The Hyaku-nin-isshiu
Those who are familiar with the Hyaku-nin-isshiu[1] ("Single Verses by a Hundred People"), written before the time of the Norman Conquest, will recognise that much of the old Japanese poetry depended on the dexterous punning and the use of "pivot" and "pillow" words. The art was practised, not with the idea of provoking laughter, which was the aim of Thomas Hood, but rather with the idea of winning quiet admiration for a clever and subtle verbal ornament. No translation can do full justice to this phase of Japanese poetry; but the following tanka, by Yasuhide Bunya, may perhaps give some idea of their word-play:
"The mountain wind in autumn time
Is well called 'hurricane';
It hurries canes and twigs along,
And whirls them o'er the plain
To scatter them again."
The cleverness of this verse lies in the fact that yama kaze ("mountain wind") is written with two characters. When these characters are combined they form the word arashi ("hurricane"). Clever as these "pillow" and "pivot" words were, they were used but sparingly by the poets of the classical period, to be revived again in a later age when their extravagant use is to be condemned as a verbal display that quite overshadowed the spirit of the poetry itself.
Love Poems
There are Japanese love poems, but they are very different from those with which we are familiar. The tiresome habit of enumerating a woman's charms, either briefly or at length, is happily an impossibility in the tanka. There is nothing approaching the sensuousness of a Swinburne or a D. G. Rossetti in Japanese poetry, but the sentiments are gentle and pleasing nevertheless. No doubt there were love-lorn poets in Japan, as in every other country, poets who possibly felt quite passionately on the subject; but in their poetry the fire is ghostly rather than human, always polite and delicate. What could be more naïve and dainty than the following song from the "Flower Dance" of Bingo province?
"If you want to meet me, love,
Only we twain,
Come to the gate, love,
Sunshine or rain;
And if people pry
Say that you came, love,
To watch who went by.
"If you want to meet me, love,
Only you and I,
Come to the pine-tree, love,
Clouds or clear sky;
Stand among the spikelets, love,
And if folks ask why,
Say that you came, love,
To catch a butterfly."
Or again, the following tanka by the eleventh-century official, Michimasa:
"If we could meet in privacy,
Where no one else could see,
Softly I'd whisper in thy ear
This little word from me—
I'm dying, Love, for thee."
There is a good deal more ingenuity in this poem than would appear on the surface. It was addressed to the Princess Masako, and though omoi-taenamu may be correctly translated, "I'm dying, Love, for thee," it may also mean, "I shall forget about you." The poem was purposely written with a double meaning, in case it miscarried and fell into the hands of the palace guards.