The boy, however, was quite unaware of what was being said about him. Once, when the moon shone and all was quiet, he went out on the veranda and, as the night deepened, cupped his hands as though dipping up water and recited this poem:
Te ni musubu This image of the moon
mizu ni yadoreru lodged in the water
tsuki kage wa I hold in my hand—
aru ka naki ka and this world we live in as well—
yo no mo sumu kana are they real, or are they not?
When Eshin heard this, he immediately said, “The poem is deeply moving in both its form and its meaning!” He therefore let the boy remain among his disciples and himself became fond of poetry, many of his poems being preserved in the anthologies compiled in later ages.
It is also reported that the boy, observing a boat on Lake Biwa in Ōmi, recited this poem:
Yo no naka o This worlds of ours—
nani ni tatoen what to compare it to?
asaborake White waves
kogiyuku fune no in the wake of a boat
ato no shiranami rowing away at dawn.
In this way, we are told, Eshin came to love poetry. The first poem the boy recited was by Tsurayuki, written when he was gravely ill and hoped thereby to ease his mind. The second poem was by Mansei.3 The boy recited these poems on occasions that were appropriate to them. Both are preserved in the Shūi wakashū.4 Eshin himself composed the following poem:
Urayamashi Enviable!
ikanaru sora no How the moon,
tsuki nareba whatever sky it’s in,
kokoro no mama ni never wavers in its goal,
nishi ni yukuran moving ever westward!5
The term “wild words and fancy phrases,” when applied to Japanese poetry, refers to poetry that is defiled, because such poetry is bound up with emotional attachments, colored by improper feelings, and decked out in empty words. But when poetry accords with the principles of the sacred teachings, wakens in our minds a sense of impermanence, and turns us away from worldly concerns, crass thoughts, and all craving for fame and profit—as when we observe the falling leaves and sense the ephemerality of this world, or when, by writing of snow or the moon, we convey to others the inherent purity of the mind—then it may guide us into the Way of the Buddha and aid us to understand its doctrines. Therefore, when persons of past times practiced the teachings of the Buddha, they did not necessarily reject the study of Japanese poetry entirely.
Hence we find that, when the occasion arose to express their feelings, such persons often wrote Japanese poems. For example, at a gathering attended by the venerable priest of Ōhara, Priest Saigyō,6 and others, Eshin himself, writing on the subject of old age, composed this poem:
Yama no ha ni As their shapes sink
kage katabukite beyond the leaves of the mountain rim,
kuyashiki ya how I grieve at
munashiku sugishi the empty passing
tsuki hi narikeri of these suns and moons!
Listening to the poem many ages after, if we stop to consider the writer’s feelings, we realize that even a man who had freed himself from emotional entanglements was still conscious of the sadness of things.
The Deep Meaning Underlying the Way of Japanese Poetry (5:12)
When we come to fully understand Japanese poetry [waka], we can see that it has the virtue of curbing thoughts that are disordered, coarse, and turbulent and of achieving a state of calm and serenity. Employing few words, it conveys vast meaning. It has the virtue of sōji, or all-encompassing mystic utterances. A sōji is a dhārani.7
The gods of our land of Japan are local manifestations of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas, the greatest of which is the manifested body of the Buddha.8 The god Susano-o initiated the practice of Japanese poetry with his poem in thirty-one syllables on “Izumo where eight clouds rise.”9 His poem is, in effect, no different from the words of the Buddha. The dhārani of India, like Susano-o’s poem, are couched in the language of the country to which they are addressed. The Buddha employed the language of India to convey his mystic utterances.
Therefore, the Meditation Master Yixing, in his Annotations on the Mahāvairochana Sutra, says: “The local languages of the various regions are all dhārani.”10 If the Buddha had appeared in our land of Japan, he would simply have used the language of Japan in which to express his mystic utterances.
1.Eshin (942–1017), better known by the name Genshin, was an eminent priest and scholar of Enryaku-ji temple on Mount Hiei and the author of The Essentials of Salvation (Ōjōyōshū, 985), a highly influential Buddhist text.
2.The phrase “wild words and fancy phrases” (kyōgen kigo) derives from a piece written by the Chinese poet Bo Juyi (772–846) when he deposited a copy of his writings in a Buddhist temple in Luoyang. In it, he expressed a wish that “these worldly literary labors of my present existence, these transgressions of wild words and fancy phrases,” might be transformed into causes for deeper religious understanding. But many Buddhists felt that undue attention to poetry and other types of secular literature was in fact an impediment to such understanding.
