The same desire to write of the common things of life may be found in the waka of Okuma Kotomichi (1798–1868) and, in particular, Tachibana Akemi (1812–1868). Almost any poem of Akemi’s will reveal how great his break was with the traditional waka poets even of the Tokugawa Period:
| The silver mine | |
Akahada no |
Stark naked, the men |
Akemi was a violent supporter of the Emperor against the Tokugawa Shogunate, partly as the result of his studies of the classics (then under the domination of ultra-nationalist scholars) but partly also because he was a sharer in the growing discontent with the regime. The poets who wrote in Chinese were particularly outspoken. Rai Sanyō (1780–1832), the greatest master of Chinese poetry in the Tokugawa Period, if not all of Japanese literature, wrote bitter invective against the regime, usually only thinly disguised. When one reads the poetry of Issa, Akemi, or Sanyō one cannot help feeling that the Tokugawa regime was doomed in any case, even if its collapse had not been hastened by the arrival of the Westerners.
The literature produced in Japan after the Meiji Restoration is of so different a character that it has been felt advisable to devote a separate volume to it. It is hoped that with the publication of the two volumes of this anthology the Western reader will be able to obtain not only a picture of the literature produced in Japan over the centuries, but an understanding of the Japanese people as their lives and aspirations have been reflected in their writings.
