yatsumesasu
The many-clouds-rising
Izumo- take ga
Izumo Brave
hakeru tachi
wears a sword
tsuzura sawa maki
with many vines wrapped around it,
sami nashi ni aware
but no blade inside, alas!
Thus, having swept away and pacified his foes, he went up and reported on his mission.
Then the emperor once again commanded Yamato Takeru: “Subdue and pacify the unruly deities and the unsubmissive people of the twelve regions to the east!” He dispatched together with him the ancestor of the Omi of Kibi, whose name was Mi-suki-tomo-mimi-take-hiko, and bestowed on him a giant spear of hihiragi wood. Thus, when he received the command and set out, he went to the shrine of the Great Deity of Ise and worshiped at the court of the deity.
Then he said to his aunt Princess Yamato: “Is it because the emperor wishes me to die soon? Why did he dispatch me to attack the evil people of the west? Then when I came back up, why did he dispatch me once more after only a short while, without giving me troops, to subdue the evil people of the twelve regions to the east? In view of all this, he must cause me to die soon.” He lamented and wept.
On his departure, Princess Yamato gave him the sword Kusanagi, Grass Feller. She also gave him a bag and said: “Should there be an emergency, open this bag.” Afterward, he arrived in the land of Owari and went into the house of Princess Miyazu, the ancestress of the governor of Owari. Although he wanted to marry her, he decided to marry her on his return. Thus promising, he proceeded to the eastern lands and subdued and pacified all the unruly deities and unsubmissive people of the mountains and rivers.
At that time, when he arrived in the land of Sagamu, the governor of that land deceived him, saying: “In this plain there is a great pond. In the pond there lives a deity who is an extremely unruly deity.” Then when he went into the plain in order to see that deity, the governor set fire to the plain. Realizing that he had been deceived, he opened the bag given him by his aunt Princess Yamato, looked inside, and found a fire-striking implement.
Then, first he mowed away the grass with his sword; then he lit a fire with the fire-striking implement and set a counterfire to keep the fire away. Then he went back out and killed the governor and all of his clan. Then he set fire to them and burned them. Today the place is therefore called Yakizu, Burning Ford.
From there he proceeded to cross the sea of Hashiri-mizu, Running Water. Just then the deity of the crossing stirred up the waves so that the boat went adrift and could not move forward. Then his empress, whose name was Princess Oto-tachibana, said: “I will go into the sea in your stead, O prince. You, O prince, must complete the mission entrusted to you and return to report on it.” When she was about to go into the sea, they took many layers of sedge mats, many layers of skin carpets, and many layers of silk carpets and spread them out on top of the waves, and she went down onto them. At this time the rough waves of themselves became calm, and the boat was able to move forward. Then the empress sang this song:
sanesashi
O you, my lord, alas—
Sagamu no ono ni
you who once, standing among the flames
moyuru hi no
of the burning fire, spoke my name
honaka ni tachite
on the mountain-surrounded
toishi kimi wamo
Plain of Sagamu!
Seven days later, the empress’s comb was washed ashore. Taking this comb, they made her tomb and placed it inside.
From there he proceeded and subdued all of the unruly Emishi and pacified the unruly deities of the mountains and rivers. Then on his way back to the capital, he arrived at the foot of the pass of Ashigara, and just as he was eating his travel rations, the deity of the pass, assuming the form of a white deer, came and stood there. Then he took a piece of hiru plant left over from his meal and struck the deer. It hit the deer’s eye and killed him.
Then he climbed up the pass and, grieving, sighed three times: “My wife, alas!” Therefore the name of the land is Azuma. Then he proceeded overland from that land to Kai. While he was there at the palace of Sakaori, he sang this song:
Niibari
How many nights have we slept
Tsukuba o sugite
since passing Niibari
ikuyo ka netsuru
and Tsukuba?
Then the old man tending the fire sang this song to continue his song:
kaga nabete
The number of days is, all together,
yo ni wa kokonoyo
of nights, nine,
hi ni wa tooka o
and of days, ten.
Then he rewarded the old man and made him the governor of the land of Azuma.
From that land he crossed over to the land of Shinano. There he subdued the deity of the Shinano pass and returned to the land of Owari. He entered the dwelling of Princess Miyazu with whom he had previously made a promise of marriage. At that time, when presenting his food, Princess Miyazu brought the great wine cup and presented it to him. But Princess Miyazu had menstrual blood staining the hem of her cloak. Noticing the menstrual blood, he sang this song:
Across the heavenly Kagu Mountain
the long-necked swan flies like a sharp sickle.
Your arm slender and delicate like the bird’s neck—
although I wish to clasp it in my embrace,
although I desire to sleep with you,
on the hem of the cloak you are wearing
the moon has risen.
Then Princess Miyazu sang this song in reply:
O high-shining Sun Prince,
O my great lord ruling in peace!
as the years one by one pass by,
the moons also one by one elapse.
It is no wonder that while waiting in vain for you,
on the cloak I am wearing the moon should rise.
Then they were conjugally united, and he, leaving his sword Kusanagi at Princess Miyazu’s dwelling, went to take the deity of Mount Ibuki.
