The Spirit of Japanese Poetry/Chapter 4

by Yone Noguchi

IV

THE EARLIEST JAPANESE POETRY

I

I used to linger around the spot at Kamakura marked by a stone commemorating the street preaching of Nichiren, that undaunted spirit of a Buddhist priest born to a fisher's family in the Awa province in 1222, whose belief in the mysterious law of the White Lotus made him proclaim himself a prophet. And I would call to my imagination the continuous scene of persecutions the priest encountered gibes, railings, and even stones; he exclaimed at the beginning of the establishment of his own Buddhism, the sect of the White Lotus: "Know that all the sects in existence are a way to Hell, or the teaching of infernal hosts, or a heresy to destroy the nation, or an enemy of the land. These are not my words, but I found them in the sutra. And I am the messenger sent by the Worshipful for the teaching of the Real Law." When he attempted with the fervent tongue of a propagandist, to destroy at one stroke the old formulae and conceptions (or, more true to say, superstitions), by emphasising the individualistic fire of Buddhistic inspiration through whose activity he himself, as he declared, was the symbol of the infinite, his mind dwelt on the religious freedom born out of the idealism whose real manifestation can only appear through the highest development of the individual life. Nichiren saw clearly that Japan or Japanese life had been greatly harmed by the pessimistic interpretation of Buddhism, with its thought of Nirvana or peaceful haven far beyond where your absorption of the infinite can only be realised through the virtue of death, a death that does not recognise individuality. It was Nichiren’s Activism (with apology to the German professor) to make life more meaningful, or again to make death more meaningful by that meaningful life, through the true Buddhism perfectly delivered from the despotism of ignorance or misconception; it is not far wrong to say that he alone found the meeting ground of Buddhism and the thoughts of our Japanese ancestors who, like sunflowers, most passionately sought after life and sunlight; on the sunflower I wrote once in The Pilgrimage, a book of verses, the following lines:

“Thou burstest from mood:
Marvel of thy every atom burning in life.
How fully thou livest!
Passionate lover of sunlight,
Symbol of youth and pride;
What absorption of thy life’s memory,
Wonder of thy consciousness,
Mighty sense of thy existence!”

I am thankful to Nichiren, although his influence was not universal, for his hopeful, brighter mind (it was almost a Western mind), whose theological adventure would certainly please the followers of Eucken; it was the effect of the common pessimism of Buddhism or thought of Nirvana, combined with the morality and ethics of the Confucian literature, that our original Japanese mind, indeed quite a Celtic mind, like that of the young woman in Yeats’ Land of Heart’s Desire, who ever wearied of four tongues and wished to dance upon the mountains like a flame, had slowly but steadily lost its imagination and passion, and our lives had become hardened and disfigured. I leave aside the question of religion, because my chief concern for the present moment is in poetry whose rejuvenation may depend in some measure on a leader (such a leader as Nichiren in religion)–a leader who, like Whitman, will cry for “the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling” from the worshipping mind gladdened in Nature’s sanctuary where our ancestors of three thousand years ago loved and lived. They had only the thought of life and birth, again the thought of birth and eternal life, never the thought of death and shadow; how our Japanese ancestors hated shadow and death is recorded in the first page of Kojiki or Records of Ancient Matters, the earliest book of Japanese literature in existence, as it was actually written or completed in A.D. 712. On this book I am going to dwell presently at greater length.

