BUNYA NO ASAYASU lived about 900 A. D. during the reign of the Emperor Daigo. He is the son of Bunya no Yasuhide, whose poetry I have found untranslatable. Asayasu’s poem was written at the request of the Emperor during a garden party and poem-writing contest.
FUJIWARA NO ATSUTADA is believed to have died in 961 A. d. He was a Chunagon, a State Adviser, and the son of the Udaijin, the Minister of the Right of the Emperor Daigo. The Fujiwara family, or rather, clan, still extant and powerful today, is one of the most extraordinary which has ever existed. For centuries they have provided Japan with administrators, regents, Sh5guns, poets, generals, painters, philosophers, and abbots.
ŌE NO CHISATO is believed to have lived about 825 A. D. Nothing else is known of him, although this poem is one of the most famous in Japanese literature.
THE MONK HENJŌ. Nothing is known of Eikei except that he wrote towards the end of the tenth century.
THE ABBOT HENJŌ died in 850 A. D. Before he entered the monastic life, he was named Yoshimune no Munesada. He was related to the Imperial family and was a powerful courtier of the Emperor Nimmyo. The word “sojd” is often translated “bishop.” There are neither priests nor bishops in Buddhism, but monks and abbots. In Shinto there are priests and priestesses, but no bishops. The poem refers to a dance at court of the daughters of the nobility, on the Feast of Light when the first fruits are offered to the gods and Emperor in the Autumn. The point is that the girls are really moon maidens, and will return to the moon unless the sky becomes overcast.
KAKINOMOTO NO HITOMARO flourished during the reign of the Emperor Mommu, 697-707 A. D. Nothing else is known of him except what can be gathered from his poems. He was possibly a personal attendant of the Emperor. Presumably he spent his later years in Iwami (where he may have been bom) and died there. He is generally considered the leading Japanese poet, and is the only Japanese who ever wrote really great “long poems,” naga uta, which are not long poems but elegies of moderate length. He is a kasei, a deified poet. “Tiring to the feet,” ashibiki, is a pillow-word, makura kotoba, for “moimtain,” yama. This is an archaic word the meaning of which is no longer known, but the majority of commentators derive it from ashi hiku, “to drag the foot.” Others, however, think it means “thickly forested.” “Spreads his tail feathers” is shidari 0, “the spreading tail feathers,” a pillow-word for dori, “pheasant.” The whole phrase is a joshi, or introductory verse, to Naga nagashi yo, “the long, long night.” Many translators have considered such devices either excrescences or only euphonically related to the meaning of the poem. I feel, however, that with a little study their emotional significance and their function as suppressed metaphors, in almost all cases, can be disentangled. The poem, “My girl is waiting for me,” is Hitomaro’s death poem. Poem xxii is a sedoka. “The oars of the boat crossing the River of Heaven” refers to the seventh night of the seventh month, on which the Herd Boy, Altair, crosses the Milky Way to visit the Weaving Girl, Vega, firom whom he is separated all the rest of the year. It is usually said that the magpies link their wings and form a bridge by which the lovers can cross, but sometimes they use a boat. Hitomaro seems to have had at least two “wives,” Kibitsu Uneme, who died before him, and another, Yosami, who wrote some poems on his death, as well as the Iwami girl of the naga utas.
LADY HORIKAWA is known Only as the Mon in, attendant, of the Empress Dowager Taiken, in the middle of the twelfth century.
LADY ISE was mistress of the Emperor Uda, 888-897, and bore him a son, Prince Katsura. Her father was Fujiwara no Tsugukage, Governor of Isc, from which she came by her name. She was famous for her scholarship and the sweetness of her personality. She is not to be confused with Ise Tayu the Priestess of the Ise shrine in the eleventh century.
Virgins of Ise, for information of readers of Genji, were only ritually “pure.” The poem contains two quite different meanings which I have tried to combine.
LADY IZUMI SHIKIBU lived at the end of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh century, a contemporary of Akazome, Murasaki, Sei Shonagon, and Ise Tayu. She was the daughter of Oe no Masamune, and the wife of Tachibana no Michisada, the Lord of Izumi, the mistress of Prince Tametaka and his brother Prince Atsumichi, the wife of Fujiwara no Yasumasa, Lord of Tango. Her correspondence with her lover (except the verse, possibly apocryphal) the Izumi Shikibu Monogatari, is a masterpiece of Japanese prose. Of all the poets of the classical period, she has, to my mind, the deepest and most poignant Buddhist sensibility.
THE MONK JAKUREN was a Fujiwara; Jakuren is his monastic name. He lived at the end of the twelfth ccntury.
