Traditional Japanese Literature
Page 74
Tarō had been able to navigate the mountains and cliffs of Shinano, but never before had he encountered such a slippery smooth surface as these oiled floor boards, and he skidded and slipped to and fro as he walked. Nadeshiko led him behind the lady’s screen and disappeared. Just as he was about to approach her, he lost his footing, tumbled head over heels, and landed squarely on top of her cherished koto, Tehikimaru, smashing it to smithereens. The lady was heartsick. Tears streaming down a face turned as red as the leaves of autumn, she said:
Whatever can I do now
to while away my idle hours?
Gazing up at her from his prone position, Tarō returned:
The koto’s smashed; my hopes are dashed—
I’m so abashed!199
With this, the lady realized that Tarō had the soul of a gentleman. So moved was she that they must have shared a karmic bond, for this could not be the shallow connection of a single lifetime. She pledged herself to him.
Dawn broke all too soon, and as Tarō was making ready for a hasty departure, she said, “I was moved in spite of myself to invite you in. Surely this means that we share a bond from a former life. If you hold me dear to your heart, please remain here. I may be a court lady, but what difference does that make?” And so Tarō agreed to stay.
Together the lady and her maid worked day and night setting him to rights. They had him bathe every day for a week, and by the seventh day he sparkled like a jewel. Each successive day thereafter he shone more brilliantly and came to acquire a reputation as a handsome man and an accomplished poet of linked verse. As his lady was of high rank, she was able to instruct him in all matters of gentlemanly deportment. His dress was impeccable: from the hang of his trousers to the angle of his court hat and the coif of his hair, he easily outdid the highest of nobility. The Governor of Buzen heard about him and summoned him to an audience. Seeing Tarō so beautifully dressed, he remarked, “You are indeed a handsome man. What is your name?”
“Lazy Tarō.”
This was so inappropriate that the Governor renamed him Uta no Saemon.200
Eventually, word reached the inner sanctum of the palace, and Tarō was summoned to report there at once. He tried to decline the honor, but to no avail. He rode in a carriage to the palace, and on his arrival he was ushered into the formal audience hall.
“I hear that you are a prodigy at linked verse. Compose a couple of links,” ordered the Emperor. Just then, a warbler flew down, perched on a plum branch, and sang. Hearing this, Tarō recited:
Is it because spring rain has spilled over the umbrella
of plum blossoms that the warbler is bathed in tears?
“Do they call it a plum where you come from?” asked the Emperor. Without hesitation, Tarō replied:
In Shinano the flower is called baika;
in the capital what might they call the plum?
The Emperor was very impressed. “Who are your ancestors?” he asked.
“I have no ancestors.”
The Emperor ordered him to inquire of the Deputy Governor of Shinano about his ancestry. The Deputy Governor in turn gave the commission to the local steward, and eventually the results were brought to the Emperor in a missive wrapped in rush matting. On examination, the Emperor learned that the Middle Captain of the Second Rank, the second son of the fifty-third emperor, Ninmyō,201 also known as Fukakusa, had been exiled to Shinano, where he lived for many years. He had no children, and his desperation led him to make a pilgrimage to Zenkō Temple, where he petitioned the Amida Buddha. As a result, he was blessed with a son. When the child was but three years old, his parents died, and thus he dropped to a lowly status and was tainted with the dirt of humble commoners.
On reading this, the Emperor saw that Tarō was not far removed from the imperial line itself. He dubbed him the Middle Captain of Shinano and granted him the domains of Kai and Shinano. Accompanied by his wife, the Middle Captain went to the village of Asahi in Shinano. Since Nobuyori, the Steward of Atarashi, had been so kind to him, he made him General Administrator of his domains and awarded land to each of the farmers who had fed him for three years. For the site of his own mansion, he selected Tsukama, and there set up his household. Everyone, regardless of social standing, obeyed him, and he governed his domains in peace and tranquillity under the protection of the gods and buddhas. He lived for 120 years, producing many descendants, and his household overflowed with the Seven Treasures and abundant wealth. He became a god of longevity and the Great Deity of Odaka, while his wife was a manifestation of the Asai Gongen.
This occurred during the reign of Emperor Montoku.202 Tarō was a manifestation of a god who brought together those who had gathered karmic merit from a previous life. He vowed that when anyone, man or woman, came to worship him, he would fulfill the request. Usually, ordinary men are provoked to anger at talk of their origins, but, when the origins of a god are revealed, the torments of the Three Heats203 are quelled, and he is immediately delighted. As revealed in this tale, even a lazy man may be pure and sincere at heart.
The god has vowed that those who daily read this story or tell it to others will be filled with riches and achieve their hearts’ desires. How wonderfully blessed!