At this time he said, “I will take the deity of this mountain with my bare hands,” and went up the mountain. Then on the mountain he met a white boar the size of a cow. Thereupon he spoke a charm, saying: “This is the deity’s messenger, which is here transformed into a white boar. I will not kill it now but will kill it when I come back,” and went up.
At this time the deity of the mountain caused a violent hailstorm and dazed Yamato Takeru. It was not the deity’s messenger that had been transformed into the white boar but the deity itself. He was dazed because he had spoken a charm to it.3
Then he came back down the mountain; his mind awoke somewhat as he rested at the spring of Tama-kura-be. For that reason it is called Isame, Spring of Coming to the Senses. From there he set out, and arriving on the plain of Tagi, he said: “I had always thought in my heart of flying through the skies, but now my legs cannot walk; they have become wobbly.” For this reason that place is called Tagi, or Totter.
From there he proceeded a little farther and, because of his extreme fatigue, walked along slowly, using a staff. For this reason that place is called Walking-Stick Pass. When he arrived at the foot of the single pine on the Cape of Otsu, he found that a sword that he had left behind when he had eaten there had not disappeared but was still there. Then he sang this song:
Directly across from Owari,
on the Cape Otsu you stand,
O lone pine—O my brother!—
O lone pine, were you a man,
I would give you a sword to wear,
I would dress you with clothes,
O lone pine—O my brother!—
Proceeding from there, when he arrived at the village of Mie, he again said: “My legs are like a threefold curve, and I am extremely tired.” For this reason that place is called Mie, or Threefold.
From there he proceeded to the plain of Nobo, where he sang this song recalling his homeland:
>
Yamato is the highest part of the land;
the mountains are green partitions, lying layer upon layer.
Nestled among the mountains,
how beautiful is Yamato!
Again he sang:
Let those whose life is secure
take from Mount Heguri of the rush matting
leaves of great oak and wear them in their hair
—O my lads!—
These are “songs of yearning for the homeland.” Again he sang:
From the direction
of my beloved home
the clouds are rising.
This is a “half song.” By this time his illness had become critical. Then he sang this song:
Next to the maiden’s
sleeping place
I left the saber, the sword—
alas, that sword!
Immediately after he had sung the songs, he died. Then couriers were sent to the emperor.
At this time his empresses and children who were in Yamato came down to the plain of Nobo and constructed his tomb. Then, crawling around the neighboring rice paddies, they sang while weeping:
The vines of the tokoro
crawl around
among the rice stems,
the rice stems in the rice paddies
bordering on the tomb.
At this time he was transformed into a giant white bird and, soaring through the skies, flew away toward the beach. Then the wives and children, although their feet had been cut by the stumps of the bamboo reeds, forgot the pain and ran after the bird, weeping. At this time they sang this song:
Moving with difficulty, up to our waists
in the field of low bamboo stalks,
we cannot go through the skies—
but alas, must go by foot!
Again, when they waded into the sea and moved through the waves with difficulty, they sang:
Going by sea, waist deep in the water,
we move forward with difficulty;
like plants growing by a large river,
we drift aimlessly in the ocean currents.
Again, when the bird had flown to the rocky shores, they sang:
The plover of the beach
does not go by the beaches,
but follows along the rocky shores.
These four songs were sung at his funeral. For this reason, even today these songs are sung at the funeral of an emperor. From that land the bird flew away and stopped at Shiki in the land of Kōchi. For this reason they built his tomb at that place and enshrined him there. This tomb is called the White Bird Tomb. But from that place the bird again soared through the heavens and flew away. During the entire time that Yamato Takeru went about subduing the country, the ancestor of the Atae of the Kume, whose name was Nana-tsuka-hagi, served in his company as his food server.
[Adapted from a translation by Donald Philippi]
MAN’YŌSHŪ (COLLECTION OF MYRIAD LEAVES, CA. 785)
The Man’yōshū (Collection of Myriad Leaves), Japan’s oldest anthology of poetry, consists of twenty volumes containing more than 4,500 poems (uta), most of which were composed between the mid-seventh and the mid-eighth century. The Man’yōshū appears to have been edited in several stages by different people over seventy or eighty years. The first half of volume 1 was probably compiled at the beginning of the eighth century, and the first sixteen volumes had been written by 744. The finished product was probably completed between 770 and 785.
The three main poetic categories of the Man’yōshū are zōka, sōmon, and banka. zōka eventually came to mean “miscellaneous poems,” but originally it may have meant something like “public poems.” Sōmon literally means “exchanges” and includes poems about love as well as (but to a far lesser extent) interpersonal and family relationships. Banka literally means “coffin-pulling songs” and originally referred to poems that were recited at the site of the temporary burial of emperors and princes. When this ritual practice was replaced by cremation at the end of the seventh century, the category of banka came to refer to poems about death in a more general sense. The terms banka and zōka are poetic categories in the Wen xuan (Monzen), a noted Chinese anthology of poetry. Sōmon was not a poetic category in China but existed as a poetic term meaning “exchange.”