3.Ki no Tsurayuki (868–945) was a renowned poet and an editor of the Kokinshū (Collection of Ancient and Modern Japanese Poems, ca. 905). Sami Mansei (dates unknown) was a poet of the mid-Nara period (710–784). The boy quotes a slightly revised version of Mansei’s poem.
4.The Shūi wakashū (Gleanings Collection of Japanese Poetry, 1005–1007), often abbreviated as Shūishū, is the third imperial anthology of Japanese poetry.
5.West in Buddhist terms is the direction of Amida Buddha’s Western Paradise.
6.The “venerable priest of Ōhara” is Jakuren (d. 1202), a late Heian poet; Saigyō (1118–1190) is among the most famous of early Japanese poets.
7.Dhārani are spells or mystic formulas used in Buddhism. Sōji, a translation of the Sanskrit word dhārani, means “all-retaining,” because one who recites a dhārani is able to remember all of the Buddha’s teachings.
8.One of the three bodies of a Buddha, this is the one in which he manifests himself in the temporal world.
9.In “Izumo where eight clouds rise,” the first poem in the Record of Ancient Matters (Kojiki, 712), Susano-o describes an eightfold fence that he has built in Izumo to protect his wife.
10.Annotations on the Mahāvairochana Sutra (Great Sun Sutra; Ch. Darijing, Jp. Dainichi-kyō) is a compilation of the lectures of Shanwuwei (Skt. Shubhākarasimha, 637–735) on the sutra made by his disciple Yixing (683–727).
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TRANSLATIONS AND STUDIES IN WESTERN LANGUAGES
TRANSLATIONS
Backus, Robert L., trans. The Riverside Counselor’s Stories: Vernacular Fiction of Late Heian Japan. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985.
Brower, Robert H. “The Konzyaku monogatarisyū: An Historical and Critical Introduction, with Annotated Translations of Seventy-eight Tales.” Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1952.
Brownlee, John, trans. “Jikkinshō: A Miscellany of Ten Maxims.” Monumenta Nipponica 29, no. 2 (1974): 121–161.
Chingen. Miraculous Tales of the Lotus Sutra from Ancient Japan: The Dainihonkoku Hokekyōkenki of Prince Chingen. Translated and annotated by Yoshiko Kurata Dykstra. Hirakata City, Osaka: Intercultural Research Institute, Kansai University of Foreign Studies, 1983.
Dykstra, Yoshiko Kurata, trans. “Jizō, the Most Merciful: Tales from Jizō Bosatsu reigenki.” Monumenta Nipponica 33, no. 2 (1978): 179–200.
——, trans. The Konjaku Tales: Chinese Section: From a Medieval Japanese Collection. Hirakata City, Osaka: Intercultural Research Institute, Kansai University of Foreign Studies, 1994.
——, trans. The Konjaku Tales: Indian Section: From a Medieval Japanese Collection. Hirakata City, Osaka: Intercultural Research Institute, Kansai University of Foreign Studies, 1986.
——, trans. The Konjaku Tales: Japanese Section: From a Medieval Japanese Collection. 3 vols. Hirakata City, Osaka: Intercultural Research Institute, Kansai Universit
y of Foreign Studies, 1998, 2001, 2003.
——, trans. “Notable Tales Old and New: Tachibana Narisue’s Kokon Chomonjū.” Monumenta Nipponica 47, no. 4 (1992): 469–493.
——, trans. “Tales of the Compassionate Kannon: The Hasedera Kannon genki.” Monumenta Nipponica 31, no. 2 (1976): 113–143.
Forster, John S., trans. “Uji shūi monogatari: Selected Translation.” Monumenta Nipponica 20, nos. 1–2 (1965): 135–208.
Frank, Bernard, trans. Histoires qui sont maintenant du passé. Paris: Gallimard, 1968.
Geddes, Ward, trans. Kara monogatari: Tales of China. Tempe: Center for Asian Studies, Arizona State University, 1984.
Jones, S. W., trans. Ages Ago: Thirty-seven Tales from the Konjaku monogatari Collection. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959.
Kamens, Edward B. The Three Jewels: A Study and Translation of Minamoto Tanemori’s Sanbōe. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1988.
Keikai. Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition: The Nihon ryōiki of the Monk Kyōkai. Translated and annotated by Kyoko Motomochi Nakamura. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973.
