Songs of a Cowherd/Introduction
Introduction
A quarter of a century has passed since the death of Sachio Ito, and it is interesting to note that he has been a kind of fixed star in the Japanese poetic movement. Coming into prominence at a time when poetry was passing out of the hands of a few aristocratic versifiers into those of the populace, he emphasized, independently of the warfare in opposing camps, certain fundamental elements in the nature of poetry which were in danger of being obscured by the increasing tendency to treat poetry as a social document and to forget that it is an art. Though actively participating in the intellectual and artistic rebirth, Sachio, unlike some of his contemporaries, chose a more critical and a soberer path. There is none of that intellectual insolence and conscious break with tradition in his work which characterized the new poetry. Through a gradual process of synthesis, Sachio took from the past what he needed and could use, and moved forward into the present. It was this distinction that made him the vital link between the poetry of the past and present, and the acknowledged leader of the Araragi school.
Kojiro Ito, better known by his pen-name Sachio, was born on August 18, 1864, in Naruto, Kazusa Province, the youngest son of Ryosaku and Natsu Ito. Situated at the end of the fertile Kwanto Plain famous in Japanese history, Naruto is a small castle-town founded by Lord Yasumichi Ishikawa in 1590. Until the close of the nineteenth century, it remained a feudal citadel. For generations the Ito family owned in the outskirts of the town a small farm which yielded them a meagre living. The old thatched cottage with a grove of pine trees behind, a stream full of crawfish, the yellow rape-seed field that merged into the blue ocean, and the distant roar of the Pacific haunted Sachio years later when he began to dwell in the large city.
Sachio was the child of his parents’ old age. As he wrote:
“My mother was father’s second wife and married him rather late in life. My older brother and I were her only children, and as a child I remember well how gray her hair was.”
There is a charming description of the family group from the recollection of his sixth year. On the eve of the beginning of the spring season, known as the Setsubun festival, Sachio came home late from his play and found a holly twig with a sardine head at the gate.
“After dinner we all sat around the hearth, and my father explained the significance of the festival. After the ceremony of scattering toasted beans to drive out devils, he picked up twelve beans from the floor and arranged them by the fire in a row. Counting from the right, they represented the twelve months of the year. As they burned, father explained that those that crumbled into white ash signified fair weather, while those that turned into black charcoal, rain. He said the weather that year was to be favorable to the crops, and we all rejoiced.”
In the spring of 1873 Sachio was sent to a village school, where he proved to be an average country lad full of energy and spirit, but with no particular bent toward learning. In 1877, however, of his own will he became a pupil of Shumpo Sato, local scholar, under whom he acquired a comprehensive knowledge of Chinese classical literature. Farm life, family life, school life—all were simple, pleasant, and serene in that castle-town, but the political unrest and the changes brought about in Japan’s contact with the Western world affected the young man deeply, and he wanted to seek his fortune in a wider world.
“At the age of seventeen, I went to Tokyo to study law as a preparation to go into politics. My tendency to argue even today, I am afraid, is a hangover from that experience. Within six months, however, I had to give up any idea of study, for my sight was fast failing.”
A series of examinations by specialists disclosed that he was suffering from a serious case of progressive myopia, and he was told that his sight was like a cracked china bowl. If he used it with care, it might last him a long while; otherwise it would be gone. There was nothing now for him to do but to go back to his parents, who
“… did not consider my case serious. Many a man has been totally blind. If I were to be only near-sighted, I should consider myself very fortunate. There is, moreover, nothing strange for a farmer’s son to be a farmer. In fact believing that now I would probably remain home contentedly, they were quite pleased.”
Of his life during the succeeding four years we know little beyond the fact that he overcame his desire to go to America so that he might care for his aged parents.
In November, 1885, with only two yen in his pocket, he went to Tokyo, and became an apprentice in a dairy. Starting at the very bottom, he learned the trade of dairying, and in the spring of 1889 he was able to open his own business at No. 18 Kayabacho, Honjo Ward, Tokyo.
“Of course I had no capital to speak of and had to depend absolutely on my customers’ good will and my own hard labor. I used to work eighteen hours or more a day, and won the reputation of being the hardest working man in my business.”
