Portrait of Fujiwara no Kintō, an early eleventh-century court poet and musician who compiled one of the first collections of Japanese and Chinese poems for singing; 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 3

POPULAR SONGS

EMPEROR YŪRYAKU 雄略天皇, Kinkafu 13

You maiden,	minasosogu
fine as flowing waters:	omi no otome
hold the vessel tightly, now,	hodari tori
hold it firmly.	kataku tore
Grip it tightly from below,	shitagataku
just as tightly as you can,	yagataku tore
you girl holding the vessel.	hodari torasu ko

CONTEXT: Some of the earliest songs of the Japanese tradition appear in a small collection titled Kinkafu (Songs to accompany the koto), which scholars date to sometime in the late tenth century, although the songs come from much earlier times. Sometimes the songs of the collection suggest allegorical readings, but on the surface the subjects are straightforward: banquets, the hunt, planting, the new year, the beauties of the natural word, and, of course, love and courting.

The introduction to the song here offers two conflicting origin stories. The first says it was composed by Emperor Yūryaku (418–479) in a banquet setting, when a lady of high station (omi no otome) served him wine. The second is more convoluted, telling how the emperor’s consort composed the song as a lament over members of her clan (the Ōomi) who had been killed in an intrigue against her husband. Scholars tend to favor the former account, first because a similar song is recorded with a similar story in the mytho-historical record Kojiki and also because of that story’s appealing simplicity.

COMMENT: A notation tells us that the song was known as an ukiuta—i.e., a song sung “when pouring sake.” We should imagine, then, a woman of high birth given the honor, and the weighty responsibility, of offering wine to a person of some consequence. Doubtless ritual or etiquette was involved in bringing in a wine jar—a large, heavy vessel, the poem implies—and serving libations to an honored guest; hence the concern of the speaker that the maiden hold the vessel firmly as she pours.

Like many early chōka, the song displays irregular prosody (four five-syllable lines, two six-syllables lines, and one seven-syllable line), and it also shows its connection to prevailing poetic convention by beginning with a makurakotoba. Here that figure—“fine as flowing waters”—introduces the idea of purity, applied both to the sake and to the woman presenting it. Needless to say, the way the emperor encourages her (in a voyeuristic way?) to grip the vessel tightly is suggestive and meant to be so. The reference to her physical embrace of the jar seems especially symbolic when we remember how daughters in elite society of the time were often objects of barter in political maneuvering—what we call marriage politics. Perhaps with this in mind it is not so difficult to imagine the poem as indeed having been written by a woman in grief over the loss of family and perhaps unsure of her own new position. The repetition of various forms of “hold the vessel tightly” on that reading would be a way of reminding herself that she must be careful to hold her place, to play her role well.

ANONYMOUS, Kokinshū 1075: “A torimono song”

And what damage	shimo yatabi
have the unceasing frosts done	okedo kare sen
to the sakaki?	sakakiba no
None—no, the leaves are thriving,	tachisakayu beki
as shall those who serve the gods.	kami no kine ka mo

CONTEXT: In ancient times the imperial government founded a Bureau of Folk Songs tasked with collecting folk songs, regional songs, and sacred songs. Quite naturally, a chapter of such songs was included in Kokinshū. The one here is a sacred song (kami asobi uta or kagurauta). Authorship of the song is unknown, as is the case with all but two of the two dozen in that chapter. The song is identified as in the subcategory torimonouta, “presentation songs” that accompanied the offering of auspicious objects before the gods. In ancient times, the sakaki, now usually identified with Cleyera japonica, seems to have been a more vague reference to various evergreens employed in shrine rituals.

Commentary: Kagura were performed at shrines and at the imperial court as part of enthronement ceremonies and twice yearly at the Naishidokoro (Handmaid’s Office) and involved the courtly arts of poetry, music, and dance, intended to impress the god and elicit favor. The symbolic origin of the rituals is the mythological story of how the Sun Goddess, sequestered in a cave after an argument with her brother, was coaxed out by dancing, singing, and a decorated sakaki tree. Folk versions of kagura, which flourished at banquets and at shrines all over the country and are performed to this day, were likely lively affairs. However, things were more staid at court, as is evidenced by the standard prosody of the songs included in Kokinshū—almost certainly the result of editing. In this sense, they are prosodically no different from waka. The performance we should imagine as the setting of the above poem would have been done at night, probably by torchlight, in a courtyard. A director would dance, with other dancers, a cadre of musicians playing clappers, zithers, Japanese flutes, and hichiriki (a kind of oboe), as well as choruses. Performances and the banquets that accompanied them could last all night and involve scores of songs, sung slowly. The poem here is obviously symbolic, functioning as a prayer for favor. The phrase kami no kine may be a kakekotoba referring both to the trees of the gods (sakaki) and, as a homonym, to the miko (shrine maidens), who performed among the dancers.

