JAPANESE

LITERATURE
An Introduction f o r Western Readers

By

Donald Keene, Ph.D.

Lecturer in Japanese in the
U n iversity o f Cambridge
 apanese literature is most extensive in its
J range and form and this introduction to it
coven all its various branches—poetry, plays,
novels and other prose writings—and com­
pares them with parallel developments in the
West. Western influence on Japanese litera­
ture is more extensive than is commonly
supposed and the author devotes a chapter
to a discussion o f this. He also has many
interesting things to say about the influence
of Haiku poetry and N o plays on Western
writers. Dr. Keene is lecturer in Japanese
at Cambridge University, and this book is
based on his lectures delivered there.

JOHN MURRAY
^vri ,^/MV
l' a s
th e w is d o m o f th e e a s t s e r ie s
E d it e d b y J. L. C R A N M E R -B Y N G , M .C .

JA P A N E SE L IT E R A T U R E

_ i - * J ^ '( J S T A K A A \
I-A K Ü J . T A S _ S A S T k x -
Japanese Literature
An Introduction for Western Readers

By

D O NALD K E E N E , Ph.D . (Columbia)

Lecturer in Japanese in the
University o f Cambridge

Joh n M urray, Albem arle Street

London, W .
Made and Printed in Great Britv v

andPubUshedby andW o n
 To

M A R Y G. D IC K IN S
 ED ITO RIAL NOTE

T h e object of the Editor o f this scries is a very definite one. He

desires above all things that these books shall be the ambassadors o f
good-will between East and West. He hopes that they wilt con­
tribute to a fuller knowledge o f the great cultural heritage o f the East,
for only through red understanding will the West be able to appre­
ciate the underlying problems and aspirations o f Asia today. He
is confident that a deeper knowledge o f the great ideals and lofty
philosophy of Eastern thought tvill help to a revival o f that true
spirit of charity which neither despises norfears the nations o f another
creed and colour,
J . L. CRANMER-BYNG.
50. A lbem arle S t b e b t ,
L ondo n , W . i .
 CONTENTS
PAGE
' I In t r o d u c t io n ...................................................................................... i
II J apanese P o e t r y ...........................................................................22
ID T he J apanese T h e a t r e ................................................................ 47
IV T he J apanese N o v e l ................................................................ 67
V J apanese L iterature undbr W estern Influence . . 88
Selected B i b l i o g r a p h y .................................................................. h i

In d e x .................................................................................................. 1 1 3
 PREFACE

M y intent in w riting this little book has been to provide the

W estern reader— the man w ho enjoys the great w orks o f the
W espem literary heritage— w ith an introduction to some o f
the things w hich I have found most beautiful and remarkable
in Japanese literature. Since the size o f die book was necessarily
limited, I had to decide whether to give a bare outline o f the
long and com plex history o f Japanese literature, or to select
a relatively small number o f representative w orks for fuller
discussion. I preferred the latter alternative, even though it
meant passing over in complete silence some o f the masterpieces
most acclaimed b y Japanese and W estern critics alike ; thus,
I w as forced to sacrifice any mention o f the Matiyöshü, the most
famous collection o f Japanese poetry, fo r it was clear that i f
I discussed it adequately there w ou ld be too little space left for
thelinked-verseand/iaikai, w hich greatly appeal to me. T h eb o o k
is thus neither a systematic outline nor a w o rk o f reference, but a
h ighly personal appreciation o f certain aspects o f Japanese litera­
ture w hich I believe to be o f especial interest to W estern readers.
I have included in the bibliography the titles o f histories and
other reference w orks for the guidance o f readers w ho w ish to
go beyond the scope o f this introduction. I have also given
a list o f readable translations. Thanks m ainly to the super­
latively good w o rk o f Arthur W aley, the W estern reader w ho
is ignorant o f Japanese need not fear that i f this bo ok arouses
his curiosity there w ill be no w a y to appease it. I have taken
advantage o f D r. W aley’s kind permission to quote extensively
from his w ritin g s; however, all translations w hich are not
specifically acknowledged are m y ow n.
ix
 The material o f the book, in a som ewhat different form , w as
originally used in lectures delivered at the U n iversity o f C am ­
bridge during the Lent Term o f 19 52. T h e book has since
benefited b y the helpful suggestions o f M r. J . L. C ran m er-B yn g ,
M r. E. B . Ceadel and M r. T . Kam ei, to w h o m I here express
m y thanks.
 I. IN T R O D U C T IO N
J a p a n e s e literatu re, in spite o f its b eau ty, richness an d im m ed iate
ch a rm , is as y e t in ad eq u ately k n o w n in the W e st. T h e reasons
f o r this n eg lect are n o t h ard to d isco ver. T h e intricacies o f
th e Ja p a n ese lan g u ag e p re v e n t all b u t a h an d fu l o f foreign ers
f r o m ap p ro ach in g the literatu re in the o rig in al, an d the un­
in spired n ature o f m a n y translations often causes the enthusiasm
o f the m o st ad ven tu ro u s-m in d ed read er to co o l. T h e g o o d
translations w h ic h d o exist, n o ta b ly those b y A rth u r W a le y ,
h a v e w o n their circle o f adm irers, b u t m a n y W estern readers
rem a in reluctant to e x ten d their interests in the d irection o f
Ja p a n ese literature, i f o n ly because o f a w id esp read b e lie f that
since the Jap an ese are a “ race o f im itato rs ” , their literatu re
can b e n o m o re than a pale reflection o f the C hinese.
T h e question o f the d egree o f Ja p a n ’ s indebtedness to C h in a
is so basic that I m u st discuss it b riefly, b e fo re g o in g o n to an y
m o re critical consideration o f the literature. It w o u ld b e im ­
possible to d en y the en orm ou s ro le p la y e d b y C h in a in the
d evelo p m en t o f Jap an ese civilization . T h e m eth o d o f w ritin g ,
th e p h ilo so p h y, m u ch o f the religio n , an d certain lite ra ry genres
h a d their o rig in in C h in a, and Jap an ese h a v e at all tim es professed
th e greatest ad m iratio n fo r the o ld er cu lture, freq u en tly p a y in g
it the sup rem e co m p lim en t o f im itatio n . B u t i f this is true
o f Ja p a n ’ s relationship to C h in a it is eq u a lly tru e o f F ran ce’ s and
e v e n E n g la n d ’s to the classical w o rld , alth o u g h w e d o n o t say
o f Shakespeare’s A ntony and Cleopatra o r o f R a c in e ’ s Phèdre that
th e y are “ n o th in g b u t ** im itations. I d o n o t th in k it fair,
either, to say it ab ou t those Jap an ese w o rk s w h ic h o b v io u sly
h a v e their roo ts in C h in a . W it h the excep tio n o f v e r y short
periods o f indiscriminate borrowing, everything that Japan took
from China was filtered through the basically different Japanese
temperament and considerably modified. W e may contrast
this Japanese resistance Co the powerful influences o f Chinese
culture with the almost unquestioning acceptance o f them by
Korea. Even when the Japanese were trying very hard to
take over some Chinese doctrine, such as Confucianism, they
appear to have been unable to refrain from altering i t ; thus
it was that some o f the Japanese Confucian scholars were at
the same time devout worshippers o f the gods o f the Land o f
the Rising Sun and sought to reconcile the two beliefs. The
Korean Confucianists, on the other hand, tended towards
extreme orthodoxy, and a chance remark attributed to Con­
fucius, that the superior man did not talk while he ate, resulted
in centuries o f silent meals in Korea, though not in China,
much less in Japan.
But Japan has been far more than a skilful modifier o f Chinese
civilization. In the field o f literature, with which we are pri­
marily concerned here, we shall find that Japanese poetry is in
most ways unlike Chinese, that the Japanese were writing novels
o f magnitude and beauty centuries before the Chinese, and
that the Japanese theatre, far surpassing the Chinese, ranks with
the great dramatic achievements o f die world.
It is small wonder that Chinese and Japanese literature are so
dissimilar, for the two languages are entirely different. Chinese
is a monosyllabic language with musical tones to distinguish
the many identical syllables. In its classical form at least,
Chinese is a language o f great compactness. Japanese, on the
other hand, is polysyllabic, has no tones like the Chinese, and
sounds rather like Italian, at least to those who do not know
Italian. In contrastwith the brevity o f classical Chinese, Japanese
is a language o f interminable sentences— sometimes literally
interminable, in which case they are left incomplete, at the end
o f the twentieth or fortieth subtle turn o f phrase, as i f their
authors despaired, o f ever com ing to the end o f their task.
Again, Chinese poetry is usually rhym ed and is based on a
complicated pattern o f musical tones. In Japanese, on the other
hand, rhym e is generally avoided, and the form al rules o f
prosody reduce themselves to a matter o f counting syllables.
Although the earliest Japanese poems w e know , those preserved
in a w o rk o f the early eighth century a . d ., have lines o f irregular
length, the preference for alternating lines o f fiv e and seven
syllables soon crystallized am ong Japanese poets, and this
eventually became the basic rhythm o f the language, found
not only in poetry but in almost any type o f literary com ­
position.
T o give an idea o f the appearance o f Japanese in transcription
(with the consonants pronounced as in English, and the vow els
as in Italian), I have chosen a passage, ostensibly in prose but
in alternating lines o f seven and five syllables. It is one o f the
most famous descriptions in the literature, the beginning o f the
lovers’ suicide journey in the play Love Suicides at Sonezaki,
written in 1703 b y Chikamatsu. T h e young man and the
young w om an, believing that it is impossible for them to know
happiness together in this life, set out in the early m orning for
the w ood o f Sonezaki, where they are to kill themselves.