Again:
“Going into business under such circumstances, people’s kindness touched me deeply. It has often been said that the city folks are cold and mercenary, but I think differently. A man who loaned me some money said to me once: ‘If you should fail after you worked so hard and be unable to pay me, I have no regret.’ ”
For Sachio, however, the period of trial and hardship was fast approaching its end. In November of the same year, he was married to Toku, oldest daughter of Juemon Ito of Kamisakai Village, a few miles from his native town. Though not quite eighteen, Toku’s mature wisdom and efficiency provided that support and moral courage of which he was in need. They started their house-keeping in a new quarter behind the cowsheds, where his parents soon joined them.[1]
The first twenty-nine years of Sachio’s life, so far as the records show, are devoid of poetic activity. Yet, judging from his temperament and his thorough knowledge of classical poetry as well as poetics, his later work must have been the outgrowth of these earlier years. He would probably have been a poet in any age, but that in which he found himself was peculiarly favorable for the development and appreciation of his genius. The exuberant literary revolt against the artificiality and rigid convention of the eighties was falling into the unhealthy emotionalism of the nineties. Led by Tekkan and Akiko Yosano,[2] the romantic Myojo school, preoccupied with new ideas and experiences, tended toward the self-indulgence of personal feeling and the display of wit. To an experienced critic, this romantic verse suffered from glaringly improper diction, artificial metaphors, and manufactured emotions. On the other hand, there was a small group headed by Shiki Masaoka (1867–1902) who advocated simplicity and sincerity. He cried over and over again: “Do not force yourself either in thoughts or expression. Be natural.” This is, of course, the creative artist’s hardest task. It means that good poetry consists not in the intensity or newness of emotion or thought, but rather in the intensity of the creative impulse disciplined by thought and experience. Needless to add, the two schools had little in common. Shiki thought it necessary to state his creed once and for all and from February 12 to March 4, 1898, he published a series of ten articles entitled “Letters to Poets,” in the metropolitan newspaper Nihon.
The enthusiasm and penetrating critical sense with which Sachio read these articles is shown in his letters to Shiki, quoted in the Nihon of April 27 and May 3, together with Shiki’s criticism. Sachio was already known in the Literary Section of the Nihon, for previously, on February 10, 23, and 24, he had published articles on the nature of poetry, stressing the importance of knowing its nature and function, rhythm as its distinguishing quality, and the dignity and integrity of poetry. His thesis was no mere argument of an inexperienced poet, but showed great critical discrimination, based on his knowledge of the historical course of Japanese poetry. In it we have the germ of the first full revaluation of poetry since the Preface to the Kokinshu by Ki no Tsurayuki in the early part of the tenth century.
Sachio’s challenge to Shiki was soon to develop into profound admiration and sympathy, for these two writers shared surprisingly similar qualities of mind. There was in each a full understanding of the importance of discipline and craftsmanship, an equal insistence on the fusion of experience and reflection, which should be expressed in apt words without sacrificing their sound or sense. Each reacted against the copious expansiveness of his own age. Therefore, on January 3, 1900, Sachio called on Shiki who was confined in bed with tuberculosis and an affection of the spine, and with the sincerity and humility of a child became a pupil of Shiki. He writes:
“Long before I called on Shiki, I was firmly convinced that he was the greatest master since the days of the Manyo[3]. Therefore, my joy at being able to come in close contact with his personality and receive his criticism knows no bounds. I felt virtually that I was pulled up to a higher level inch by inch.”
Again:
“Under such circumstances, every utterance of Shiki absolutely held me spell-bound. In the monthly poetry gathering, how delighted I was if my poems met his approval and how dejected I felt when it was otherwise. I could not sleep one whole night when my poems were printed in the Nihon.”
Shiki was in charge of the literary page of the Nihon, and the first printed poem by Sachio was
To a sickle and spade
Hung under the newly-thatched eaves,
I tied the festive straw strands
And welcomed the New Year.
The most significant poem, however, is his Song of a Cowherd, which marks his turning point and voices his aspirations:
A cowherd impelled
To compose poems,
Quickens in the world
A marvelous new poetry.
Previous to this in the early part of 1899, a group of younger poets had rallied around Shiki, gathering monthly at his house and composing verse upon a given subject. This group is the origin of the famous Negishi Poetry Society which played such an important rôle in the subsequent history of the Japanese poetry. To the first gathering of 1900, Sachio came, and one of the members wrote:
“A big, fat man whose name was Sachio Ito came, but we paid little attention to him.”
Another person recorded:
“Sachio had no education, and at Shiki’s he was the laughing stock of the whole group.”
