Dickins’s[4] most scholarly and valuable translation keeps one’s attention always in the realm of intellectual interest, and it is his intention to be strictly in accord with the original. His version is partly in prose and partly in this form—
“across the surf he
upon the shipway oareth,
gentle the skies are,
the spring-winds softly blowing—
what tale of days shall
his bark in the cloudy distance
sail o’er the sea-plain
till Hāruma he reacheth.”
With this it is interesting to compare Aston’s translation, which is largely prose. The lines quoted above from Dickins are rendered by Aston[5] as follows: “With waves that rise along the shore, and a genial wind of spring upon the ship-path, how many days pass without a trace of him we know not, until at length he has reached the longed-for bay of Takasago, on the coast of Harima.”
This play of Takasago is often quoted and is much beloved by the Japanese, and some of the verses from it are invariably chanted at the wedding festivals. The beginning of the famous chorus is thus rendered by Aston (p. 209)—
“On the four seas
Still are the waves;
The world is at peace.
Soft blow the time-winds,[6]
Rustling not the branches.
In such an age
Blest are the very firs,
In that they meet
To grow old together.”
Captain Brinkley’s translation of Ataka is in somewhat similar style to the preceding, a mixture of prose and “verse” of short lines like the following example—
“From traveller’s vestment
Pendent bells ring notes
Of pilgrims’ foot-falls;
And from road-stained sleeves
Pendent dew-drops presage
Tears of last meetings.”
To the same school of translators belongs Mr. Sansom,[7] though he is slightly less literal than Mr. Dickins. He renders the exquisite fragment from the Sakuragawa as follows—