Go back to the age, that is many thousand years ago, when our Japanese mind was the Japanese mind pure and true, not the Japanese mind of later age, sometimes, doubtless, refined and polished, but always wounded and tormented by the despotic counsel of Chinese literature and Buddhism, therefore the Japanese mind like the sunflower, as I said before, a seeker of sunlight and life, the Japanese mind which is the personification of life’s activity itself; you might call it the individualism, conscious or unconscious, following after the modern fashion. Let me exclaim as I exclaimed on the sunflower: “Marvel of thy every atom burning in life, how fully thou livest!” Our later Japanese spiritual history in literature or what not is more or less the history of quietism or negation in which the great charm and attraction is the thought of Cathay called death; I myself am pleased to sing on and of death because it makes life more strong, more beautiful, and more meaningful through its virtue of difference; and when I put stress upon the fusion of death with life, or upon valuing them equally, my mind thinks on the real spiritual freedom which will soon become a perfect idealism like a broader day born from the mixed souls of East and West. But when the Japanese mind of later days began to deal with death as a state lifeless, or something hard and final, then the thought of death ceased to have a better, greater influence on life; I despise such a death or such a thought of death. Go back to the age when our ancient Japanese did not know death and shadow, or even when they knew them, did not think much of them, or scorned them, like children laughing with winds and sun. To return to the age of Kojiki is indeed a rare treat in a time like to-day, when our aspiration or ambition, I mean that of the Japanese, only wastes its energy under incongruities, contradictions, and confusions of wild cross-currents of East and West.

II

Here in the second volume of Records of Ancient Matters we have a story in Yamato-Take (not only that one story, but many other stories scattered in the first and last volumes) which will surely please a mind of Meredithian cast, epic-loving; one who fully endorses the so-called evolutional philosophy in the Woods of Westermain, or the cultivation of the power of the will, can find enough material for building his songs of tragic life; that rude philosophy of Meredith’s our forefathers practised unconsciously. They such a self-strengthening mind and will (indeed the ancient Japanese thought was that life’s greatest sin was the sin of weakness) as the old Norsemen thought; but our ancestors hailed, I believe, from a warmer climate with poetry and love; they were from the beginning poets and warriors. To return to Yamato-Take; he was a fierce type like Meredith’s King Harold; while the English ballad ends with the following lines,

“Sudden, as it were a monster oak
Split to yield a limb by stress of heat,
Strained he, staggered, broke
Doubled at their feet,”

the story of Yamato-Take does not close with his death, because, from the hatred of death and shadow, his great dead spirit turned into a white bird eight fathoms long, soared up to the skies, and flew away over the seas, while the princesses and children who had shared equal pains under his conquering banner in the Eastern countries, pursued after that bird with their sad songs in heart, saying:

“Impeded are our loins in the plain,
(The plain thick with bamboo-grasses):
Oh! we are only on foot,
Not flying through the skies.”

Again saying:

“Impeded are our loins as we go
Through the seas, oh! tottering
In the seas like herbs
Grown in a great river-bed.”

This great valiant spirit, son of Emperor Keiko who was already afraid of his wonderful valour and ferocity, had been again sent away to conquer the unsubmissive bravoes of the East; on receiving the Imperial command, he said: “The Heavenly Sovereign must be thinking that I should die quickly, for after sending me to smite the wild people of the West, I am no sooner come up again to the capital than, without bestowing on me an army, he now sends me off afresh to subdue the wicked people of the East. So I think that he certainly thinks I shall die quickly.” It was in the almost mythological ancient age when even the father, if he be weak, often happened to suffer the fate of a dove torn by a hawk; although Yamato-Take clearly knew his father’s intention, he could not disobey his command, and beside, his love of fighting for fighting’s sake made him start with renewed joy toward the East, where he began a series of successes with the slaying of the rulers of Sagama. He lost his beloved wife, Princess Oto-Tachibana, while crossing the sea of Hashiri Midzu, who drowned herself in the waves for the purpose of calming the storm by the sacrifice of her own self; it is said that the violent waves at once went down, and Yamato-Take’s ship was able to proceed. His wife, this Japanese woman of many thousand years ago, already understood something of Meredith’s following lines, of course with a variation of Japanese morality:

“The lesson writ in red since time first ran:
A hunter hunting down the beast in man;
That till the chasing but of its last vice,
The flesh was fashioned but for sacrifice.”

Yamato-Take subdued and pacified all the East; now reaching the moor of Yagi on the way home, he suddenly felt weak and exclaimed: “Whereas my heart always felt like flying through the sky, my legs are now unable to walk; they have become rudder-shaped.” Again at the village of Mike he exclaimed: “My legs are like threefold crooks, and very very weary.”

Then he pulled his tired body to the Moor of Nobo, and from his deep love of his native land, he exclaimed, singing:

“O Yamato, the most hidden of lands,
Yamato, snug within green hills,
The hills encompassing thee with their fences,
How delightful, O Yamato!”