MINAMOTO NO KANEMASA flourished early in the twelfth century. He was a member of another great noble house of Japan, the rivals of the Taira. The word translated “shore birds” is chidori, which means sandpipers, plovers, birds like our killdeer and phalaropes. It also means, and is written with the characters for, “the thousand birds.” This is my favorite Japanese poem. There is a parallel implied with the guardians of the gates of life, weary with the cries of souls migrating from hfe to life, and some, passing to the Bhss of Amida’s Paradise, or to Nirvana. The meaning “never finding” is imphcin awaji; also, awa means “spindrift” or “a bubble.” This poem is often echoed in later literature, notably by the great erotic novelist Saikaku in his Futokoro Suzuri: “Hearing the cries of the shorebirds of the Isle of Awaji, I know the sadness of the worlds.” Genji was banished to Suma, and Yukihira, the brother of Narihira; and there the Taira clan, fleeing from the capital with the infant emperor, camped and were surprised and almost exterminated by the Minamoto in a great battle that brought to an end the finest years of Japanese civilization. See also the twenty-six syllable folksongs in Georges Bonneau, L’expression Poétique dans le Folk-lore Japonais, Vol. i, pp. 51, 50, 57. (See also the note on Yukihira.)
TAIRA NO KANEMORI flourished in the tenth century. Nothing else is known of him. The Tairas were the third great family of Japan.
FUJIWARA NO GO-KANESUKE lived in the tenth century and had office as a State Councillor, Chūnagon. The first two lines of the poem are an excellent example of the use of a seemingly irrelevant preface, J5shi, linked to the rest of the poem emotionally and as a suppressed metaphor.
LADY KASA lived in the eighth century, and was a lover of Yakamochi. She was possibly related to the femily of Kasa Kanamura, who made a collection of poetry, some of which was included in the Manyoshu, or to the Monk Manzei, whose secular name was Kasamaro, also a poet of the Manyoshu.
THE PRIME MINISTER KINTSUNE (Nyūdo Saki no Dajō Daijin) held office in the early part of the thirteenth century. Later he became a monk, and founded the temple Saionji.
FUJIWARA NO KIYOSUKE died in 1177. He was the son of Fujiwara no Akisuke, also a poet, and was Lord of Nagato, Vice Steward of the ex-Empress, and held the Senior Fourth Court Rank. The Zoku Shika Shū anthology, which he compiled at the order of the Emperor Nijo, was unfinished at the latter’s death, and so is not ranked as one of the Imperial Anthologies.
THE EMPEROR KŌKŌ reigned from 885 to 887. This poem was written in his youth.
ONO NO KOMACHI lived from 834 to 880. She is the legendary beauty of Japan. She is supposed to have lost her beauty in old age and become a homeless beggar. This may be true, but it is improbable and is most likely derived from her poems, many of which deal with the transitoriness of life and beauty. She was the daughter of Yoshisada, Lord of Dewa. The second poem echoes the curse of Iha Nagahimi in the Nihongi.
FUJIWARA NO GO-KYŌGOKU was regent, Sessho, and Prime Minister, Dajō Daijin, at the end of the twelfth century. This poem has been attributed to Yoshitsune; the twelfth century war lord.
FUJIWARA NO MASATSUNE lived from II70 tO I22I. He was a Sangi, a Councillor of State, with the Junior Third Rank, and was one of the compilen of the anthology. Shin Kokin Shū. His father was Toshinari (Shunzei), a famous poet. “Fullers’ mallets sound” refers to the beating of cloth in cold water, at the stream’s edge— one of the conventional signs
of Autumn common to both Chinese and Japanese poetry, in Chinese, “wen han ch’u,” “hear cold mallet.”
FUJIWARA NO MICHINOBU was bom in 973. He became a Lieutenant General and showed great promise as a poet, but died at the age of twenty-two.
THB MOTHER OF THE COMMANDER MICHITSUNA (Udaishō Michitsuna no haha) was the wife of the Regent Kaneie, and lived in the latter part of the tenth century. According to legend, she gave this poem to her husband when he came home very late one night, as he habitually did.
OSHKOCHI NO MITSUNE lived at the beginning of the tenth century. He was one of the compilers of the Kokin Shū.
MINAMOTO NO MOROTADA lived in the twelfth century. He was an officer in the Imperial Guard. Another translation might be
In the mountain village
I am awakened
By the wind in the leaves.
Deep in the night I hear
The deer cry out.
PRINCB MOTOYOSHI was the son of the Emperor Yosei, who reigned from 877 to 884. Again an ambiguity hinged on a double meaning of Naniwa, as in the poem by Lady Ise.
MINAMOTO NO MUNEYUKI lived in the tenth century.