The “presentation song” (Kokinshū, no. 1074) that precedes the one here is even more obviously celebratory and simple in conception, a paean of praise that presents again the sakaki flourishing in the shrine precincts on an unspecified “holy mountain” (mimuro).

Inside the sacred fence	kamikaki no
around the shrine to the god	mimuro no yama no
on its holy mountain,	sakakiba wa
see how the sakaki leaves grow,	kami no mimae ni
flourishing before the god!	shigeriainikeri

ANONYMOUS, Ryōjin hishō 399

The woodcutter, he’s a scary sight!	kikori wa osoroshi ya
He has a rugged look—	arakeki sugata ni
dangling a sickle,	kama o mochi
with an ax in one hand,	yoki o sage
walking along with firewood	ushiro ni shibaki
loaded on his back.	mainoboru to ka ya na
And to keep mountain guards	mae ni wa yamamori
from approaching head-on—	yoseji tote
he has a walking stick as well.	tsue o sage

CONTEXT: Our earliest collection of so-called modern songs (imayō) comes from Emperor Go-Shirakawa (1127–1192), a fan of songs sung by female street entertainers called asobi and kugutsu. He titled his collection Ryōjin hishō (A secret sheaf of dust from the rafters, ca. 1169). Unfortunately, only a tenth of the original work survives—part of a first chapter of mostly spring songs and the complete second chapter, which concentrates on religious themes. This poem comes from the “Miscellaneous” section in the second chapter.

COMMENT: Songs show a broader swath of life than we see in courtly waka and employ a less-polished, colloquial vocabulary. The woodcutter is also evoked in waka and renga but never in such detail. The song relies on a straightforward sequence of rustic images and contains no poetic devices. Scholars point out that the text mirrors a description of the guardian deity Fudō (Acala in Sanskrit) from the same anthology (Ryōjin hishō, no. 284), knowledge of which injects mild humor into the description of the woodcutter.

Fudō Myōō, he’s a scary sight!	Fudō myōō osoroshi ya
He has an angry look—	ikareru sugata ni
dangling a sword,	kemu o mochi
with a rope in one hand,	saku o sage
walking along with a fire	ushiro ni kaen
burning behind him.	moenoboru to ka ya na
And to keep evil demons	mae ni wa akuma
from approaching head-on—	yoseji tote
ah, that fearsome mien!	gama no sō

Fudō was a guardian deity whose physical attributes and appurtenances symbolized his readiness to withstand evil—a harsh, wrathful posture, a straight sword, a rope, fire, and a frightful countenance. A woodcutter is a more mundane figure who had need of such a posture. Every day he went into the woods to collect wood, which he carried into towns to sell. Animals and terrain were a constant danger, as were thieves, who might steal either his cargo or his money, and mountain guards, who might restrict his gathering. Imitating the guardian deity was a wise strategy—so the poem suggests.

ANONYMOUS, Ryōjin hishō 363

Only the two children,	ōna ga kodomo wa
that’s all I’ve got.	tada futari
My girl, she was summoned	hitori no onago wa
to the kitchens	nii chūjōdono no
of a middle captain,	kuriyazōshi ni
a man of second rank—	meshishikaba
and there she serves.	tatemateki
Her young brother, he was summoned	ototo no onokogo wa
to the swift boats	usa no daiguji ga
of the Shrine Lord	hayafune funako ni
at Usa Hachiman—	koishikaba
and there he works.	madaiteki
Look down on me,	kami mo hotoke mo
gods and buddhas of Wakamiya—	goranze yo
what is it I have done	nani o tataritamau
for you to curse me so?	wakamiya no omae zo

CONTEXT: Emperor Go-Shirakawa, a particular enthusiast of popular song, gives us the names of a few among his courtiers who were imayō enthusiasts—for example, Taira no Narifusa (d. 1179) and Minamoto no Sukekata (1113–1188). It appears, however, that they were musicians and not the authors of the songs, which had anonymous origins. The perspective of this song is a man of fairly low social status.

