To emphasize their antiquity, shrine buildings were kept simple, even rustic, but every effort was made to keep both buildings and grounds clean, reflecting the fact that one of the chief occupations of priests presiding there was purification rituals.

COMMENT: A curious story lies behind the decision to hold a poetry contest at Hirota Shrine—referred to as just that Poetry Contest at Hirota Shrine—in 1172. Two years before, a large event of eighty-seven rounds involving all the major poets of the day, including courtiers, court ladies, and clerics, had been held on Osaka Bay at Sumiyoshi Shrine, which made the god of Hirota so envious, so the story goes, that he expressed his displeasure in a dream that was reported to a monk—who then decided to hold a similar event at Hirota to assuage the spirit of the god. The format of the contest was identical to the one held at Sumiyoshi, involving most of the same poets, dai, and the same judge, Fujiwara no Shunzei.

The circumstances of the contest are perhaps suggested by Tomotsune’s poem, in which he explicitly expresses a desire not to offend the god. The central idea of the poem, however, perhaps owes more to literary precedent, especially a poem by Izumi Shikibu (precise dates unknown) from Shikashū (Collection of verbal flowers, ca. 1151–1154; no. 158) in which she tries to convince herself that it is just as well she is not visited by a tardy lover, “not wanting footsteps to disturb / the snow of my garden court.” This explains Shunzei’s comment in awarding the poem a win in its round: “Nothing new in conception, but still elegant and refined [yū], I should think.” The poet’s reluctance to sully the beauty of the shrine precincts reveals a proper courtly sensibility, as well as religious devotion, of course; but as we imagine the speaker standing outside the fence, looking in on the grounds in reverie, we also naturally think of the precincts as a sacred space made more so by a layer of pure white snow, a place in which the aesthetic and the spiritual merge together. That it was associated with the most important of all native gods, the Sun Goddess, imbued the poem with an additional layer of cultural significance.

SAIGYŌ 西行, Sankashū 77 (Spring): “From his many poems on ‘blossoms’ ”

If I had my wish,	negawaku wa
I would die beneath the blossoms	hana no shita nite
in the springtime—	haru shinan
midway through the Second Month,	sono kisaragi no
when the moon is at the full.	mochizuki no koro

CONTEXT: Saigyō (1118–1190) was a samurai in the Guards Office of the retired emperor before becoming an itinerant monk in his twenties. He died as he wished, on the sixteenth day of the Second Month.

COMMENT: This poem from the poet’s personal collection, Sankashū (Mountain home collection, precise date unknown), also appeared in a mock-poem contest, the Mimosusogawa uta-awase (The Mimosusogawa poem contest, 1189), which Saigyō submitted to Shunzei, whose comment on the poem is famous: “This poem is anything but beautiful in outward effect, but for its style it works well. Yet a person who has not gone far along the way will not be up to composing in this manner. This is something that can be achieved only after a poet has arrived at the highest level” (Mimosusogawa uta-awase 13).

The poem is terse and direct, without adornment, colloquial, and didactic—indeed, as Shunzei says, not beautiful (uruwashi) in total effect (sugata). The aesthetic term often used to describe such works is heikaitei, “ordinary” or “plain,” and it is used in a negative sense by Shunzei himself, as well as by Retired Emperor Juntoku (1197–1242) and other medieval critics. In Saigyō’s case, however, the direct style succeeds in expressing the ultimate religious desire—to die at the same time of year as the historical Buddha—in terms of two premier icons of the courtly tradition, cherry blossoms and the moon. He believed in the spiritual efficacy of waka, in “purifying the heart, eliminating evil from one’s thoughts” (Saigyō shōnin danshō [Conversations with Saigyō], ca. 1225–1228, p. 271).

Another poem shows that Saigyō could produce poems of conventional beauty and skill. This one (Shin kokinshū, no. 1615) was written when he saw Mount Fuji while on the road:

Following the winds,	kaze ni nabiku
smoke rises from Fuji’s peak	fuji no keburi no
into empty sky,	sora ni kiete
its destination unknown—	yukue mo shiranu
as too my vagrant passions.	waga kokoro kana

Here Saigyō employs a jokotoba in which the first three or four lines of the poem provide a figurative correlative for the idea expressed at the end: “Smoke rising from a peak and then fading off into the sky, at the mercy of the winds,” he says, “that is what love is for me.” Fuji had been on the list of poetic meisho (or nadokoro, “famous places”) for hundreds of years and remains an icon of Japanese culture today. This poem is listed in Teika jittei (p. 366) as an example of the taketakakiyō (the lofty style), in direct contrast to the heikaitei.

PRINCESS SHIKISHI 式子内親王, Shin kokinshū 1124 (Love): “From among the poems of a hundred-poem sequence”

Oh, I am aware	yume nite mo
that I may appear in his dreams—	miyuramu mono o
but what of my sleeves?	nagekitsutsu
Will he see these wet sleeves, tonight,	uchinuru yoi no
as in sadness I lie down?	sode no keshiki wa

CONTEXT: Princess Shikishi—formally Shikishi Naishinnō (d. 1201)—served as Kamo Virgin in her youth, but after a decade resigned because of illness, thereafter living a somewhat reclusive life. In 1197 she became a nun. She was among those requested by Retired Emperor Go-Toba (1180–1239) to present a hundred-poem sequence in the autumn of 1200. She died very soon after and never saw her poem honored in Shin kokinshū.

COMMENT: Princess Shikishi’s poem is an example of how the subject of love is often figured through a contrast between the dream world and the world of reality. We can assume that the speaker is not so much Shikishi herself, who was a nun at the time, as a rhetorical extension of herself based on literary precedents and her own experience in the highly codified culture of the imperial court. Writing on dai (in this case, love) demanded that one express an idea, usually through a particular and private experience.

Still, though, she was a woman. The setting of the poem is nighttime, when a woman is yearning for a lover whose identity is undisclosed. Perhaps he had promised to visit; perhaps she waits only for a message. In either case she is left alone, musing that while tonight they may not meet in the real world, perhaps she will appear to him in his dreams. Even if she does, however, she stresses that he will not see the reality of her situation. “And suppose I do appear in his dreams,” she says, “will he see me the way I am now—my sleeves drenched with tears?” The rhetorical question suggests that what the man sees will likely be only an extension of his own romantic fantasies. The reality would be more unpleasant: a woman grieving as she gives in and goes to bed, her sleeves showing her distress. The sleeves are a synecdoche for an entire body wracked with heartache.

In coming years Princess Shikishi would figure in the tradition as the court lady par excellence, evoking effusions like the following from Kirihioki (The paulownia brazier, p. 287), a text spuriously attributed to Teika but written well after his death: “How should one describe her poems? A courtier, his countenance rosy and glowing, dances ‘The Waves of the Blue Ocean’ below the palace steps as autumn leaves fall, his hair adorned with a chrysanthemum beginning to fade.” Such a highly romanticized vision, harking back to the image of the ideal Heian-era courtier, Genji, who danced the same dance in the “Beneath the Autumn Leaves” chapter of The Tale of Genji, is perhaps the sort of thing Shikishi is actively resisting in her poem. She includes no mention of color, or scent, or sound, and even the image of tears drenching her sleeves must be inferred from context. It is also significant that the metaphor reverses her gender, while aestheticizing it at the same time.

LADY KUNAIKYŌ 宮内卿, Shin kokinshū 1199 (Love): “Love, using ‘wind’ to express longing”

Do you not hear it?	kiku ya ika ni
Even the fickle wind that blows	uwa no sora naru
in the sky above	kaze dani mo
is sure to sound its coming	matsu ni oto suru
to the waiting pines.	narai ari to wa

CONTEXT: One of Go-Toba’s consorts, Kunaikyō died only a few years after she wrote this poem, still in her twenties. Fifteen of her poems ended up in Shin kokinshū. She was among ten poets invited by the retired emperor to participate in a contest in the autumn of 1202, dai for which were sent out on the twenty-ninth of the Eighth Month, with a formal “airing” and judgment taking place at Go-Toba’s Minase Palace two weeks later—the so-called Minasedono koi jūgoshū uta-awase (The fifteen-poem contest at Minase Palace). At that time, Shin kokinshū was being compiled and poets did their utmost to produce poems worthy of inclusion in the imperial anthology.

COMMENT: In judgments attached to the contest, Lady Kunaikyō’s poem received high praise from both Go-Toba and Fujiwara no Shunzei, the latter calling it “excellent in both idea [kokoro] and diction [kotoba], from beginning to end” (Minasedono koi jūgoshū uta-awase, no. 141). She begins with an enigmatic question to a negligent lover: “How can you not hear what I hear?” Then the speaker answers the question by referring to something the lover must hear too: the wind, which despite its reputation for caprice, can still be relied upon (the Japanese is narai ari, “to be in the habit or custom of”) to let the pines know, through its sound, that it is coming for a visit. As a message, then, the poem says simply, “You are less reliable even than the wind. How long must I wait?” Readers (of the Japanese original, at least) would recognize the presence of two kakekotoba: matsu, meaning both “pine tree” and “waiting,” and otosuru, meaning both “announce” and “visit.” Also working as a double entendre is the phrase uwa no sora (the sky above), which when modifying the “wind” means “fickle.”

Despite its rhetorical complexity, the poem is graceful both aurally (the full vowel sounds of uwa no sora naru at the center of the poem contrasting well with the more staccato sounds before and after, leading up to a final emphatic and rising wa) and syntactically, thus displaying the qualities held to be essential for poetic excellence. Altogether, it is a fine example of the ideal of the “clever style” (omoshirokiyō). But Kunaikyō’s poem is more than just clever. As Go-Toba remarks, “It is the skillful use of the ‘wind’ to articulate the dai that makes the poem” (Wakamiya senka-awase [Wakamiya contest of selected poems] 1202; no. 27). Along with the speaker, we sit inside at night, listening (not seeing: the poem is all sound) to the wind in the pines, anxious for a visitor or at least a messenger. But as the hours go by the wind signifies only disappointment. Anticipation turns to bitterness, and we pine with the pines, listening in the darkness to sounds that inspire more annoyance than hope. The psychological state of the speaker is thus as intricate as Kunaikyō’s rhetoric.