And then he passed away, singing:

“Thou whose life may be strong,
Adorn thy hair, thou in health,
With the bear-oak leaves from Heguri Mount,
Be happy, my child!”

Such was the last song of this great spirit; when you compare it with the Japanese songs of a later age, you will see that our ancestors, even at the moment of death, were never taken, to use the modern words, by the thought of pessimism or sentimentality; they were the singers of life and joy, not of death and tears.

They knew the world was never made for weak body and mind; they never exercised pity and compassion upon any form of weakness; they believed that the instant that one begins to doubt his own strength, whether it be of mind or body, all the hopes of winning life’s prizes shall be at once overthrown. The fact that the sad destruction of life comes most surely through indulgence, not through struggle and pain, is well illustrated in the story of the Emperor Chuai somewhere in the second volume.

The book reads as follows: “So when the Heavenly Sovereign, dwelling at the Palace of Kashii in Tsukushi, was about to smite the land of Kumaso, the Heavenly Sovereign played on his lute; the Prime Minister, the noble Takeuchi, being in the pine court, requested the divine orders. Hereupon the Empress, divinely possessed, charged him with this instruction and counsel: ‘There is a land to the Westward; in that land is abundance of treasures dazzling to the eye, from gold and silver downward. I will now bestow this land upon thee.’ Then the Heavenly Sovereign replied saying: ‘If one ascend to a high place and look Westward, no country is to be seen. There is only the great sea. What lying deities.’ He pushed away his lute, playing no more, and sat silent. Then the deities became very angry, and said through the mouth of the Empress: ‘Altogether as for this Empire, it is not a land over which thou oughtest to rule. Do thou go only the road to Hades!’ The Prime Minister, the noble Takeuchi, said: ‘I am filled with awe, my Heavenly Sovereign! Pray, continue playing thy great august lute.’ The Heavenly Sovereign slowly drew his lute to him and languidly played on it. But when the sound almost immediately became inaudible, the Heavenly Sovereign was found, alas, dead.” What a splendid subject this for a ballad or poem for a poet of Meredith’s class.

The first note we encounter in opening the pages of this Records of Ancient Matters is our ancestors’ conception of death as defilement; here we have a story of Izanami or His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites, who followed after his dead wife, Her Augustness the Female-Who-Invites, to the Land of Hades. When the male deity entreated her to come back again to the world, saying: “The lands that I and thou made are not yet finished making; pray come back!” Her Augustness the Female-Who-Invites was pleased to consent, but begged her husband to wait for a little while, as she had to discuss the matter with the deities of Hades. And she made him promise not to attempt to come to her while retiring within the palace of shadow. She tarried there so long, His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites would not wait any longer; so having taken and broken off, this mythology goes on to say, one of the end-teeth of this close-toothed comb stuck in the left bunch of his hair, he lit a light and went in and looked. Alas, his wife-deity was rotting with swarming maggots; in her head, it is written in the book, dwelt the Great Thunder, in her breast the Fire-Thunder, in her belly the Black Thunder, in her private parts the Cleaving Thunder, in her left hand the Young Thunder, in her right hand the Earth Thunder, in her left foot the Rumbling Thunder, in her right foot the Couchant Thunder, thus altogether eight Thunder Deities dwelt there. His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites, indeed, overawed at the sight, fell back, while his wife, who grew mad, exclaimed: “Thou hast put me to shame,” and sent the eight Thunder Deities with a thousand and five hundred warriors of Hades to pursue him; but when they failed to meet him, Her Augustness the Female-Who-Invites came out herself in pursuit. She was blocked by a huge rock at the Even Pass of Hades which the male deity had placed there for his own protection; here these two deities stood opposite to one another, and Her Augustness the Female-Who-Invites was first to speak, and she said: “If thou doest like this, I will in one day strangle to death a thousand of the folk of thy land.” Then His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites replied: “If thou doest this, I will in one day set up a thousand and five hundred parturition houses, and make the women bear children. Suppose a thousand people may each day die; but each day a thousand and five hundred people will be born.” Thus birth conquered over death, the land of light over the land of shadow.