COMMENT: Many songs, including the one here, offer us narratives that employ parallelism—sometimes syntactic, sometimes thematic, sometimes both—reminiscent of patterns observed in the chōka. The prosody of the song, however, is highly irregular (six five-syllable lines, but also four eight-syllable lines, three of nine syllables, and one of ten) when viewed in that way. Likewise, the diction is highly colloquial.

Our speaker is a father presenting a lament on his plight as a father. Significantly, the poem presents not a single natural image and no lyrical flourishes. Instead, it describes a real-world predicament in dramatic and heartfelt terms. Placing children in livings was a duty for a father, of course, and a challenge, and this father could claim that he has achieved success. His girl has gone into service of a middle captain of second rank, someone high in the court hierarchy in Kyoto, who uses her in his kitchens. His son is in less-enviable circumstances, perhaps, working as a sailor, perhaps an oarsman, in the employ of a supervisor at Usa Hachiman Shrine, a large and prosperous Shinto shrine in Kyushu. Yet worldly success does not translate into personal happiness. What the father in his lonely house feels is not gratitude but resentment, not a blessing but a curse. The particular curse he refers to is one visited upon someone by a dead spirit that demands expiation, but it can fall on someone wholly blameless. Wakamiya is a subshrine where people appealed for expiation of their sins.

ANONYMOUS, Ryōjin hishō 302

In spring, I go into burnt fields	haru no yakeno ni
to pick herbs	na o tsumeba
and there he is, a holy man,	iwaya ni hijiri koso
living beneath a cliff—	owasu nare
and all by himself.	tada hitori
Hey there, holy man,	nobe nite tabitabi
we’ll meet once in a while	au yori wa
in the fields,	na iza tamae
but that’s not enough—	hijiri koso
so come with me!	iyashi no yō nari to mo
It’s a crude thing, my hut of sticks,	warawara ga
but please do come along.	shiba no iori e

CONTEXT: It was common practice for monks to withdraw from the world and pursue their devotions in isolation. Here we see a devout man who has taken that step but still finds himself faced with temptations.

COMMENT: This poem begins with the rustic scene of a woman going into the fields to engage in the customary spring activity of gathering young herbs. In that sense the song begins as a praise of new life in the form of plants emerging in fields burned over at the end of the previous harvest season. Spring has come; the snows have melted and people can again enjoy the bounties of the natural world.

But in her trek through the fields the woman finds more than herbs. As she walks along, thinking of her table and the tasty meal to come, the prospect of another sort of pleasure confronts her when she happens on a monk living beneath a cliff. Thus the stage is set for a meeting. The woman and the monk are unidentified; they are types meant to be of universal application. Both live lives of privation, but for different reasons—simple poverty in the case of the woman, one guesses, and religious vocation in the case of the monk.

The woman reveals her attitude with her playful form of address: “Hey there, holy man”—or hijiri, an honorific title, given to the truly devout but here coming across as a mildly seductive taunt. In every way her approach is cagey: since I live close by, she says, in mock innocence, we are bound to meet from time to time; why not keep each other company? Thus she seeks to erase the distinctions between them, arguing that because they occupy the same environment they may as well occupy it together in the warmth and shelter of her small house, which offers more comfort than the elemental and “natural” environment of a cave. However, we know that for the holy man temptation is waiting in the house of sticks—a place that is “constructed” rather than natural. For a recluse monk, withdrawal from comfort was the whole point, and abstaining from all contact with the opposite sex was a fundamental purpose for fleeing into the wilds in the first place. That we are not told the outcome of the dramatic narrative tells us that the basic conflict the poem poses is constant and endless.