FUJIWARA NO TEIKA 藤原定家, Shin kokinshū 1206 (Love)

After his tryst,	kaerusa no
he may think it lights the way	mono to ya hito no
as he returns home.	nagamuran
But I gaze at it, still waiting—	matsu yo nagara no
there in the dawn sky, the moon …	ariake no tsuki

CONTEXT: Teika, son of Shunzei, is known for his interest in aesthetics generally and, in his own poetry, for complex rhetoric and use of symbolism. Here we have a poem of the sort that might appear in a court romance. In another poem that involves gender reversal, a woman gazes up at the moon after waiting all night for a man who never came, a man whom she imagines going home, oblivious to her loneliness, after visiting a rival. The moon in the sky at dawn is that same moon that served as a symbol of rejection for Mibu no Tadamine. Indeed, it seems likely that Teika wants us to remember Tadamine’s poem, which Teika later recontextualized for his anthology Ogura hyakunin isshu (no. 30).

COMMENT: In Japanese, Teika’s poem reverses normal syntax by ending not with a verb but with a noun (a rhetorical technique called taigendome), creating an unresolved effect popular among poets of the generation of Shin kokinshū and on into the late medieval era. The romantic, evocative quality of the poem makes some scholars see Teika’s poem as an example of the ideal of yōen, or “ethereal beauty,” a term that Teika used only a few times and never really defined. What’s more, when the poem appears in Teika’s list of poems in various styles, it is offered as an example of the ideal of Teika’s later years—ushin, or “deep feeling.” (Frustratingly, the yōen style is not included in that list at all.) Since Teika elsewhere says that the quality of “deep feeling” is one that should be present in all styles, the problem is not insurmountable. But the confusion does serve as a caution against reducing our understanding of Japanese poetry to an exercise in mechanically applying aesthetic ideals to poems. A poem by Juntoku (Juntokuin onhyakushu [The one-hundred-poem sequence of Retired Emperor Juntoku] 1237; no. 5) that Teika in a short interlinear note does praise as an example of yōen presents something closer to Shunzei’s ideal of en, or “loveliness”:

I wake from a dream,	yume samete
and through the gaps in blinds	mada makiagenu
not yet rolled up,	tamasudare no
it seeks its way into my chambers—	hima motomete mo
the scent of flowering plum.	niou mume ga ka

There is no direct allusion of human drama here but only the delicate evocation of an elegant situation and an ingenious conception: we expect moonlight in the last line, but instead we get the scent of plum. One suspects, however, that Juntoku—and Teika reading Juntoku’s poem—may have been thinking of old traditions that associated plum scent with nostalgic feelings for departed loved ones.

CHIEF ABBOT JIEN 慈円, Shin kokinshū 1782 (Miscellaneous): “From a fifty-poem sequence”

As I muse alone,	omou koto o
why does no one come to ask	nado tou hito no
what is troubling me?	nakaruramu
I look up, and in the sky	augeba sora ni
the moon is shining bright.	tsuki zo sayakeki

CONTEXT: Jien (or Jichin, 1155–1225) was the son of a regent and himself became the chief abbot of the Tendai sect, most powerful of the aristocratic sects of Buddhism at the time. The poem here was composed for a poem contest titled Rōnyaku gojisshu uta-awase (Contest of fifty poems, between the old and the young) convened by Retired Emperor Go-Toba early in 1201. The first step in the process was the composition of fifty-poem sequences by the ten participants, which were then paired for the contest of two hundred fifty rounds. Jien, at age forty-seven, was on the “old” side. His poem was on the open dai of “miscellaneous,” which gave poets considerable latitude in choosing imagery. Strictly speaking, the image of the moon would denote an autumn setting, but seasonal description is obviously not the main focus of the poem.

COMMENT: The upper half of Jien’s poem is a simple statement of loneliness. We are not told what the speaker is brooding about, only that he wishes someone would come and allow him to unburden himself. The last two lines then give him—and his readers—a reply. In his loneliness, he looks up at the sky and sees the moon shining bright. In this case the brightness (sayakesa) is crucial to our understanding. One need only remember the cold glare of the moon in Tadamine’s famous poem to conclude that in Japanese poetry the moon does not always offer comfort. But here the brilliance of the moon seems to be answering Jien’s query. As scholars point out, the moon shining bright is described in Buddhist discourse as the shinnyō no tsuki, “the moon of truth.” Since the compilers placed Jien’s poem in the “Miscellaneous” book of Shin kokinshū rather than in Buddhism, they must have judged it to be less an attempt at doctrinal statement than a poem of praise about the beauty of the moon shining in worldly gloom. It is not surprising, however, that Jien turned to a Buddhist conception for his theme. Several years before, he had been replaced as chief abbot because of political conflicts, but he would be reappointed at Go-Toba’s bidding just a few days after the first of the gatherings for the contest took place.

In several medieval lists this poem is offered as an example of the “lofty style” (taketakakiyō). One wonders if this is partly because early readers immediately identified the speaker with Jien himself, a man of the highest rank and aristocratic attainments. More than anything else, however, it is the elevated diction of the poem and its sense of grandeur that put it in that exalted category. Rhetorically the lines of the poem take us from the gloom of the speaker’s mind up into the sky, and then into the light. The way the upper and lower halves of the poem related to each other not through word association but through suggestion and feeling qualified the poem in the mind of the renga master Shinkei (1406–1475) as an example of soku, or “distant linking,” as explained in his Sasamegoto (Whisperings, 1463–1464, p. 122).

FUJIWARA NO IETAKA 藤原家隆, Minishū 1776 (Winter): “ ‘Snow in the pines,’ from a fifty-poem sequence at the house of the Reverend Prince Dōjō”

At Takasago	takasago no
the days go by without cries	onoe no shika no
from deer on the slopes—	nakanu hi mo
days that pile up with white snow	tsumorihatenuru
enveloping the pines.	matsu no shirayuki

CONTEXT: Fujiwara no Ietaka (1158–1237) was a regular in the court of Retired Emperor Go-Toba. Like Teika, he served as a compiler of Shin kokinshū.

COMMENT: Poetry in the waka form is highly intertextual in the sense that it uses fixed lines and phrases that inevitably gesture back toward scores of other poems. But from early in the tradition poets also used a device called, literally, “taking a line from a foundation poem” (honkadori). The practice began very early but was particularly conspicuous among poets of the Shin kokin age. It was applied in diverse ways, with poets sometimes appropriating only one prominent phrase, sometimes as much as three full lines. Ietaka’s poem is an example of the latter, taking three lines (the first three in the foundation poem, which become the last three in the later poem) from an anonymous poem from Shūishū (no. 191), written two hundred years before.

Again and again	akikaze no
the winds of autumn blow	uchifuku goto ni
at Takasago—	takasago no
where no day goes by without cries	onoe no shika no
from deer on the slopes.	nakanu hi zo naki

A first reading of Ietaka’s poem will focus on the clever way in which he “reverses” the earlier poem by changing just one syllable: takasago no onoe no shika no nakanu hi ZO [naki] becoming takasago no onoe no shika no nakanu hi MO [tsumori], which in the translation becomes “no day goes by” and “the days go by.” Beyond that, however, Ietaka has also changed the seasonal context, moving from autumn to winter. As a reader one cannot help but imagine the deer of the earlier poem hunkered down somewhere on slopes now covered with snow. Thus Ietaka invites us to hear those distant cries, along with the autumn wind, hovering behind his winter scene. In so doing, he suggests imagery and meaning that are the essence of what Shunzei called yūgen, “mystery and depth,” while also imbuing his scene with “deep feeling” (ushin). The Zen monk and poet Shōtetsu (1381–1459), speaking of layers of meaning, would say that Ietaka’s poem was itself the “deepest of all poems” (Kenzai zodan [Chats with Master Kenzai], before 1510?, p. 144). The call of the deer—figured as yearning for its mate—was considered especially moving. Ietaka makes it even more evocative by alluding to it only as an absence, in that way fully expressing the feeling of accumulating snow that obscures all.

EMPEROR TENCHI 天地天皇, Ogura hyakunin isshu 1

In autumn fields	aki no ta no
stands a makeshift hut of grass	kariho no io no
with its roof of thatch—	toma o arami
so roughly made that my long sleeves	waga koromode wa
are ever wet with dew.	tsuyu ni nuretsutsu

CONTEXT: Emperor Tenchi was the son of Emperor Jomei (593–641). As noted, succession disputes after his death eventually brought his brother, Emperor Tenmu, to the throne. His poem begins Fujiwara no Teika’s famous Ogura hyakunin isshu, the most famous of all hundred-poem sequences (hyakushu-uta), which dates from around 1216 and is thus a prime example of recycling. The Man’yōshū original (no. 2174), noted as anonymous, is on the dai of dew.

In autumn fields	akita karu
I’ve made a hut to live in,	kariho o tsukuri
while I harvest grain;	waga oreba
and so my long sleeves are cold,	koromode samuku
drenched as they are with dew.	tsuyu zo okinikeru

COMMENT: This poem has a messy history. The Man’yōshū version appears with a slightly altered first line as an anonymous poem in Shin kokinshū (no. 454). But the version Teika uses in his anthology comes from Gosenshū (Later collection, ca. 951; no. 302), the second imperial anthology, where it is listed as “topic unknown” and attributed to Emperor Tenchi, although he almost certainly did not write it. Prevailing opinion is that the final version dates from the Heian period, along with the attribution to Tenchi, reflecting his importance as the ancestor of all Heian-era emperors. The usual interpretation sees it not as a personal lament but as a didactic display of sympathy for farmers, but that idea probably also comes from Heian times.

