85
This poem, in the yōen style (see the Introduction, here), uses highly unusual imagery (the gaps in the sliding door of a bed chamber) to express a familiar concept: the pain of a night spent alone waiting for a lover who does not come. The lover waiting would typically be a woman, so here the poet is adopting a female persona (see matsu onna). Though this is a love poem, the reference to persistent darkness calls to mind the Buddhist characterization of the sentient world as a place of darkness, where humans wander waiting to be illuminated by the light of the Buddha, a reading which was no doubt intended by the poet (a Buddhist priest).
This is a poem on an assigned topic (dai), but the sentiment of the last two lines is quite unique.
Priest Shun’e (1113–91?), son of Toshiyori (poem 74), was the mentor of Kamo no Chōmei (see commentary to poem 83), who recorded in his Mumyō shō (A Nameless Treatise; written from 1211) many of his master’s words. Shun’e named his Shirakawa house Karin’en (Poem-Wood-Garden), and he often held poetry parties, attended by famous poets. Shun’e himself made several compilations of poems, but he was not as innovative or experimental as his father. In addition to a private collection of verse, eighty-three poems of his appear in the imperial waka anthologies. He is one of the Thirty-Six Poetic Geniuses of the Late Classical Period.
86
Although this is not one of Saigyo’s best-known poems, he seems to have rated it quite highly because he included it in his private poetry collection, the Sankashū (Mountain-Hut Anthology; 1180–85?), and in his ‘Poetry Contest at the River Mimosuso’ (c.1187), a fictional contest in which he pitted his best poems against each other with actual judgements on the individual poems provided by Shunzei (poem 83). According to the headnote (kotobagaki) to the poem in the Senzaishū (no. 926), the poem was composed on the motif ‘Love by Moonlight’. The face of the moon here is compared to the face of the beloved: both are disarmingly beautiful and out of the poet’s reach. However, the poem is more than just a love poem and can be read more as a general meditation on the human condition. Partly because of its importance in Buddhist discourse, many of Saigyo’s finest poems feature the moon, including the following (Shin-kokinshū no. 1993), regarded as one of the greatest in classical Japanese literature:
If my wish were to come true
I would die in spring
under cherry blossoms
of the second month,
when the moon is full.
(Negawaku wa / hana no moto nite / haru shinamu / sono kisaragi no / mochizuki no koro)
Saigyo loved flowers too, especially the cherry blossoms of Yoshino, which was also a place of religious significance.
Priest Saigyo (1118–90), lay name Sato Norikiyo, was an officer of the Imperial Guard of the Left. A friend of Shunzei (poem 83), he abandoned his wife and family and entered religion at the age of twenty-two, becoming famous as a wandering poet-monk. Many later travelling poets took him as their model and inspiration, including the great haiku master Matsuo Basho (1644–94). The moon, cherry blossoms and solitude were his preferred themes. He edited several private collections of his poems, the most famous being the Sankashū. A total of 266 of his poems appear in imperial waka anthologies. A legend about Saigyo features in the Noh play Eguchi by Zeami.
87
The most appealing aspect of poem 87 is the precision and detail with which the landscape is described. The cold rains of autumn have yet to dry when wisps of white fog start to rise, standing out against the dark background of the pine trees. The transition from the small droplets of water on the leaves to the scene as a whole has an almost cinematic quality to it, and calls to mind a camera slowly panning out from a close-up shot. Time is also important as the poem captures the exact moment when the rain gives way to the fog.
The original poem uses a sharp break – taigendome – (see also commentary to poem 79), which may be rendered dash on the fourth line, creating a division between the natural scene and the summation by the poet:
and wisps of fog rise –
the autumn dusk.
But I have opted for a less dramatic translation, which I believe is closer to the gentle sentiment of the poem.
Priest Jakuren (lay name Fujiwara no Sadanaga, 1139–1202) was the nephew and adopted son of Shunzei (poem 83), and a member of the Mikohidari house of poetry alongside Teika and Ietaka (poem 98). He entered religion in 1192. Appointed a member of the Bureau of Poetry in 1201, he participated in the compilation of Shin-kokinshū, but died before it was completed. He has a private poetry collection and 117 poems in the imperial waka anthologies.
