Japanese Literature

She was the favorite of the first Emperor of the Hung dynasty in China, and the rival of the Empress. When the Emperor died, the Empress, a clever and disdainful woman, revenged herself by cutting off her feet, and her arms, and making away with her son.

99

This seems to have been the name of an aged attendant.

100

Among Japanese children it often happens that the milk teeth become black and decayed, which often gives a charm to their expression.

101

It was the custom to show a white horse on the seventh day of the new year to the Empress, the superstition being that this was a protestation against evil spirits.

102

A game consisting in opening Chinese poetry books and covering the rhymes, making others guess them.

103

Name of a ballad.

104

In Chinese history it is recorded that in giving an injunction to his son, Duke Choau, a great statesman of the eleventh century b.c., used these words: "I am the son of King Yuen, the brother of King Mu, and the uncle of King Ching; but I am so ready in receiving men in any way distinguished, that I am often interrupted three times at my dinner, or in my bath." It would seem that Genji, in the pride of his feeling, unconsciously made the above quotation in reference to himself.

105

The name of a small bird which appears about the time when the orange trees are in blossom. It sings, and is most active in the evening. In poetry, therefore, the orange blossom and this bird are associated, and they are both, the blossom and the bird, emblems of old memories.

106

When a person was exiled, he was generally deprived of his own title, or was degraded. Genji appears to have been deprived of his.

107

A favorite phrase in Chinese poems describing the journey of exile.

108

Suma is about sixty miles from Kiôto, the then capital.

109

A musical instrument—often called a koto.

110

When Sugawara, before referred to, arrived at Akashi, on his way to exile, the village postmaster expressed his surprise. Thereupon Sugawara gave him a stanza, which he composed:

"Oh, master, be not surprised to seeThis change in my estate, for soOnce to bloom, and once to fadeIs spring and autumn's usual lot."

111

In Chinese history it is recounted that a certain artful intriguer made a fool of his Sovereign by bringing a deer to the Court and presenting it before the Emperor, declaring it to be a horse. All the courtiers, induced by his great influence, agreed with him in calling it a horse, to the Emperor's great astonishment and bewilderment.

112

The coast along by Suma is celebrated for Chidori, a small sea-bird that always flies in large flocks. Their cries are considered very plaintive, and are often spoken of by poets.

113

Expressions used in a poem by Hak-rak-ten, describing a tasteful residence.

114

Here Tô-no-Chiûjiô is compared to the bird.

115

The third day of March is one of five festival days in China and Japan, when prayers for purification, or prayers intended to request the freeing one's self from the influence of fiends, are said on the banks of a river.

116

In the Japanese mythology the number of gods who assemble at their councils is stated to have been eight millions. This is an expression which is used to signify a large number rather than an exact one.

117

In Japanese mythology we have a story that there were two brothers, one of whom was always very lucky in fishing, and the other in hunting. One day, to vary their amusements, the former took his brother's bow and arrows and went to the mountain to hunt. The latter took the fishing-rod, and went to the sea, but unfortunately lost his brother's hook in the water. At this he was very miserable, and wandered abstractedly along the coast. The dragon god of the dragon palace, under the blue main, admired his beauty, and wishing him to marry his daughter, lured him into the dragon palace.

118

A religious feast in the Imperial Palace, in which Nin-wô-kiô, one of the Buddhist Bibles, was read, an event which rarely took place. Its object was to tranquillize the country.

119

The god of the sea.

120

The "biwa," more than any other instrument, is played by blind performers, who accompany it with ballads.

121

The services performed by rigid priests were six times daily—namely, at early morn, mid-day, sunset, early evening, midnight, and after midnight.

122

The Buddhist idea that when we get into Paradise we take our seat upon the lotus flower.

123

A line of an old ode about the beacon in the bay of Naniwa, at the same time expressing the desire of meeting with a loved one. It is impossible to translate this ode literally, as in the original there is a play upon words, the word beacon (in Japanese) also meaning "enthusiastic endeavor." The word "myo-tzkushi" (= beacon) more properly means "water-marker" though disused in the modern Japanese. In the translation a little liberty has been taken.

124

The name of a seaweed, but also meaning the eyes that meet, and hence the twofold sense of the word.