Mills, D. E. A Collection of Tales from Uji: A Study and Translation of Uji shūi monogatari. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Moore, Jean. “Senjūshō: Buddhist Tales of Renunciation.” Monumenta Nipponica 41, no. 2 (1986): 127–174.
Morrell, Robert E. “Mujū Ichien’s Shinto–Buddhist Syncretism: Shasekishū, Book 1.” Monumenta Nipponica 28, no. 4 (1973): 447–488.
Mujū, Ichien. Collection de sable et de pierres: Shasekishū. Translation, preface, and commentaries by Hartmut O. Rotermund. Paris: Gallimard, 1979.
——. Sand and Pebbles (Shasekishū): The Tales of Mujū Ichien, a Voice for Pluralism in Kamakura Buddhism. Translated and edited by Robert E. Morrell. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985.
Pandey, Rajyashree. “Suki and Religious Awakening: Kamo no Chōmei’s Hosshinshū.” Monumenta Nipponica 41, no. 3 (1992): 299–321.
——. “Women, Sexuality, and Enlightenment: Kankyo no Tomo.” Monumenta Nipponica 50, no. 3 (1995): 325–356.
Philippi, Donald L. “Two Tales from the Nippon ryōiki.” Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 5 (1960): 53–55.
Shirane, Haruo, ed. Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Tahara, Mildred M., trans. Tales of Yamato: A Tenth-Century Poem-Tale. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1980.
Tyler, Royall, trans. Japanese Tales. New York: Pantheon, 1987.
Ueda, Akinari. Tales of Moonlight and Rain. Translated by Anthony H. Chambers. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Ury, Marian. “Genkō shakusho: Japan’s First Comprehensive History of Buddhism.” Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1971.
——. “Nuns and Other Female Devotees in Genkō shakusho (1322), Japan’s First History of Buddhism.” Revised for publication by Robert Borgen. In Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Premodern Japan, edited by Barbara Ruch, 189–207. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002.
——, trans. “The Ōe Conversations.” Monumenta Nipponica 48, no. 3 (1993): 359–380.
——, trans. “Recluses and Eccentric Monks: Tales from the Hosshinshū by Kamo no Chōmei.” Monumenta Nipponica 27, no. 2 (1972): 149–173.
——, trans. Tales of Times Now Past: Sixty-two Stories from a Medieval Japanese Collection. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.
Waters, Virginia Skord. “Sex, Lies, and the Illustrated Scroll: The Dōjōji Engi Emaki.” Monumenta Nipponica 52, no. 1 (1997): 59–84.
Yanagita, Kunio. The Legends of Tōno. Translated by Ronald A. Morse. Tokyo: Japan Foundation, 1975.
STUDIES
Deal, William E. “Women and Japanese Buddhism.” In Religions of Japan in Practice, edited by George J. Tanabe Jr., 176–184. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Eubanks, Charlotte. “Illustrating the Mind: ‘Faulty Memory’ Setsuwa and the Decorative Sutras of Late Classical and Early Medieval Japan.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 36, no. 2 (2009): 209–230.
——. “Rendering the Body Buddhist: Sermonizing in Medieval Japan.” Ph.D. diss., University of Colorado at Boulder, 2005.
Foster, Michael Dylan. Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yōkai. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.
Geddes, Ward. “The Courtly Model: Chōmei and Kiyomori in Jikkinshō.” Monumenta Nipponica 42, no. 2 (1987): 157–166.
Howell, Thomas Raymond, Jr. “Setsuwa, Knowledge, and the Culture of Reading and Writing in Medieval Japan.” Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2002.
Kelsey, W. Michael. Konjaku monogatari-shū. Boston: Twayne, 1982.
——. “Konjaku monogatari-shū: Toward an Understanding of Its Literary Qualities.” Monumenta Nipponica 30, no. 2 (1975): 121–150.
——. “Salvation of the Snake, the Snake of Salvation: Buddhist–Shintō Conflict and Resolution.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 8, nos. 1–2 (1981): 83–113.
Kimbrough, R. Keller. Preachers, Poets, Women, and the Way: Izumi Shikibu and the Buddhist Literature of Medieval Japan. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2008.
Klein, Susan Blakeley. “When the Moon Strikes the Bell: Desire and Enlightenment in the Noh Play Dōjōji.” Journal of Japanese Studies 17, no. 2 (1991): 291–322.
