one).
Autumn:
| Meigetsu ya | Bright full moon |
| Ike o megurite | The pond I wandered around |
| Yomosugara | All night long. |
Spring:
| Na no hana ya | Oh rape-flowers |
| Tsuki wa higashi ni | Moon in the East |
| Hi wa nishi ni | Sun in the West. |
Winter:
| Chiru susuki | Falling grass of susuki |
| Samuku nam no ga | The cold increases |
| Me ni mieru | Before the eyes. |
Here is beauty in simplicity. The principle underlying all Japanese artistic expression is perhaps the control of feeling. This can be seen in the simplicity of time, in the sobriety of colour in painting, and in the austere elegance of classic sculpture and architecture. This simplicity tends to be heightened by a refinement, purity, and luminous synthesis. But what I like best in Japanese poetry, what gives an impression of grandeur as in certain poems about nature by great Chinese poets like Li Po and Tu Fu, is the poetry of Noh, Here we can marvel at the weight of every word and be overwhelmed by its strength and universal beauty. Who could but admire the passage of Hagoromo, beautifully translated by Arthur Waley?
Now upon earth trail the long mists of Spring;
Who knows hut in the valleys of the moon
The heavenly moon-tree pats her blossom on?
The blossoms of her crown win back their glory:
It is the sign of Spring,
Not heaven is here, hut beauty of the wind and sky
Blow, blow you wind, and build
Cloud-walls across the sky, lest the vision leave us
Of a maid divine!
This tint of springtime in the woods,
This colour on the headland.
Snow on the mountain,
Moonlight on the clear shore,—
Which fairest? Nay, each peerless
At the dawn of a Spring day.14
THE CONCEPT OF LOVE
The concept of love in poetry is basically linked with the position of the woman in a certain society. We do not need here to go as far as to consider the economic situation of women and their place in the family ; but it is obvious that the way a poet looks at the lady of his dreams and her situation necessarily influences the tone of the song he sings to her. An analytical study of the relation between the position of the woman in a certain society and the character of the poetry she inspires has never been done; but it is easy to see that the devoted way the troubadours addressed their belles is far from the direct, abrupt and even sometimes brutal apostrophes of the poets of our time, Japanese included. From an anonymous English troubadour: Ma très douce et très aimé. . . . Night and day for love of thee suspiro. From one of the greatest Japanese modern poets, Sakutaro Hagiwara (1888-1942): "Woman, with your breasts like rubber balls." Western poetry has suffered for many centuries from the influence of the courteous type of love of the Middle Ages, in which the woman was worshipped by the knight-poet who died from love for her. In this worshipping of the troubadour and kneeling before his belle, there is certainly a deep religious influence suggested by the ideal of the Virgin Mother. All the great epic poets invoked goddesses or women to give them inspiration. Venus, Beatrice, Dulcinea, and Eleanora are not only literary creations, but also sources of creative power; Milton's Muse has been identified by some critics with the feminine principle in the cosmic creation.
Denis de Rougemont, in his interesting book Love in the Western World, asserts that the religion of love has dominated the Western world until today, opposing love to life and pursuing passion to death. Its foremost expression is the myth of Tristan and Iseult—love is a "boundless desire." This idea appears in the tradition of courtly love in the great literary works of the Renaissance and of the Romantic Movement.
There is nothing similar to this feeling of worship and spiritual devotion in Japanese poetry. The woman was never an ideal. The social influence of woman with her position lower than man, and the Buddhist thought which confirmed this did not encourage poets to assign high places to women in their dreams. About this Tanizaki wrote:
Ancient Japanese court literature and the drama of the feudal ages, with Buddhism a strong and living force behind it, had its classical dignity, but with the Edo Shogunate and the decline of Buddhism even, that disappeared. While the dramatists and novelists of the Edo period were able to create soft, lovely women, women who were likely to dissolve in tears on a man's knee, they were quite unable to create the sort of woman a man would feel compelled, to kneel before.15
But this says too little. Love, as it was sung by the poets of the West, was unknown to the Far East. It is known that the very word for love could not be pronounced, in Japan, in polite company.
Lin Yutang wrote this:
The most singular contrast between Chinese and Western art is the difference in the source of inspiration, which is nature itself for the East and the female form for the West. . . . Whereas the Chinese painter symbolizes spring by a fat and well-shaped partridge, the Western painter symbolizes it by a dancing nymph with a faun chasing after her.16
Love in Chinese poetry is seldom if ever Platonic. Besides, the note of friendship is more frequent than in Western poetry; to this J. Y. Liu adds, "There are many Chinese poems by men professing affection for other men in terms which would, bring serious embarrassment if not public prosecution to an English poet."17 In Japan, said Junichiro Tanizaki, the "liberation of love is the most substantial influence we have received from Western literature.
In the Manyoshu, we find, love themes treated with fresh candour, hidden ardour, and conjugal attachment. We cannot find there the fire, the eloquent rapture, the maddening love known in Western poetry. Japanese lovers are never very outspoken, and they do not cultivate eloquence. On the other hand, there is a grace and fire in this reserve that has its own charm.
The prince of the poets of the Manyoshu is Hitomaro, surnamed Kakinomoto because as a child he was found under a persimmon tree by a warrior named Ayabe, When Ayabe asked the divinely beautiful child who he was, he answered; "No father or mother have I, but in the moon and the winds, and in poetry I find my joy." The following is one of his poems:
| Tasokare to ware o na toi so | In this twilight of life ask not who I am |
| Nagatsuki no tsuyu ni nuretsutsu | Long time drenching in September dew |
| Kimi matsu ware o | For you waiting. |
Conjugal love is frequently expressed with a quiet tenderness or with the nostalgia of separation that retains the fresh candour of young courtship days. Ladies are
