Japanese Plays and Playfellows

by Osman Edwards

Mock not the puckered

Bloom of a dried plum;

Once on its fresh spray

Nightingales wept.

The umeboshi, a plum pickled in salt and shiso and afterwards dried, is as happily descriptive of the wizened monkey face of a Japanese crone as the peach of an Anglo-Saxon lassie’s complexion. It will be seen that serio-comic touches of self-depreciation, like the old lady’s frank comparison of faded bloom to dried fruit, do not jar on the Japanese. Sincerity—genuine feeling and just appreciation—is at the root of their poetic impulse. Why should a disappointed girl shrink from whispering her secret to the reeds of anonymous minstrelsy?

Rejection.

As vine weds ivy,

So would I clasp him;

If the man will not,

What can be done?