The contrasts between the two versions tell us much about aesthetic ideals in Heian and later times. In the Man’yōshū version, the speaker constructs his own hut and alludes to actual work in the fields as his purpose, while the later version alludes directly to no such labor; nor does the later version say openly that the speaker “lives in” the hut, leaving that to suggestion, subtlety being a chief feature of late courtly ideals. Also, the Man’yōshū version says “sleeves are cold” directly, rather than hinting at that as in the newer version. Finally, there are syntactic breaks or pauses at the end of lines 2, 3, and 4 of the earlier version, while the Hyakunin isshu poem has only one break, at the end of line 3, which gives the poem the more elegant flow and rhythm of a formal poem (hare no uta). Thus the poem has been revised in a way that would have pleased representatives of later court ideals such as Teika’s father, Shunzei, who said that a good poem should have flowing aural qualities when read aloud and that it should be both elegant and moving (Korai fūteishō, p. 275). The revised version presents rustic subject matter, but in a more elegant and poignant way; and it eliminates choppy syntax in favor of a more smoothly flowing structure. A prominent medieval list of poems in aesthetic categories (Teika jittei, p. 363) lists the later version of the poem under yūgen, “mystery and depth.”

FUJIWARA NO TAMEUJI 藤原為氏, Shoku gosenshū 41 (Spring): “On ‘spring view of a cove,’ written in 1250 for a poem contest”

If someone asks me	hito towaba
I shall say I haven’t seen it—	mizu to ya iwamu
Tamazu Island,	tamatsushima
where haze spreads over the cove,	kasumu irie no
in spring, in the dim light of dawn.	haru no akebono

CONTEXT: Fujiwara no Tameuji (1222–1286) was son and heir of Fujiwara no Tameie (1198–1275), the latter being the sole compiler of Shoku gosenshū (Later collection continued, 1251), the imperial anthology in which the poem here appears. Tamazu Island was located off the coast at Waka Bay (now Wakayama Prefecture) and was the site of a shrine to one of the three gods of poetry, the other being Sumiyoshi Myōjin and Hitomaro.

COMMENT: The poet Tonna (1289–1372) records that the second line of this waka originally read, “I shall say I have seen it” and was changed to “I haven’t seen it” by Tameie himself, a small change (from mitsu to mizu in Japanese). Another anecdote, from Waka teikin (Teachings on poetry, 1326?, p. 139) explains, “Rather than describing in detail the features of Tamazushima, the poem seems replete with artistic atmosphere [fuzei] as the scene floats up before our eyes. It is the virtue of uta to reveal a surplus of meaning in just thirty-one syllables.… In poems with overtones [yojō], we see little technique on the surface, but as we recite them, we find more profound pathos and more loneliness.”

Leaving something to the imagination of readers is what constitutes the quality of yojō (also pronounced yosei) in this case, gesturing as it does toward an ineffable experience. And the effect is enhanced by an allusion to an anonymous Man’yōshū poem (no. 1215).

Tamazushima:	tamatsushima
be sure to observe it well.	yoku mite imase
What will you say	aoniyoshi
in Nara, place of rich earth,	nara naru hito no
when people ask what you saw?	machitowaba ika ni

Tameie’s death left his family in a fractured state. Tameuji was clearly his heir in the court hierarchy and inherited his titles, but his younger brothers challenged his authority. This conflict resulted in the splitting of the lineage into three branches: the Nijō descending from Tameuji; the Kyōgoku descending from Tamenori; and the Reizei descending from Tameie’s sons by his last wife, known as the Nun Abutsu (d. ca. 1283). This rivalry continued for more than a century, and the poetic issues it engendered for much longer than that. Yojō continued to function as ideal for poets in all those lineages, although more so for the Nijō than for the other lineages, and it would continue as an ideal in waka, renga, and haikai.

THE NUN ABUTSU 阿佛尼, Izayoi nikki (p. 195)

Mist was rising over waves breaking on the shore, concealing the many fishing boats on the water from view.

As if to declare,	amaobune
“You may not watch as fishing boats	kogiyuku kata o
ply the waters here!”	miseji to ya
waves rise and crest into mists	nami ni tachisou
at morning, out on the bay.	ura no asagiri

CONTEXT: Abutsu was a lady-in-waiting to an ex-empress in her youth who later became Fujiwara no Tameie’s wife and bore him several children. Izayoi nikki (Diary of the sixteenth night moon) relates how she traveled to Kamakura in 1279 in order to bring suit against Tameie’s formal heir, Tameuji, for withholding behests made to her sons. The poem above was written as she was arriving in Kamakura on the twenty-ninth day of the Tenth Lunar Month, just two weeks from her departure.

COMMENT: Travel poems are a staple of the court tradition, beginning even before Man’yōshū. Many among the nobility, high and low, traveled for official or private reasons, and pilgrimage too was an ordinary part of life. No wonder, then, that travel is a subcategory in even the earliest imperial anthologies (often subsumed under “Miscellaneous”) and a frequent dai in poetry contests and small anthologies. Our earliest major travel diary is Tosa nikki (Tosa Diary, 935) by Ki no Tsurayuki, and from his time until the end of the nineteenth century hundreds of other writers left such works. Some record mostly poems, composed at well-recognized meisho, while others include substantial bodies of prose. The travel diary of the Nun Abutsu presents a well-balanced mix. She documents thoroughly her journey along the most well-traveled road of the time, writing poems at all the places required by tradition, and concludes with a fairly lengthy description of her life in Kamakura, where she apparently stayed until her death a few years later.

We therefore know that the bay in this poem is at Kamakura and that the boats we see are mostly fishing boats. As the government seat of the shogun and his administrators, established nearly a century before, Kamakura was a bustling place, full of temples, shrines, government offices, residences grand and small, and shopping districts. Abutsu’s description shows us not such less-than-elegant and “worldly” sights, focusing rather on a vague view of mists on the sea, which she accuses of actively thwarting any desire she might have to see more of the boats at work. In this way we are denied any view of the labor of the boatmen, instead confronting a pastoral that shows the forces of the natural world colluding to restrict our vision: we continue to gaze out, but further details are left to the imagination. Abutsu’s reasons for traveling to Kamakura were worldly, indeed political for the most part, but her poems seldom allude to such matters in any direct way, except in how they establish her bona fides as a poet attempting to secure a place in court society for her sons.

LADY SAKUHEIMON’IN 朔平門院, Gyokuyōshū 719 (Autumn): “From among her poems on ‘the moon’ ”

In the growing light	shiramiyuku
of an ever whitening sky,	sora no hikari ni
its rays fade away	kage kiete
and leave only its silhouette—	sugata bakari zo
the moon lingering at dawn.	ariake no tsuki

CONTEXT: Sakuheimon’in (1287–1310) was a daughter of Emperor Fushimi’s (1265–1317) who died in her early twenties and left only a handful of poems. As a member of Fushimi’s family, however, she was involved in an important literary faction, the so-called Kyōgoku school, sponsored by Fushimi and the people around him. Gyokuyōshū (Collection of jeweled leaves, 1313), fourteenth of the imperial anthologies, enshrines their efforts.

COMMENT: The rhetorical tendencies of the Kyōgoku school are apparent here in the way the author avoids direct reference to a viewer in her poem, not even an adjective (shiramu, “whitening,” for instance, being presented in verbal form) to represent an emotional response. She also uses no metaphor, no allusion, not even a semantic proposition. Instead, she offers us a scene “as it is” (ari no mama), without explicit mediations: the moment of change when the moon is reduced to a pale sphere as the sun rises.

Sakuheimon’in’s poem recalls another from her father’s personal collection, Fushimiin gyoshū (The collection of Retired Emperor Fushimi, mid-fourteenth century; no. 1557), although we do not know which came first.

The color of frost	niwa no omo wa
begins whitening the ground	shimo no iro yori
of my garden court;	shiramisomete
and fading, paler all the while—	usuku kieyuku
the moon lingering at dawn.	ariake no kage

Fushimi’s poem is like his daughter’s in offering no subjective reference to a speaker, no adjectives, only a scene presented “objectively.” Kyōgoku Tamekane (1254–1332), a grandson of Tamie’s who was the chief theorist of the school, tells us that such an approach is not intended as a version of pastoral but rather an attempt to “become one” with the scene in Buddhist terms, thus capturing the truth of it, in its moment (orifushi no makoto). From this we can assume that neither author was intent on rendering a scene from experience—however much experience may have conditioned the process—so much as on presenting an allegory of harmonious union. Sakuheimon’in’s poem, in particular, might be described as a meditation on the transformative effects of light. Lacking even the garden of Fushimi’s poem, her scene has no immediately human or even earthly reference points, only the expanse of the broad sky high above us as it passes through a process of illumination in which the moon, a brilliant orb in the darkness, is absorbed into gathering sunlight.

KYŌGOKU TAMEKO 京極為子, Gyokuyōshū 1535 (Love): “Written as a love poem”

In sad reverie	mono omoeba
I abandon my writing brush	hakanaki fude no
to its own vain whims—	susabi ni mo
and find that what I write down	kokoro ni nitaru
is like what is in my heart.	koto zo kakaruru

CONTEXT: Kyōgoku Tameko (d. 1316?) was a lady in service to Empress Eifuku (1271–1343), consort of Emperor Fushimi. Along with her brother, Tamekane, she was an artistic leader of the Kyōgoku school. The headnote to this poem tells us nothing of the circumstances behind its composition but gives us a crucial prompt: the dai of love. Without that context, we might wonder about the cause of the “sad reverie” of the first line. Thinking about the past? Worldly affairs? Illness? Tameko, or perhaps a later editor, decided to resolve the issue, by implicitly acknowledging the ambiguity: “Written as a love poem.”

COMMENT: While mainstream love poems tend to employ striking imagery and complex rhetoric, the Kyōgoku school poets with whom Tameko was associated sought to represent the various emotions of love—yearning, anticipation, rejection, resentment, and so on—with fewer verbal mediations, emotions “just as they are” (ari no mama). Thus Tameko does not use a natural image to express her mood but something in her immediate surroundings: a writing brush. We see before us a lady sitting by her desk, musing about her relationship with some unidentified man, taking out an inkstone and brush and jotting down something—probably old poems—just to pass the time. Calligraphy practice was a constant in aristocratic life, where the need to write notes and letters was a daily thing. Here, however, the speaker picks up her brush in a moment of boredom, with no particular reason, and finds that her hands and heart are connected. Ironically, we encounter a distracted mind refusing to be distracted.