LADY MURASAKI SHIKIBU lived from 974 to 1031. She is the greatest figure in Japanese literature, the author of The Tale of Genji, one of the world’s greatest books, of a diary, and of numerous poems. She was the daughter of Tametoki, Lord of Echigo, the grand-daughter of Fujiwara no Kanesuke, a well-known poet, and the second wife of Fujiwara no Nobutaka. She was a Lady-in-Waiting to the Empress Akiko. Shikibu is a title, actually a military one, which seems to have been given to important women of the court as a courtesy. Murasaki is the name of the wife of Genji in her novel. Arthur Waley gives a complete biography in the introduction to his translation of Genji.
ARIWARA NO NARIHIRA lived in the middle of the ninth century. The Ise Monogatari purports to be based upon his diaries, but it is more likely a largely fictional romance developed by imagining situations for his poems. He is the legendary great lover of Japanese literature and there are several plays and Noh dramas about him. Kakitsubata, translated by Pound, is one of the most subtle and beautifiil of all Noh plays. In the poem about Tatsuta River, the reference, is to what we call tie-and-dye. The blue is imderstood as the ground color of the red. Note the resemblance to Western prosody, especially in the fust poem.
THE MONK NŌIN lived in the eleventh century. His secular name was Tachibana no Nagayasu. Compare the second poem with the haiku by Issa.
THE MONK RYŌZEN was a monk of the Gion Temple near Kyoto during the eleventh century.
FUJIWARA NO SADAIE lived from 1162 to 1242. He was an Imperial Vice-Councillor, Gon-Chunagon, and the compiler of the Hyakunin isshu, “Single Poems by a Hundred Poets,” from which over half of the poems in this book are taken.
He assisted in the compilation of the Shin Kokin ShS for the retired Emperor Go-Toba and the Shin Chokusen Shii for the Emperor Go-Horikawa, and left a diary, the MeigetsuKe, or “Bright Moon Diary.” The translation is free— the Japanese refers to the “burning” sea water in the salt kilns.
FUJIWARA NO SADAYORI wasa Gon-Chūnagon, or Vice Councillor, in the middle of the eleventh century.
LADY ŌTOMO NO SAKANOE lived at the beginning of the eighth century. She was the aunt of Otomo Yakamochi. In poem ixra elide toyū.
FUJIWARA NO SANBSADA (Go Tokudaiji no Sadaijin) was Minister of the Left of the Temple Tokudaiji at the end of the twelfth century. In the dodoitsu form this is one of the most popular geisha songs.
THE SHŌGUN MINAMOTO NO SANBMOTO (Kamakura no Udaijin) was only nominally Shogun and exercised none of the authority of the office, but spent his time in writing, calligraphy, and the appreciation of the arts. In 1219 he was murdered at the shrine ofHachiman, the God of War, in Kamakura, by his nephew, the Priest Kugyo. With his death the Minamoto clan lost all of its power.
THE EMPEROR SANJŌ reigned from 1012 to 1017, when he was forced to retire by the Regent Fujiwara no Michinaga.
THE PRIEST SABUMARU lived before the ninth century. He was a Tayū, or priest of a Shinto shrine. Outside of these two facts, only legends are known of him.
LADY SEISHŌNAGON was bom in 967, the daughter of Kiyohara no Motosuke, a descendant of the Emperor Temmu, who was a poet, a teacher of poetry, and one of the compilers of the Gosen Shu anthology, as well as Governor of the Province of Bingo. She was an attendant of the Empress Sadako. (Shōnagon is the title of her office.) She is the author of the famous “Pillow Book,” Makura no Sdshi, a half diary, half book of short essays and pensées, a class of literature peculiar to China and Japan, and something like the Essaysof Montaigne or a very secular Pensées of Pascal. She was considerably of a blue stocking, with somewhat of a waspish temper, which the poem given here reflects. My translation is a possible meaning of the poem, but the accepted meaning is too complex to stand translation: Briefly, a Chinese warrior once escaped from captivity when one of his retainers imitated the crowing of a cock so perfectly that the guards lowered the gates of the city in which they were held. Sei says that although the imitation of a cock’s crow may fool the world, the guards of Osaka Gate (which means “the Gate of the Hill of Meeting”) will not permit subterfuge — that is, it is not possible to gain an assignation with her by vulgar devices. Osaka is not, of course, the modem city, but a hill East of Kyoto and South of Lake Biwa.
THE MONK SHUN-E lived in the twelfth century. He was the son of Minamoto no Toshiyori, a Senior State Councillor and compiler of the Kin yo Shu Anthology.
THE MONK SOSEI, whose lay name was Yoshimine no Hironobu, lived at the end of the ninth century. He was the son of the Abbot Henjō.