88
In the original Japanese, poem 88 is perfectly intelligible while containing an astonishing quantity of punning and wordplay. Karine means both a ‘brief sleep’ and ‘cut reeds’; hitoyo is both ‘a single night’ and ‘one stalk’ of a reed; miotsukushi (channel marker; rendered miotsukushite in the poem), is very similar to the phrase mi o tsukusu, which means ‘to wear oneself out’ (usually with feelings of love), a commonly used pun in love poetry. (See also commentary to poem 22.) Through punning, two distinct sets of imagery are conflated, one dealing with the natural setting (cut reeds, a stalk, channel markers) and one with the imagery of love (brief sleep, a single night, wear oneself out). English simply does not have enough homonyms to create such an effect.
According to the headnote (kotobagaki) in the Senzaishū, the poem (no. 807) was composed on the topic ‘Love: Encounter at a Traveller’s Dwelling’. In Teika’s time, the Naniwa Inlet (see utamakura) was a place famous for meeting pleasure girls. Channel markers, frequently referred to in love poetry (see poem 20), were made of wood and decayed quickly in the salt water. The reeds of Naniwa, a much-used metaphor for a short time span, also appear in poem 19.
Kokamon-in no Betto (fl. late twelfth century), the daughter of Minamoto no Toshitaka, was lady-in-waiting to Empress Seishi (1122–81), later known as Kokamon-in. She was a regular attendant at poetry contests. Only nine of her poems appear in the imperial waka anthologies.
89
Poem 89 is based on the famous motif of a string of gems (tama no o) – pearls or other jewels such as jade strung together in a necklace or bracelet – which was widely employed in Japanese literature of the Heian period as a metaphor for life. The word tama can mean both ‘pearl’ and ‘soul’, hence the breaking of the thread of gems sometimes even symbolized death.
Whereas the previous poem is rife with imagery and wordplay, poem 89 is quite stark. In the Japanese, the fierce strength of the first part of the poem contrasts sharply with the quiet, pensive tone of the last section. The translation reverses the order of the images to have the more powerful lines come at the end of the poem.
Princess Shokushi (d. 1201), aka Shikishi, a daughter of Emperor Go-Shirakawa (r. 1155–8), served as Priestess of the Kamo Shrine from 1159 to 1169. She studied poetry under Shunzei (poem 83) and later under Teika. Tradition has it that it was for her that Shunzei wrote his treatise Korai fūteishō (A Treatise on Poetic Styles Through the Ages; 1197–1201). Although she was much older than him, there is a tradition that she and Teika were lovers, though this is unlikely. She appears in Zeami’s Noh play Teika. There is a private collection of her verse and she has fifty-five poems in the imperial waka anthologies.
90
Poem 90 is both an allusion and a response to a poem composed more than a century earlier by Shigeyuki (poem 48) in the Goshūishū (no. 827):
At Matsushima
only the fisherfolk
fishing on the shore of Ojima
can have sleeves
as drenched as mine.
(Matsushima ya / ōjima no iso ni / asari seshi / ama no sode koso / kaku wa nureshika)
Though not stated directly, the sleeves are wet from tears of love. Ojima in the poem is a well-known poetic location (see utamakura), used to add resonance.
Poem 90 develops the imagery of the original poem by stating that not only are the poet’s sleeves thorou
ghly soaked, but they have changed colour, presumably because the crying has continued for so long. Some commentators suggest that the sleeves have turned red not out of excessive crying but because the poet has been crying tears of blood, a conventional image in Chinese poetry (kanshi) for deep despair – believed to derive from the story of Bian He, who cried tears of blood when wrongfully accused of having presented a fake piece of jade to the King of Chu – but this is not the standard view.
Inpumon-in no Taifu (c.1130–c.1200), the daughter of Fujiwara no Nobunari, served a daughter of Emperor Go-Shirakawa (r. 1155–8), Princess Ryoshi (known as Inpumon-in). Highly esteemed by Teika (poem 97), she took part in many poetry contests and was a member of the Karin’en poetry circle. There is a private collection of her verse and sixty-three poems by her appear in the imperial waka anthologies.