Although Tameko’s poem stands on its own and needs little in the way of explication, knowing that she alludes to a scene from The Tale of Genji enriches our understanding—which was the primary and immediate purpose of allusion in traditional court poetics. The scene is from the “Wakana” (Spring shoots) chapter and describes how Murasaki, Genji’s companion of many years, turns to brush and ink for distraction when she is feeling vulnerable after Genji has just married the Third Princess. “Setting herself to writing practice, she would find that, quite spontaneously, the old poems flowing from her brush would reveal her worries of the moment, impressing upon her how heavily those things weighed on her mind” (4:81).

The general custom in waka poetry was to allude to prose passages rather than poems in The Tale of Genji, and in that sense Tameko is following the canons of her day. Yet the passage she chose was not a particularly famous one, which leaves one impressed with how thoroughly she knew the tale.

TONNA 頓阿, Tonna hōshi ei 42 (Spring): “At day’s end, after viewing blossoms”

Till evening comes …	kurenaba to
so I thought as I spent the day	omoishi hana no
beneath the blossoms.	ko no moto ni
But how hard it is to abandon	kikisutegataki
the sound of the vespers bells!	kane no oto kana

CONTEXT: Tonna was a man of samurai birth who took the tonsure early to dedicate himself to poetry as a religious Way, living in various cottages in Kyoto, where he carried on a thriving literary practice involving textual work, teaching, and of course poetry gatherings. “Composing on topics” (daiei) was central to medieval poetic culture. Poem contests were still held, and hyakushu-uta (sequences of one hundred poems) were still commissioned for poetry gatherings. But even in casual gatherings after such events people often composed extemporaneously (tōza) on dai chosen by lots, a practice that allowed professional poets like the monk Tonna to show their mettle, as he does in this poem from Tonna hōshi ei (Poems by the lay monk Tonna, no. 1357).

COMMENT: Fujiwara no Tameie wrote in Eiga no ittei (The foremost style of poetic composition, early 1170s, p. 202) that the challenge of daiei was to abide by precedent while adding “something a little different” when occasion allowed. Since “at day’s end, after viewing blossoms” demanded treatment of cherry blossoms—the most timeworn dai of the entire classical canon—Tonna would have taken it as a special challenge. His speaker begins by presenting himself as waiting but then gives us a sound from day’s end, the vespers bells that rang throughout Kyoto at the end of each day. In so doing he focuses on the poetic “essence” of his dai, based on precedent and informed imagination, what critics called hon’i. Almost certainly he had in mind a poem (Shin kokinshū, no. 116) by Nōin (988–1050?):

“Written when he was in a mountain village”

To a mountain village	yamazato no
at evening on a spring day	haru no yūgure
I came, and saw this:	kite mireba
blossoms scattering on echoes	iriai no kane ni
from the vespers bells.	hana zo chirikeru

For Nōin and Tonna, both monks, the temple bell symbolized Buddha’s voice calling people away from worldly cares. In Nōin’s case the sound transforms the falling blossoms into an allegory of transient beauty in a world of universal decline and death. Tonna, on the other hand, focuses our attention on the irony of how the sight of the blossoms is replaced by the sound of the bell, how one sensory delight follows another, both teaching the same message. At first, the speaker plans to stay only till dusk, thinking there would be no reason to tarry. But the sound of bells reminds him of Nōin’s poem and awakens him to another subtle beauty that only gains in attraction as daylight fades and the blossoms literally recede from view.

PRINCE MUNENAGA 宗良親王, Rikashū 366 (Autumn): “Written when he was looking at autumn leaves, at a time when he was living in a mountain village”

These showers falling	kokorozashi
on a path back in the mountains	fukaki yamaji no
must have a kind heart—	shigure kana
dyeing leaves in autumn hues	somuru momiji mo
that only I shall see.	ware nomi zo miru

CONTEXT: Munenaga Shinnō (1311–1385?) wrote this poem when he was living away from Kyoto, embroiled in the political conflicts during a period of divided rule between the Northern Court in Kyoto and the Southern Court in the provinces. From 1337 on, he lived mostly in remote places like Yoshino, Shinano, and Echigo, finally passing away, sometime before 1389, in the provinces, far from Kyoto.

COMMENT: The majority of poems written from the Shin kokin age onward into the Edo period are on dai, and records show that this was true of Munenaga’s poems as well. And even when he writes about what is before his eyes, he employs mostly traditional images and ideas and creates a model of ushin, or “refined feeling.” Yet headnotes do reveal deeply personal dimensions to some of Munenaga’s poems. The rain showers in the poem here seem to offer consolation as they do the work of dyeing leaves. Normally, however, a poet would look forward to sharing such beauties with friends in the capital. If there is comfort in the constancy of natural processes, then, there is also a sense of alienation. And somehow the poem gains power because we know that Munenaga is not just creating a poetic conception—which it would be easy to do, adopting the voice of a recluse, for instance—but is actually looking out on a scene that must indeed have felt lonely. While he does not allow the realities of politics to invade his poem, he must have known that readers would know his situation. The final “that only I shall see” is, we know, more than rhetorical posturing for an audience, as is also the case with poems like the following lament, also from his personal anthology, Rikashū (Collection of the lord of the Bureau of Ceremonies, ca. 1374; no. 790): “Perhaps because I went to sleep with things on my mind, in my dreams I seemed to see only things of the past. After rising the next morning I wrote this”:

Sleep leads to dreams;	nureba yume
and waking, to reality.	samureba utsutsu
One way, or another,	to ni kaku ni
I never forget the past—	mukashi wasururu
not for an instant of time.	toki no ma mo nashi

A poem in the category of “Reminiscence,” perhaps? For Munenaga, living in his hut in the mountains, a happier youth and intervening trials must have been impossible to forget.

SHŌTETSU 正徹, Sōkonshū 7061: “Lightning on a dark night”

Even in its glow	terashite mo
my heart remains as ever,	kokoro wa yami no
still in the gloom;	mama nareba
it’s for someone besides me—	waga mi no yoso no
this lightning in the night.	sayo no inazuma

CONTEXT: Shōtetsu was born into a samurai family but entered a Buddhist temple as a young man and dedicated himself to poetry as a Buddhist Way. He attracted numerous disciples, including men later known primarily as renga poets, including Shinkei. He also had many elite patrons, such as the samurai of the Hatakeyama clan at whose monthly gathering (tsukinamikai) he composed the poem here.

COMMENT: Buddhism was a category in the court tradition, but Buddhist ideas and ideals appear in poems written on more secular themes as well. The first thing we notice about this poem by a Zen monk is how skillfully it is structured, with the two elements of the dai (“gloom” and “lightning”) separated as convention required and with the initial “glow” (the verb terasu, the first word in the Japanese) reaching forward to “lightning” (inazuma, last word in the Japanese) at the end. Between those poles, we confront a man in the dark. Assuming that Shōtetsu speaks for himself may go too far; the poem was on a dai that, if we take its essence to be the brevity of lightning as a natural phenomenon, the poet articulates skillfully.

In Buddhist thought the world is dark by definition, and strict Zen practitioners did not believe in saviors such as Amida. For Zen monks the goal was a moment of enlightenment that—usually after devotion and labor—might come in a flash. Yet the burden of the poem is that if enlightenment has come for somebody, it must be for someone else (yoso). Ironically, this makes more intense the gloom (yami) that remains. A similar idea comes through in another poem on “lightning,” also from Shōtetsu’s personal anthology, Sokonshū (Grassroots collection, precise date unknown; no. 10959):

In the dark of night,	kuraki yo no
to whom shall I pour out	tare ni kokoro o
what is in my heart?	amasuran
Suddenly the clouds blink—	kumo zo matataku
a flash of autumn lightning.	aki no inazuma

The Buddhist “prompts” of the first poem—glow (terasu) and gloom (yami)—are absent in this case, but the existential loneliness (sabi) remains; and the phrase “to whom shall I pour out / what is in my heart” expresses even more effectively a longing for something warmer than enlightenment—human companionship. The use of the word “blink” (matataku), an unusual metaphor, with its human connotations, stresses the point even more starkly. Whatever “eye” the lightning throws on the speaker’s very human situation seems a cold one indeed.

INAWASHIRO KENZAI 猪苗代兼載, Sōgi shūenki (pp. 459–60)

Dew on the branch tips,	sue no tsuyu
raindrops beneath the trees—	moto no shizuku no
these are but tokens	kotowari wa
of the order of our world,	ōkata no yo no
shared by one and all.	tameshi nite
Yet when it is a close friend	chikaki wakare no
one is parting from,	kanashibi wa
somehow the sorrow you feel	mi ni kagiru ka to
seems for you alone.	omōyuru
Ah, since we met long ago,	nareshi hajime no
how much time has passed,	toshitsuki wa
months adding up to make years	misoji amari ni
more than thirty times.	nariniken
In those days far in the past,	sono inishie no
so kind was he	kokorozashi
that now nothing would I grudge	ōharayama ni
to express my thanks—	yaku sumi no
not even my life itself,	keburi ni soite
which I would gladly give	noboru to mo
to rise with smoke from charcoal,	oshimarenu beki
sent from Ōhara.	inochi ka wa
We were in the East Country,	onaji azuma no
each on his journey,	tabinagara
but separated so far	sakai haruka ni
that the wind took far too long	hedatsureba
to bring me tidings.	tayori no kaze mo
Rising from sleep	ari ari to
on my pillow of boxwood,	tsuge no makura no
I was in a dream	yoru no yume
and unable to waken.	odorokiaezu
Still, though, I set off,	omoitachi
toiling over field and hill,	noyama o shinogi
hoping as I went	tsuyu kieshi
to witness his form, at least,	ato o dani tote
after his passing—	tazunetsutsu
while the mountains on the way	koto tou yama wa
showed no hint of care,	matsukaze no
replying to my queries	kotae bakari zo
with only the wind in the pines.	kai nakarikeru

Envoy

What foolishness	okururu to
to berate being left behind!	nageku mo hakana
How long will I last,	iku yo shi mo
my body a mere dewdrop	arashi no ato no
left in the wake of a storm?	tsuyu no ukimi o

CONTEXT: Inawashiro Kenzai (1452–1510) was a renga master from Aizu who studied and practiced in Kyoto for some years before retiring to the East Country. His chōka memorializes one of his teachers, Sōgi (1421–1502), who died at Yumoto on the eastern side of the Hakone Mountain range without Kenzai’s being able to pay his last respects. Sōchō (1448–1532) appended Kenzai’s poem to his own account of the master’s death, Sōgi shūenki (A record of Sōgi’s passing, 1502).

