Classical Poetry and Drama Of Japan, Basil Hall Chamberlain
Classical Poetry and Drama Of Japan
Basil Hall Chamberlain
Category: Verse
Genres: Non-fiction,Poetry,History
Level 7.111:34 h
The present collection of Japanese poetry is compiled and translated into English from what the Japanese call “The Collection of Myriad Leaves,” and from a number of other anthologies made by imperial decree year by year from the tenth until the fifteenth century. Selections translated into English by Basil Hall Chamberlain.

Classical Poetry and Drama of Japan

With Critical and Biographical Sketches by
Epiphanius Wilson, A. M.

Selections translated by
Basil Hall Chamberlain

Classical Poetry and Drama Of Japan

Classical Poetry of Japan

Introduction

The poetry of a nation is always the best revealer of its genuine life: the range of its spiritual as well as of its intellectual outlook. This is the case even where poetry is imitative, for imitation only pertains to the form of poetry, and not to its essence. Vergil copied the metre and borrowed the phraseology of Homer, but is never Homeric. In one sense, all national poetry is original, even though it be shackled by rules of traditional prosody, and has adopted the system of rhyme devised by writers in another language, whose words seem naturally to bourgeon into assonant terminations. But Japanese poetry is original in every sense of the term. Imitative as the Japanese are, and borrowers from other nations in every department of plastic, fictile, and pictorial art, as well as in religion, politics, and manufactures, the poetry of Japan is a true-born flower of the soil, unique in its mechanical structure, spontaneous and unaffected in its sentiment and subject.

The present collection of Japanese poetry is compiled and translated into English from what the Japanese call “The Collection of Myriad Leaves,” and from a number of other anthologies made by imperial decree year by year from the tenth until the fifteenth century. This was the golden age of Japanese literature, and nowadays, when poetry is dead in Japan, and the people and their rulers are aiming at nothing but the benefits of material civilization, these ancient anthologies are drawn upon for vamping up and compiling what pass for the current verses of the hour. The twenty volumes of the “Myriad Leaves” were probably published first in the latter half of the eighth century, in the reign of the Mikado Shiyaumu; the editor was Prince Moroye, for in those days the cultivation of verse was especially considered the privilege of the princely and aristocratic. A poem written by a man of obscure rank was sometimes included in the royal collections, but the name of the author never. And indeed some of the distinctive quality of Japanese poetry is undoubtedly due to the air in which it flourished. It is never religious, and it is often immoral, but it is always suffused with a certain hue of courtliness, even gentleness. The language is of the most refined delicacy, the thought is never boorish or rude; there is the self-collectedness which we find in the poetry of France and Italy during the Renaissance, and in England during the reign of Queen Anne. It exhibits the most exquisite polish, allied with an avoidance of every shocking or perturbing theme. It seems to combine the enduring lustre of a precious metal with the tenuity of gold-leaf. Even the most vivid emotions of grief and love, as well as the horrors of war, were banished from the Japanese Parnassus, where the Muse of Tragedy warbles, and the lyric Muse utters nothing but ditties of exquisite and melting sweetness, which soothe the ear, but never stir the heart: while their meaning is often so obscure as even to elude the understanding.

Allied to this polite reserve of the courtly poets of Japan is the simplicity of their style, which is, doubtless, in a large measure, due to the meagre range of spiritual faculties which characterize the Japanese mind. This intellectual poverty manifests itself in the absence of all personification and reference to abstract ideas. The narrow world of the poet is here a concrete and literal sphere of experience. He never rises on wings above the earth his feet are treading, and the things around him that his fingers touch. But within this limited area he revels in a great variety of subjects. In the present anthology will be found ballads, love-songs, elegies, as well as short stanzas composed with the strictest economy of word and phrase. These we must characterize as epigrams. They are gems, polished with almost passionless nicety and fastidious care. They remind us very much of Roman poetry under the later Empire, and many of them might have been written by Martial, at the court of Domitian. They contain references to court doings, compliments, and sentiments couched in pointed language. The drama of Japan is represented by two types, one of which may be called lyrical, and the other the comedy of real life. Specimens of both are found in the present collection, which will furnish English readers with a very fair idea of what the most interesting and enterprising of Oriental nations has done in the domain of imaginative literature.

E. W.

Ballads

The Fisher-Boy Urashima

‘Tis spring, and the mists come stealing
O’er Suminóye’s shore,
And I stand by the seaside musing
On the days that are no more.