Kono yo no nagori Farewell to this w orld

Yo mo nagori A nd to the night, farewell.
Shini ni yuktt mi wo W e w h o w alk the w ay to death
Tatöreba T o w hat should w e be likened ?
Adashi ga hara no T o the dew on the road
Michi no shimo B y the fields o f Adashi
Hitoashi zutsu ni Vanishing w ith each
 Kiete yuku Step ahead ?
Yume no yume koso This dream o f a dream
Aware nare Is sorrowful.

Are kazöreba Ah, did you count the bell ?

Akatsuki no O f the seven strokes
Nanatsu no toki ga That m ark the dawn
Mutsti narite Six have sounded ;
Nokom hitotsu ga The remaining one
Kotijö no W ill be for this existence
Katie no hibiki no The last echo
Kiki osame W e shall hear.
Jakumetsii iraku to It will echo
Hihiku nari The bliss o f nothingness.

As one may easily see from the above, the sounds o f Japanese
are very simple Each syllable generally consists o f one con­
sonant M o w e d by one vowel. The restricted number o f
possible sounds has inevitably meant that there are many
omonyms in ie anguage, and coundess words contain within
themselves other words or patts o f WQrds r f quite unrelated
meanings, or examp e the w ord shirtmami, meaning “ white
waves or the wake behind a boat, might suggest to a Japanese
the word ^ ™ n g mknowng ,,
tears . ^ ^ „ l - * 76 Ending into one another three ideas,
■unknown , w bte Wave ^ ^ ^
how from a combination o f SUck • u
_ a boat sails for an u n k n o ^ ? “ ? “ ? P° em
i wfltrliAc 0Wn destination over the white
r eS’ \ a m d d p t l f Wake 0 f » * “ *•
From such,f ” ^ BPh a 7 ,,o f ^word associations evolved the h k e -
kTf Japanese
o a’ “ verse
verse. The
The ffunctlon
° “ - ° f the „ ivot. w o rdMatures
„ ££)
lin k t w o d ifferent im ages b y shiftin g in its o w n m ean in g. T h is
m a y b e illustrated b y the lines :

W h a t use are riches w h en y o u diam onds,

R u b ie s and g o ld are dross.

In this cru de exam p le, “ d iam o n d ” shifts as it is p ro n o u n ced

f r o m the w o r d “ d ie ” , necessary to com p lete the th o u gh t
“ w h e n y o u die ” to the fu ll m ean in g o f the preciou s stone, as
th o u g h the sou nd “ die ” started in the p o et’ s subconscious m in d
a train o f im ages associated w ith “ riches
T h e Japan ese “ p iv o t-w o rd ” show s a characteristic feature
o f the lan gu age, the com pression o f m an y im ag es in to a sm all
space, usu ally b y m eans o f puns w h ic h exp an d the overton es
o f w o rd s. In E n g lish the use o f the p un , o r the p la y o n w o rd s,
fo r this p urp ose is n o t com m on , b u t there are exam ples even
b e fo re Jo y c e pushed this m ed io d to the extrem e w ith such
creations as M eandertaltale. In Macbeth, fo r instance, at a h ig h ly
tra g ic m o m en t in the p la y occu r the lines :

Y o u r castle is surpriz’ d ; y o u r w ife an d B abes

S a v a g e ly slaughtered : T o relate the m an n er
W e r e on the Q u a rry o f these m u rth er’ d D ee re
T o adde the death o f y o u .
(IV , iii, 2 3 9 -4 2 .)

Shakespeare certain ly d id n o t in tend the p u n on “ deer ” and

“ dear ” to b e greeted w ith lau gh ter ; it serves rather to increase
th e c o m p le x ity o f the lines, as it w o u ld in a Jap an ese d ram a.1
T h e g re a t n u m b e r o f sim ilar-so u n d in g w o rd s in Jap an ese affords
a perhaps un iq u e ran g e o f p la y on w o rd s. P un s w e re som etim es
used fo r c o m ic effects as in other lan gu ages, b u t the tragic pun
1 See M uir, Kenneth, " T h e Uncomic Pun ” , in the Cambridge Journal,
Vol. 3, N o. 8, M ay, 1950.
was also developed, and it was even possible fo r poets to keep
two different sets o f images going at the same time through an
entire poem without any awkwardness, as in this exam ple :

Kie wabinti, utsurou hito no, aki no iro ni,

mi ino kogarashi no, mori no shita tsuyn.
(S h in K o k in s h ü , 1 2 0 5 a . d .)

One may give two almost entirely different translations o f

these lines. The first, the more personal interpretation,, m ight
be, Sadly I long for death. M y heart tormented to see h o w
he, the inconstant one, is w eary o f me, I am w eak as the forest
dew. Or, by using other meanings o f the sounds, “ See h o w
it melts away, that dew in the wind-swept forest, w here the
autumn colours are changing ! ” Neither o f ^ translations
is a full rendering, because in the poet’s m ind and words there
is a constant shifting o f the tw o sets o f images, so that the
dew which looks as i f it SOOn must be melted aw ay b y the
autumnal wind becomes one w ith the wom an w ho has been
abandoned by her bored W e r, and w ho wonders w hat keeps
Cr u • ^ ** j S n°it t^lat t^e dew is simply being used
metaphorically to describe the wom an’s state (and to suggest
er tears), o e image o f the dew is used in its full sense o f
the naturjd phenomenon in the second rendering o f the poem
I gave. The author meant both to be understood at the same
tU' ï ’ t0 W bnt ' two concentric circles o f meaning,
each complete but indusolubly linked to the other.
The efiect ac eved in this poem was mtUrally possible only