COMMENT: In the medieval period chōka were often used for laments. Kenzai’s poem includes one kakekotoba (tsuge, meaning both “inform” and “boxwood”), but it is one of Kokinshū vintage, and he does not employ other Man’yōshū conventions, using neither parallelism nor makurakotoba, instead using the medieval technique of honkadori. His first reference, given almost verbatim, is to Shin kokinshū no. 757, a didactic poem by Archbishop Henjō (816–890), to which Kenzai provides an emotional response.

Dew on the branch tips,	sue no tsuyu
raindrops beneath the trees:	moto no shizuku ya
these are but tokens	yo no naka no
of how in this world we mourn	okure sakidatsu
as others go—or go ourselves.	tameshi naruran

A second allusion is to an anonymous poem (no. 1208) from Goshūishū sent to someone who asked the author “if he would like a gift of charcoal”:

Were you so kind	kokorozashi
as to pledge me charcoal	ōharayama no
from Mount Ōhara	sumi naraba
then I would put that warmth to use	omoi o soete
in lighting the coals on fire.	okosu bakari zo

So playful a poem may seem inappropriate in the context of a lament, but Kenzai sidesteps the humor, alluding only to the “kindness” shown by Sōgi as a teacher (“as great as Mount Ōhara”) in order to express his own gratitude. Mount Ōhara was another name for Oshioyama, located west of Kyoto and known for its charcoal kilns.

Kenzai’s poem contains no vestige of a public voice, describing a personal grief so intense that even the natural landscape offers no relief. While it does contain a narrative element, then, its “story” focuses less on outside events than on the very medieval themes of transience and Buddhist resignation.

SASSA NARIMASA 佐々成政, Taikōki (p. 28)

In the world of men,	nanigoto mo
everything has changed—	kawarihatetaru
and changed utterly.	yo no naka o
And yet, all unknowing,	shirade ya yuki no
white snow keeps falling down.	shiroku fururamu

We associate waka with the culture of the imperial court, but even in the early years many warrior men composed poetry, some, like Saigyō, becoming canonical figures. And by the 1300s most elite warriors participated in poetic culture. This poem, quoted in a work that chronicles the life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1598), was written by a retainer to Hideyoshi’s predecessor, Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582). His name was Sassa Narimasa (1536–1588), and the occasion was when he was stripped of all but one of his fiefs by Nobunaga’s successors. Later, he was commanded to commit suicide.

There is nothing in the vocabulary or rhetoric of Sassa’s poem to mark the poem as the effort of a warrior. Our knowledge of the circumstances, however, makes the poem more poignant. It could have been written by anyone that had suffered a loss, of course, but warriors lived peculiarly perilous lives. Particularly in the period of the Warring States (1467–1600), fortunes could be unmade in an instant. A man was more often cast aside because of his entanglements than for his own offenses. Narimasa had been lord of the province of Etchū, on the Japan Sea, in the heart of what is now known as Japan’s snow country. But a short note in the chronicle tells us that the poem was not written from imagination alone: “As he watched the snow fall,” it says, “he was thinking about times gone by” (furu koto nagara omoiiderarenikeri). Although a prose comment, it uses the poetic device of double entendre to good effect, the word furu koto meaning both “falling” and “of old.” The fact is reassuring in a way: the human world changes, but the patterns of the natural world are oblivious, and life must go on. But Narimasa also means for us to see the falling snow as a symbol of the vagaries of human affairs. As he watches, the snow obliterates the landscape, along with his own accomplishments, which in the new order worked against rather than for him.

According to convention, Narimasa’s poem would be categorized as a statement of feeling, jukkai. Though no dai is mentioned, the sentiment expressed is nothing new. Instead the poem connects with similar statements of the past, offering again a kind of consolation. The characterization of the snow as “unknowing” communicates just the right note of stoicism. Our last scene is the snow falling “whitely,” obscuring borders and covering over Narimasa’s past, leaving Narimasa’s speaker and his readers to look out on a world that is indeed utterly changed.

SEN NO RIKYŪ 千利休, Rikyū hyakushu 100

What is chanoyu?	cha no yu to wa
It is to heat up water,	tada yu o wakashi
prepare the tea,	cha o tatete
and then to drink it:	nomu bakari naru
know that that is all it is.	koto to shiru beshi

CONTEXT: In late medieval times, the composition of waka and renga was considered a polite accomplishment for anyone in literate society, and it was virtually a requirement for the practice of many other arts, from Noh drama to chanoyu (the tea ceremony). It comes as no surprise that one of the earliest tea masters, Takeno Jōō (1502–1555), was a renga master who counted the renga poet Sōchō and the court poet Sanjōnishi Sanetaka (1455–1537) among his friends, or that among Jōō’s own students was the most famous of all tea masters, Sen no Rikyū (1522–1591).

COMMENT: Doubtless Rikyū did not compose all the poems in the collection (which in its current form was compiled by Gengensai in the 1800s) that bears his name, but there is no reason to think he would have blanched at using poetry for a purpose less aesthetic than educational. For while many artists composed poetry out of a belief that it elevated their spirits, they also employed poetry in more didactic ways, one of which involved using the 5-7-5-7-7-syllable form as a pedagogical device. Arts had rules that students had to learn, and rules were easier to memorize in poetic form. Nor were only “philosophical” teachings the rule; matters of dogma and etiquette (no. 78) were put forward as well.

If serving someone	hanami yori
who has just been blossom viewing,	kaeri no hito ni
then don’t display these:	cha no yu seba
paintings of flowers and birds	kachō no e o mo
or arrangements of flowers.	hana mo okumaji

The tea ceremony was typically held in a small room or cottage, and those participating were instructed to banish the outside world from their thoughts and enjoy a moment of simple pleasure that was social, aesthetic, and sensual—just heating water, preparing tea, and drinking, as the poem makes clear. Hence, reminding a guest of the flowers he has just seen or the birds he has just heard in the “real” world would amount to a distraction and perhaps even invite disappointment. (What artistic representation could actually compete with the direct experience of nature?)

The poems in Rikyū hyakushu are mostly free of poetic devices: no kakekotoba, jokotoba, etc. Rather, the poems are subordinated to their educational task. When images appear, they come from the tea room, tea wares, and implements, or flowers and plants that might be displayed in the alcove. Above all, the voice of the poems, from the first to the last, is the voice of a master of a discipline, speaking not privately but as a teacher who is comfortable issuing commands: know this, do this, be aware of this.

KINOSHITA CHŌSHŌSHI 木下長嘯子, Unaimatsu 291: “There was no change, none at all, in where she had lived; only she was gone”

Morning and night	akekure ni
I do nothing but lament	sono kiwa bakari
how she passed away—	nagekarete
and still I cannot dispel	kagiri no sama no
the look in her dying eyes.	me o zo hanarenu

CONTEXT: Kinoshita Chōshōshi (1569–1649), now known as a Kyoto recluse associated with Kōdaiji Temple in the Higashiyama district, was a warlord who retired only after political reversals made it necessary.

COMMENT: According to an anonymous disciple Chōshōshi “wrote whenever he was overcome by feelings, disregarding rules and unconcerned with established convention” (Kyohakushinhyō [Reading to the heart of Kyohaku], mid-seventeenth century, p. 109). This comes out most strongly in his personal poems, like the one here, written after the death of his third child by his second marriage, a daughter who fell ill in the spring of 1626 and died a year later, aged just seventeen—a process the poet wrote about in detail and movingly in a memoir he titled Unaimatsu (Grave-marking pine). Chōshōshi’s poem is explicit in a way that is rare in formal composition. His grief continued into autumn, again documented in poems (nos. 319, 323, 328) distinctive in their direct expression:

Barely seen at all,	miru to naki
lightning strikes in the gloom	yami no utsusu no
of our reality—	inazuma ya
its destination the same	hakanaki hito no
as the one who is no more.	yukue naruramu
Ailing though she was,	kozo no aki no
at this same time last year	kono koro made wa
she was still with me—	ukinagara
here with me as through the mists	kirima no tsuki o
we gazed upon the moon.	tomo ni mishi kana
My body weakened	naki hito o
by longing for one now gone,	koiyowaru mi wa
I gaze at my garden	iku yo shi mo
and think my days will soon end—	araji to zo miru
vanishing like the white snow.	niwa no shirayuki

Lightning, mist, the moon, and snow—all of these will of course come around again in the natural course of things, having a provisional temporality established in the cycles of nature; not so, though, Chōshōshi’s daughter, as those images, to his sad frustration, endlessly instruct. The symbols, in that sense, are simply not enough—nor, the many poems suggest, is poetry.

KAMO NO MABUCHI 賀茂真淵, Kamo okina kashū 80 (Spring): “Broad plains”

As a lark rises	hibari agaru
into spring skies at break of day,	haru no asake ni
I gaze, and behold	miwataseba
the Broad Plain stretching afar	ochi no kunihara
beneath bands of spreading haze.	kasumi tanabiku

CONTEXT: In the Edo period there were many competing genres, waka, haikai, and kanshi (Chinese poetry), and many competing movements. In the waka form, one of these was kokugaku, “national studies,” whose members often looked to Man’yōshū for inspiration in their own poetry. Kamo no Mabuchi (1697–1769) was one of that movement’s founders.