As he freely admitted, Sachio was truly a cowherd and paid little attention to his external appearance. He was so extremely nearsighted that he had to wear two pairs of heavy glasses to see anything at all, which gave him an uncouth appearance. He was very tall and stout; his contemporaries regarded him as enormous. Altogether he was not prepossessing, especially to smart and refined city people. Shiki, who was three years Sachio’s junior, was nevertheless great enough to see beneath the surface and appreciate this strange genius. It is interesting to note that seven poems of Sachio’s with Shiki’s corrections have come down to us in manuscript, and except in one or two instances we cannot consider the corrections to be any improvement. Sachio’s reads:
When I sip the tea of Uji,
Tenderly I recall the melodies
Sung by the maidens of Uji
Who were picking tea-leaves.
Shiki’s corrected version reads:
When I sip the tea of Uji
In the land of Yamashiro,
I recall songs of the maidens
Who were picking tea-leaves in Uji.
Sachio’s admiration of Shiki knew no bounds, and with almost pathetic intensity he strove toward the high goal set by his teacher. When “Waterfall” was set as the subject of the monthly gathering, he made a trip to Nikko to see the famous falls, and for “Pines” he visited Okitsu, where old, knotty pine trees line the beautiful sandy shore. His “New Theory of Poetry” in the Kokoro no Hana[4] is an epoch-making treatise, in which the thesis is the same he had held before he met Shiki—that the essential function of poetry is not intellectual but emotional. Good poetry is not the result of an outpouring of personal emotion, but an expression of thought and feeling realized through a set of objects, a situation, or a chain of events. Hence he stresses the utmost importance of the faculty of seeing things as they really are, apart from imposed conventions, and concentration of mind as the necessary means of gaining accurate and precise expression. Japanese poetry since the Kohin-shu[5] had degenerated into a slavish following of set conventions and formalized technique. Love was always cruel, the zephyr always melted the nightingale’s frozen tears, and the silvery dewdrops were always jewels. Shiki fought against and successfully tore down the accepted structure of poetic theory and practice, but he was too ill to begin any reconstruction, and the task of providing a new technique and a new convention fell to Sachio. What makes his criticism so enduring is that he was not merely a theorist, but a craftsman talking of what he knew at first hand.
Soon Sachio published in the same journal a second series of articles on the “New Theory of Poetry.”[6] Like a sonnet sequence in the West, Japanese classical poems of thirty-one syllables frequently came in sequence, but each poem was always considered as independent. Almost accidently, Shiki discovered a new method of composing upon one subject a series of poems organically related, and again it was Sachio who successfully tried it out in his creative work. He compares it with landscape gardening.
“A dignified old tree can stand alone in the garden. So, a long lay can fully express complex thoughts and emotions. But with smaller shrubs, it is best to group them in an harmonious whole, and a series of poems on the same subject, each voicing its different phases, clusters together naturally.”
This method of composition was used effectively by such able poets as Akahiko Shimaki, Mokichi Saito, and others, and it gave their work an extraordinary wholeness and integrity.
The death of Shiki on September 19, 1902, was a bitter blow to Sachio and the Negishi group. Without their leader, the members began to drift away. Lamenting this sad state, Sachio, Takashi Nagatsuka (1879–1915), and a few others gathered the scattering group and in June, 1903, founded a journal, Ashibi. Until it was discontinued in January, 1908, with the thirty-second issue, Sachio was its editor-in-chief with the editorial office at his house. Almost all Sachio’s poems as well as his critical essays in these years were published in the Ashibi. He was also writing idyllic novelettes, which appeared serially in various magazines and newspapers. With a little more leisure of mind and body, Sachio now was able to devote his time to the cult of tea. His new experiences in other fields of literature and art and his association with brilliant younger poets enriched his verse. Just as he and others had previously gathered around Shiki, they now met at Sachio’s house every month, discussing and composing poems.
More and more Sachio showed strong indignation toward the Myojo school with their wild intoxication, their “artiness,” and their abysmal ignorance of the poetic tradition. In March, 1906, he published a criticism of Akiko in the Ashibi. His contention was first that a poet must constantly synthesize and harmonize the experiences of life. Secondly, good poetry consists of wisely chosen words in excellent arrangement and excellent metre. He quotes Akiko’s poem on the nightingales:
In the spring rain
The young nightingales
Sing in the nest
Made of my fallen hair.
The nest made with her fallen hair caught her fancy, and at once she manufactured the spring rain and the young birds. As an example of her lack of precision and synthesis, he takes the following poem which was praised highly by the critics:
Oh Kamakura!