91
Here, lines from old poems are put together almost like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to create a lovely picture of autumnal melancholia. Among the source poems that contemporary readers would have recognized is a poem from the Kokinshū (no. 689):
Upon the straw mat
is she spreading out her robe
and waiting for me
alone again tonight –
the Maiden of the Bridge of Uji.
(Samushiro ni / koromo katashiki / koyoi mo ya / ware o matsuramu / Uji no hashihime)
They would have also recognized one from the Shūishū (no. 778), by Hitomaro, which also appears in this collection as poem 3.
Spreading out a ‘robe for one’, referred to in both the poem above and poem 91, derives from the practice of lovers spreading out their robes when they slept together (see kinuginu no uta). The image of a single robe, rather than two placed companionably together, poignantly conveys the lonely night-time vigil of the poet, waiting in vain for a lover who will never come.
Though clearly a love poem, poem 91 also captures the sadness of autumn, which is why it originally appeared in one of the ‘Autumn’ books of the Shin-kokinshū (no. 518). It was composed in 1200 for a one-hundred-poem sequence commissioned by Emperor Gotoba (poem 99).
Fujiwara no Ryokei (1169–1206), son of Grand Chancellor Kanezane and nephew of Jien (poem 95), became Minister of the Left in 1199, regent in 1200 and chancellor in 1204. He was also a member of the Bureau of Poetry, and took part in the compilation of the Shin-kokinshū, for which he also wrote the preface. He has a private collection of verse, while 320 poems of his appear in the imperial waka anthologies. He is one of the Thirty-Six Poetic Geniuses of the Late Classical Period.
92
When used wisely, convention can be a wonderful means of adding depth and complexity to a new poem. Hidden feelings and wet sleeves are familiar ingredients in waka, but poem 92 is effective precisely because it uses these images in an unconventional way. Indeed, the poem was so admired that Sanuki apparently became known as ‘Rocks-in-the-offing Sanuki’ (Oki no ishi no Sanuki). The lover’s sleeves are compared to underwater rocks far away from the shore, always hidden from view, and always wet (from tears). The word hito (literally, ‘person’; translated here as ‘you’) can mean either the person that the poem would have been directly addressed to or a third-party observer. Using only age-old expressions, the poem manages to be fresh and interesting, so can be seen as a textbook application of Teika’s dictum to combine ‘old words but with a new heart’ (kotoba furushiki kokoro atarashiki).
Lady Sanuki (c.1141–1217) was the daughter of Minamoto no Yorimasa, a prominent warrior and poet and one of the main characters in the late-Heian war epics The Tale of the Heike and The Tale of Heiji (Heiji monogatari). She was a lady-in-waiting to Ninshi, the consort of Emperor Gotoba (poem 99). Seventy-three of her poems appear in the imperial waka anthologies and she was one of both the Thirty-Six Poetic Geniuses of the Late Classical Period and the Thirty-Six Women Poetic Geniuses.
93
This is a simple poem about the seascape off the port of Kamakura (a well-known poetic location or utamakura), which tells of the poet’s wish for the world to remain the same. It acquires extra poignancy when one considers that the author was assassinated in the very same area at the young age of twenty-seven. Like the previous poem, this one also makes use of earlier poems by other poets, including one anonymous poem from the Kokinshū (no. 1088):
In Michinoku everywhere’s lovely
but my heart leaps up
at the sight of boats
pulled by ropes
along the Bay of Shiogama.
(Michinoku wa / izuku wa aredo / Shiogama no / urakogu funa no/ tsunade kanashimo)
Sanetomo is known for his predilection for the archaic style of the eighth-century Man’yōshū as opposed to the more polished style of later imperial waka collections; this can be seen here in his use of archaic diction in line 2, tsune ni mogamo na (also appearing in Man’yōshū no. 22). The phrase mogamo na (how I wish it were like this) is an old expression not widely used in poetry from the Heian period onwards.