COMMENT: Mabuchi’s poem, from his personal collection, exhibits the traits of the kokugaku style: elevated diction, lofty imagery, declarative rhetoric, and what was called honest feeling (naoki kokoro). His attention piqued by a lark rising into mild spring skies, the speaker gazes out on a broad landscape that is a picture of calm. The dai of the poem is archaic, as is the word asake (break of day). Furthermore, Mabuchi’s calls to mind the ancient imperial harvest rite of kunimi, or “surveying the realm,” as memorialized in the second poem in Man’yōshū (no. 2), a chōka attributed to Emperor Jomei:

Climbing Mount Kagu and Surveying the Realm

Mountains abound	yamato ni wa
in our Land of Yamato,	murayama aredo
yet finest of all	toriyorou
is Kagu of the Heavens.	ame no kaguyama
To its peak I climb	noboritachi
and there survey my realm:	kunimi o sureba
smoke rising	kunihara wa
over broad plains of land,	keburi tachitatsu
seagulls rising	unahara wa
over broad plains of sea.	kamame tachitatsu
How splendid our land—	umashi kuni zo
our dragonfly islands,	akizushima
our Realm of Yamato!	yamato no kuni wa

Like Jomei’s, Mabuchi’s poem is all sensory, invoking no reasoning process but only celebratory images. He presents a “spring” view, replaces the cooking fires with a lark, but otherwise creates a similar auspicious scene. One remembers what Ueda Akinari (1734–1809), himself a kokugaku scholar, said in Harusame monogatari (Tales of Spring Rain, p. 571) about Man’yō-era poets: “Whatever moved them, they wrote about it without affectation.” An exaggeration, perhaps, but one that capsulizes the designs of Mabuchi and other poets of his school, whose project was inevitably involved with the nationalist ideology of the new Tokugawa regime.

OKUN おくん, Okunshū (p. 38): “Bedclothes”

In my old age	oiraku wa
I pile on the bedclothes at night,	yoru no fusuma o
layer on layer;	kasanete mo
yet still through my chamber walls	neya no hima moru
seeps the chill of the wind.	kaze zo samukeki

CONTEXT: Okun (1715–1781) was consort to Tokugawa Muneharu (1696–1764), lord of Owari domain. Few Edo-era women left large anthologies of their work, but she left more than four thousand poems—an exception perhaps explained by her high status. The dai of bedclothes—which refers to quilts, a variation on what we now call futon—was somewhat unusual, but her anthology makes it clear that Okun did not choose the dai herself, instead receiving it from her teacher, a Kyoto courtier of the noble Reizei house.

COMMENT: Next to this poem Okun’s teacher jotted down, “Based on real feelings, perhaps?” (jitsujō ka). A more established dai demanded strict attention to precedent, but “bedclothes” allowed more latitude. Okun begins with a blunt comment: oiraku wa, “in my old age,” which colors everything that follows. First she sets the scene—night; then we see her in her bedchamber, piling on quilts; and then we feel with her the “chill of the wind.” In this way we go from outside to inside and then to the wall between inside and outside, where gaps allow in the cold wind. Okun’s scene is one that anyone can understand but is particularly designed to capture the reality of the experience of the elderly. It is not a far step to imagine Okun under her quilts, shivering with cold, awake and listening to the wind rattling the walls, as her teacher evidently does.

The word jitsujō was also used in reference to poems of the past, as is clear in an anecdote about Jiun (1673–1753) and his teacher, Mushanokōji Sanekage (1661–1738). It begins with Jiun saying he had in the past not been impressed by the following poem by Tonna (Tonna hōshi ei, no. 10) until he experienced a similar scene firsthand.

Morning after morning	asana asana
I go outside, and I listen:	tachiidete kikeba
to where in haze	haru no no no
spreading over spring fields	kasumeru kata ni
a bush warbler sings.	uguisu zo naku

In his Shirin shūyō (Leaves from the groves of poetry, mid-eighteenth century, p. 166), Sanekage ratifies his judgment. “Ah, you have achieved a fine insight. At first, the poem may seem bland, but it is actually quite ingenious. After all, a poem must first of all present a new conception. There are many poems about the bush warbler, but you will not find one using the phrase ‘morning after morning I go outside, and I listen.’ This is the part of the poem on which one should focus attention. It is something new, a poem that expresses the feeling of actual experience [jitsujō].”

OZAWA ROAN 小澤蘆菴, Hokusō sadan (p. 298)

In 1792, Ozawa Roan took to bed with a serious ailment and was down a long time. During that period a certain rich man who had been his poetry disciple did not come to visit even once, and so when he had recovered … Roan sent the man a letter expressing his anger …

In this world of men	hito no yo no
riches are but dewdrops	tomi wa kusaba ni
on the grasses—	oku tsuyu no
light shining for a moment	kaze o matsu ma no
while we wait for the wind.	hikari narikeri

CONTEXT: Ozawa Roan (1723–1801) was a midranking samurai, born in Kyoto, who in middle age opted for life as a poetry scholar and teacher, living in the Okazaki and later the Uzumasa areas of that city. The scholar Tachibana Nankei (1753–1805) records this anecdote, dating it 1792 in his miscellany Hokusō sadan (Idle chats beneath a northern window, 1801); the poem is no. 1608 in Roan’s personal anthology, Rokujō eisō (ca. 1811). He also notes that after recovering Roan cut off all contact with the man.

COMMENT: In the passage that prefaces this poem, Roan taxed his wealthy friend with a “lack of human feeling,” using a phrase (kokoro ari or ushin) that in poetic discourse is often presented as the summum bonum of poetic identity. One does not usually associate Japanese poetry with such a strident statement of grievance. The anecdote ends with a postscript that reveals some discomfort with Roan’s reaction: “Perhaps this sounds a little ill-tempered and harsh, but his anger was not without cause.” Whatever the man’s reasons, Roan’s gibe offers us the very old trope of dew on the grasses, shining for only a moment before being dashed by the wind. Behind the trope is the assumption that the practice of poetry should elevate the sensibility and contribute to the building of character.

Roan was no hidebound pedant; indeed, in his time he was known for his quirky, unconventional style, as is evident from another poem, this one from his personal anthology Rokujō eisō (Poems in the style of the Six Notebooks, 1804; no. 1483).

“Hearing the cry of a crow in the distance, in the morning”

The sounds of things	mono no ne wa
are better in the distance.	tōki masareri
Why, even that crow	karasu sura
heard from far, far away,	haruka ni kikeba
is a source of true delight.	okashikarikeri

Some might fault such a poem for vulgar imagery and colloquial rhetoric (what Roan called tadakotoba), but as we see the speaker stopping whatever he is doing to enjoy a moment of sensory experience we recognize a familiar pose that claims for the poet the sort of sensibility that his wealthy student supposedly lacked.

MURATA HARUMI 村田春海, Kotojirishū 595: “On the first morning of spring, he washed his inkstone and wrote his ‘first poem of the New Year’ ”

So old am I now	oigami wa
that the world seems far away;	yo ni shi mo utoshi
no one comes calling	wabizumi wa
at my shabby little house.	hito mo toikozu
Yet all the same,	shikaredomo
I am like everyone else:	yo no hito nami ni
I too add on	atarashiki
a new year to those gone by.	toshi o kasanu to
So I sweep the dust	fuseio no
from my squat hut of grass,	chiri kakiharai
and cast aside	kinaraseru
clothing grown old and worn—	kinu nugikaete
waiting for the light	asahiko no
of the dear sun to shine down,	kage machitorite
facing the direction	haru no kuru
from which new spring will come.	kata ni mukaeba
Unnoticed by me,	hitoki tatsu
buds have begun to appear	hairi no ume mo
on my one plum tree	itsushika to
where it stands at my front door;	himo tokihajime
and on the stakes	muratake no
of my bamboo wattle fence	orikakegaki ni
a bush warbler, too,	uguisu mo
is singing his first song—	hatsune morashite
all filling my heart	onozukara
with a natural sense of calm.	kokoro nodokeshi
And so I say:	yoshi ya sa wa
I’m fine with no visitors!	towarenu mo yoshi
So I’ve grown old—	oinu tote
what reason is that to complain!	nani nagekamashi
It’s my good fortune	ureshiku mo
to live life at my leisure	yukurayukura ni
in a world at peace,	shizuka naru
and to once again be here	yo ni nagaraete
to greet a new spring—	mugura ni mo
a spring that begins above,	sawaranu haru o
unspoiled by the weeds below.	mata mo mukaetsu

Envoy

In happy spirits	ureshiku mo
I now behold a new spring.	haru wa mukaetsu
From today on,	kyō yori zo
my friends will be the flowers	hana uguisu o
and warblers ’round my home.	waga yado no tomo

CONTEXT: Murata Harumi (1746–1811) was born into the merchant class, but his literary talent emerged early, and he was for a time adopted as the heir of a renga master in service to the shogunate. He studied philology under Kamo no Mabuchi, a chief figure in the National Studies movement, and produced work of some distinction. His first love, however, was Japanese poetry in the waka form. Along with Katō Chikage (1735–1808), he became a central figure in Edo poetic circles. His personal anthology, Kotojirishū (Behind the koto, 1810), put together with the help and at the insistence of students, records more than sixteen hundred waka and nearly thirty chōka.

COMMENT: Old genres persisted into the Edo period, and most poets could compose chōka when occasion demanded. One of those occasions, as seen in the chōka of Mitsune, was the advent of a new year, which marked the beginning of spring in the lunar calendar. In premodern Japan, many rituals and celebrations marked the beginning of a new year, one of which was composing a “first poem,” in either Chinese or Japanese, or both. In the case of short poems, propitious imagery and sentiments were the rule, but Harumi uses his chōka form to produce a personal portrait; no public voice here.