?Japanese
“ ” * writers
w k e have
X ! always
f WOrd~Play that • •JapanesI
1 affords. B u« tf
words, and their exploitation o f t " " " T v • ° ° vef oneS ° f
is not merely a fortuitous res^t o f 1 ° * f ^If
names and their meanings havee specially
“ o f Purf the
fascinated “ e-Japanese.
P,b c e -
 A w h o le class o f ea rly literatu re consists la r g e ly o f fo lk -e ty m o ­
lo g ie s o f p lace-nam es. M o st p la y s con tain a jo u rn e y , as fo r
ex am p le the on e q u oted ab o v e , d u rin g w h ic h the m ea n in g and
associations o f the nam es o f the places passed are used to c o m ­
m u n icate the em otion s o f the travellers, w h e th e r o n their w a y
to death o r to a h a p p y reu nion. In the p o e m ab o u t the d e w
translated in tw o such d ifferent w a y s , th ere is on e o th er im a g e
to b e n o ted : kogarashi, w h ic h m eans b o th “ the au tu m n w in d ”
an d “ y e a rn in g fo r ” , is the n am e o f a fam o u s forest, an d it
m a y h a v e been fr o m this n am e its e lf that the p o e m h a d its
genesis, as d ie p o e t cau g h t the successive w a v e s o f im ag es e v o k e d
b y its d ifferen t m eanings.
It w o u ld b e untrue to in fer fr o m this exam p le, h o w e v e r, that
all Jap an ese p o e try is so e x tre m e ly co m p licated in its expression.
T h e re are m a n y re la tiv e ly stra ig h tfo rw ard p oem s, an d there has
been m o re than on e p o et w h o has decried the artificiality o f
the p o e try o f his tim e and insisted on the virtu es o f sim ple
sin cerity. B u t sim p licity an d plain expression d o n o t seem to
b e tr u ly characteristic o f the lan gu age, w h ic h is su rely o n e o f
the w o r ld ’s v ag u est y e t m ost su ggestive. Ja p a n ese sentences are
ap t to trail o f f in to thin sm oke, their w h o le m ean in g tin ged
w it h d o u b t b y the use o f little particles at the end, such as
“ perhaps ” , “ m a y it n o t b e so ? ”
T h e a m b ig u ity in the lan g u ag e is such that at tim es, especially
in the N o p lays, w e m a y h a v e the effect o f listen in g to a strin g
trio o r quartet. T h e re is a to tal m e lo d y w h ic h w e can reco gn ize,
a lth o u g h w e are at d ie sam e tim e a w a re th at it is the co m b in ed
p ro d u c t o f the in d iv id u a l m elo d ic lines o f the several instrum ents.
Ja p a n e se critics, h o w e v e r, h a v e g e n e ra lly been less con cern ed
w it h the effects o f a m b ig u ity in the lan g u ag e than w it h the m o re
d elib erate effects o f su ggestion . A g a in an d ag ain in the h isto ry
o f lite ra ry criticism in Ja p a n w e fin d discussions o f d ie fu n c -
dons o f suggestion. Perhaps the most interesting remarks for
die modem Western reader are those made by the dramatist
Chikamatsu about 1720. In speaking o f the art o f die puppet
theatre, he declared:
“ There are some who, believing that pathos is essential
to a puppet play, make frequent use o f such expressions as
* it was touching1 in their writing, or who when chanting
the lines do so in voices thick with tears. This is foreign
to my style. I take pathos to be entirely a matter o f restraint.
"When all parts of the art are controlled by restraint, the effect
is moving, and thus the stronger and firmer the melody and
words are, the sadder will bp the impression created. For
this reason, when one says o f something which is sad that
it is sad, one loses the implications, and in the end, even the
impression of sadness is slight. It is essential that one not
say of a thing that ‘ it is sad but diat it be sad o f itself.” 1
It is interesting to note in this connection that over two
centuries later the editor o f an anthology o f English and American
imagist poetry made the same discovery as Chikamatsu and
wrote : Poetry is a matter o f rendering, not comment. Y o u
must not say : I am so happy * ; you must behave as i f y ou
were happy. ■ Imagist poetry was certainly deeply indebted
to translations from the Japanese, which perhaps served also to
inspire such a critical judgment.3
In any case, what was new enough to need saying for W e s t e r n
1 Translated in Keene, The Battles o f Coxmga, p. 95-
* Ford Madox Ford in Imagist Anthology 1930, p. xiv.
a One critic o f the imagist school asserted, “ Their manifestos are
prettily adorned with occult reference to Japanese poetry and criticism,
with much expenditure of printer’s ink in spelling out exotic-looking
syllables in ki, ka and ko.” (Quoted in Hughes, Imagism and the Imagists,
P- S4-)
 readers in 1 9 3 0 had been voiced in one form o r another b y
Japanese authors for centuries. In Japanese literature the un­
expressed is as carefully considered as the expressed, as in a
Japanese painting the em pty spaces are made to have as strong
an evocative p o w er as the carefully delineated mountains and
pines. There always seems to be an instinctive reluctance to
say the obvious words, whether they are “ I am so happy ” or
“ It is so sad Seldom has it been desired to present the w hole
o f any sight or experience. W h a t the Japanese poets and painters
w ere trying to do instead is perhaps best illustrated b y a famous
anecdote. It is related h o w one day a great general, clad in
brilliantly polished armour, was waiting for an audience. H e
was inform ed that someone was com ing w h o must not see him
in armour, and he quickly threw about him self a thin g o w n o f
w hite silk. T h e effect o f the polished armour glinting through
the thin silk is the one at w hich the poets have aimed. T o
attempt to describe the full magnificence o f the' general in his
arm our, or the full beauty o f a spring day, has not been the
intent o f Japanese writers. T h e y have preferred to tell o f the
glint o f the metal, or o f the opening o f a single blossom, and
lead us thus to imagine the rest o f the w h ole fro m w h ich these
fe w drops have been distilled.
T h e attempt to represent larger entities b y small details resulted
in a realism and concreteness in the im ages w h ich contrast
strangely w ith the m isty am biguity o f the general effect. T h e
splash o f a fro g ju m p in g into the water, the shrill cries o f the
cicadas, the perfume o f an unknown flow er, m a y be the central
im age around w h ich a Japanese poem is built. In this w e m ay
detect the influence o f the philosophy o f Z e n Buddhism w h ich
taught, am ong other tilings, that enlightenment could com e
fro m any sudden perception. T h e splash o f a fro g disturbing
the ancient stillness o f a pond could be as valid a means o f
gaining enlightenment as any other, as w ell as the v e r y em bodi­
m ent o f the m ovem ent o f life.
It m ay be seen that die effect o f suggesting a w h o le w o r ld b y
means o f one sharp im age is o f necessity restricted to shorter verse
forms, and it is in fact in such form s o f expression that the
Japanese have in general excelled. T h e literature contains som e
o f the longest novels and plays in the w o rld , som e o f them o f
high literary quality, but the special Japanese talent fo r exquisite
and suggestive detail has not been m atched b y a talent fo r con­
struction. T h e earliest novels, i f so w e m a y call them , w ere
often little more than a num ber o f poem s and the circumstances
which inspired them. Such unity as these books possessed cam e
from the fact that all the poems w ere credited to one m an, or
to one Em peror s court, but no attem pt w as m ade to connect
the amorous advenpure w hich gave rise to one verse w ith the
adventure on the follow ing page. E v e n in the later novels
there is no really sharp distinction betw een the w o rld o f p o etry
and the w orld o f prose, probably because p o etry p layed a m ore
common role in Japanese society than it has ever p layed in ours.
In The Tale o f Genji, written about iooo a .d ., there are about
800 verses. Conversations often consist large ly o f p o etry, and
no lover w ould neglect to send a poem on the d ay after seeing
his mistress. But however lo vely these poem s m a y be, it cannot
be pretended that they are all essential to the plot o f the n ovel.
Most Japanese novels indeed tend to break up into alm ost entirely
disconnected incidents m the manner o f the old poetry-tales.
In some o t e nove s there is at least the thread o f historical
fact to link t e various anecdotes o f disparate nature, but in
other w o r s w e ave digressions o f no apparent relevance.
E ven in t e mo era Japanese novel, w hich has been m uch
influenced b y European eXamples> w e find curiously lyrical
sections floating like clouds over the rest o f the w o rk . F o r

f T 4 <-> '
 example, in The Thin Snow (Sasame-yuki 1946-9) b y Tanizaki,
the most important Japanese novel published in the years follow ­
ing the war, there is an exquisite scene in w hich several o f the
principal characters go hunting fireflies o f 3. summer night.
Rem em bering from old novels and poetry the descriptions o f
elegant court ladies in long-sleeved kimonos catching the fireflies
in silken nets, they at first feel disappointed, for they see before
them only a m uddy ditch in the open fields. B u t gradually,
as the insects fill the air w ith glow ing points o f light, they are
captured b y the beauty so long familiar to them in poetry, and
the description rises to lyrical heights w orthy o f The Tale o f
Genji.
I f this incident does not advance very gready the plot o f The
Thin Snow, nor give us any better understanding o f the char-
' acters, it is beautiful in itself, and serves in an indefinite but real
w ay to give us an impression o f life in the Japan o f 1939 , just
as the poetry in The Tale o f Genji recreates for us the Japan o f
950 years before. The digressions in Japanese novels m ay betray
a weakness in the novelists’ powers o f construction, but often
their intrinsic beauty is such that our enjoyment o f the whole
w ork is not lessened b y the disunity. In retrospect it is as
brilliantly coloured bits somehow m erging into an indefinite
w hole that w e remember the novel. And, as the European
impressionist painters create an illusion o f reality in spite o f the
fact that their landscapes are composed o f seemingly arbitrary
splashes o f green, orange, blue, and all the other colours, so the
apparently disconnected incidents o f a Japanese novel, blending
into one another, leave us w ith an imprecise understanding o f
their life.
Certain genres o f literature have developed to a greater extent
in Japan than in other countries, perhaps as a result o f the difficulty
experienced b y Japanese writers in organizing their lyrical
impressions and perceptions. These are the diary, the travel
account, and the book o f random thoughts, w orks w h ich are
relatively formless, although certainly not artless. T h e charm
and refinement o f such works m ay be illustrated b y one o f the
travel accounts, The Narrow Road o f Oku, b y the seventeenth-
century poet Bashö. This w o rk begins :

The months and days are the travellers o f eternity. Th e

years that come and go are also voyagers. T h ose w h o float
aw ay their lives on boats or w ho g r o w old leading horses are
orever journeying, and their hom e is w h erever their travels
take diem. M any o f the men o f old died on the road, and
I too for years past have been stirred V>v the. sip-lit n f a cnlirarv

Knsa no to mo
Sumikawaru yo zo Ven 3 thatched hut
this ■changing w o rld m ay turn
Hina no ie
nto a doll’s house.
 “ W hen I set out on the 27th March, the dawn sky w a s ,
misty. Though the pale morning moon had lost its light,
Fuji could still be seen faintly. The cherry blossoms on the
boughs at Ueno and Yanaka stirred sad thoughts within me,
as I wondered when, i f ever, I should see them again. M y
dearest friends had all come to Sampu s house the night
before so that they might accompany me on the boat part
o f the w ay that morning. W hen w e disembarked at a place
called Senju, the thought o f parting for so long a journey
filled me with sadness. As I stood on the road that was per­
haps to separate us forever in this dreamlike existence, I wept
tears o f farewell.
Yuku ham ya Spring soon ends—
Tori naki no no Birds w ill weep, while in
Me wa namida The eyes o f fish are tears.”