The great deity who defeated death and persuaded the deities of shadow not to pursue any more, said: “How hideous! I have come to a hideous polluted land; I will perform the purification of my person.” Then he went into a plain and by a river near Tachibana in the island of Tsukushi, and began to purify and cleanse himself; it is written in the book, that, when he threw down his girdle, the Deity Road-Long Space was born thence, the Deity Master of Trouble from his upper garment he put aside, the Deity Master of the Open Mouth from his hat, and so on; thus the twelve deities altogether were born from his taking off the things that were on his person. And then from the bathing of his august person itself the other fourteen deities came into existence, among them the three illustrious children at whose birth His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites was rejoiced, the Heaven Shining Great August Deity from his left eye, His Augustness Moon-Night Possessor from his right eye, and His Brave Swift Impetuous Male Augustness from his nose. When these three deities, the first and second representing the sun and moon, the last ruling the seas, were born, we know that the creation of the world was in good shape. Not only from garment or eyes, but from anything or anywhere, indeed, even from a cough, our ancient deities, it was supposed, had such a power or magic to produce anything and everything by their free will, and they inspired their own personalities into the things they created. All the phenomena thus exhibited were, in our ancient Japanese mind, nothing but the symbol of life’s active spirit; the great reverence of our forefathers toward the deities or gods was only fierce adoration or praising expression toward the power or strength which overflows from the bosoms of mighty personalities. I dare say that it would do justice to class it with the common pantheism or Nature-worship you find in ordinary barbarous tribes; when Japanese scholars like Motoori declare that the gods or deities of old Japanese mind were human beings, it is from their belief that the conception of gods should be based on the true realisation of life’s fire.

Therefore, where was the real expression of life was a deity; there are no men who created so many gods or deities as the old Japanese; to them most impossible Japanese names were given, names like Ameno-Minaka-Nushi or Takami Musubi or Umashi-Ashikabi-Higoji.

III

The date of A.D. 712 was given to Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters), in fact, the first written book in Japan, in its completion; it is said that Yasumaro, the author, took it all down from the lips of a certain Hiyedano Are, a Kataribe or reciter whose official function, at the very early Mikado’s government of the Nara period, was to retell ancient records from his memory; it will be believed that they must have been changed, some parts perhaps omitted, or others added, during the process of retelling from one reciter to another. It is not my work to discuss here their value as legends of history; my important concern with them is their poetry, that is to say, the poetry of our Japanese ancestors, which runs through almost every page of the book. When I read love-songs diffused here and there in these three volumes it makes me think of a popular ditty like the following:

“What does never change,
Since the days of the gods,
Is the way how a river runs:
What does never change
Since the days of the gods,
Is the way how love flows.”

One of the early love-songs is found when the Deity-of-Eight-Thousand-Spears went forth to woo the Princess of Nuna-Kaha and sang on his arrival at her house as follows:

“His Augustness the Deity-of-Eight-Thousand-Spears,
With no Spouse in the Land of the Eight Isles,
Now has heard in the far-off Koshi Land there is a maiden wise,
Now has heard there is a maiden beauteous:
Here he stands to truly woo her.
Here he goes backward and forward to woo her,
Having untied even the cord of his sword,
Having untied even his veil,
He pushes back the plank door shut by the maiden;
He stands here, forward he pulls it:
Here he stands, he soon hears the Nuge singing on the green hill;
And the bird of the moor, the pheasant, resounds,
The bird of the yard, the cock, crows:
Oh, the pity that the birds should sing, oh, these birds!
Oh, how soon the night dawns!
Would that I could beat them to sickness and death!”

Then the Princess of Nuna-Kaha, without opening the door, sang from within:

“Thine Augustness the Deity-of-Eight-Thousand-Spears,
Being a maiden like a drooping plant,
My heart is just a bird on a bank by the shore;
My heart is now indeed a dotterel.
But it will soon become a gentle bird;
So as for thy life, do not deign to die.”