The two main poetic forms of the Man’yōshū are the tanka (short poem) and the chōka (long poem). When a tanka is placed after a chōka, it is sometimes referred to as a hanka (envoy). The tanka consists of five metric units, or ku (measures), in a 5/7/5/7/7 syllable pattern. The chōka, which can be of various lengths, alternates between measures of five and seven syllables, closing with three measures usually in a 5/7/7 syllable pattern. Some of the early chōka in the Man’yōshū, however, follow a short-measure/long-measure pattern, without strict syllable measures. Most of the poems in the Man’yōshū are tanka, with the chōka form tending to be composed by specialized poets on specific themes. Two other forms are the sedōka (head-turning poem), with a pattern of 5/7/7/5/7/7, of which there are sixty-two examples, and the bussokuseki-ka (Buddhist stone poem), with a pattern of 5/7/5/7/7/7, of which there is only one poem in the anthology.
The main rhetorical figures of the poetry of the Man’yōshū are the makurakotoba (pillow word), the jokotoba (preface phrase), and the tsuiku (binary measures). Makurakotoba, usually consisting of five syllables, are formulaic epithets that modify a specific word. In many cases, they are used before place-names, but they also modify words like “palace,” “gods,” “life,” and other terms of special significance. Some makurakotoba are words of praise, others are simply descriptive, and many have obscure meanings and origins. One function of pillow words appears to have been rhythmic, producing a 5–7/5–7–7 rhythm in the tanka and a 5–7/5–7/5–7 rhythm in the chōka, since the pillow word (5) and the modified phrase (7) must be read together as a unit. Originally they may have lent a sacred significance to the words they modified. Some may also be references to legends, particularly those modifying place-names. In Kakinomoto no Hitomaro’s poems, though, pillow words tend to have specific meanings and are usually translated as adjectives or as adjectival phrases.
The jokotoba (preface phrase) usually consists of two or three measures and introduces the main topic of the poem or a particular section of a long poem. In general, the jokotoba is connected to the poem’s main statement through a pun, in which case it often has no direct connection to the meaning of the poem, or through metaphoric association (for instance, “the river passes away [like] my love [passed away]”). In contrast to makurakotoba, jokotoba are not formulaic epithets and often are unique to a particular poem. They can be considered metaphorical or punning introductions to the main statement of the poem. Because of the difficulty of translating puns, most preface phrases are translated with an explanatory word such as “like” or “as.”
Tsuiku (binary measures) are a rhetorical technique of Chinese origin most often used in chōka. The most common tsuiku establish some kind of spatial or temporal framework, such as day/night, morning/evening, spring/autumn, land/ sea, and heaven/earth. Many of them are formulaic phrases used in a variety of contexts.
The Man’yōshū is generally divided into four historical periods. The first period covers the poetry produced before the Jinshin war (672). The second period begins after the Jinshin war and ends with the capital’s move to Nara (710). The third period contains poetry produced from 710 to the somewhat arbitrary date of 733 (the date of the poet Yamanoue no Okura’s death). The fourth period continues to 759, the date of the last poem in the Man’yōshū.
The Man’yōshū is a vast anthology that includes poems composed over more than a century and compiled over some seventy-five years. The Man’yōshū probably began to be compiled in and around the court in the second period. In the third period, with the move of the capital to Nara and the expansion of the ritsuryō state, poetic circles also were formed outside the capital when courtiers were sent to the provinces as governors. By the fourth per
iod, the compilation of the Man’yōshū appears to have become mainly a private enterprise by Ōtomo no Yakamochi (d. 785) and his circle in Etchū Province.
The Man’yōshū is written entirely in Chinese characters, which were used in two main ways: as kun, or Japanese readings (reading the graph for “house” as ihe), and as on, or one-unit Sino-Japanese readings (reading the graph for “house” as ke). In addition, the kun readings could have a semantic value or could have been used also for their sound. The other possibilities include the reading of characters by semantic association, such as writing the character for “winter” but reading it as “cold.”
The Man’yōshū was a cultural production of the aristocracy, and therefore emperors and high-ranking aristocrats are well represented. But with the exception of the Ōtomo clan poets (Tabito, Lady Sakanoue, Yakamochi), most of the major poets of the Man’yōshū seem to have been lower-ranking aristocrats, such as Hitomaro, Akahito, Okura, and Mushimaro. Many of these lower-ranking poets may have had collections of their own, as can be deduced by references in the Man’yōshū to the Hitomaro Collection, the Mushimaro Collection, and Yamanoue no Okura’s Forest of Classified Poetry, to cite just a few examples. The Man’yōshū was, in a sense, a collection of collections.
In regard to the Man’yōshū as a whole, it is clear that uta (poetry) was a very versatile practice: it was used as a mythical-historical narrative, as an expression of mourning, and as entertainment at banquets; to describe the political order; to tell tales and legends, for both real and fictional social interaction and correspondence; and to mark public occasions at court. In addition, and perhaps most important, poetry was something to be collected and classified in encyclopedic fashion. The Man’yōshū thus was compiled not only as a definitive guide to poetic practice but also as a monument of poetic knowledge.
Traditional Japanese Literature Page 6