In such works die Japanese have been happiest, able as they

are in them to give us their inimitable descriptions o f nature,
and their delicate emotional respdnses, without the necessity
o f a formal plot. A gentle humour and a gende melancholy fill
these pages. This desire to blend images into images, found
throughout Japanese poetry, here takes the form o f diverse
experiences, whether the adventures o f a journey, or the day-to-
day happenings at the court, blended into the personality o f the
narrator. There is a general smoothing aw ay o f the rough
edges o f emotion, as something indecorous and rather vulgar.
M uch is sadly evocative, very little is shattering, cither in these
books o f personal reflections or elsewhere in Japanese literature.
E ven in the direct imitations b y Japanese poets and artists o f
foreign works, there is always a disinclination to lose the native
lightness and grace. The heart-breaking g rief experienced by
a Chinese poet on seeing the destruction o f his city w ill find its
echo in the sweetly nostalgic recollections o f his Japanese
imitator. O r, the portrait o f a Taoist im m ortal, filled, b y the
Chinese artist with an intense sense o f m ystery, becom es, in an
almost direct Japanese copy, a charm ing com position o f the
immortal, his magic toad, pine-trees and clouds.
In this ^attitude w e m ay find w hat the Japanese call miyabi,
literally, courtliness” , for Japanese literature is p rev ailin g ly
aristocratic in tone. This does not mean, o f course, that there
have been no folk ballads, and no novels designed, to m eet the
tastes o f the low er classes, but Japanese popular literature has
not been o f very great importance, at least until recent centuries,
an even such w orks are likely to display far greater elegance
than their Western equivalents do. M ost o f the p oetry in the
official anthologies was com posed b y courtiers, and this h ig h ly
refined art has been so w idely disseminated at all levels o f society,
that the images most likely to com e to a peasant-poet’s m ind
today are those first used centuries ago b y a prince at the court.
ere is a difference in this respect betw een the Chinese and
Japanese literary traditions. In China, most o f w hat w e think
o as ‘terature love poetry, the drama, the novel, etc.— w as
consi ere beneath the dignity o f the educated w riters, and w e
possess re atively few works o f merit in these genres w h en com ­
pare w i e vast bulk o f Chinese literature. In Japan , even
emperors were not ashamed to w rite love poetry, and the novels
and dramas written b y members o f the court gave the tone to
ater w or m these forms. B u t it was not on ly in the strict
sense ot having been written b y aristocrats that the literature is
aristocratic, or w e m ay discover a constant tendency even in
e P °P ar terature for it to develop into m ore refined form s,
gam an again w e read how some n ew verse fo rm or theatrical
entertainment, originally intended m erely as am usement fo r the
low er classes, was purified and codified b y persons w h o saw the
 higher, more aristocratic possibilities o f the art. But the elimina­
tion o f coarseness often means the elimination o f vigour as
well, as w e can see in the French theatre o f the seventeenth
century, and some genres o f Japanese literature b y choosing not
to offend thereby forfeited the pow er to interest, becom ing no
more than the academic toys o f the idle court aristocracy. The
poet Bashö was aware o f this danger, and insisted that the haiku,
the short verse form , should aim not only at achieving the
eternally beautiful effects o f which all poetry is capable, but
also at creating an impression o f freshness. This was rather an
exceptional attitude, for the earlier masters had preferred to
w rite “ w hat oft was thought but ne’er so w ell expressed ” rather
than to be original. E ve ry member o f the court was expected
to know b y heart the poems in the principal Japanese and Chinese
anthologies, and a slightly different emphasis given to an old
poem w ould be recognized at once and appreciated as much i f
not m ore than a completely new idea. The virtuoso approach
to literature, and to art as well, where the artist attempts to do
essentially the same thing as his predecessors but in a slightly
different w ay, is characteristic o f Japan. The technique m ay
be illustrated most clearly b y the follow ing examples. T h e first
is a haiku b y Buson (1716-8 4) :

Tsurigatie ni On the temple bell

Tomarite tiemurit Resting, asleep
Kocho ka na A butterfly.

T h e second example is b y Shiki (1867-1902) :

Tsurigatie ni O n the temple bell

Tomarite hikartt R esting, glow ing
Hotaru ka na A firefly.
There is no question here o f plagiarism ; rather, Sh iki assumed
that the persons reading his haiku w o u ld be fam iliar w ith
Buson s, and undoubtedly hoped that the n ew touches w h ich his
sensibility imposed on the old poem w o u ld be w elco m ed b y a
discriminating audience. O bjectively view ed , Sh iki’s haiku is
as good as Buson’ s, although a W estern reader w o u ld condem n
Shiki s as derivative, and his first im pulse m igh t be to w rite
a parody o f his ow n, such as “ O n the tem ple bell, R estin g,
chirping, A grasshopper.” Bashö saw the danger o f the virtuoso
technique practised b y the court poets (and b y Shiki in the
example I have just used), and him self seldom m ade direct
reference to earlier w orks in his poetry, but he w as unable to
rid the Kterature o f this characteristic feature. Th is is n ot sur­
prising, for in a country w here poetry w as recognized b y some
as a religion it is only natural that the w ord s and im ages o f the
old poems come as quickly to a poet’s m ind as original thoughts,
so that he thinks largely in other people’s terms, adding o n ly the
colouring which is his ow n. Sim ilarly, one finds the same
stories figuring as the basic plots o f every typ e o f Japanese
eatrical entertainment. T h e audiences w hich attended a play
on one o f the familiar themes did not expect to be surprised
y e ending nor b y any m ajor change in the p l o t ; it w as
rat er to the details that they looked fo r the differences resulting
rom e temperaments o f successive dramatists, as in the G reek
t eatre t e story o f Oedipus, roughly the same w hether treated
y eschylus, Sophocles or Euripides, nevertheless differed
sigrn can y rom dramatist to dramatist in the details, as w ell
as in e psychological approach. In som e w ays the fact that
t e su ject is prescribed enables the dramatist to display his
ents in more subtle ways than in the invention o f plot, w hich
m ay explain w h y certain dramatists, notably in France, have
continued to treat the story o f Oedipus, and w h y Japanese
 writers o f today have not entirely abandoned the traditional
themes o f their country’s literature.
The survival o f the old forms w ould scarcely have been pre­
dicted at certain times in the past eighty years when it seemed
as though European literature and ideas w ould overw helm the
native culture. This was especially true during the twenty
years im m ediately follow ing the M eiji Restoration o f 1868, a
time , when Japanese literature reached its lowest point. The
university in T o k yo was for a time without a department o f
Japanese and Chinese literature, while in some schools English
but not Japanese literature and history were taught and even the
readers used for moral instruction were translations o f foreign text­
books.1 T h e Minister o f Education, w ho was later assassinated
b y an opponent o f his views, went so far as to favour die use
o f English instead o f Japanese, and one w riter even advocated
that Japanese men all take European wives so as to im prove the
size and strength o f the race. Such suggestions w ere not really
feasible, but there was a much more serious possibility that the
native literature w ould be entirely eclipsed. Translations o f
European w orks soon became the most popular books in Japan.
In an attempt to discover the reasons for the success o f Western
peoples, as shown b y their military and commercial achieve­
ments, Japanese turned first to books o f instruction, such as
S e lf Help b y Samuel Smiles, translated in 1870, only tw o years
after the M eiji Restoration, and destined to play an important
role in advising Japanese how best to get along in the European
manner.
T h e W estern books o f a more literary character w hich w ere
translated in the early days o f the new Japan included novels
b y B u lw er Lytton and Disraeli, and the prevailingly political
1 Cf. Sansom, The Western World and Japan, p. 487- Sansom gives
an invaluable account o f the whole period.
tone o f these works was undoubtedly responsible fo r the-large
number o f political novels w hich came to be w ritten in Jap an
at the time. Japanese critics attempted to evaluate the native
literature as they thought Europeans m ight, and in the search
for a Japanese Shakespeare or a Japanese G oethe such w riters
as the eighteenth-century dramatist Chikam atsu w ere glorified
as never before, w hile the fam e o f other w riters w hose w orks
bore no obvious relationship to the European ideas o f literature
suffered accordingly. Essays w ith such titles as “ T h e characters
o f Chikamatsu’ s heroines ” replaced earlier ones on the im p ort­
ance o f literature as a means o f encouraging virtu e and chastising
vice. It was inevitable that Japanese novelists and dramatists
should then have begun to w rite in a revolutionarily different
manner. N ot only w ere they interested in aspects o f society
which had been ignored b y their predecessors, but the v e ry
language that they used w as m arkedly different. P revious to
the Meiji Restoration there had existed a great gap betw een the
colloquial and literary languages. E ven the w riters o f popular
romances had used a modified form o f the older literary language
with its distinctive grammar and vocabulary. B u t w ith the
arge-scale translation o f works from English and other European
anguages ^ became necessary to m ake increasing use o f the
colloquial language in literary expression, for it w as foun d hope­
lessly awkward to render the conversational approach o f the
English novel into the flow ery patterns o f literary-Japanese.
The new colloquial style was used not only in translations, but
in a works which had been influenced b y European exam ple.
T ere were, it is true, violent protests from various quarters
against the adulation accorded to European exam ples, but
although successful in some political and religious matters, such
protests failed in so far as literature was concerned. In the past
seventy years or more Japanese literature has been intim ately
affected b y all European trends and, in fact, m ay be regarded in
effect as form ing a part o f the modern movement in Western
literature. Ezra Pound included a literary club in T o k yo among
the four or five fragments he had shored against his ruins and
quoted at length 1 the views o f M r. Katsue Kitasono on the
relation between im agery and ideoplasty. Kitasono w rote :
“ M an has thought out to make a heart-shaped space w ith two
right angles,” and Pound commented that this was die “ point
where the occidental pedlars o f im aginary geometries fell d o w n ” ,
indicating that perhaps the Japanese had beaten at their own
game their masters in modern literary techniques.
Kitasono otherwise attained some celebrity as a poet o f the
new style w ith such verses as
The boy in the hothouse
The distant moon
W hite flowers
W hite.

