FOOTNOTES:
[151] The plum-tree, cherry-tree, etc., are in Japan cultivated, not for their fruit, but for their blossoms. Together with the wistaria, the lotus, the iris, the lespedeza, and a few others, these take the place which is occupied in the West by the rose, the lily, the violet, etc.
[152] The lotus is the Buddhist emblem of purity, and the lotus growing out of the bud is a frequent metaphor for the heart that remains unsullied by contact with the world.
[153] The transplanting of the rice occupies the whole rural population during the month of June, when men and women may all be seen working in the fields, knee-deep in water. The crops are gathered in October.
[154] This ode was composed on beholding a screen presented to the Empress by Prince Sadayasu at the festival held in honor of her fiftieth birthday, whereon was painted a man seated beneath the falling cherry blossoms and watching them flutter down.
[155] The "Herb of Forgetfulness" answers in the poetical diction of the Japanese to the classical waters Lethe.
[156] It is the young poet Ki-no-Tomonori who is mourned in this stanza.
[157] The Milky Way.
[158] This stanza is remarkable for being (so far as the present writer is aware) the only instance in Japanese literature of that direct impersonation of an abstract idea which is so very strongly marked a characteristic of Western thoughts and modes of expression.
[159] Composed on the occasion of a feast at the palace.
[160] One of a number of stanzas composed by a party of courtiers who visited the cascade of Nunobiki, near the site of the modern treaty-port of Kobe.
[161] This stanza was composed and sent to the owner of the neighboring house on the last day of winter, when the wind had blown some snow across from it into the poet's dwelling.
THE DRAMA OF JAPAN
[Selected Plays, translated by Basil Hall Chamberlain]
NAKAMITSU
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
Mitsunaka, Lord of the Horse to the Emperor Murakami.
Bijiyau, Son of Mitsunaka, and still a boy.
Nakamitsu, retainer of Mitsunaka.
Kauzhiyu, son of Nakamitsu, and foster-brother of Bijiyau.
Weshiñ, Abbot of the great monastery on Mount Hiyei, near Kiyauto (Miaco).
The Chorus.
Scene.—The Temple of Chiynuzañzhi, and my Lord Mitsunaka's palace in Kiyauto.
Time.—Early in the Tenth Century.