by Donald Keene
stick beaks
Pointed at me
Have you come,
at last,
To peck me
to death?
ANCIENT
PERIOD
TO 794 AD
MAN'YŌ SHŪ
The "Man'yōshū," or "Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves," is the oldest and greatest of the Japanese anthologies of poetry. It was compiled in the middle of the eighth century, but it includes material of a much earlier date—one cannot say with certainty just how early. There are about 4,500 poems in the "Man'yōshū," and they display a greater variety of form and subject than any other collection. In particular the long poems—chōka or nagauta—have a sustained power that could never be achieved in the tanka of thirty-one syllables which was to be the dominant verse form in Japan for centuries. Even in the shorter poems of the "Man'yōshū" there is a passion and a directness that later poets tended to polish away.
The translations here given were made by the Japanese Classics Translation Committee under the auspices of the Nippon Gaku-jutsu Shinkōkai. The poet Ralph Hodgson was among those responsible for these excellent versions.
Your basket, with your pretty basket,
Your trowel, with your little trowel,
Maiden, picking herbs on this hillside,
I would ask you: Where is your home?
Will you not tell me your name?
Over the spacious Land of Yamato
It is I who reign so wide and far,
It is I who rule so wide and far.
I myself, as your lord, will tell you
Of my home, and my name.
Attributed to Emperor Yūryaku (418-479)
Climbing Kagu-yama and looking upon the land
Countless are the mountains in Yamato,
But perfect is the heavenly hill of Kagu;
When I climb it and survey my realm,
Over the wide plain the smoke-wreaths rise and rise,
Over the wide lake the gulls are on the wing;
A beautiful land it is, the Land of Yamato!
Emperor Jomei (593-641)
Upon the departure of Prince Ōtsu for the capital after his secret visit to the Shrine of Ise
To speed my brother
Parting for Yamato,
In the deep of night I stood
Till wet with the dew of dawn.
The lonely autumn mountains
Are hard to pass over
Even when two go together—
How does my brother cross them all alone!
Princess Ōku (661-701)
. .
In the sea of Iwami,
By the cape of Kara,
There amid the stones under sea
Grows the deep-sea miru weed;
There along the rocky strand
Grows the sleek sea tangle.
Like the swaying sea tangle,
Unresisting would she lie beside me—
My wife whom I love with a love
Deep as the miru-growing ocean.
But few are the nights
We two have lain together.
Away I have come, parting from her
Even as the creeping vines do part.
My heart aches within me;
I turn back to gaze—
But because of the yellow leaves
Of Watari Hill,
Flying and fluttering in the air,
I cannot see plainly
My wife waving her sleeve to me.
Now as the moon, sailing through the cloud-rift
Above the mountain of Yakami,
Disappears, leaving me full of regret,
So vanishes my love out of sight;
Now sinks at last the sun,
Coursing down the western sky.
I thought myself a strong man,
But the sleeves of my garment
Are wetted through with tears.
ENVOYS
My black steed
Galloping fast,
Away have I come,
Leaving under distant skies
The dwelling place of my love.
Oh, yellow leaves
Falling on the autumn hill,
Cease a while
To fly and flutter in the air,
That I may see my love's dwelling place!
Kakinomoto Hitomaro (Seventh Century)
On the occasion of the temporary enshrinement of Princess Asuka
Across the river of the bird-flying Asuka
Stepping-stones are laid in the upper shallows,
And a plank bridge over the lower shallows.
The water-frond waving along the stones,
Though dead, will reappear.
The river-tresses swaying by the bridge
Wither, but they sprout again.
How is it, O Princess, that you have
Forgotten the morning bower
And forsaken the evening bower
Of him, your good lord and husband—
You who did stand handsome like a water-frond,
And who would lie with him,
Entwined like tender river-tresses?
No more can he greet you. You make your eternal abode
At the Palace of Kinohe whither oft in your lifetime
He and you made holiday together,
Bedecked with flowers in spring,
Or with golden leaves in autumntide,
Walking hand in hand, your eyes
Fondly fixed upon your lord as upon a mirror,
Admiring him ever like the glorious moon.
So it may well be that grieving beyond measure,
And moaning like a bird unmated,
He seeks your grave each morn.
I see him go, drooping like summer grass,
Wander here and there like the evening star,
And waver as a ship wavers in the sea.