A white building
W hite
Pink lady
W hite distant view
Blue sky.

W hite boy
Distant sky
Hyacinth
W in dow
W hite landscape.

This was not the most m odem o f die verses produced in the
i In Guide to Kulchur, pp. 137- 9 -
twenties b y any means. O ne, entitled The White Butterfly,
concluded :
It is a w hite butterfly.
It is a w hite butterfly.
It is a w hite butterfly.
It is a w hite butterfly.
It is a w hite butterfly.

In spite o f such outstanding examples o f the n e w style as The

White Butterfly, the influence o f the W est w as p ro b a b ly less
marked on Japanese poetry than any other branch o f literature.
M any o f the novelists o f the n ew school had already gained
fame as translators before publishing their o w n w o rk s, and th ey
reveal at every moment their indebtedness to W estern w riters,
even when the subject is purely Japanese. It is tem pting to
describe certain novels as being, f or exam p lc> the “ Japan ese
O f Human Bondage or the “ Japanese Forsyte Saga ” , and such
names are not devoid o f meaning. E ven the fe w novelists w h o
have deliberately affected the old style betray in a thousand w ays
how m u * closer they are to the W estern n o vel than to the
traditional Japanese one. B u t the poets have not been so read y
to abandon the old forms. Althrm,>u i c
t , , L u «iough n ew styles or p oetry w ere
evolved at about the same time for ~ c .i f i j
c j i t ne tor p oetry as fo r the n o vel and
tor drama, the best poets continn»j r \
• l j- • if w uo n u ed fo r die m ost part to w rite
in the traditional forms, and evpn „ i • i ,
«. 1 1 f „ • . .1 ven w orks m the n ew style w ere
likely to fall into the conventional - . r u J ■>-
o f five and seven syllables, the b
The decision o f the poets to ret “
a f TV*
Vf ^

show that there is a greater c o „se™ ^ tradltlonal m ay

other genre o f literature, or it m a v " “ ^
the b rief poems were after all the m " ? ? T eT ®
i Li Af , , L ; • V m ost suited to the ianguaee,
and m ore capable o f achieving the impressionistic effects sought
b y the m odem poets than the formless free verse. Certainly
no m odem poet has managed to suggest m ore w ith so few
words than did Issa (176 3-18 28 ) after the death o f his only
surviving child. W e m ay im agine that his friends attempted to
console him w ith the usual remarks on the evanescence o f the
things o f this w orld, and the meaninglessness o f this existence
as compared to the eternal life in Buddha’s W estern Paradise.
Issa w rote :

Tsuyu no yo wa The w orld o f dew

Tsuyu no yo nagara Is a w orld o f dew and yet,
Sarinagara A nd yet.
O n e o f the earliest and most famous statements on Japanese
poetry was made in 905 A.D. b y K i no T surayuki in his preface
to the Collection o j Ancient and Modern Poetry. Th is begins :

Japanese poetry has for its seed the hum an heart, and
grows into countless leaves o f w ords. In this life m an y things
touch men : they seek then to express their feelings b y images
drawn from w hat they see or hear. W h o am ong m en does
not compose poetry on hearing the song o f the nightingale
among the flowers, or the cries o f the fro g w h o lives in the
water ? Poetry it is w hich, w ithout effort, m oves heaven
and earth, and stirs to pity the invisible demons and g o d s ;
which makes sweet the ties between m en and w om en ; and
which can comfort the hearts o f fierce w arriors.”

A t first glance these words m ay seem little m ore than a conven­

tional statement on the powers o f poetry, and indeed there is in
Tsurayuki s words more than one suggestion o f earlier Chinese
remarks. B u t beneath the smooth rhetorical finish there are
some things said, and some unsaid, w liich are bound to interest
the Western reader. First o f all, w e must note that T surayuki
claims that poetry has the capacity o f affecting supernatural
beings, not, as in the W est, that the supernatural beings speak
through the poet, who is m erely an inspired m edium fo r their
words. The Japanese m ay have believed that poetry, like every­
thing else in their country, originated w ith the gods, but Japanese
poets have never turned to a muse or any other divine being for
help with their verses. T h e art, fo r all the w on derful pow ers
that w ere attributed to it, was not considered to lie b eyon d the
22
unaided talents o f man. Tsurayuki listed some o f the circum­
stances under which people have sought consolation in poetry
__“ when they looked at the scattered blossoms o f a spring
m orning ; when they listened o f an autumn evening to the
falling o f the leav es; when they sighed over the snow and waves
reflected w ith each passing year b y their looking-glasses ; when
they w ere starded into thoughts on the brevity o f their lives
b y seeing the dew 011 the grass or the foam on the w ater , or
when, yesterday all proud and splendid, they have fallen from
fortune into loneliness ; or when, having been dearly loved,
are neglected These remained among the principal subjects
o f Japanese poetry and required none o f them a muse o f fire.
The second point made b y Tsurayuki was that poetry helped
a s a go-between in love-affairs. This perhaps needs litde explana­
tion for W estern readers, familiar as w e are with the love-poetry
o f European languages, but until w e read one o f the Japanese
court-novels such as The Tale o f Genji, written about 1000A.D.,
w e are not prepared for the extent to which poetry could be
used for this purpose. W hole conversations between lovers
w ere carried on in poems, and a skilfully caught poetic allusion
m ight w in a man’s heart as easily as a glimpse o f his lady’s face.
There is a full repertory o f Japanese love-poetry, whether pro­
testations o f passion, aubades b y parting lovers, laments over
faithlessness, or any o f the other possibilities in so highly devel­
oped a medium. The importance o f poetry as a go-between
in love-affairs arose from the to us rather strange manner o f
courtship o f the Japanese aristocracy in the ninth, tenth and
eleventh centuries, when the techniques o f their poetry w ere
being formulated. Since court ladies m ight not be seen b y any
other men than their recognized husbands, conversations between
lovers, at least in the initial stages, took place w ith the lady
hidden behind a screen. This formalization o f the relations
between the tw o people favoured the adoption o f the m ore
form al language o f poetry. W hen the lovers did n o t actually
speak to one another, they w ere constantly sending notes back
and forth, sometimes tied to sprays o f plum -blossom o r red
maple-leaves, i f they happened to be in season. T h e notes, o f
course, w ere also poems, and they w ere ju d g e d not o n ly b y their
content but b y the calligraphy. T h e usual w a y a love-affair
began was fo r a young man, w h o had n ever seen the la d y o f
his choice, to w rite her a poem . Th en he w o u ld w ait w ith
impatience for her reply.

She chose a Chinese paper, very h eavily scented. * Som e

fault there must be in die stem o f this m arsh-flow er. E lse it
had^ not been left unheeded am id the m iry m eadow s b y the
sea. Such was her poem . It w as w ritten in rather faint
ink and Genji, as he eagerly scanned it, thought the hand lack­
ing in force and decision. B u t there w as breeding and distinc­
tion in it, more indeed than he had dared to lo o k fo r ; and
on the whole he felt m uch relieved.” 1

Sometimes, however, the ardent lover had his passion cooled :

It was an idle repartee, and even the handw riting seemed

to nnce Sochi s expectant eye som ewhat vague and purpose-
ess. He was, indeed, not at all sure, w hen he saw it, that he
had not made a great mistake.” 2

N o better w ay existed to conquer a lad y’s heart than w ith a

touch 7 written on just the right paper. A s a final

She could not but be pleased and flattered b y the elegance

! 2S T a k °fG e n Ji (translated by W aley), one-volume edition, p. 457.

