Japanese Poetry_

Masterpieces of Japanese Poetry Ancient and Modern. Translated and annotated by Miyamori Asataro. 2 Vols. (Tokyo : Maruzon.)

TUE publication of these two handsome volumes, containing nearly eight hundred pages and many illustrations from paintings and manuscripts, has been made possible by a " gracious grant " from a prince of the Imperial family. They form a fine companion piece to Mr. Miyamori's Anthology of Haiku, and together with that work afford a most helpful introduction to the appreciation of Japanese poetry, ancient rather than modern, for only two poets under forty arc represented, and only a single one born in the present century. No shadow of a " dangerous thought " could have been allowed to darken the perspective, for the anthologist could scarcely have flown in the face of his Imperial patron, but in any case his tastes seem naturally safe and academic. His enterprise must be praised, his scholarship is impressive, and his labours, not least in the matter of proof-reading, must have been enormous. An introduction treats of the character- istics and history of Japanese poetry, and the arrangement of the poems is chronological, as in the previous anthology. There are short biographical notes, then the Japanese text is given, then a transliteration, then Mr. Miyamori's transla- tion, then in many cases translations by other hands, English and occasionally German, for the purposes of comparison, then such explanatory notes as have been thought necessary. The illustrations, mostly by contemporary painters and beautifully reproduced, have been carefully chosen to match the poems, and the local fauna and flora are as carefully described : if a frog is mentioned, we are asked to observe that it is polypedates buergeri Boulenger and none other. Mr. Miyamori has done his heroic best with the translations, but he has handicapped himself by forcing rhymes where none are needed, and by using archaisms. Between the Japanese ear and the English ear there is a great gulf fixed, and it is a measure of the remoteness and unfamiliarity of Japanese culture that an educated Englishman, an English poet even, might surprise one by being able to name a single Japanese pOet : probably the Lady Murasaki-no-Shikibu is the only

one out of all these hundreds whose name is known here l.

. at all With few exceptions, these poems are lanka, which have 31 syllables, as distinct from haiku, which have 17. The

nka consists of five phrases of 5, 7, 5, 7, 7 syllables, and contains from twelve to twenty words. " Pregnancy and suggestiveness, brevity and ellipsis," remarks Mr. Miyamori, are the life and soul of the lanka. Like the modes of feeling which it reflects, it is extremely ancient and highly stylised, and although it is extremely difficult to write an ideal lanka, " it is a rather easy task for a man of culture to compose commonplace ones, since only arranging 31 syllables consti- tutes a poem." In Japan, as Lafcadio Hearn noted, poetry is composed by almost everybody.

The anthology opens solemnly with a piece ascribed to a deity, the younger brother of the Sun Goddess in fact, and closes with a didactic verse by the headmaster of a girls' school in the provinces. In between may be found many shades of elegance and sensitiveness, touches of magic, meditations, conceits, patriotic banalities, exquisite " tiny sentiments," expressions of melancholy, of the emotions of expectant or disappointed lovers and of parental or filial love, but especially a delight in Nature, flowers, trees, clouds., birds, water, spring, autumn, and so on. I am inclined to think that out of deference to his Imperial patron Mr. Miyamori has given us rather too many of the effusions of the Emperor Meiji (1852-1912), who for various reasons might almost be called the Queen Victoria of Japan. However, as this Monarch constantly overflowed with impeccable thoughts and is said to have composed no fewer than a hundred thousand poems, we are perhaps lucky to be let off with less than Seventy : among the more remarkable one is pacifist in tone, and another is a hit at the newspapers: The Moon, according to'Our ideas, plays throughout a rather too dominant part, but then it rains. so much here thaf we seareelk know what it looks like. Again, the Wesiernreader, unfamiliar w ith the Japaneie land4c'ape and Japanese ways Of thought, may easily' sufferfrom a surfeit of cherry bloSsoms. And how is he to aPpreciaie the flowers of the lespedezd, Which he ha's never seen, or the notes' of the uguisu, a vity disiant cousin of the nightingale, which he has never heard ? HoW

he to understand the myriad associations that a Japanese has with the very name of this or that place, person, or thing ?

At best he can only get an inkling of the meaning. If we read

"The wind blowing down from Mount Hira Flung flowers all over the lake,

Until a boat, rowing, divided the petals And left .a long wake,"

we find nothing in it " pregnant and suggestive " ; we see a pretty picture, and that is all—but it is not by any means all in the original. Poetry is always impossible to translate, but in Europe a rose is a rose and a cuckoo a cuckoo. In Japan. however, a rose is a peony or a lotus, and a cuckoo is a hotologisa and sings quite a different tune (sometimes annoyingly, according to an eighteenth century poet called Munctake) in a different environment to cars more different than words can say.

" One ant nods to another ant,

And then they run and run From east to west, from west to east, As on some urgent business bent."

And urgent business leaves little time for the cultivation of poetry.

Among the many delights and surprises of this anthology I feel obliged to mention a poem by Yamanouc-no-Okura, a diplothat born in the seventh century. I do not mean the well- known one beginning " Whenever I eat melons I think' of my children . . " but the Dialogue on Poverty, not a lanka but a poem of some fifty lines. It is a spirited piece that might have pleaied Villon centuries later. Mr. Miyamori, greatly daring, thinks that it entitleS Okura to be called a " proletarian poet," but Okura has been dead fol. over 'sixteen hundred years, so his " dangerouS thoughts " have had time to mature. HerC is an extract :

" No smoke rises from the hearth, Spiders' webs are spun in the rice-steamer, And we have forgotten how to cook rico.

Thus my family sigh and cry mournfully.

Then to make the matter still worse, Like the proverb, to snip what was short before,' A rod in hand, the village headman Comes to the door of our sleeping-room, And loudly cries to claim his dues.

Such is my lot ! Are these the ways of this world I " WILLIAM PIA:MIER.