THE STEWARDESS OF THB EMPRESS KŌKA (Koka Mon-in nO Betto) was the daughter of Fujiwara no Toshitaka and lived in the twelfth century. The poem also means, “For the sake of a joint of a reed of Naniwa Bay, shall I wade past the depth-measuring gauge.”
THE LADY suo was the daughter of Taira no Tsugunaka, Governor of Suo, and a Lady-in-Waiting of the Emperor Go-Reizei, who reigned in the middle of the eleventh century. The commentators give several legends, all improbable, about the occasion of the poem.
MIBU NO TADAMI lived in the tenth century.
FUJIWARA NO TADAMICHI was Regent and Prime Minister in the latter part of the twelfth century.
MIBU NO TADAMINE lived in the tenth century. This poem has often been considered the best of the Kokin Shū, of which Tadamine was one of the compilers. His dates are sometimes given as 867-965.
KI NO TOMONOBI lived in the early tenth century. He was a nephew of Tsurayuki and aided him in compiling the Kokin Shū.
MINAMOTO NO TŌRU (Kawara no Sadaijin) died in 949. He was Minister of the Left, Sadaijin, living in Kawara, a part of Kyoto. The poem is very elliptical in Japanese; another reading could be:
Some woman
Has made my mind as
Disordered as Michinoku
Cloth, printed with tangled ferns.
It did not get that way
By itself
THE PRIEST FUJIWARA NO TOSHINARA died in the year 1205, He was a courtier of the Empress Dowager Kogu and later became a Shinto priest. He is also known by the Chinese pronimciation of his name, Shunzei, by his priestly name, Shakua, and by the title, Kotai Kogu no tayū Toshinari. He was poetry instructor of the Emperor Go-Toba and one of the leaders of the poetic renascence of that Monarch’s court. He was also a famous painter and calligrapher.
FUJIWARA NO TOSHIYUKI lived from 88o to 907. He was an officer of the Imperial Guard and a famous calligrapher as well as poet. The poem is a good illustration of the use of a seemingly irrelevant preface. The first two lines are linked to the rest of the poem by the word yoru, the “crowding” of the waves, which is repeated in the third line in the sense of “night.”
MINAMOTO NO TSUNENOBU lived in the latter half of the eleventh century. He was a Dainagon, or Minister of State. Implicit in the poem is the notion that the rustling of rice leaves by the hut of the hermit reminds him of the rustle o
f silk skirts of the court he has abandoned. Tsunenobu himself never became a recluse. He was famous as a poet, painter, calligrapher, and musician.
HAKUMICHI NO TSURAKI livcd in the furst quarter oi the tenth century. He was a provincial governor.
Ki NO TSURAYUKI lived from 882 to 946. He is one of the major figures of Japanese literature, the author of the Tosa Nikki, the Tosa Diary, the principal editor of the Kokin Shiianthology, generally considered equal or superior to the first great collection, the Manyōshū, and the author of the preface to the Kokin Shit, which is the first masterpiece of Japanese prose. He was also one of the greatest Japanese calligraphers. He compiled another anthology— Shinsen Shii, “The New Collection of Poems,” and a selection firom the Manyōshū. Another reading for the second poem could be
I do not know
What they are thinking about
In my birthplace, but
I do know diat
The flowers still smell the same.
There is a reference to a famous quatrain by Wang Wei.
THE EMPEROR UDA reigned from 880 to 897. This poem is also attributed to Ki no Tsurayuki.
LADY UKON lived at the end of the ninth century. Nothing else is known of her.
ŌTOMO NO YAKAMOCHI lived from 718 to 785. He was the son of Ōtomo no Tabito, whose poems in praise of sakeare famous, and who was a Grand Councillor of State. Yakamochi himself became a Chūnagon, Senior Councillor of State, after a career as a General, courtier, and provincial Governor. His family, which numbered several poets, was broken up after his death because of a crime of one of its members. His poetry is exceptional in the Manyōshū for its exquisite delicacy. He writes almost like a précieux of the eleventh century. The poem, “The frost lies white,” is imitated from the many Chinese “dawn audience” poems. (Until its fall in 1912, it was the custom of the Chinese Court to open at dawn.) The Magpies’ Bridge is both the bridge across the Milky Way by which the Herd Boy (Altair) visits the Weaving Girl (Vega) once a year on the seventh night of the seventh moon, and also a bridge in the Japanese Palace of those days, named, of course, after the mythical one. The poem can mean that he has very important business at court and has come early, or that he is stealing away from an assignation with one of the palace ladies, or that he has waited all night and she has not come. The orange blossoms were those of the tachibana, the small Japanese orange, probably not yet edible; the pearls were baroque abalone pearls.
100 Poems from the Japanese Page 5