a Ibid., p. 497. r
 o f the note ; for it was not only written in an exquisite hand,
but was folded w ith a careless dexterity w hich she greatly
admired.” 1
•The w riting o f love-poetry w as not restricted to amorous
young people, but was indulged in b y all members o f the court,
from the Em peror down, as a form o f literary exercise. In
looking through the old anthologies w e are apt to find verses
like the follow ing one, which is signed simply A Form er
Prim e Minister ” , and entitled On Hidden Love.
shirurame ya W h o could detect it ?
ko no ha furishiku Carpeted with fallen leaves
tani tniztt no A stream in the valley
iwama ni morasu Trickling between the rocks—
shita 110 kokoro wo A n all but stifled love.
It should not be supposed, however, that it was only at the
court that poetry was considered to be an indispensable accom­
plishment. Tsurayuki declared that poetry could comfort the
hearts o f fierce warriors. Indeed, w e are likely to be struck
when reading Japanese novels, b y the composure o f heroes in
their death struggles w ho manage to find time to compose a
valedictory verse about the falling o f the cherry-blossoms, or
b y the verses o f ordinary soldiers w ho gathered o f a winter s
night to compose poetry together. B u t poetry in Japan is the
property o f all classes o f society, and even today almost any
Japanese can w rite a poem without difficulty, although, o f
course, it m ay not be o f any literary merit. Tsurayuki asked
in his p reface,£< W hat man does not compose poetry on hearing
the song o f the nightingale am ong the flowers ? ” and the same
question was asked 800 years later b y the haiku poet Onitsura
(16 6 1-17 3 8 ):
1 Ibid., p. 94-
 fude toranu Is there, I wonder,
hito mo aro ka A man w ithout pen in hand.—
kyö no tsuki T h e m oon tonight !

It remains true to this day that poetry is not felt to be exclusively

the business o f poets, or even o f educated people. T h is is
partially because o f the sim plicity o f Japanese prosody, partially
also because the range o f the poetry is so limited.
The prosody o f Japanese has been determined b y the nature
o f the language. Stress accent, or quantity, the tw o most
common features o f European poetry, are ruled out b y their
absence in Japanese. This is true, o f course, o f French poetry
as well, but the excessive facility o f rhym e in Japanese, w here
every syllable ends in a simple v o w el and there are no consonant
clusters, deprives the language o f this m ainstay o f French poetry.
Japanese verses, then, came to be based on the syllable-count,
and different types o f poetry are usually distinguished b y the
num. er o f syllables they contain. Thus, the tanka is a poem
arranged in lines o f 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables.
Die■ hatku, a more recent development, contains 1 7 syllables,
in t ee es o f 5, 7 and 5 syllables. In these tw o form s and in
variants ased on them is to be found almost all o f w hat Japanese
consi er to e poetry. As m ay w ell be im agined, it is no great
problem to compose a verse in only 3 1 or 1 7 syllables, w ith out
I rhym e or metre, but it must be added that it is as difficult in
Japanese as in any other language to w rite anything o f value.
The range o f the poetry is limited both b y the shortness o f the
verses and also b y what it was felt proper to include in a poem.
The shortness is responsible, am ong other things, fo r the lack o f
true narrative poetry, since, obviously, very little can be related
in 3 1 syllables, m uch less 17 . B u t the shortness alone is not
accountable for another feature, the rarity o f poems o f an
intellectual or otherwise non-emotional character. T h e hst
made b y Tsurayuki o f subjects likely to arouse a man to poetic
expression contains only emotional ones. In contrast, the most
sizeable, i f not usually the best parts, o f m any Chinese poets’
works consist o f occasional verse o f an almost com pletely un­
emotional character in any ordinary sense. In Arthur W aley s
book on P o Chii-i, for example, w e find such specimens o f P o’s
lyricism as :

Since the day that old H o died the sound o f recitation has ceased ;
Secretaries have come and secretaries gone, but none o f them
cared fo r poetry.
Since H o’ s day their official journeys have remained unsung ;
The lo vely precincts o f the head office have waked no verse.
For lon g I grieved to see you kept in the same humble p o s t;
I trem bled lest the art o f high song should sink to its decline.
To -d ay w hen I heard o f your appointment as Secretary o f the
W ater Board
I was far m ore pleased than when m yself I became secretary to
a B o ard .1

This is an exam ple o f the kind o f verse which it is impossible

to w rite in Japanese, and no one w ould dream o f attempting
it. A Japanese political poem is much more likely to take the
form o f a w ish that the emperor’s reign w ill last until pebbles
become boulders and are covered w ith moss.
Th e num ber o f moods in whichjapanese poetry can be written
is also limited b y tradition. There are few poems written m
burning indignation, like some o f the greatest Chinese poetry,
few o f religious exaltation, few which touch m ore than vaguely
on metaphysics or ethics. This hst m ight be prolonged almost

1 Waley, The Life and Times o f Po Chii-i, pp. 145-6-

indefinitely until w e are left w ith a v e r y lim ited v arie ty o f
subjects considered fit fo r poetry, and w ithin that lim ited variety,
a lim ited num ber o f w ays o f treating them. M ost o f the verses
m ay be classified as love- or nature-poetry, and the m ost
frequently em ployed tone is one o f gentle m elancholy. T h e
falling o f the cherry-blossoms and the scattering o f the autum n
leaves are favourite themes because both o f them suggest the
passing o f time and the b revity o f hum an existence. T h ere is
a religious background to such poetry, the typ e o f Buddhism
which taught that the tilings o f this w o rld are m eaningless and
soon faded, and that to rely on them is to put one’s faith in dust
and ashes. B u t such religious ideas as are fou n d in Japanese
poetry are quite simple, and cannot have disturbed the poets
very much. T yp ically enough, it w as the anti-intellectual Z en
Buddhism w hich furnished the only significant religious influence
on Japanese poetry.
The uncomplicated nature o f the subjects favoured b y Japanese
poets was perhaps the result o f the sim plicity o f the verse-form ,
or perhaps it was the sim plicity o f the ideas w hich helped to
ctate e form. In either case, most Japanese poets did not
tret at the narrow limits o f the 31-syllable tanka ; those w h o
did could write “ long-poems ” (nagauta), although this becam e
an increasing y rare medium, or compose poem s in Chinese, as
English poets used sometimes to w rite verse in Latin. F o r the
most part, however, the form and content o f traditional Japanese
poetry seem perfectly suited to one another, and to correspond
w ith Japanese taste as revealed in other form s o f art.
One obvious feature o f Japanese poetry, w hich has been h ig h ly
praised b y critics, is its pow er o f suggestion. A really go od
poem, and this is especially true o f haiku, m ust be com pleted
b y the reader. It is for this reason that m any o f their poems
seem curiously passive to us, for the w riter does not specify
the truth taught him b y an experience, nor even in what
w a y it affected him. Thus, for example, the haiku by
Bashö (1644-94) :
kumo no mine The peaks o f clouds
ikutsu kuzurete Have crumbled into fragments—
tsuki no yama T h e moonlit mountain.