125

A short romance, supposed to be the oldest work of the kind ever written in Japan, as the authoress states. The story is, that once upon a time there was an aged man whose occupation was to cut bamboo. One day he found a knot in a bamboo cane which was radiant and shining, and upon cutting it he found in it a little girl who was named Kakya-hime. He took her home and brought her up. She grew a remarkable beauty. She had many suitors, but she refused to listen to their addresses, and kept her maiden reputation unsullied. Finally, in leaving this world, she ascended into the moon, from which she professed to have originally come down.

126

This is another old romance, and Toshikagè is its principal hero. When twelve or thirteen years of age he was sent to China, but the ship in which he was, being driven by a hurricane to Persia, he met there with a mystic stranger, from whom he learned secrets of the "Kin;" from thence he reached China, and afterwards returned to Japan.

127

This man was one of the maiden's suitors. He was told by her that if he could get for her the skin of the fire-proof rat she might possibly accept his hand. With this object he gave a vast sum of money to a Chinese merchant, who brought him what he professed to be the skin of the fire-proof rat, but when it was put to the test, it burnt away, and he lost his suit.

128

This Prince was another suitor of the maiden. His task was to find a sacred island called Horai, and to get a branch of a jewelled tree which grew in this island. He pretended to have embarked for this purpose, but really concealed himself in an obscure place. He had an artificial branch made by some goldsmith; but, of course, this deception was at once detected.

129

Japanese pictures usually have explanatory notes written on them.

130

It seems that this stanza alludes to some incident in the Shiô-Sammi, at the same time praising the picture.

131

This seems to be the name of the hero in the story alluded to above.

132

Such frantic demonstrations of grief are very frequently mentioned in the early poetry, and sound strangely to those who are accustomed to the more than English reserve of the modern Japanese. Possibly, as in Europe, so in Japan, there may have been a real change of character in this respect.

134

The N-á-h-i are sounded like our English word nigh, and therefore form but one syllable to the ear.

135

Anciently (and this custom is still followed in some parts of Japan) the hair of female children was cut short at the neck and allowed to hang down loosely till the age of eight. At twelve or thirteen the hair was generally bound up, though this ceremony was often frequently postponed till marriage. At the present day, the methods of doing the hair of female children, of grown-up girls, and of married women vary considerably.

136

The Mikado is meant. The feudal system did not grow up till many centuries later.

137

The original of this stanza is obscure, and the native commentators have no satisfactory interpretation to offer.

138

In the original the title is "The Beggar's Dialogue," there being two poems, of which that here translated is the second. The first one, which is put into the mouth of an unmarried beggar, who takes a cheerier view of poverty, is not so well fitted for translation into English.

139

Because, according to the Buddhist doctrine of perpetually recurring births, it is at any given time more probable that the individual will come into the world in the shape of one of the lower animals.

140

A literal translation of the Japanese idiom.

141

The Japanese commentators are puzzled over the meaning of the passage "with skirt uplifted, drew near and fondled me." To the European mind there seems to be nothing obscure in it. The mother probably lifted her skirt to wipe her eyes, when she was crying. It is evidently a figurative way of saying that the mother was crying.

142

The play in the original is on the word Matsu, which has the double signification of "a pine-tree" and "to wait."

143

Mount Lover and Mount Lady-love (Se-yama and Imo-yama) in the province of Yamato.

144

The reference in this song is to an old superstition. It used to be supposed that the chance words caught from the mouths of passers-by would solve any doubt on questions to which it might otherwise be impossible to obtain an answer. This was called the yufu-ura, or "evening divination," on account of its being practised in the evening. It has been found impossible in this instance to follow the original very closely.

145

Died A.D. 671.

146

Viz., with the departed and deified Mikado.

147

The Milky Way.

148

The part played by the mirror in the devotions of the Japanese is carried back by them to a tale in their mythology which relates the disappearance into a cavern of the Sun-goddess Amaterasu, and the manner in which she was enticed forth by being led to believe that her reflection in a mirror that was shown to her was another deity more lovely than herself.

149

One of the ancient names of Japan, given to the country on account of a supposed resemblance in shape to that insect. The dragon-flies of Japan are various and very beautiful.

150

The Mikado referred to is Zhiyomei, who died in A.D. 641.

151

The poet alludes to the so-called Ama-no-Ukihashi, or "floating bridge of heaven"—the bridge by which, according to the Japanese mythology, the gods passed up and down in the days of old.

152

The plum-tree, cherry-tree, etc., are in Japan cultivated, not for their fruit, but for their blossoms. Together with the wistaria, the lotus, the iris, the lespedeza, and a few others, these take the place which is occupied in the West by the rose, the lily, the violet, etc.