Like Kenzai, Harumi employs no makurakotoba: he lauds not a “rough-hewn year” (aratama no toshi) but a straightforward “new” year (atarashiki toshi); and although he does use some parallel structures, they are not as clearly articulated as they would be in a chōka of the Man’yō era. In this sense, his chōka is modern, however antique its generic origins. His description of his life in a shabby little house, a fuseio with eaves that nearly touch the ground, is as modest as the life it purports to represent. In a few laconic lines, we learn that he is a recluse, old and out of touch with the world of human affairs—a pose, certainly, but true enough of a man who had left behind worldly ambitions. Yet the speaker nearly immediately insists that even in such surroundings, he remains part of the community. Hence he does his chores, as expected of all homeowners, sweeping out his abode, throwing out worn garments in favor of something new, and turning toward the “dear sun” (asahiko) as a symbol of renewal. Around him, he chronicles a natural world in harmony with the transition from winter to spring, symbolized by buds coming out on his one flowering plum and a warbler breaking out in song. His hut may boast only a crude fence fashioned from bamboo, but he anticipates coming warmth and color all the same, enjoying the natural sense of security that accompanies those changes.

The last eleven lines of the poem and its envoy, full of optimism and approbation, forgo expressing the melancholy usually associated with old age. “I may be on the fringe of things,” the speaker says, “but even as an old man, I should not complain. Thanks to the peace of the world around me, I can bask in the spring sun, safe and sound, enjoying the friends I do have, the flowers and the birds.” A shadow of loneliness is thus balanced against a bright spirit of gratitude.

RYŌKAN 良寛, Ryōkan kashū 1208: “Holing up for winter”

Below Kugami,	ashihiki no
that foot-wearying mountain,	kugami no yamamoto
I hole up for winter.	fuyugomori
On this ridgeline, that peak,	mine ni mo mine ni mo
the white snow descends,	shirayuki no
piling up, piling up again.	tsumoritsumorite
No more do I hear	tobu tori no
songs from birds flying by,	koe mo kikoezu
and the path people take	satobito no
going back and forth from town—	yukikau michi no
it has disappeared.	ato mo nashi
So I shut out the cruel world	ukiyo o koko ni
and pull fast my gate,	kado sashite
my life barely sustained	hida no takumi ga
by pure waters	utsu nawa no
flowing down from mountain crags:	tada hitosuji no
a stream sure as plumb lines	iwashimizu
struck by Hida carpenters.	so o inochi nite
Thus I have survived	aratama no
to greet a new year afresh,	kotoshi no kyō mo
as I do again today.	kurashitsuru kamo

Envoy

As the night wears on,	sayo fukete
the snow must be piling up	takane no miyuki
on the peak above.	tsumorurashi
Water gurgling amidst boulders—	iwama ni tagitsu
even that sound has stopped.	oto dani mo senu

CONTEXT: Ryōkan (1758–1831), eldest son of a well-to-do farmer, studied in a Zen monastery in his teens but later moved back to Mount Kugami in Echigo, near his hometown. He wrote chōka, along with waka, haikai, kanshi, and some free verse. Although he studied in Bitchū (modern Okayama) for ten years and received a certificate of enlightenment, Ryōkan never held clerical office, instead living as a beggar-monk.

COMMENT: Ryōkan’s poem, from Ryōkan kashū (Ryōkan’s collection of Japanese poems, 1835), describes life in a harsh climate but also shows his knowledge of poetic traditions, beginning with a makurakotoba (“foot-wearying,” applied to mountains), employing parallelism, and including an old metaphor for skill and steadfastness—the carpenters of Hida (in modern Gifu Prefecture), who since early times had been commissioned to do civil projects in Kyoto. The poem’s dark tone and elevated rhetoric remind us of Mitsune’s famous Kokinshū-era chōka about the New Year’s. Yet the last two lines are characteristically playful, suggesting that Ryōkan may have to get along without the “pure waters” he is used to relying upon.

KAGAWA KAGEKI 香川景樹, Keien isshi 974: “On a woman selling firewood”

Come and buy, now!	mese ya mese
buy firewood for dinnertime,	yūge no tsumaki
hurry, get it now!	hayaku mese
The road home stretches far,	kaerusa tōshi
to the village of ōhara.	ōhara no sato

CONTEXT: Kagawa Kageki (1768–1843; also known as Keien) was born in Tottori but moved to Kyoto in his twenties to make a career as a poet. He studied waka under a commoner poet affiliated with the noble Nijō school but was also influenced by Ozawa Roan and ended up breaking with his teacher and establishing a school of his own. Kageki’s critical writings show his profound knowledge of the classical poetic canon but also the influence of the neo-Confucian discourse that so dominated the intellectual world of his time, which is evident in his impatience with narrow concepts of rationalism and corresponding encouragement of ideas like shirabe (fine tuning or tonal integrity) and makoto (sincerity).

COMMENT: Kageki’s emphasis on the affective qualities of shirabe seems at odds with his championing of the Kokinshū, an anthology criticized for its excessive artifice by members of the National Studies movement. And there are many other seeming contradictions in Kageki’s writings. Although he praises the rhetorical polish of Heian times, for example, he writes many poems that seem more reminiscent of the “plain words” of Ozawa Roan. The one here would seem to fit into that category.

The character Kageki offers in this poem is one with which any resident of Kyoto—or any city at the time—would have been very familiar. Every day in late afternoon peasants, men and women, from the mountains would walk through the city streets, hawking their products, usually carried on their backs, calling out with words like the ones Kageki puts in the mouth of his subject. Colloquial language of this sort would of course not have appeared in a standard Kokinshū poem, but it was not imitation of classical poets that Kageki encouraged so much as their freshness and depth of feeling. Furthermore, he put the poem in the haikai section of his anthology, Keien isshi (One branch from Master Keien, 1830), thus classifying it as “unorthodox” in the technical sense.

Kageki’s poem was written as an inscription for a painting depicting a woman selling firewood. The first three lines of the poem tell us what the people of a neighborhood would hear as she walks by: mese ya mese—literally, “Buy, buy!” To people on any given street the voice would be familiar, probably, in fact, the voice of someone they would see frequently. Then the woman urges her patrons on by warning them that she must soon leave, in a way meant to evoke pity. The “hurry, get it now!” is not just a come-on: ōhara village, located to the northeast, along the banks of the Takano River, was most likely a two-hour journey, even for an experienced walker. And the walk would come after a long day of labor that began with a hike into the hills to gather wood, probably at dawn. In our minds, we see the long valley stretching out as the sun declines toward the mountains.

TACHIBANA AKEMI 橘曙覧, Dokuraku gin

What a joy it is:	tanoshimi wa
when I catch a glimpse of something	futo mite hoshiku
I simply must have—	omou mono
and then through pain and effort	tsuraku hakarite
come to hold it in my hand.	te ni ireshi toki

CONTEXT: Tachibana Akemi (1812–1868) was a scholar in the National Studies movement dedicated to study of ancient texts and also a prominent poet. In the Edo period there was a whole subgenre of humorous waka called kyōka, the origins of which go far back into medieval times, but what we confront in Akemi’s poem is not generally called kyōka, that term being reserved for poems of elaborate wordplay and often ribald or vulgar subject matter. Akemi’s work is instead in the tradition of the drinking poems of Ōtomo no Tabito in Man’yōshū.

COMMENT: This poem is the last of a set of fifty-two poems titled Dokuraku gin (Solitary pleasures, 1864) that all begin with “What a joy it is” (tanoshimi wa) and end (in the Japanese) with “when” (toki)—each presenting a declarative statement. The subjects deal mostly with the small delights of everyday life: family, friendship, reading, writing, and joys of the moment, from napping to eating and drinking and enjoying a pipe, and the emphasis is often on sensory experience, stated unabashedly. In the poem here, for example, the final satisfaction is expressed in tactile terms, “to hold it in my hand.” Nor does Akemi try to defend his enjoyments as always noble or grand. We have all found ourselves just wanting something, perhaps even something vain or silly, and it is describing such universal human feelings that is the point of the poems. The joys he describes as “solitary” are in no sense known to him alone, though some of them concern feelings we might rather not admit.

Another refreshing feature of the poems is that, like the one here and that following (nos. 14 and 43), they sometimes foreground a topic never treated in orthodox waka—namely, finances, or rather feelings related to financial struggle:

What a joy it is:	tanoshimi wa
when our empty rice barrel	akikomebitsu ni
has new rice in it,	kome ideki
and I’m told we have enough	ima hitotsuki wa
to last us for a month.	yoshi to iu toki
What a joy it is:	tanoshimi wa
when there is something I want,	hoshikarishi mono
so I take out my purse	zenibukuro
and pour out all of my coins—	uchikatabukete
and have enough to buy it!	kai etaru toki

ŌTAGAKI RENGETSU 大田垣連月, Zōho Rengetsu zenshū 1 (p. 58): “Composed when she heard that south of Fushimi many men had fallen in battle”

I hear the reports	kiku mama ni
and drench my sleeves with tears.	sode koso nurure
There by the roadside,	michinobe ni
those corpses left on the ground—	sarasu kabane wa
they will be somebody’s sons.	ta ga ko naruran

CONTEXT: Ōtagaki Rengetsu (1791–1875) sold poems inscribed on tanzaku and also provided inscriptions on paintings and tea wares. She was born into a samurai family and actually served in a castle in her youth, where she learned polite arts such as poetry and calligraphy. Her first marriage ended in divorce, but not before she bore and lost two children, and when she married again, the result was the loss of two (maybe three) more children and her new husband, within five years. At age thirty-three she became a nun, along with her adoptive father, an administrator at Chion’in, a Kyoto temple of the Pure Land sect. Thereafter she supported herself as a commercial artist, living in the Higashiyama and Kamo areas of Kyoto.