A "Western poet w ould probably have added a personal con­

clusion , as did D . H . Lawrence in his Moonrise, w here he tells
us that the sight made him “ sure that beauty is a thing beyond
the grave, that perfect bright experience never falls to nothing­
ness B u t this is w hat no Japanese poet w ould say explicitly ;
either his poem suggests it, or it fails. The verse o f Bashos
just quoted has clearly failed i f the reader believes that the poet
remained impassive before the spectacle he describes. Even for
readers sensitive to the suggestive qualities o f the poem, the
nature o f the truth perceived b y Bashö in the sudden apparition
o f the moonlit mountain w ill vary considerably. Indeed, Basho
w ould have considered the poem faulty, i f it suggested only one
experience o f truth. W hat Japanese poets have most often
sought is to create w ith a few words, usually w id i a few sharp
images, the outline o f a w ork whose details must be supplied
b y the reader, as in a Japanese painting a few strokes o f the brush
must suggest a whole w orld. - i t
It is partially because o f this feature o f suggestion that Japanese
poetry is communicated rather inadequately into E n g lish The
W estern reader is often in the position o f the lover o f Russian
ballet w ho watches for the first time the delicate gesture-language
o f the Balinese d a n c e -n o leaps, no arabesques no entrechats,
nothing o f the medium with wloich he is familiar save for the
grace and the movement. The d a n c e -o r Japanese p o e t r y -
m ay appear over-refined, wanting in real vigour, monotonous,
 and to such, criticism there is no answer. T h eir com pass w ill
inevitably appear limited to m ost people, and o n ly the con­
noisseur w ill discover areas o f suggestion around them.
The w ord connoisseur ” suggests another difficulty fo r the
W estern reader. Japanese poetry, like alm ost ev ery branch o f
their arts, is virtuoso in methods, and perfectionist in details.
This is in direct contrast w ith W estern p oetry, w h ere tw o or
three mediocre stanzas in the m iddle o f a lo n g p o em are not
considered a serious defect p roviding that there are a sufficient
number o f high moments in it. A lthough the second verses
o f most o f our poems are inferior to the first ones, the cry
from the poet’s heart or his philosophic perceptions are generally
thought w orthy o f m ore than a single quatrain. H o w e ver, the
Japanese poet when expressing his feelings is m ore lik ely to
use a few w ords o f someone o f lon g ago, w ords as fam iliar
to everyone in Japan as at one time the fam ous parts o f the
Bible w ere familiar in this country, adding a little and g ivin g
to these old words the n ew accent o f the present. It is thus
possi e in a gh ly concentrated fo rm to express m uch to the
connoisseur familiar w ith the allusion, and the change fro m the
o poem needs to be very slight i f it is expertly m anaged.
Often it is almost impossible to express these slight changes in
nglish translation, so delicate are the variations. I f the ranee
0 Japanese poetry is small, the shadings w ithin that range can
make the English language seem gross and unw ieldly.
1 problem in translation is accentuated b y the fact that
correspondence in vocabulary betw een
o fT o r d 7 F° r examPle>Ja p a n s e has a rich variety
o f words for different types o f winds, enough to name a w h ole
class o f destroyers used in the past w ar. O r w ith the w o rd
hm am , which w e m ay translate “ flow er-view in g ” , a poet can
suggest gaily-clad crowds enjoying the sight o f the cherry-
blossoms. O f course w e can express the idea in h a lf a dozen
words, but the poetic effect is lost.
A s a final m ajor difficulty, there is die fact that the overtones
o f w ords are not the same. Sometimes this results from the
fact that the thing itself is different; thus, the frog is celebrated
in Japan fo r the beauty o f its cries, which are not at all like the
croaking w ith w hich w e are familiar here. B u t m ore often it
is the poetic tradition w hich is different. Japanese are never
tired o f w riting about the autumn grasses— all o f w hich have
disagreeable Latin names w hen one attempts to translate— but
they seem utterly indifferent, say, to the rose, although familiar
w ith it. This list m ight be prolonged to cover almost all the
most frequent images o f both languages.
It must be clear from the above that to appreciate Japanese
poetry fu lly it must be read in the original, but I think that it
is possible to communicate some o f its qualities b y describing
the developments in one branch o f the poetry. I have chosen
the renga, or linked-verse, together w ith the related haiku.
These in some w ays are the most Japanese o f verse-forms, and
suitable therefore as illustrations.
T h e linked-verse, in its simplest form , consisted o f one tanka
composed b y tw o people ; that is, one person w rote the first
three lines, and the other the last tw o lines, to make one normal
poem . A n exam ple o f this type o f linked-verse m ay be found
even in the Record o f Ancient Matters (.Kojiki) o f 7 12 a .d ., the
oldest surviving Japanese book, but it was not until the eleventh
and twelfth centuries that the form became popular. H o w it
happened that one poem came to be divided in tw o m ay be
seen b y com paring the early anthologies w ith the N ew Collection
o f Ancient and Modern Poetry (Shin Kokinshü) o f 1205 A. d . In
the earlier poetry there was no fixed place for the break in the
verse, w hich w ould come at the end o f the second, third, or
fourth line, but in the N ew Collection it m ost co m m o n ly falls
after the third line, as in this poem :

ümisato wa M y old hom e

chiru momxjiba ni U nder scattered scarlet leaves
uzumorete Lies buried n ow .
noki no shinobu ni T h rough the fern b y the eaves
akikaze zo fuku T h e autum nal w inds b lo w .
M in a m o t o no T o sh iy o r i .

In this example the last tw o lines o f the p oem h ave the effect
o f a comment on the first three, and alm ost stand independent.
W e can see h o w such a poem m ight have been created b y tw o
people, unlike the older poems w hich w ere generally far m ore
o f a piece. Linked-verse o f a simple kind becam e in the eleventh
and twelfth centuries a popular court pastime. O ne m an w ou ld
compose the opening three lines, m aking them as difficult to
cap as possible, and a second m an w ou ld dem onstrate his
virtuosity b y supplying the final tw o lines in spite o f the p rob­
lems. The first m ajor step fo rw ard in the developm ent o f
e -verse came with the addition o f a third verse in three
es o 5 , 7 and 5 syllables, thus destroying the lim itations im posed
y t e original tanka form o f a poem in fiv e lines, and opening
e w ay to poetry chains o f m any verses o f alternating three
an two lines. The unit o f three verses rem ained the m ost
important m the long linked-verse, even w hen the n um ber o f
links reached 10,000 or more, for each verse had to fit w ith the
one before and the one after. This represented a m arked change
rom e earlier form o f linked-verse, w here the highest object
had been to achieve a brilliant response to a difficult opening.
In a long series it was no virtue to compose a verse w hich it w as
almost impossible to follow , and thus linked-verse becam e
essentially a co-operative enterprise, and as such w as popular
 f

am ong soldiers, priests and ordinary citizens as w ell as courtiers,

w ho found that an evening o f linked-verse m aking w as pleasantly
spent. Generally three or m ore persons took turns composing
verses, either o f 5, 7, and 5 syllables, or o f 7 and 7 syllables.
Th e subject matter o f these verses varied from contribution to
contribution, the only requirement being a link o f some sort
w ith the verse imm ediately preceding. This is illustrated b y
one o f the earliest examples o f the linked-verse b y three people
(from the Mirror o f the Present o f 11 7 0 a.d.) :

Nara no tniyako wo M y thoughts go out

otnoi koso yare T o the capital at Nara.
F u jiw a h a n o K in n o r i .

yaezakura T h e double-cherry blossoms

aki no montiji ya And the red leaves o f autumn
ika naramu W h at are they like ?
M in am o to no A rihito .

shigurum tabi ni W ith each autumnal shower

iro ya kasanaru T h e colours multiply.
E chigo no M en o to .

Here, the second verse is linked to the first b y the fact that
the capital city o f N ara was famous for its cherry-blossoms and
bright autumn leaves. T h e third verse links to die second m
its reference to the colour o f the leaves changing after the
autumnal showers. B u t no apparent connection exists between
the first and third verses. It was, in fact, considered undesirable
to pursue the same subject beyond a few verses.
T h e existence o f a superficially similar type o f poetry in China
has led some people to believe that the linked-verse was not
an indigenous Japanese product. H ow ever, a careful examina­
tion o f the Cliinese lien-chü, as it was called, shows that no
connection could have existed betw een the tw o types o f poetry.
A typical lien-chii is this dialogue betw een one C h ia C h ‘ung
and his w ife, a w o rk o f the fourth century a .d . :

C h ia : W h o is it sighs so sadly in the ro o m ?

W ife: I sigh because I fear ou r ties m a y break.
C h ia : O ur m arriage ties are firm cem ented ; rocks m ay
crumble, but m y heart w ill n ever change.
Wife : W h o does not w o rry at the end ? ’T is fate that they
w ho meet must part.
Chia : M y heart is kn ow n to y o u ; y o u r heart I understand.
W ife: W hile y o u are faithful to y o u r w o rd , it’s fit I stay
w ith you.

This exam ple illustrates tw o characteristics o f the Chinese lien-

chu, the unity o f subject and the lightheartedness o f the tone,
neither at all true o f Japanese linked-verse. In any case, I believe
it is clear from w hat has already been said that the linked-verse
was a natural development in Japanese poetry, and not dependent
on any foreign influence.
The lien-chU was never taken seriously b y the Chinese, and is
are y mentioned in histories o f their literature, but linked-verse
eve ope steadily in Japan into an extraordinarily com plicated
o f poetry, governed b y elaborate codes. O f the opening
verse (the hokku) it was said, “ T h e hokku should not be at
variance w ith the topography o f the place, w hether the m oun­
tains or the sea dominate, w ith the flyin g flow ers o r falling leaves
ot the grasses and trees o f the season, w ith the w ind , clouds,
mist, tog, ram, dew, frost, snow, heat, cold or quarter o f the
moon. jects which excite a ready response possess the
greatest interest for inclusion in a hokku, such as spring birds
or autumn insects. B u t the hokku is not o f m erit i f it looks as
though !t had been previously prepared.” T h e requirements for
the second verse w ere somewhat less demanding ; it had to be
closely related to the first and to end in a noun. T h e third
verse w as m ore independent and ended in a participle ; the
fourth had to be “ smooth ” ; the m oon had to occur in a
certain verse ; cherry-blossoms could not be mentioned before
a certain 'p o in t; autumn and spring had to be repeated in at
least three but not m ore than five successive verses, w hile summer
and w inter could be dropped after one mention, etc. Th e rules
multiplied to such an extent that one m ight feel safe in predicting
that nothing w orthw hile could be written under such handicaps.
Y et, although linked-verse increasingly became the toy o f
dilettanti w hose chief accomplishment was exact conform ity to
the rules, great poetry was occasionally written, especially by
Sogi (14 2 1—1502), the master o f the linked-verse.
In 1488 Sögi and tw o disciples met at a place called
and composed together 100 linked-verses which are considered
to be the m arvel o f the art. The series begins :
yuki nagara Snow yet remaining
yamamoto kasumu Th e mountain slopes are hazy—
yube ka na It is evening.
S ögi .

yukti mizu töku The water distantly flows

unte niou scito B y the plum-scented village.
S h öh aku .

kawakaze ni hi the river-breeze

hitomura yanagi A cluster o f w illow s
ham miete Spring is appearing.
SÖCHÖ.

futie sastt oto mo T h e sound o f a boat being poled

shiruki akegata Clear in the clear morning light.
S ögi .
 There is an effortlessness about these verses w h ich m ight
deceive us into thinking that the rules had been ign ored, but
verse after verse w ill be found to be in perfect con form ity.
T h e opening one tells us that the season is early spring, w hen
the haze first hovers over the mountains still covered w ith the
w inter s snow. T h e place is indicated as the M inase R iv e r by
its allusion to this poem b y the E m p ero r G otob a (118 0 —12 39 ) :

miwataseba W hen I lo o k far out

yamamoto kasumu T h e m ountain-slopes are hazy
Minase-gawa Minase R iv e r —
yübe wa aki to W h y did I think that o n ly in autumn
nani omoikemu T h e evenings could be lo v e ly ?