ANONYMOUS, Ryōjin hishō 332, 333

332

What is it that clears the heart?	kokoro no sumu mono wa
In autumn, at every hut	aki wa yamada no
in mountain paddies,	iogoto ni
one hears the sound of clappers	shika odorokasu chō
keeping deer away,	hita no koe
that, and the sound	koromo shideutsu
of mallets striking robes.	tsuchi no oto

333

What is it that clears the heart?	kokoro no sumu mono wa
Spring haze, groves of flowers,	kasumi hanazono
the moon in the night,	yowa no tsuki
fields in autumn.	aki no nobe
In the way of love	kamishimo mo wakanu wa
there is neither high nor low:	koi no michi
down through gaps in the rocks	iwama o morikuru
water spills—a cascade.	taki no mizu

CONTEXT: We associate lists with Sei Shōnagon (b. 965?), whose famous Pillow Book contains lists of everything from “Clouds” to “Things That Make the Heart Race.” One can easily imagine people creating such lists in conversation. “What are things that make you angry?” … “What are your favorite flowers?”

COMMENT: These two songs are from the “Miscellaneous” section of the second chapter of Ryōjin hishō, and the idea of “clearing the heart” easily fits into a Buddhist scenario. But poets too were advised to clear their hearts before composing, usually by reading classical texts or observing the natural world in order to elevate the sensibility above mundane concerns. Both songs in fact focus on traditional poetic images: huts in mountain paddies, deer clappers (wooden sticks fastened to ropes pulled to make a clapping sound and scare birds and animals away), women beating the wrinkles out of robes with a mallet, in the first poem, and spring haze, flowers, the moon, autumn fields, and water coursing between rocks in the mountains in the second. Yet, however canonical, the things on the lists are well within the experience of normal people. It may seem curious that both poems end with images that evoke love: a woman beating a robe, which was a common trope for longing for a mate away from home, and rushing water, often used as a metaphor for overwhelming passion. But the experience of love was considered a fundamental component of what it meant to be human, and monks often composed on that dai. As the songs suggest, love is a universal, and Buddhist thought was highly invested in the contemplation of universals.

ANONYMOUS LITTLE SONGS, from Kanginshū

59

How does love feel to me?	waga koi wa
Fireflies flickering	mizu ni moetatsu
above the water,	hotaru hotaru
forlorn fireflies	mono iwade
unable to say a word.	shōshi no hotaru

CONTEXT AND COMMENT: In 1518 a recluse who says about himself only that he had lived for more than ten years near Mount Fuji made a collection of 311 kouta (little songs) and other songs. (Tradition identifies him as the renga poet Sōchō, but no sure evidence for the attribution has been discovered.) He titled his collection Kanginshū (Songs from quiet days). The little songs express universal human feelings, often using standard images from the courtly tradition, such as the fireflies in the song here—a straightforward metaphor for smoldering passion that has no voice. The following songs do the same, using images from boats and hail to clouds, the moon, and blossoms.

131

In a slave boat I am rowed along	hitokaibune wa
out on the sea.	oki o kogu
I am to be sold, boatman.	totemo uraruru mi o
Could you not row more gently,	tada shizuka ni koge yo
please?	sendōdono

COMMENT: What does gently (shizuka ni) mean in such a context? “Take your time, let me have a little calm and peace” before my wretched new life begins.

225

Even the crow	karasu dani
is weary of the world.	ukiyo itoite
Look, see his black robes!	sumizome ni sometaru ya
Yes, he has put on	mi wo sumizome ni
robes of black.	sometari

COMMENT: A recently tonsured person, perhaps looking for comfort, finds it in the natural world: a lowly crow, a vagabond and scavenger, wearing dark robes like a wandering monk.

231

This world of ours:	yo no naka wa
it’s hail, that’s what it is,	arare yo nō
pattering down	sasa no ha no ue no
on leaves of bamboo.	sarasara satto
Hail falling, that’s what it is.	furu yo nō

COMMENT: As we walk along, suddenly hailstones fall, pelting us, making us seek for shelter—a metaphor for the nature of life in a harsh world.

235

I want so to tell you,	amari kotoba no
but all I can say is,	kaketasa ni
“Look, look, now,	are misainō
see how fast the clouds go	sora yuku kumo no
through the sky.”	hayasa yo

COMMENT: A man is with a woman to whom he would like to unburden himself, but all he can manage is a few words about the weather, which happens to resemble his racing feelings.

305

I look at blossoms	hana mireba
and my sleeves are wet,	sode nurenu
I look at the moon	tsuki mireba
and my sleeves are wet.	sode nurenu
What goes on in my heart?	nani no kokoro zo

COMMENT: Do we know ourselves where are feelings come from? Somehow all the beauty the speaker sees merely reminds him of feelings of (frustrated?) love.