Minamoto no Sanetomo (1192–1219) was the third Kamakura shogun. He studied poetry from childhood and was taught by Teika (poem 97). Teika, who was anything but a flatterer, praised Sanetomo as having surpassed him by the early age of twenty. Teika’s Kindai shūka (Superior Poems of Our Time; 1209) is said to have been written as a manual for the younger poet’s instruction. Though appointed shogun in 1203, Sanetomo was a virtual prisoner of his family on the maternal side. He had a tragic destiny and was assassinated by his nephew Yoshinari in 1219. He was considered with Saigyo (poem 86) to be among the greatest poets of his day. His poems are collected in the Kinkaishū. A total of ninety-three poems of his appear in the imperial waka anthologies.
94
Poem 94 draws on both Chinese and Japanese literary precedents to paint a charming picture of autumnal melancholia. The great Tang poet Li Bai (701–62) wrote four songs of the seasons, one of which, ‘Ziye Song’, describes the sound of fulling mallets echoing in the autumn wind. Once washed, clothes were pounded with a mallet on a wooden block or stone, to dry and soften them and to bring out a sheen, in a process that was the forerunner of the domestic smoothing iron. The image was often used to symbolize restoring love gone dull to its pristine beginnings. A translation of Li Bai’s poem might read:
A slip of the moon hangs over the capital.
Ten thousand fulling mallets are pounding,
and the autumn wind is blowing my heart.
The image also appears in ‘Early Autumn, Alone at Night’ by Bai Juyi (772–846). In the Chinese poetic tradition (see kanshi), the sight and sound of a mallet beating cloth on the fulling block reminded a husband far away from home of his distant wife. Burton Watson’s translation of this poem reads:
Parasol tree by the well, cold leaves stirring;
nearby fulling mallets that speak an autumn sound:
I sleep alone facing the eaves,
wake to find moonlight half over the bed.fn1
Poem 94 also draws directly on one in the Kokinshū (no. 325) by Ki no Korenori, which describes Mount Yoshino getting colder as the snow piles up in winter. In poem 94, here the season is autumn and the snow is replaced by the image of cloth being fulled at dusk, resulting in a charming example of synaesthesia (the cold sound of the mallet). Samuku (coldly) in line 4 acts as a pivot word between furusato (old home) and koromo utsu (to beat the clothes) to convey the double sense of clothes being beaten in the cold of the evening and the ‘chilly’ sound of the mallet. The word furusato in line 4 can be translated both as ‘the old capital’ or as ‘my old home’. In this poem, it is generally understood to refer to the old capital of Yoshino, a famous poetic location (see utamakura).
An analysis of these influences helps to illustrate the complex background of many of the poems and how steeped they are in literary antecedents.
Fujiwara no Masatsune (1170–1221), aka Asukai, founded the Kemari football school of that name. In 1198, Emperor Gotoba (poem 99) summoned him from Kamakura and in 1201 ass
igned him to the Bureau of Poetry, where he took part in the compilation of the Shin-kokinshū. There is a private collection of his verse and 134 poems of his appear in the imperial waka anthologies. He is one of the Thirty-Six Poetic Geniuses of the Late Classical Period.
95
Poem 95, written when the author was thirty-two, constitutes a vow to devote one’s life to the salvation of others. The phrase ‘in these wooded hills’ (waga tatsu soma ni) was used in a poem by the monk Saicho (767–822), the founder of the Japanese Tendai sect of Buddhism, to refer to Mount Hiei, the central temple of the sect and a well-known poetic location (utamakura). The word sumi in line 5 is a pun (kakekotoba) meaning both ‘to reside’ – on Mount Hiei – and ‘to dye’ (one’s robes black). Though the exact circumstances of composition of the poem are unknown, some scholars speculate that it may have been composed in 1187, when a series of misfortunes hit the area of the capital (as described in the Hōjōki of Kamo no Chomei – see commentary to poem 83), causing much despair and leading to a heightened sense of religious mission among the clergy. Teika’s father Shunzei (poem 83) remarked of this poem: ‘Right from the first line, it is full of heartfelt sentiment, and everything down to the last overtone of the final verse is absolutely charming’ (Jichin Kashō jika-awase (Tournaments of One’s Own Poems); 1198?).
The first line, which could also be translated as ‘Though I hesitate to say’, expresses the monk’s humility before the task ahead.
One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each Page 14