in form and content, is incapable of satisfying today's aspirations. The poets who are still attached to tanka and to the other old forms waste their energy in putting into words old fashion ideas; by nature these old forms belong to the past and are no longer good for our time.
There are modern poets, though, that maintain the old devotion for the traditional forms. Santei (Masao Kume) writes: "Often I wonder why I did not spend my whole life as an artist, as a pure haiku poet. In regard to a unity in life, art, and mental attitude, there is no other artist for whom it is so harmonized as for the haiku poet."1
THE CONCEPT OF POETRY
The concept of poetry that we can find in the classic forms could correspond in a general way to the one expressed by Ki no Tsurayuki (884-946) in the preface of the Kokinshu:
Japanese poetry has its roots in the human heart and flourishes in countless thoughts. As people in the world are interested in so many kinds of things, it is in poetic words that they shape the meditations of their hearts on what they see and they hear. Who shall not be touched hearing the warbler sing among the blossoms and the frog in his water dwelling? It is poetry which moves heaven and earth, moves god and devils to pity, softens man and woman, consoles the hearts of fierce warriors.
About the subjects fit for poetry, Tsurayuki writes:
Pleasure livens the spirit of the poet; joy overflows his heart. He compares his love to the rising smoke of Mount Fuji; he remembers a friend when he hears an autumn insect chirp; he makes companions of the pine trees of Takasaeo and Suminoe; he is reminded of the old days of Otoko-yama, and consoles himself by composing verses even when dejected. He sees the blossoms scatter in a spring morning and hears the leaves fall in an autumn evening. He looks in the mirror and is sad he is growing old, and considers the inconstancy of life at the sight of dew in the grass and of foam on the water. He was prosperous yesterday, and today is poor; he feels abandoned in the world; his mends leave mm. He pledges his love swearing to god, meets clandestinely, passes a sleepless night, and is peevish in the morning. Sometimes he will confide his grief and feel indignation; he hears smoke rises no more from Mount Fuji and that old Nagae bridge is newly spanned. Then he feels relieved by betaking himself to poetry.
Lyricism animated by the pleasure of contemplating the beauty of nature, the joys and sorrows of love, parting and death, and the melancholy towards the passing of time are the main subjects of Japanese classic poetry. The tone is nearly always emotional, and melancholy is its prominent note. There are few exceptions which reach the plane of intellectual or moral reflexion, as happens often with the great Chinese poets.
In the anthology Kindai Shuka, we can see that the main emphasis is on life's sadness. In the curious preface, the author, Teika Fujiwara, writes the following about Tsurayuki, his predecessor:
Tsurayuki, in ancient times, preferred a style in which the conception of the poem was clever, the loftiness of tone difficult to achieve, the diction strong, and the effect pleasing and tasteful, but he did not compose in the style of overtones and eternal beauty.
And about the technique of composition, Fujiwara states concisely: "The art of Japanese poetry appears to be shallow but is deep, appears to be easy but is difficult."2
More recently, Norinaga Motoori (1730-1801), in his treatment of the nature of poetry in Sekijo Shishuku-gen (Observations from Long Years of Apprenticeship to Poetry), states the source and aim of poetry: Poetry "comes only from emotion. This is because emotion is more sensitive to things." The aim of poetry is to "give expression to an awareness of poignancy of human life." 3
This "sensibility of things" or "deep feeling in one's heart is expressed in Japanese by the word aware. Aware signifies all deep emotions, melancholy and amusement, sorrow and pleasure, love and regret. Anything which impresses the feelings strongly is aware. To write poetry is to express the feeling of aware. Quoting Tsurayuki, Motoori says, "A verse appears of itself from the aware of things and thus a master-poet is one who has the clearest understanding of aware,"4
LIMITATIONS
The limitations imposed by an aristocratic tradition brought about an inevitable complexity of technique and perfection in form. It brought also a certain monotony of subject, as the themes which the poets were allowed to treat were also limited. Bound by these two sorts of limitations, in form and in subject, Japanese poetry was condemned never to go beyond a charming simplicity of ideas, and to concentrate on power of suggestion and subtlety of expression.
About the limitations in subject Donald. Keene writes:
There are few poems written in burning indignation, like some of the greatest Chinese poetry, few of religious exaltation, few which touch more than vaguely on metaphysics or ethics. This list might be prolonged almost indefinitely until we are left with a very limited variety of subjects considered fit for poetry, and within that limited variety, a limited number of ways of treating them.5
To a Western reader this scarcity of variety and absence of freedom appears still more limiting than it really is, because probably no Westerner will ever be able to grasp the full beauty and depth of a Japanese poem. It requires a cultural heritage of thousands of years to find resonance to certain phrases, to develop an insular inclination towards seeking for meaning, and to prolong the subtlest hint or vaguest suggestion in depth. It requires a state of absolute identity with nature that Westerners are not normally able to attain. R. H. Blyth says that "to understand, to read properly a single haiku requires years of unconscious absorption of all the culture of India, China and Japan that comes to fulfilment in these small verses."
A Westerner finds it difficult to understand the full meaning of haiku. He probably cannot even understand why great Japanese writers today prefer Eastern to Western poetry. Soseki Natsume, the greatest of Japanese writers from Saikaku until today, says Oriental poetry "appears to me to be more palatable than Faust or Hamlet." For Soseki, the Oriental poet is the true poet; he has to attain a pure state of mind to be able to enter the realm of pure poetry. That is why, in this summit of serenity and simplicity, he can find poetry in the most ordinary things: "Basho found even the sight of a horse urinating near his pillow elegant enough to write a hokku about."
Be this as it may, the reader from the West can only make a judgement according to his own poetic standards. And according to these, G. B. Sansom sums it up in these words: "The Japanese poetical genius is often described as incapable of sustained flights, and perhaps this is true enough as a general view."
Lin Yutang thinks Chinese poetry also "lacks grandeur and power and richness. . . . Chinese lyrics are dainty, but never very powerful. By their terseness, narrative and descriptive passages are necessary limited in character."6 Still, I find a dramatic greatness in, for instance, Chang Heng's poem "The Bones of Chuang Tzu" and a splendorous grandeur in "The Szechwan Road" by Li Po.
Japanese poetry is, by its nature, restrained and brief. Foreign readers cannot apprehend the delicate shades, the subtle touches which can be grasped only in the original. Besides, the written characters have, in the skilful choice of a good poet, their own poetic content. But if it is impossible to translate a poem perfectly, what can pass into a foreign language in a poem rich in deep feeling and thought is always enough to show the high quality of its inspiration; otherwise great poets would seldom be known outside their own language.
The foreign reader, though admiring the noble simplicity of traditional forms, feels unsatisfied with their brevity and short range of subjects. But even the Japanese feel today the effect of these impoverishing limitations, and the proof is that their best poetry by contemporary poets follows the Western forms of expression.
These considerations, though, should not lessen the prominent role that poetry has played in Japanese
