Although by no means a rare insect, the matsumushi is much esteemed for the peculiar clearness and sweetness of its notes—(onomatopoetically rendered in Japanese by the syllables chin-chirorīn, chin-chirorīn),—little silvery shrillings which I can best describe as resembling the sound of an electric bell heard from a distance. The matsumushi haunts pine-woods and cryptomeria-groves, and makes its music at night. It is a very small insect, with a dark-brown back, and a yellowish belly.
Perhaps the oldest extant verses upon the matsumushi are those contained in the Kokinshū,—a famous anthology compiled in the year 905 by the court-poet Tsurayuki and several of his noble friends. Here we first find that play on the name of the insect as pronounced, which was to be repeated in a thousand different keys by a multitude of poets through the literature of more than nine hundred years:—
Aki no no ni
Michi mo madoinu;
Matsumushi no
Koe suru kata ni
Yadoya karamashi.
“In the autumn-fields I lose my way;—perhaps I might ask for lodging in the direction of the cry of the waiting-insect;”—that is to say, “might sleep to-night in the grass where the insects are waiting for me.” There is in the same work a much prettier poem on the matsumushi by Tsurayuki.
With dusk begins to cry the male of the Waiting-insect;—
I, too, await my beloved, and, hearing, my longing grows.
The following poems on the same insect are less ancient but not less interesting:—
Forever past and gone, the hour of the promised advent!—
Truly the Waiter’s voice is a voice of sadness now!
Parting is sorrowful always,—even the parting with autumn!
O plaintive matsumushi, add not thou to my pain!
Always more clear and shrill, as the hush of the night grows deeper,
The Waiting-insect’s voice;—and I that wait in the garden,
Feel enter into my heart the voice and the moon together.