I am going to offer examples of these compositions,—partly because of their unfamiliar emotional quality, and partly because I think that something can be learned from their strange art of construction. The older songs—selected from the antique drama—seem to me particularly worthy of notice. The thought or feeling and its utterance are supremely simple; yet by primitive devices of reiteration and of pause, very remarkable results have been obtained. What strikes me especially noteworthy in the following specimen is the way that the phrase, begun with the third line of the first stanza, and interrupted by a kind of burthen, is repeated and finished in the next stanza. Perhaps the suspension will recall to Western readers the effect of some English ballads with double refrains, or of such quaint forms of French song as the famous—
Au jardin de mon père—
Vole, mon cœur, vole!
Il y a un pommier doux,
Tout doux!
But in the Japanese song the reiteration of the broken phrase produces a slow dreamy effect as unlike the effect of the French composition as the movements of a Japanese dance are unlike those of any Western round:—
KANO YUKU WA
(Probably from the eleventh century)
Kano yuku wa,
Kari ka?—kugui ka?
Kari naraba,—
(Ref.) Haréya tōtō!
Haréya tōtō!
Kari nara
Nanori zo sémashi;—
Nao kugui nari-ya!—
(Ref.) Tōtō!
That which yonder flies,—
Wild goose is it?—swan is it?
Wild goose if it be,—
Haréya tōtō!
Haréya tōtō!
Wild goose if it be,
Its name I soon shall say:
Wild swan if it be,—better still!
Tōtō!
There are many old lyrics in the above form. Here is another song, of different construction, also from the old drama: there is no refrain, but there is the same peculiar suspension of phrase; and the effect of the quadruple repetition is emotionally impressive:—
Isora ga saki ni
Tai tsuru ama mo,
Tai tsuru ama mo,—
Wagimoko ga tamé to,
Tai tsuru ama mo,
Tai tsuru ama mo!