Japanese Culture: Identity and Tradition

Literature I: Poetry [Week 3/Lecture 3]

▲Varley, H. Paul. 2000. Japanese culture. 4th ed. Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press. pp.4—47, 58—61, 95—98, 121—124, 193—197

▲**Miner, E. R. Introduction To Japanese Court Poetry. Chapter 8 (pp.144—159)

▲**Levy, Ian Hideo. 1981. The ten thousand leaves: a translation of the Manyoshu,
Japan's premier anthology of classical poetry, Princeton library of Asian
translations. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Introduction (pp.
3—33)

First anthology of poetry.
Collection from the second quarter of the 7th century to the middle of the eighth.
Poems from people of many walks of life
Some say that it preserves 'pure' Japanese voice, free from Chinese and Korean influence.
But there is a great mix of styles. Some Confucian and Taoist written in Chinese, and some just primitive Shinto.
A work that reflects the dramatic cultural growth of the time. Fujiwara Capital, the first City. The Buddhist growth and architecture. Nara (modelled after Tang China). The Manyoshuu was yet another of these grand things.
The writings are ingenious, and stretch back even back to Japan's pre literate past.
There are many based on Buddhism.

Girl with your basket,
with your pretty basket,
with your shovel.
your pretty shovel,
gathering shoots on the hillside here,
I want to ask your home.
Tell me your name!

On the plain of land,
smoke from the hearths rises, rises
On the plain of waters,
gulls rise one after another.

Yamato. The land. The birthplace of Japanese civilisation. The emperor's palace was always built somewhere around the Asuka plain, in the Yamato area (Western Honshuu). The position changed each time an emperor died to prevent pollution. They were always built around this area, however, until the capital was moved to Nara in northern Yamato.

The use of Chinese writing in Japanese court, while stilted, was the catalyst to consciousness of verbal expression as a specifically aesthetic, rather than ritual medium, and this consciousness was applied to Japanese writing as well.

Nature began to yeild to Princess Nukada's aesthetic judgements.
Japanese poems don't have meter or rhyme, but rely on rhythm of phrases with alternating numbers of syllables. By the 7th century the 5/7 rhythm had been established.
The two major forms are the 長歌 and 短歌.
Now many days and months have passed
since the voice of his morning commandments
fell silent,
and the Prince's courtiers
do not know which way to turn.

I struggled up here,
kicking the rocks apart,
but it did no good:
my wife, whom I thought
was of this world,
is ash.

“There is a high degree of imagistic and formulaic interplay within Hitomaro's poetry. it occurs not only between “public” and “private” expressions, but also between the three classical thematic categories of The Ten Thousand Leaves.” (p. 20)

Celebration
Longing
Bereavement

This is a land of fearful gossip!
Do not show your emotion,
do not be revealed in scarlet hues,
even if the longing kills you.

(IV.683)

Eroticism in The Ten Thousand Leaves is formulaic.

Whether sexual or just between friends, it's all under the heading if “Personal Exchange”

koi not “Love” but “Longing”.

751

Though several days
have yet to pass
since we saw each other,
how intensely I long for her,
driving madness upon madness!

752

What can I do
when she bears on my mind like this,
mere visions of her obsessing me?
What can I do
inside the thicket of men's eyes?

753

I thought that, after we had met,
my desire would be assuaged a while,
but now my longing rages all the more.

A development in the “Personal Exchanges” poems is the that of the psychological metaphor.

Like the hidden stream
trickling beneath the trees
down the autumn mountainside,
so does my love increase
more than yours, my Lord. (II, 92)

“Here nature provides an image of passion as an incremental force, an action of the emotions that, imperceptible at first, gathers in time. It is far more than a merely ornamental “prelude,” for it brings off a dynamic interplay between nature and the psyche in a way similar to that of the Homeric simile.”
More metaphor:

It is because my thoughts of her
follow one upon another -
like the bridge of planks
across the shallows of Mano Cove -
that I see my wife in my dreams?

(IV.490)

“The astonishing ease with which the phenomena of nature are transformed into symbolic images of psychological states is one of the great accomplishments of Japanese literature.”

Book five includes poems of times when it was all about Chinese.

But thankfully for the sake of Japanese literature, Japanese poets didn't just want to copy, and they applied their own language into their compositions.

Would I could obtain
a dragon steed right now,
so I could fly
to the capital at Nara,
beautiful in the blue earth.

(V.806)

Uses the Chinese Dragon Steed and also the Japanese pillow word of Nara in the same poem.

Okura shall take his leave now.
My child must be crying
and its mother,
who bears it on her back,
must be waiting for me.

(III.337)

Followed immediately by a poems in praise of wine, as a response to the self righteousness:

Rather than making pronouncements
with an air of wisdom,
it's better to down the wine
and sob drunken tears.

(III.341)

It's the contrasting natures of Taoism and Confucianism, one worshiping and proffering the freedom to commune with nature and one adhering to social and family responsibilities.

But this testifies the breadth of the Manyoushuu with the seriousness and carelessness of the two poets Okura and Tabito.

The manyoushuu was written in the mix of Semantic and Phonetic Chinese, as it was written before the mature development of hiragana. After it was written, the 8th century saw Chinese become more popular for writing, so native literature suffered. But in 951 the Emperor decided to decipher it which took thousands of scholars many centuries, and their texts are the bases for modern interpretations.

▲**Rodd, Laurel Rasplica, Mary Catherine Henkenius, and Tsurayuki Ki. 1984.
Kokinshu: a collection of poems ancient and modern, Princeton library of
Asian translations. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Introduction
(pp. 3—34)

▲**Miner, E. R. 1979. Japanese linked poetry: an account with translations of renga
and haikai sequences. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Introduction (pp. 3—18)