153

The lotus is the Buddhist emblem of purity, and the lotus growing out of the bud is a frequent metaphor for the heart that remains unsullied by contact with the world.

154

The transplanting of the rice occupies the whole rural population during the month of June, when men and women may all be seen working in the fields, knee-deep in water. The crops are gathered in October.

155

This ode was composed on beholding a screen presented to the Empress by Prince Sadayasu at the festival held in honor of her fiftieth birthday, whereon was painted a man seated beneath the falling cherry blossoms and watching them flutter down.

156

The "Herb of Forgetfulness" answers in the poetical diction of the Japanese to the classical waters Lethe.

157

It is the young poet Ki-no-Tomonori who is mourned in this stanza.

158

The Milky Way.

159

This stanza is remarkable for being (so far as the present writer is aware) the only instance in Japanese literature of that direct impersonation of an abstract idea which is so very strongly marked a characteristic of Western thoughts and modes of expression.

160

Composed on the occasion of a feast at the palace.

161

One of a number of stanzas composed by a party of courtiers who visited the cascade of Nunobiki, near the site of the modern treaty-port of Kobe.

162

This stanza was composed and sent to the owner of the neighboring house on the last day of winter, when the wind had blown some snow across from it into the poet's dwelling.

163

The reader will call to mind the extreme simplicity which distinguishes the method of representing the Japanese lyric dramas. In accordance with this simplicity, all the changes of place mentioned in the text are indicated merely by a slight movement to and fro of the actors upon the stage.

164

It is said that in antiquity an ode commencing with the name of Mount Asaka was the first copybook put into the hands of children. The term is therefore now used as the "Pillow-word" for learning to write.

165

The doctrine of retribution set forth in the above lines is a cardinal point of the Buddhist teaching; and, as the afflicted Christian seeks support in the expectation of future rewards for goodness, so will the pious Buddhist find motives for resignation in the consideration of his present sufferings as the consequence of sins committed in past stages of existence.

166

A little further on, Kauzhiyu says it is a "rule" that a retainer must lay down his life for his lord. Though it would be difficult to find either in the Buddhist or in the Confucian teaching any explicit statement of such a duty, it is nevertheless true that the almost frantic loyalty of the mediæval and modern Japanese was but the natural result of such teaching domiciled amid a feudal society. We may see in this drama the whole distance that had been traversed by the Japanese mind since the time of the "Mañyefushifu" poets, whose means of life and duty were so much nearer to those of the simply joyous and unmoral, though not immoral, children of nature.

167

Literally, "turns his child into a dream."

168

During the Middle Ages it was very usual for afflicted persons to renounce secular life, the Buddhist tonsure being the outward sign of the step thus taken.

169

The Past World, the Present World, and the World to Come. According to the Buddhist teaching, the relations subsisting between parents and children are for one life only; those between husband and wife are for two lives; while those uniting a servant to his lord or a disciple to his master endure for the space of three consecutive lives.

170

This sentence, which so strangely reminds us of John iii., 16, is, like all the prose passages of these dramas, a literal rendering of the Japanese original.

171

In Japan, as in England, it is usual to talk of going "up" to the capital and "down" to the country.

172

A form of mortification current in the Shiñgoñ sect of Buddhists.

173

Bôdhidharma, the first Buddhist Patriarch of China, whither he came from India in a.d. 520. He is said to have remained seated in abstraction gazing at a wall for nine years, till his legs rotted off. His name is, in Japan, generally associated with the ludicrous. Thus certain legless and shapeless dolls are called after him, and snow-figures are denominated Yuki-daruma (Snow Daruma).

174

Needless to say that no such text exists.

175

Used for carrying parcels, and for presenting anything to, and receiving anything from, a superior. The touch of the inferior's hand would be considered rude.

176

The meaning is that, as one of the two must be under the blanket in readiness for a possible visit from the wife, the servant would doubtless feel it to be contrary to their respective positions for him to take his ease outside while his master is sitting cramped up inside—a peculiarly uncomfortable position, moreover, for the teller of a long story.

177

The lines are in reality a bad Japanese imitation of some in a poem by Li Shang-Yin.

178

Proverbial expressions.

179

Properly, the Five Hundred "Arhân," or personal disciples of Sâkya. The island of Tsukushi forms the southwestern extremity of Japan.