Though a Buddha,
What a handsome chap is Sakyamuni.
The summer’s grove!
“Let us,” says Sachio, “transfer this into an ordinary conversation. A guest says to the host: ‘What a clever chap your young son is! The pine trees in the garden.’ What do you think the host would think?”
Indeed, Sachio learned early in his poetic career to appreciate the dual nature of a word’s power. It can enchant as well as betray, and only mastering every resource in word and rhythm, can one transmute his personal experience into something rich and impersonal. Finally:
“Whether in poetry, prose, or any form of plastic art, a man cannot produce anything better than what he really is. The style cannot be separated from the personality.”
The following few years were eventful for Sachio. A new journal, Araragi, was founded in October, 1908, and he was virtually its editor-in-chief till his death in 1913. For some time he had been deeply in love, an experience poignantly expressed in his poetry and one which finally reached its breaking point about this time. A series entitled My Life in 1911 and Dark Hair in the following year are its result, and in the Light of Decay one feels a certain foreboding. Furthermore, his young pupils, Akahiko and Mokichi and others, had been drifting into a new trend to which Sachio himself could not subscribe, and this undoubtedly saddened him. It was, however, the greatness of this man to live through any bitter experience and attain a higher spiritual level.
The period of storm and strife was over by 1910. He had quietly borne the death of his father and mother, and the tragic death of his little daughter. In the spring of 1910, a tea-arbor was built in the small garden of his house in Honjo. The timber used was the gift of his friend, Shinichiro Warabi (1876–1922), who appears in the Keeper of the Hills. Retiring here, Sachio found the solace and spiritual peace which he had long sought in vain. Here all the disturbing problems of his life found their own solution, and he was determined to dedicate the remaining years of his life to the service of the muse. This singleness of purpose made him unwilling to confine his efforts to one style, but impelled him from one discovery to another. In such essays as “Expression and Presentation,” “Life of New Poetry,” and “Cries” which discuss the use of exclamation in lyric poetry, he touches upon the most profound problems in poetry. They are valuable as the by-product of his quest for truth and permanent value.
In April, 1912, the dairy was moved from Honjo to Kameido. After oft-repeated calamities of flood, this move was a happy one. In June, his oldest daughter was married, and the following summer Sachio was a grandfather. In the spring of 1913, the family finally moved to new quarters at Kameido, leaving only his tea-arbor where he often returned to meditate. Both his prose and poetry at this period express a sense of great relief, and his mind seemed to reach out to another higher synthesis. But it was to be cut off suddenly. On July 30, at two in the morning, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and passed away at six o’clock that evening. On August 2, he was buried in the Fumoin Temple in Kameido.
Sachio’s writings were not collected in his life-time, but in 1920, his pupils gathered his work and published the Complete works of Sachio Ito. In 1931, his verse and essays on poetry were published in four volumes.
Soseki Natsume (1867–1916), the greatest modern novelist, once wrote to a friend:
“The truth is a man like Sachio cannot talk about poetics. Worshipping Shiki to the point of absurdity, he is composing silly poems for dear life.”
Soseki was not alone in that sentiment; Sachio was not learned in the popular sense. Without realizing that he himself was a far better poet than Shiki who died comparatively young, he strove to reach the goal set by his master. Though unbending in what he held in his poetic tenets to be true, he was always so humble in mind that an unceasing growth kept him young in spirit, and whatever idea or experience he gleaned, he in due time elevated in a higher synthesis. Moreover, he took poetry seriously and held it in profound veneration. He wrote poems for dear life, and through that sublimation of himself to something so far beyond himself, he truly achieved a personal immortality.
- ↑ At last Sachio was in position to fulfil his earnest desire to provide for and comfort his parents in their old age. His mother died on March 2, 1904, at the age of seventy-three, while his father passed away in February, 1907, at the age of eighty-four.
- ↑ See the Introduction of Volume II of the present series, Tangled Hair.
- ↑ The earliest collection of Japanese poems, compiled in the middle of the eighth century.
- ↑ A journal of poetry edited by Nobutsuna Sasaki, v. 4 nos. 3–6, March–June, 1901.
- ↑ An anthology of poetry compiled by Ki no Tsurayuki in the early tenth century.
- ↑ November, 1901, to May, 1902; v. 4 nos. 11–12, v. 5 nos. 1–5.