Again she sang in the following fashion:

“The sun may hide behind the green hills,
The night, the jewel-black night will come forth;
I will then welcome thee.
Smile like the glad morning sun and come;

Thine arms white as rope of paper-mulberry bark,
Shall softly pat my breast soft as melting snow;
Patting each other interlaced,
Stretching out, pillowing us on each other’s arms, on true jewel-arms,
With outstretched legs, oh, will we sleep.
So speak not too lovingly,
Thine Augustness the Deity-of-Eight-Thousand-Spears!”

The Chief Empress, Her Augustness the Forward-Princess, got very jealous; His Augustness the Deity-of-Eight-Thousand Spears was greatly distressed when he was about to go from Izumo to the Land of Yamato; as he stood attired, with one hand on the saddle of his horse and one foot in his stirrup, he sang, saying:

“I take and carefully attire myself
In my garments black as the jewels of the moor;
Like the birds of the offing I look at my breast,
I find these are not good,
And cast them off on the waves of the beach.
I take and carefully attire myself
In my garments green as a kingfisher;
Like the birds of the offing, I look at my breast,
I find these too are not good,
And cast them off on the waves of the beach.
I take and carefully attire myself
In my raiment dyed in the sap of the dye-tree,
The pounded madder sought in the mountain fields;
Like the birds of the offing, I look at my breast,
I find they are good.
My dear Younger sister, Thine Augustness!
Though thou say thou wilt not weep,
If, like the flocking birds, I flock and depart,
If, like the led birds, I am led away and depart,
Thou wilt hang down thy head

Like a single eulalia upon the mountain
Thy weeping shall indeed rise
As the mist of the morning shower,
Thine Augustness, my spouse young like young herbs!”

Then the Empress taking a great liquor cup, and drawing anear and offering it to her husband deity, sang as follows:

“Thine Augustness the Deity-of-Eight-Thousand-Spears!
Thou, my Master-of-the Great-Land, being a man,
Mayest have a wife young like young herbs,
On all island headlands that thou seest,
On every beach headland that thou lookest on;
But as for me, alas, being a woman,
I have no man except thee, I have no spouse except thee,
Beneath the fluttering of the ornamented fence,
Beneath the rustling cloth coverlet,
Thine arms white as rope of paper-mulberry bark
Softly patting my breast soft as melting snow,
Patting each other interlaced,
Stretching out, pillowing us on each other’s arms, on true jewel-arms,
With outstretched legs, oh, will we sleep.
Luxuriant liquor, oh, pray, lift up!”

The fact that the ancient Japanese patiently bore any amount of pain for conquering love is illustrated in how His Augustness the Deity-of-Eight-Thousand Spears found his Empress, that is Her Augustness the Forward-Princess, and married her; he was put in a snake-house by her angry father when he discovered their love, and again in a house filled with centipedes when he was rescued. And after many happenings His Augustness the Deity-of-Eight-Thousand Spears grasped the hair of the father of the Princess, while he was sleeping, and tied it fast to the various rafters of the house, and after blocking up the floor of the house with a huge rock, he carried off his new wife on his back, and ran away. It is written in the book that when he ran away, the heavenly-speaking lute which he also carried on his back brushed against a tree and the beautiful voice of the lute resounded, shaking the earth. I think that our old ancestors had quite a developed sense of music; here is a story, the most beautiful of all the stories which illustrates their delicacy of feeling.

There was in the reign of the Emperor Nintoku a tall tree on the west bank of the river Tsuki; the shadow of this tree, on its being struck by the morning sun, it is said, reached to the Island of Ahaji, and on being struck by the evening sun, it crossed Mount Takayasu. When the tree was cut down, it was made into a vessel which proved to be a very swift-going one, and it was called by the name of Karanu. With this vessel the water of the Island of Ahaji was drawn morning and evening and presented as the great august water. The vessel became ruined and useless in time; some broken pieces of this old vessel were used as fuel to dry salt, and other pieces of wood that remained over from the burning were turned into a lute, whose sound beautifully re-echoed seven miles away. Some one sang, saying:

“Karanu was burned for salt;
The part that was left was made into a lute;
Oh, when, struck, listen, it sounds
Like the wet trees standing
Hocked on the reefs in the middle of the wave,
In the middle of the Yura Sea.”