[Translated by Virginia Skord]
POPULAR LINKED VERSE (HAIKAI)
Haikai (literally, “popular or unorthodox poetry”) usually take the form of interlinking verses, alternating between seventeen-syllable and fourteen-syllable verses. Haikai also appear earlier in the form of the thirty-one-syllable waka in the Kokinshū (ca. 905), in which the term applies to thirty-one-syllable waka that either are humorous or diverge from courtly standards in diction, content, or aesthetics. Here haikai were largely characterized by what they were not: elegant, refined, and aristocratic.
As linked verse, haikai developed alongside classical or orthodox linked verse (renga) but without its restrictions in diction and rules. The typical form was a fourteen-syllable (7/7) previous verse (maeku) followed by a seventeen-syllable (5/7/5) added verse (tsukeku), which combined with and twisted the first verse. The seventeen-syllable (5/7/5) opening verse (hokku), which required a seasonal word (kigo) and a cutting word (kireji), also became an independent form (and eventually the modern haiku). For most of history, haikai were scorned as beneath the notice of serious anthologizers, and so most haikai verses have been lost. But with the advent of the Warring States period (1467–1573), when “inferior overcame superior” in a massive political, economic, and cultural upheaval, haikai became popular. Like the kyōgen plays performed between the more rarified no dramas, haikai reveled in the daily, comedic, and vulgar, taking particular pleasure in skewering pretensions, religious ideals, and courtly romance. The increasingly rule-bound and sophisticated form of classical linked verse likewise contributed to the growth of haikai linked verse, which was simpler and addressed the interests and concerns of a wider cross section of society.
The oldest extant collection of haikai linked verse appears in book 19 of the first court-sponsored anthology of linked verse, the Tsukuba Collection (Tsuku-bashū, 1356–1357). Its compilers, the court literatus Nijō Yoshimoto (1320–1388) and his poetic adviser Gusai (also read as Kyūsei, 1282?–1376?), were intent on raising the reputation of verse to rival that of waka, and so they modeled the anthology, including its haikai linked-verse section, on the Kokinshū. Interest in haikai grew, and gradually the genre began to be perceived as a separate enterprise. It was at this point that the first extant anthology completely devoted to haikai, the Hobbyhorse Collection of Mad Songs (Chikuba kyōginshū, 1499), was compiled. The Hobbyhorse Collection is divided into sections of hokku and linked-verse couplets of maeku and tsukeku. In order to elevate classical linked verse, Sōgi (1421–1502), an influential fifteenth-century renga master, did not include haikai in his New Tsukuba Collection (Shinsen tsukubashū, 1495). The fact that Chikuba kyōginshū was compiled only four years after Shinsen tsukubashū suggests that it was a counterpoint to classical renga.
The most famous anthology of early haikai is the Newly Selected Mongrel Tsukuba Collection (Shinsen inu tsukubashū, ca. 1530), which came to be known as the Mongrel Tsukuba Collection (Inu tsukubashū). The editor of the Mongrel Tsukuba Collection is thought to have been Yamazaki Sōkan (1465–1533). The first extended haikai sequence is the “Moritake Thousand Verses” (Moritake senku), composed by Arakida Moritake (1473–1549), a colleague of Sōkan. Although the Hobbyhorse Collection was not circulated widely in the Tokugawa period, the Mongrel Tsukuba Collection and the “Moritake Thousand Verses” became well known, with the result that Sōkan and Moritake were regarded by later generations as the founders of haikai. As a genre, haikai reached its apex in the Tokugawa period, when it became the most popular poetic and literary form of that time.
HOBBYHORSE COLLECTION OF MAD SONGS (CHIKUBA KYŌGINSHŪ, 1499)
The Hobbyhorse Collection of Mad Songs, whose compiler is not known, is the first extant anthology devoted to haikai. Roughly patterned on the imperial waka collections, it begins with sections on the seasons, followed by sections on love (koi) and miscellaneous topics. Selections of two-verse links are translated here. The witty and often ribald approach to the classical topics makes an interesting contrast with more formal waka and renga anthologies. Many of the selections in the Hobbyhorse Collection also appear in the Mongrel Tsukuba Collection. The preface to the anthology—which is rich in puns, presaging the later haikai prose (haibun)—is an important early manifesto regarding the value of haikai.
