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Page 8
Eight hundred years earlier, the Greek poet Diodorus Zonas of Sardis
had written:--
"_Do thou, who rowest the boat of the dead in the water of
this reedy lake, for Hades, stretch out thy hand, dark
Charon, to the son of Kinyras, as he mounts the ladder by the
gang-way, and receive him. For his sandals will cause the lad
to slip, and he fears to set his feet naked on the sand of the
shore._"
But the charming epigram of Diodorus was inspired only by a myth,--for
the "son of Kinyras" was no other than Adonis,--whereas the verses of
Okura express for us the yearning of a father's heart.
* * * * *
--Though the legend of Tanabata was indeed borrowed from China, the
reader will find nothing Chinese in the following compositions.
They represent the old classic poetry at its purest, free from alien
influence; and they offer us many suggestions as to the condition of
Japanese life and thought twelve hundred years ago. Remembering that
they were written before any modern European literature had yet taken
form, one is startled to find how little the Japanese written language
has changed in the course of so many centuries. Allowing for a few
obsolete words, and sundry slight changes of pronunciation, the
ordinary Japanese reader to-day can enjoy these early productions of
his native muse with about as little difficulty as the English reader
finds in studying the poets of the Elizabethan era. Moreover, the
refinement and the simple charm of the _Many[=o]sh[=u]_ compositions
have never been surpassed, and seldom equaled, by later Japanese
poets.
As for the forty-odd _tanka_ which I have translated, their chief
attraction lies, I think, in what they reveal to us of the human
nature of their authors. Tanabata-tsum� still represents for us the
Japanese wife, worshipfully loving;--Hikoboshi appears to us with none
of the luminosity of the god, but as the young Japanese husband of the
sixth or seventh century, before Chinese ethical convention had begun
to exercise its restraint upon life and literature. Also these poems
interest us by their expression of the early feeling for natural
beauty. In them we find the scenery and the seasons of Japan
transported to the Blue Plain of High Heaven;--the Celestial Stream
with its rapids and shallows, its sudden risings and clamourings
within its stony bed, and its water-grasses bending in the autumn
wind, might well be the Kamogawa;--and the mists that haunt its shores
are the very mists of Arashiyama. The boat of Hikoboshi, impelled
by a single oar working upon a wooden peg, is not yet obsolete; and
at many a country ferry you may still see the _hiki-fun�_ in which
Tanabata-tsum� prayed her husband to cross in a night of storm,--a
flat broad barge pulled over the river by cables. And maids and wives
still sit at their doors in country villages, on pleasant autumn days,
to weave as Tanabata-tsum� wove for the sake of her lord and lover.
* * * * *
--It will be observed that, in most of these verses, it is not the
wife who dutifully crosses the Celestial River to meet her husband,
but the husband who rows over the stream to meet the wife; and there
is no reference to the Bridge of Birds.... As for my renderings, those
readers who know by experience the difficulty of translating Japanese
verse will be the most indulgent, I fancy. The Romaji system of
spelling has been followed (except in one or two cases where I thought
it better to indicate the ancient syllabication after the method
adopted by Aston); and words or phrases necessarily supplied have been
inclosed in parentheses.
Amanogawa
Ai-muki tachit�,
Waga ko�shi
Kimi kimasu nari
Himo-toki mak�na!
[_He is coming, my long-desired lord, whom I have been waiting
to meet here, on the banks of the River of Heaven.... The
moment of loosening my girdle is nigh!_[7]]
[Footnote 7: The last line alludes to a charming custom of which
mention is made in the most ancient Japanese literature. Lovers,
ere parting, were wont to tie each other's inner girdle (_himo_) and
pledge themselves to leave the knot untouched until the time of their
next meeting. This poem is said to have been composed in the seventh
year of Y[=o]r[=o],--A.D. 723,--eleven hundred and eighty-two years
ago.]
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