Table of Contents
| Preface | [11] | |
| Part I. | ||
| Lovers Embracing | [21] | |
| A Picnic Under the Cherry Trees | [22] | |
| Court Lady Standing Under Cherry Tree | [23] | |
| Court Lady Standing Under a Plum Tree | [24] | |
| A Beautiful Woman | [25] | |
| A Reading | [26] | |
| An Actor as a Dancing Girl | [27] | |
| Josan No Miya | [28] | |
| An Oiran and Her Kamuso | [29] | |
| Two Ways Of Love | [30] | |
| Kurenai-ye or "Red Picture" | [31] | |
| A Woman Standing by a Gate with an Umbrella | [32] | |
| Scene from a Drama | [33] | |
| A Woman in Winter Costume | [34] | |
| A Pedlar | [35] | |
| Kiyonobu and Kiyomasu Contrasted | [36] | |
| An Actor | [37] | |
| Part II. | ||
| Memory and Forgetting | [41] | |
| Pillar-Print, Masonobu | [42] | |
| The Young Daimyo | [43] | |
| Masonubu—Early | [44] | |
| The Beautiful Geisha | [45] | |
| A Young Girl | [46] | |
| The Heavenly Poetesses | [47] | |
| The Old Love and The New | [48] | |
| Fugitive Thoughts | [49] | |
| Disappointment | [50] | |
| The Traitor | [51] | |
| The Fop | [52] | |
| Changing Love | [53] | |
| In Exile | [54] | |
| The True Conqueror | [55] | |
| Spring Love | [56] | |
| The Endless Lament | [57] | |
| Toyonobu. Exile's Return | [58] | |
| Wind and Chrysanthemum | [59] | |
| The Endless Pilgrimage | [60] | |
| Part III. | ||
| The Clouds | [63] | |
| Two Ladies Contrasted | [64] | |
| A Night Festival | [65] | |
| Distant Coasts | [66] | |
| On the Banks of the Sumida | [67] | |
| Yoshiwara Festival | [68] | |
| Sharaku Dreams | [69] | |
| A Life | [70] | |
| Dead Thoughts | [71] | |
| A Comparison | [72] | |
| Mutability | [73] | |
| Despair | [74] | |
| The Lonely Grave | [75] | |
| Part IV. | ||
| Evening Sky | [79] | |
| City Lights | [80] | |
| Fugitive Beauty | [81] | |
| Silver Jars | [82] | |
| Evening Rain | [83] | |
| Toy-Boxes | [84] | |
| Moods | [85] | |
| Grass | [86] | |
| A Landscape | [87] | |
| Terror | [88] | |
| Mid-Summer Dusk | [89] | |
| Evening Bell from a Distant Temple | [90] | |
| A Thought | [91] | |
| The Stars | [92] | |
| Japan | [93] | |
| Leaves | [94] |
List of Illustrations
| "Of what is she dreaming? Of long nights lit with orange lanterns, Of wine-cups and compliments and kisses of the two-sword men." | [Frontispiece] |
| Headpiece—Part I | [19] |
| Tailpiece—Part I | [37] |
| Headpiece—Part II | [39] |
| "Out of the rings and the bubbles, The curls and the swirls of the water, Out of the crystalline shower of drops shattered in play, Her body and her thoughts arose." | [46] |
| "The cranes have come back to the temple, The winds are flapping the flags about, Through a flute of reeds I will blow a song." | [58] |
| Tailpiece—Part II | [60] |
| Headpiece—Part III | [61] |
| "Then in her heart they grew, The snows of changeless winter, Stirred by the bitter winds of unsatisfied desire." | [70] |
| Tailpiece—Part III | [75] |
| Headpiece—Part IV | [77] |
| Headpiece—Part IV | [94] |
| "The green and violet peacocks Through the golden dusk Stately, nostalgically, Parade." | [Endleaf] |
Preface
At the earliest period concerning which we have any accurate information, about the sixth century A. D., Japanese poetry already contained the germ of its later development. The poems of this early date were composed of a first line of five syllables, followed by a second of seven, followed by a third of five, and so on, always ending with a line of seven syllables followed by another of equal number. Thus the whole poem, of whatever length (a poem of as many as forty-nine lines was scarce, even at that day) always was composed of an odd number of lines, alternating in length of syllables from five to seven, until the close, which was an extra seven syllable line. Other rules there were none. Rhyme, quantity, accent, stress were disregarded. Two vowels together must never be sounded as a diphthong, and a long vowel counts for two syllables, likewise a final "n", and the consonant "m" in some cases.
This method of writing poetry may seem to the reader to suffer from serious disadvantages. In reality this was not the case. Contrast it for a moment with the undignified welter of undigested and ex parte theories which academic prosodists have tried for three hundred years to foist upon English verse, and it will be seen that the simple Japanese rule has the merit of dignity. The only part of it that we Occidentals could not accept perhaps, with advantage to ourselves, is the peculiarly Oriental insistence on an odd number of syllables for every line and an odd number of lines to every poem. To the Western mind, odd numbers sound incomplete. But to the Chinese (and Japanese art is mainly a highly-specialized expression of Chinese thought), the odd numbers are masculine and hence heavenly; the even numbers feminine and hence earthy. This idea in itself, the antiquity of which no man can tell, deserves no less than a treatise be written on it. But the place for that treatise is not here.