Preface
This is an age in which all have a taste for linked verse, in which poetry is pounded out like rice cakes near and far upon Mount Tsukuba; it is even in the mouths of the gods, and the buddhas do not turn their faces from it.204 My verse is bent to breaking, a bad reed at Naniwa, and I just sit breaking wind beside the rush of the waves at Waka Bay.205 But poetry in China does not deviate from the right path, and in Japan it is as seeds in the heart; so like one of those Chinese poet-sages living in lofty madness or feigned lunacy, I have assembled verses just as wild and intoxicated, and entitled the whole Hobbyhorse Collection of Mad Songs.206
I had no way to search throughout the eight Kantō provinces to the east, nor could I inquire in the nine of Kyushu to the west; I simply copied down what people told me or I happened to hear. They are shallow, like the water at the bottom of a well in which lives a frog of a lay priest; scentless and bland like a dried plum of a monk in a forest.207 But even so, they may help guide those who look for pears but pick up chestnuts, or amuse those who cannot tell gems from stones.208 So I view them as noble, just as the barking of a village dog can lead to enlightenment, or as the belling of a stag can reveal the Truth. Perhaps he who takes up this collection will find it a morsel to whet a drinker’s thirst.
Autumn
81–82
keikai sureba
When debts pile up,
aki zo nao uki
autumn is even sadder.
tsuyu shimo no
As frosty dew falls,
furu ni sode sae
he gives up even his robe
shichi ni shite
as a pledge for a loan.209
87–88
tsubururu mo ari
Some are ruined;
tsuburenu mo ari
some are not.
akikaze ni
From the branches
kozue no jukushi
in the autumn wind,
mata ochite
another ripe persimmon falls.210
91–92
osorenagara mo
Trying to insert it
irete koso mire
while filled with awe.
wa ga ashi ya
My foot
tarai no mizu no
in a water basin
tsuki no kage
reflecting the moon.211
Love
135–136
muma no ue ni te
Making love to a temple boy
chigo to chigireri
on top of a horse.
yamadera no
At a mountain temple
shōgi no ban o
they use a chess board
karimakura
for a pillow.212
145–146
kaki no anata o
Through a hole in the fence
nozokite zo miru
he steals a look.
ware hitori
Getting a grip on himself,
nigirite netaru
he lies alone
yomosugara
all night long.213
Miscellaneous
227–228
shukke no soba ni
Beside the monk
netaru nyōbō
lies a lady.
Henjō ni
Hidden from Henjō
kakusu Komachi ga
is Komachi’s
utamakura
poem-pillow.214
371–372
nigiri hosomete
Gripping it, squeezing it,
gutto irekeri
plunging it in!
hachatsubo no
Into a small-mouthed
kuchi no hosoki ni
jar, a big bag
ōbukuro
of tea leaves.215
MONGREL TSUKUBA COLLECTION (INU TSUKUBASHŪ, CA. 1530)
The Newly Selected Mongrel Tsukuba Collection (Shinsen inu Tsukubashū), better known as the Mongrel Tsukuba Collection, is the best-known haikai collection from the medieval period. The inu (mongrel) in the title implies something both similar to and radically different from the Tsukuba Collection (mid-fourteenth century), the classical renga anthology edited by Nijō Yoshimoto in the Northern and Southern Courts period. Attributed to Yamazaki Sōkan (1465–1533), the Mongrel Tsukuba Collection is thought to have been started around 1530, after which it was added to incrementally, by both Sōkan (in whose hand several different manuscripts survive) and later editors, with the result that no single text is authoritative. Although early manuscripts are entitled Haikai renga (Haikai Linked Verse) or Haikai rengashō, by the time versions of the work began to be printed in the Tokugawa period, it had come to be known by its current title. Little is known about Sōkan except that he served the Ashikaga shogun and later took holy vows and lived west of the capital, in Yamazaki.
The variant used here has 322 linked-verse couplets divided into six sections: the four seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter), love, and miscellaneous. These are followed by a section of ninety-three hokku (opening verses), also ordered by the seasons. Even though the writers of the poems are listed as anonymous, many have been identified as the renga poets Sōgi, Kensai, and Sōchō, and the noted haikai poets Sōkan and Moritake.
Spring
1–2
kasumi no koromo
The robe of haze
suso wa nurekeri
is soaked at the hem
Saohime no
Spring has come,
haru tachinagara
and the goddess Saohime
shito o shite
pisses where she stands.216
Love
193–194
oyobanu koi o
A love beyond one’s reach
suru zo okashiki
is certainly ridiculous!
ware yori mo
In bed behind
ōwakazoku no
a young man
ato ni nete
too tall for him!217
Miscellaneous
kiritaku mo ari
To cut down
kiritaku mo nashi
or not to cut down218
nusubito o
Catching a thief
toraete mireba
and finding him
waga ko nari
to be your own child.
sayakanaru
The bright moon
tsuki o kakuseru
hidden by branches
hana no eda
<
br /> of a cherry tree.
kokoro yoki
An arrow that turns
matoya no sukoshi
out well but is a bit
nagaki o
too long.
…
ke no aru naki wa
Finding out if there is hair
sagurite zo shiru
or not by groping.
deshi motanu
A priest without
bōzu wa kami o
disciples shaves
jizori
his own head.219
Hokku
Summer
373
tsuki ni e o
If you stick