I muse on the old-world story,
As the boats glide to and fro,
Of the fisher-boy, Urashima,
Who a-fishing loved to go;

How he came not back to the village
Though sev’n suns had risen and set,
But rowed on past the bounds of ocean,
And the sea-god’s daughter met;

How they pledged their faith to each other,
And came to the Evergreen Land,
And entered the sea-god’s palace
So lovingly hand in hand,

To dwell for aye in that country,
The ocean-maiden and he —
The country where youth and beauty
Abide eternally.

But the foolish boy said, “To-morrow
I’ll come back with thee to dwell;
But I have a word to my father,
A word to my mother to tell.”

The maiden answered, “A casket
I give into thine hand;
And if that thou hopest truly
To come back to the Evergreen Land,

“Then open it not, I charge thee!
Open it not, I beseech!”
So the boy rowed home o’er the billows
To Suminóye’s beach.

But where is his native hamlet?
Strange hamlets line the strand.
Where is his mother’s cottage?
Strange cots rise on either hand.

“What, in three short years since I left it,”
He cries in his wonder sore,
“Has the home of my childhood vanished?
Is the bamboo fence no more?

“Perchance if I open the casket
Which the maiden gave to me,
My home and the dear old village
Will come back as they used to be.”

And he lifts the lid, and there rises
A fleecy, silvery cloud,
That floats off to the Evergreen Country: —
And the fisher-boy cries aloud;

He waves the sleeve of his tunic,
He rolls over on the ground,
He dances with fury and horror,
Running wildly round and round.

But a sudden chill comes o’er him
That bleaches his raven hair,
And furrows with hoary wrinkles
The form erst so young and fair.

His breath grows fainter and fainter,
Till at last he sinks dead on the shore;
And I gaze on the spot where his cottage
Once stood, but now stands no more.

Anon.

On Seeing a Dead Body

Methinks from the hedge round the garden
His bride the fair hemp hath ta’en,
And woven the fleecy raiment
That ne’er he threw off him again.

For toilsome the journey he journeyed
To serve his liege and lord,
Till the single belt that encircled him
Was changed to a thrice-wound cord;

And now, methinks, he was faring
Back home to the country-side,
With thoughts all full of his father,
Of his mother, and of his bride.

But here ‘mid the eastern mountains,
Where the awful pass climbs their brow,
He halts on his onward journey
And builds him a dwelling low;

And here he lies stark in his garments,
Dishevelled his raven hair,
And ne’er can he tell me his birthplace,
Nor the name that he erst did bear.

Sakimaro.

The Maiden of Unáhi

In Ashinóya village dwelt
The Maiden of Unáhi,
On whose beauty the next-door neighbors e’en
Might cast no wandering eye;

For they locked her up as a child of eight,
When her hair hung loosely still;
And now her tresses were gathered up,
To float no more at will.

And the men all yearned that her sweet face
Might once more stand reveal’d,
Who was hid from gaze, as in silken maze
The chrysalis lies concealed.

And they formed a hedge round the house,
And, “I’ll wed her!” they all did cry;
And the Champion of Chinu he was there,
And the Champion of Unáhi.

With jealous love these champions twain
The beauteous girl did woo,
Each had his hand on the hilt of his sword,
And a full-charged quiver, too,

Was slung o’er the back of each champion fierce,
And a bow of snow-white wood
Did rest in the sinewy hand of each;
And the twain defiant stood.

Crying, “An ‘twere for her dear sake,
Nor fire nor flood I’d fear!”
The maiden heard each daring word,
But spoke in her mother’s ear: —

“Alas! that I, poor country girl,
Should cause this jealous strife!
As I may not wed the man I love
What profits me my life?

“In Hades’ realm I will await
The issue of the fray.”
These secret thoughts, with many a sigh,
She whisper’d and pass’d away.

To the Champion of Chinu in a dream
Her face that night was shown;
So he followed the maid to Hades’ shade,
And his rival was left alone;

Left alone — too late! too late!
He gapes at the vacant air,
He shouts, and he yells, and gnashes his teeth,
And dances in wild despair.

“But no! I’ll not yield!” he fiercely cries,
“I’m as good a man as he!”
And girding his poniard, he follows after,
To search out his enemy.

The kinsmen then, on either side,
In solemn conclave met,
As a token forever and evermore —
Some monument for to set,

That the story might pass from mouth to mouth,
While heav’n and earth shall stand;
So they laid the maiden in the midst,
And the champions on either hand.

And I, when I hear the mournful tale,
I melt into bitter tears,
As though these lovers I never saw
Had been mine own compeers.

Mushimaro.

The Grave of the Maiden of Unáhi

I stand by the grave where they buried
The Maiden of Unáhi,
Whom of old the rival champions
Did woo so jealously.

The grave should hand down through ages
Her story for evermore,
That men yet unborn might love her,
And think on the days of yore.