No heart have I to comfort him,
Nor know I what to do.
Only your name and your deathless fame,
Let me remember to the end of time;
Let the Asuka River, your namesake,
Bear your memory for ages,
O Princess adored!
ENVOYS
Even the flowing water
Of the Asuka River—
If a weir were built,
Would it not stand still?
O Asuka, River of Tomorrow,
As if I thought that I should see
My Princess on the morrow,
Her name always lives in my mind.
After the death of his wife
Since in Karu lived my wife,
I wished to be with her to my heart's content;
But I could not visit her constantly
Because of the many watching eyes—
Men would know of our troth,
Had I sought her too often.
So our love remained secret like a rock-pent pool;
I cherished her in my heart,
Looking to aftertime when we should be together,
And lived secure in my trust
As one riding a great ship.
Suddenly there came a messenger
Who told me she was dead—
Was gone like a yellow leaf of autumn.
Dead as the day dies with the setting sun,
Lost as the bright moon is lost behind the cloud,
Alas, she is no more, whose soul
Was bent to mine like bending seaweed!
When the word was brought to me
I knew not what to do nor what to say;
But restless at the mere news,
And hoping to heal my grief
Even a thousandth part,
I journeyed to Karu and searched the market place
Where my wife was wont to go!
There I stood and listened,
But no voice of her I heard,
Though the birds sang in the Unebi Mountain;
None passed by who even looked like my wife.
I could on
ly call her name and wave my sleeve.
ENVOYS
In the autumn mountains
The yellow leaves are so thick.
Alas, how shall I seek my love
Who has wandered away?
I know not the mountain track.
I see the messenger come
As the yellow leaves are falling.
Oh, well I remember
How on such a day we used to meet—
My wife and I!
. .
In the days when my wife lived,
We went out to the embankment near by—
We two, hand in hand—
To view the elm trees standing there
With their outspreading branches
Thick with spring leaves. Abundant as their greenery
Was my love. On her leaned my soul.
But who evades mortality?
One morning she was gone, flown like an early bird.
Clad in a heavenly scarf of white,
To the wide fields where the shimmering kagerō rises
She went and vanished like the setting sun.
The little babe—the keepsake
My wife has left me—
Cries and clamors.
I have nothing to give; I pick up the child
And clasp it in my arms.
In our chamber, where our two pillows lie,
Where we two used to sleep together,
Days I spend alone, broken-hearted:
Nights I pass, sighing till dawn.
Though I grieve, there is no help;
Vainly I long to see her.
Men tell me that my wife is
In the mountains of Hagai—
Thither I go,
Toiling along the stony path;
But it avails me not,
For of my wife, as she lived in this world,
I find not the faintest shadow.
ENVOYS
Tonight the autumn moon shines—
The moon that shone a year ago,
But my wife and I who watched it then together
Are divided by ever widening wastes of time.
When leaving my love behind
In the Hikite mountains—
Leaving her there in her grave,
I walk down the mountain path,
I feel not like one living.
Kakinomoto Hitomaro
Dialogue poems
If the thunder rolls for a while
And the sky is clouded, bringing rain,
Then you will stay beside me.
Even when no thunder sounds
And no rain falls, if you but ask me,
Then I will stay beside you.
From the Hitomaro Collection
. .
I thought there could be
No more love left anywhere.
Whence then is come this love,
That has caught me now
And holds me in its grasp?
Princess Hirokawa (Eighth Century)
An old threnody
The mallards call with evening from the reeds
And float with dawn midway on the water;
They sleep with their mates, it is said,
With white wings overlapping and tails asweep
Lest the frost should fall upon them.
As the stream that flows never returns,
And as the wind that blows is never seen,
My wife, of this world, has left me,
Gone I know not whither!
So here, on the sleeves of these clothes
She used to have me wear,
I sleep now all alone!
ENVOY
Cranes call flying to the reedy shore;
How desolate I remain
As I sleep alone!
Tajihi (Eighth Century)
. .
Oh how steadily I love you—
You who awe me
Like the thunderous waves
That lash the seacoast of Ise!
Lady Kasa (Eighth Century)
. .
More sad thoughts crowd into my mind
When evening comes; for then,
Appears your phantom shape—
Speaking as I have known you speak.
Lady Kasa
. .
If it were death to love,
I should have died—
And died again
One thousand times over.