——. “Woman as Serpent: The Demonic Feminine in the Noh Play Dōjōji.” In Religious Reflections on the Human Body, edited by Jane Marie Law, 100–136. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.
Kobayashi, Hiroko. The Human Comedy of Heian Japan: A Study of the Secular Stories in the Twelfth-Century Collection of Tales, Konjaku monogatarishū. Tokyo: Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1979.
Kotas, Fredric. “Ōjōden: Accounts of Rebirth in the Pure Land.” Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1987.
LaFleur, William R. The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
Li, Michelle Osterfeld. Ambiguous Bodies: Reading the Grotesque in Japanese Setsuwa Tales. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009.
Mills, Douglas E. “Popular Elements in Heian Literature.” Journal-Newsletter of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 3, no. 3 (1966): 38–41.
Mori, Masato. “Konjaku monogatari-shū: Supernatural Creatures and Order.” Translated by W. Michael Kelsey. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 9, nos. 2–3 (1982): 147–170.
Morrell, Robert E. “Mirror for Women: Mujū Ichien’s Tsuma kagami.” Monumenta Nipponica 35, no. 1 (1980): 45–75.
Rodd, Laurel Rasplica. “Nichiren and Setsuwa.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 5, nos. 2–3 (1978): 159–185.
Tonomura, Hitomi. “Black Hair and Red Trousers: Gendering the Flesh in Medieval Japan.” American Historical Review 99, no. 1 (1994): 129–154.
Ury, Marian. “A Heian Note on the Supernatural.” Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 22, no. 2 (1988): 189–194.
Wilson, William Ritchie. “The Way of the Bow and Arrow: The Japanese Warrior in Konjaku monogatari.” Monumenta Nipponica 28, no. 2 (1973): 177–233.
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ASIAN CLASSICS
Major Plays of Chikamatsu, tr. Donald Keene 1961
Four Major Plays of Chikamatsu, tr. Donald Keene. Paperback ed. only. 1961; rev. ed. 1997
Records of the Grand Historian of China, translated from the Shih chi of Ssu-ma Ch’ien, tr. Burton Watson, 2 vols. 1961
Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo-Confucian Writings by Wang Yang-ming, tr. Wing-tsit Chan 1963
Hsün Tzu: Basic Writings, tr. Burton Watson, paperback ed. only. 1963; rev. ed. 1996
Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, tr. Burton Watson, paperback ed. only. 1964; rev. ed. 1996
The Mahābhārata, tr. Chakravarthi V. Narasimhan. Also in paperback ed. 1965; rev. ed. 1997
The Manyōshū, Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkōkai edition 1965
Su Tung-p’o: Selections from a Sung Dynasty Poet, tr. Burton Watson. Also in paperback ed. 1965
Bhartrihari: Poems, tr. Barbara Stoler Miller. Also in paperback ed. 1967
Basic Writings of Mo Tzu, Hsün Tzu, and Han Fei Tzu, tr. Burton Watson. Also in separate paperback eds. 1967
The Awakening of Faith, Attributed to Aśvaghosha, tr. Yoshito S. Hakeda. Also in paperback ed. 1967
Reflections on Things at Hand: The Neo-Confucian Anthology, comp. Chu Hsi and Lü Tsu-ch’ien, tr. Wing-tsit Chan 1967
The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, tr. Philip B. Yampolsky. Also in paperback ed. 1967
Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō, tr. Donald Keene. Also in paperback ed. 1967
The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon, tr. Ivan Morris, 2 vols. 1967
Two Plays of Ancient India: The Little Clay Cart and the Minister’s Seal, tr. J. A. B. van Buitenen 1968
The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, tr. Burton Watson 1968
The Romance of the Western Chamber (Hsi Hsiang chi), tr. S. I. Hsiung. Also in paperback ed. 1968
The Manyōshū, Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkōkai edition. Paperback ed. only. 1969
Records of the Historian: Chapters from the Shih chi of Ssu-ma Ch’ien, tr. Burton Watson. Paperback ed. only. 1969
Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T’ang Poet Han-shan, tr. Burton Watson. Also in paperback ed. 1970
Twenty Plays of the Nō Theatre, ed. Donald Keene. Also in paperback ed. 1970
Chūshingura: The Treasury of Loyal Retainers, tr. Donald Keene. Also in paperback ed. 1971; rev. ed. 1997
The Demon at Agi Bridge and Other Japanese Tales (Translations from the Asian Classics) Page 17