COMMENT: In January of 1868 the forces of the Tokugawa shogun and royalists fought at Toba-Fushimi in a crucial battle leading up to the collapse of the old government and the establishment of a new monarchy, the so-called Meiji Restoration. It was at that time that this lament was written. Rengetsu was in her late seventies then, living in the area west of the Kamo River near Jinkōin, well to the north of the battlefield. She is remembered now as a nun of the Pure Land sect, but she knew a great deal about the loss of children and in this and other poems writes at least partially as a mother, which amounts to a kind of gender marking. Laments had been written about war in the past, particularly by clergy, but few so direct in terms of their imagery and sentiment. “Corpse” (kabane) was not a word generally used in courtly poetry after Man’yōshū.

Many legends have attached themselves to Rengetsu. One involves the following poem (also appearing in her complete works, Zōho Rengetsu zenshū 1, p. 58), also written during the years of conflict.

Whether foes or friends,	ada mikata
whether winners or losers,	katsu mo makuru mo
I feel only grief—	aware nari
when I think that all of them	onaji mikuni no
are men of our own realm.	hito to omoeba

The legend is that she wrote this “antiwar” poem and sent it to the great general Saigō Takamori (1827–1877), one of the chief opponents of the shogunate, before he invaded Edo, which moved him so much that he changed his tactics in order to do less damage to the city. One would like to believe the story, both for what it implies about the purposes of poetry and for what it implies about Saigō.

HIGUCHI ICHIYŌ 樋口一葉, Ichiyō kashū (p. 319): “False love”

I know, of course,	itsuwari no
that in our world people lie.	yo to wa shiredomo
Yet surely not you—	kimi nomi wa
I had thought that of you at least	yo mo to bakari mo
that could never be true.	omoitsuru kana

CONTEXT: Higuchi Ichiyō (1872–1896) is known for a group of stories she wrote in a few short years before her untimely death by tuberculosis. Like many young women of her day, she studied poetry as part of her “finishing,” leaving behind a personal anthology (Ichiyō’s Waka Anthology) of more than three thousand poems. Her poem was actually written on an old dai, “false love,” which may have been assigned by her teacher. The presence of such poems in the oeuvre of one of the most admired writers of the Meiji era reminds us that old waka discourse was still alive at that time, especially for women.

COMMENT: There is a refreshing innocence in the surprise felt by the speaker of this poem, a young person, probably a woman, who lacks experience in the ways of love. Knowing something abstractly and understanding it in real experience are two different things. Ichiyō’s conclusion is nothing new; what she wanted to say was not new, but fundamental, as the following poem, composed on the topic “love at first sight,” makes clear (Ichiyō kashū, p. 320):

Ah, how swiftly	kasugano ni
the spring grasses have come out	moeizuru haru no
on Kasuga Moor,	wakakusa no
as swiftly as I have come	hayaku mo hito o
to take notice of you.	misometsuru kana

Here the place-name (in Nara) is entirely conventional, as is the imagery of grasses coming out in spring fields—a common metaphor for the first stirrings of love. And in the first three lines of the poem Ichiyō even deploys a rhetorical device that takes us all the way back to Man’yōshū days: the extended metaphorical preface, or jokotoba.

The temptation to read such poems in terms of Ichiyō’s own life experience is strong. She was, after all, a young person and must have had such feelings herself. It is equally important, however, to remember that she attended monthly poetry gatherings run by her teacher, where she not only presented her own poems but also heard lectures on the Japanese classics. It would be hard to argue that this “literary” experience was less influential than whatever she experienced in her private life. Well into the modern era, the old mores still held sway in many circles, especially those touching in some way on the education of youth, whose mentors were still likely to conceive of the mastering of an art in didactic terms.

MORI ŌGAI 森鴎外, Uta nikki (pp. 261–62): “In the trenches”

Low clouds were darkening the sky,	tempering the chill
that had prevailed at midday,	when in growing dusk
drops of rain began to tap	on my south window,
along with another sound—	someone’s voice, it was.
“Who might it be?” I wondered,	and had someone look,
finding there a foot soldier,	wounded in the arm,
who had somehow lost the road	and gone in circles
till at last he ended up	outside our gate.
After bandaging his wound	I laid him down
on the bed right next to mine	and asked him this:
“Up there on the front line,	in the trenches—
won’t you tell me about it,	what it’s truly like?
Do the frosts of morning	fall on your cap?
Do the rains of evening	drench your sleeves?
Without any proper roads	to bring you food,
do you gnaw day after day	on balls of dried rice?
Tell me, is that what it’s like?”	At this the soldier
made a weary attempt	to shake his head.
“You may think me rude, sir,	for not replying,
but just the thought of all that now	brings pain to my breast.
The way things are in that place—	why, if I return home,
I will never speak of them:	not to wife or child,
not to mother or father.	From now, forever,
I shall hide those things inside,	in my heart alone.”

sora kakikumori	hiru no ma no
samusa nagomeru	yūyami ni
minami no mado o	utsu ame to
tomo ni otonau	koe su nari
tare ka kitaru to	misasureba
kaina irareshi	heisotsu no
michi ni mayoite	tamotōri
kadobe ni koso wa	kinuru nare
kizu o tsutsumite	waga toko ni
narabi fusashime	toikeraku
daiissen no	horinuchi no
makoto no sama o	katarazu ya
bō ni ashita no	shimo furite
yūbe no ame ni	sode hizuchi
kate o hakoban	michi o nami
hoshii kamite	hi o ya heshi
ika ni to ieba	heisotsu wa
kōbe tayuge ni	uchifurite
inamaba nameshi to	obosamedo
omoeba mune zo	itamu naru
kashiko no sama wa	kaeran hi
tsuma ni kodomo ni	omochichi ni
ware wa kataraji	ima yu nochi
kokoro hitotsu ni	himeokite

Envoys

In the trenches,	horinuchi yu
so close is the enemy	keburi tateji to
that the soldiers	ada chikami
keep the stove from smoking	kudo no takigi o
and break their kindling quietly.	sasayaka ni waru
In the trenches,	horinuchi ni
how many nights have they	iku yo ka netsuru slept so—
never neglecting	isasame ni
to leave still tied the laces	yuishi ayui no
that secure their soldier boots?	himo tokazu shite

CONTEXT: Mori Ōgai (1862–1922, legal name Rintarō) was born in a provincial capital just before the Meiji Restoration, to a clan physician. After a traditional education in Chinese classics, he was sent to Tokyo Imperial University to study medicine, along with German and Western science. He graduated in 1881 and went on to study in Germany (1884–1888) on government stipend. As he advanced in the ranks of the medical corps, contributing to the study of Western science and literature in Japan, he wrote stories, novels, and biographies that eventually made him one of the chief literary figures of his time.

COMMENT: Ōgai saw medical service in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 and in 1907 became surgeon general of the army. At this time he was known as a translator of German and Scandinavian literature rather than a novelist. But he had read Chinese and Japanese poetry all his life and continued to write even while on campaigns. His Uta nikki (Uta diary, 1904) consists of poems written from the field in a variety of forms, ranging from traditional genres to modern “Western-style” verse. The narrative poem here, written at Shilihe, Manchuria, on the seventeenth day of the Tenth Month, in 1904, is an adaptation of the chōka form that presents alternating seven- and five-syllable lines but employs lineation perhaps meant to break with old models. Showing his knowledge of the Japanese canon, Ōgai employs archaic grammar, parallelism, and even a makurakotoba (tamotōri, “going in circles”). Yet we have to question his confidence when his narrator, after using traditional aesthetic rhetoric to describe the trenches of his imagination, is rebuffed by the soldier, who says that he will never speak of his experiences. Is this an example of irony—the speaker admitting the distance between the two men, in terms of rank and class? If anything, the envoys increase the distance between the two men, admitting a chasm that cannot be traversed.

WATANABE JUNZŌ 渡辺順三, Seikatsu o utau (p. 383)

She’s dirt-poor, and on top of that, has a worthless husband.

Worn thin from keeping house,

my wife nods off for a nap.

binbō na ue ni kayowai otto mochi / setai ni yaseta / tsuma no utatane

CONTEXT: Watanabe Junzō (1894–1972) was born the son of a disenfranchised samurai who found work as a grade-school principal but died when Junzō was just twelve. The family moved to Tokyo, where Junzō began working in a furniture store. In 1923 he opened a printing shop of his own but was never anything but a failure at business. Since his early twenties he had been active in literary circles and published his first collection of tanka—the term used for 5-7-5-7-7 syllables in modern Japan—in 1927. At a time when artistic lineage still meant a great deal, socially and philosophically, he was associated with the disciples of Ishikawa Takuboku (1886–1912), a proponent of socialist engagement. Watanabe himself would go on to be associated with proletarianism in the 1920s and 1930s and the progressive movements of the postwar era.

COMMENT: The history of tanka discourse in the mid-twentieth century resists summary. It was a time when anyone writing in traditional forms had to face questions about their relevance in the modern world, and inevitably there were experiments of all sorts, from the formal to the thematic. Broadly speaking, over time the world of tanka was divided—though seldom neatly or completely—between those who pursued tanka as a hobby, often participating in some sort of club or association under the direction of a master, and those who thought of it as a truly “serious” art form, on a par with free verse. Watanabe is treated as a “serious” poet. In using unconventional lineation (obscuring a traditional 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic structure) he was following the example of Takuboku. The poem here, from his 1927 book Seikatsu o utau (I sing of everyday life), is typical in the way it describes a moment of quotidian languor. Watanabe did not have to exercise his imagination to experience poverty, knowing it firsthand for most of his life. Rather than just himself, however, he often puts his wife in the picture. And another poem, from 1954, “Nihon no chizu” (Map of Japan, p. 390), manages to go beyond personal complaint to social critique.

My poverty—

it began in my parents’ times, and continued on;

it’s like grime that clings to my body, that’s how it seems.

binbō wa / oya no dai yori hikitsugite / mi ni tsuku aka no gotoshi to omou

In a capitalist society, the poet hints, poverty is at bottom a matter of lacking capital and is in many cases an inherited state. The reference to the unbathed masses, whose poverty sticks to them like grime—a layer of caked-on dirt that does not yield easily to removal—is a particularly tactile way of expressing what is after all a physical as much as a social state.