Lady Kasa
Love's complaint
At wave-bright Naniwa
The sedges grow, firm-rooted—
Firm were the words you spoke,
And tender, pledging me your love,
That it would endure through all the years;
And to you I yielded my heart,
Spotless as a polished mirror.
Never, from that day, like the seaweed
That sways to and fro with the waves,
Have I faltered in my fidelity,
But have trusted in you as in a great ship.
Is it the gods who have divided us?
Is it mortal men who intervene?
You come no more, who came so often,
Nor yet arrives a messenger with your letter.
There is—alas!—nothing I can do.
Though I sorrow the black night through
And all day till the red sun sinks,
It avails me nothing. Though I pine,
I know not how to soothe my heart's pain.
Truly men call us "weak women."
Crying like an infant,
And lingering around, I must still wait,
Wait impatiendy for a message from you!
ENVOY
If from the beginning
You had not made me trust you,
Speaking of long, long years,
Should I have known now
Such sorrow as this?
Lady Ōtomo of Sakanoue (Eighth Century)
. .
Do you desire our love to endure?
Then, if only while I see you
After days of longing and yearning,
Pray, speak to me
Sweet words—all you can!
Lady Ōtomo
. .
Oh, the pain of my love that you know not—
A love like the maiden-lily
Blooming in the thicket of the summer moor!
Lady Ōtomo
Addressed to a young woman
Over the river ferry of Saho,
Where the sanderlings cry—
When can I come to you,
Crossing on horseback
The crystal-clear shallows?
Having seen your smile
In a dream by chance,
I keep now burning in my hear
Love's inextinguishable flame.
How I waste and waste away
With love forlorn—
I who have thought myself
A strong man!
Ōtomo Yakamochi (718-785)
. .
Rather than that I should thus pine for you,
Would I had been transmuted
Into a tree or a stone,
Nevermore to feel the pangs of love.
Ōtomo Yakamochi
. .
In obedience to the Imperial command,
Though sad is the parting from my wife,
I summon up the courage of a man,
And dressed for journey, take my leave.
My mother strokes me gently;
My young wife clings to me, saying,
"I will pray to the gods for your safekeeping.
Go unharmed and come back soon!"
As she speaks, she wipes with her sleeves
The tears that choke her.
Hard as it is, I start on my way,
Pausing and looking back time after time;
Ever farther I travel from my home,
Ever higher the mountains I climb and cross,
Till at last I arrive at Naniwa of wind-bl
own reeds.
Here I stop and wait for good weather,
To launch the ship upon the evening tide,
To set the prow seawards,
And to row out in the calm of morning.
The spring mists rise round the isles,
And the cranes cry in a plaintive tone,
Then I think of my far-off home—
Sorely do I grieve that with my sobs
I shake the war arrows I carry
Till they rattle in my ears.
ENVOYS
On an evening when the spring mists
Trail over the wide sea,
And sad is the voice of the cranes
I think of my far-off home.
Thinking of home,
Sleepless I sit,
The cranes call amid the shore reeds,
Lost in the mists of spring.
Ōtomo Yakamochi
An elegy on the impermanence of human life
We are helpless before time
Which ever speeds away.
And pains of a hundred kinds
Pursue us one after another.
Maidens joy in girlish pleasures,
With ship-borne gems on their wrists,
And hand in hand with their friends;
But the bloom of maidenhood,
As it cannot be stopped,
Too swiftly steals away.
When do their ample tresses
Black as a mud-snail's bowels
Turn white with the frost of age?
Whence come those wrinkles
Which furrow their rosy cheeks?
The lusty young men, warrior-like,
Bearing their sword blades at their waists,
In their hands the hunting bows,
And mounting their bay horses,
With saddles dressed with twill,
Ride about in triumph;
But can their prime of youth
Favor them for ever?
Few are the nights they keep,
When, sliding back the plank doors,
They reach their beloved ones
And sleep, arms intertwined,
Before, with staffs at their waists,
They totter along the road,
Laughed at here, and hated there.
This is the way of the world;
And, cling as I may to life,
I know no help!
ENVOY
Although I wish I were thus,
Like the rocks that stay for ever,
In this world of humanity
I cannot keep old age away.
Yamanoue Okura (660-733)
A dialogue on poverty
On the night when the rain beats,