And Sögi tells us that it is evening, thus g iv in g the season, place

and time as required. T h e second verse helps to com plete the
opening one b y continuing the theme o f early spring in its
mention o f the plum-blossoms, the first flow ers o f the year.
It also helps further to identify the setting as the M inase R iv er
m its mention o f the flow ing water, an allusion to another poem
on the subject. Th e third verse also mentions the spring, in
eepmg with the rule, and continues the w ater im age. T h e
ourt verse breaks the spring im age, but continues the w ater
one to ree, and also satisfies the requirem ent o f smoothness.
ere are many other subtleties w hich it w o u ld be difficult to
exp am ere, but the important thing is that in spite o f the
am penng rules, a poem emerges o f surpassing grace and beauty,
it is a poem unlike any ever written in the W est, as far as I
k n o w , in that its only unity is from one verse to the next. Each
verse is 'e to the one before and the one after, but whereas,
or exam p e, the first verse tells us it is evening, the fourth verse
is about the early morning ; again, in the sixth verse w e are
told that autumn is draw ing to a close, although the first three
verses have all indicated the season as spring. T o give a parallel
in the graphic arts, one m ay compare the linked-verse w ith the
Japanese horizontal scroll (etnnkitnono). As w e unroll one o f
the scrolls w ith our left hand w e simultaneously roll up a
correspondingly long section w ith our right hand. N o matter
w hich segment o f the scroll w e see at one time, it makes a
beautiful composition, although when w e examine it as a whole
it possesses no m ore unity than a river landscape seen from a
m oving boat. Linked-verse at its best produces a somewhat
similar effect.
T h e raising to so high an artistic level o f w hat had originally
been a kind o f parlour gam e meant that it was necessary for the
fierce w arrior w ho sought com fort in verse, or for any other
amateur poet, to find some newer and simpler verse-form. The
new form w hich developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries was the haikai or “ free ” linked-verse. In contrast to
the traditional linked-verse, w hich had been full o f cherry-
blossoms, w illow s and pale moonlight, the free linked-verse
delighted in mentioning such humble things as weeds, running
noses, and even horse-dung. In time, o f course, the new poetic
diction became as stereotyped as the old, but the first result o f
the absence o f form al rules in the free linked-verse was the
release o f floods o f linked-verse and o f haiku, a new form
derived b y m aking an independent unit o f the opening verse
o f a linked-verse series. It is sometimes also called hokkti, or
haikm.1 One man is said to have composed 20,000 verses in a
single day. O bviously the quality o f all o f these verses cannot

1 Strictly speaking, haikai was the general name for the informal type
o f poetry exemplified by Bashö and his school; hokku the name o f the
opening verse o f a linked-verse scries *, and haiku (a more modern term)
the name given to an independent verse o f the haikai school. However,
the three words are very often confused.
have been v e ry high, but this expansive, optim istic, and rather
vulgar kind o f poetry is most characteristic o f late seventeenth-
century Japan. A fter lon g years o f internal w arfare, the
establishment o f peace at the beginning o f the century had led
to a period o f great prosperity and a brilliant flo w e rin g o f the
arts. It was natural that Japanese poetry, w h ich had hitherto
been marked chiefly b y its sobriety and restraint, should becom e
m ore cheerful and extravagant, and that the shift o f the centre
o f creative activity from the court to the haunts o f merchants
should be reflected also in the tone. W h at is surprising is that
there lived at this time in the capital city o f the shoguns a man
w h o is often considered Japan ’s greatest poet, w h ose verses are
o f exquisite refinement, and w h o him self led so pure a life that
he is venerated as a saint b y some. Th is w as Bashö (1644—94)»
the master o f the free linked-verse and o f the 17-syllab le haiku,
w hich was its product.
In his conversations w ith his disciples, Bashö declared that
the tw o principles o f his school o f poetry w ere change and per­
manence. This statement is made m ore intelligible b y a k n o w ­
ledge o f the tw o perils b y w hich Japanese p oetry w as alw ays
menaced. The first o f these, and the graver, w as staleness and
sterility, the result o f an excessive study and im itation o f earlier
masterpieces. Bashö insisted that his style o f p oetry should
change w ith every year and be fresh w ith ev ery m o n th ”
as he put it. H e said, m oreover, “ I do not seek to fo llo w in
t e ootsteps o f the men o f old ; I seek the things they sought/'’
That is, he did not wish to imitate the solutions given b y the
poets of form er times to the eternal problem s, but sought instead
to solve them for himself. This w as w hat he m eant b y his
second principle, that o f permanence. W h en , as under the
influence o f the new m ovements in seventeenth-century litera­
ture, all traditions w ere cast aside, and Japanese poets revelled
in their freedom , die results w ere often chaotic. For Bashö
both change and permanence had to be present in his haiku.
In some o f his greatest poems w e find these elements present,
not only in the sense just given, but also, i f w e m ay state the
terms geom etrically, as an expression o f die point w here the
m om entary intersects the constant and eternal. W e find it, for
example, in w hat was perhaps his most famous haiku :

ftmtike ya T h e ancient pond

kawazu tohikomu A frog leaps in
ttiizu tw oto T h e sound o f the water.

In the first line, Bashö gives us the eternal component o f the

poem, the timeless, motionless waters o f the pondT T h e next
line gives us the monjerffary, personified by die m ovem ent o f
the frog. T heir intersection is die splash o f the water.
Form ally interpreted, the eternal component is the perception
o f truth, the subject o f countless Japanese poems ; the fresh
contribution o f Bashö is the use o f the frog for its movement,
instead o f its pleasing cries, the hackneyed poetical image o f
his predecessors.
I f the “ perception o f truth ” is indeed the subject o f the poem,
w e m ay recognize in it the philosophy o f Zen Buddhism, which
taught, am ong other things, that enlightenment was to be gained
b y a sudden flash o f intuition, rather than b y the study o f learned
tomes o f theology, or b y the strict observance o f monastic
austerities. W hen an acolyte enters the Zen priesthood, he is
made to sit for long hours in a prescribed position, w ith his
eyes half-closed, and his mind on the Great Nodiingness. As
he sits there gendy sw aying, hearing die monotonous incantation
o f a priest intoning a sutra, and breathing the heavy fragrance
o f incense, he w ill suddenly be struck from behind w ith a light
w ooden stick, and then, i f ever, can occur the flash o f enlighten-
D
ment. B u t any sudden perception m ay lead to this state ; it
w as die appearance o f the m orning star w h ich g a v e enlighten­
ment to Buddha himself, according to Z e n believers.
Th e images used b y Basho in capturing the m om en t o f truth
w ere most often visual, as in the haiku about the fro g , o r the
equally famous :

kareeda ni O n the w ithered branch

karasu no tomarikeri A c ro w has alighted—
aki no kure T h e end o f autum n.

This verse presents so sharp an im age that it has often been

painted. B u t Bashö did not rely exclusively on visual im a g e s ;
the moment m ight equally w ell be perceived b y one o f the
other senses:

shizukasa ya Such stillness—

iwa ni shimiiru T h e cries o f the cicadas
semi no koe Sin k into the rocks.

A nd sometimes the senses w ere m ingled in a surprising modern

w ay :

umi kurete T h e sea darkens,

kamo no koe T h e cries o f the seagulls
honoka ni shiroshi A re fain tly w hite.

A s these examples indicate, the haiku, fo r all its extrem e

brevity, must contain tw o elements, usually divided b y a break
marked b y w hat the Japanese call a “ cutting w o rd ” (kireji).
One o f the elements m ay be the general condition— the end o f
autumn, the stillness o f the temple grounds, the darkening sea
and the other the m om entary perception. T h e nature o f the
elements varies, but there should be the tw o electric poles
between w hich die spark w ill leap fo r the haiku• to be effective ;
otherwise it is no m ore than a b rief statement. That is the
point which has been missed by such W estern imitators o f the
haiku form as Am y Lowell, who saw in the haiku its brevity
and suggestion, but did not understand the methods by which
the effects were achieved. Here are two o f Miss Lowell’s haiku :

A Lover
I f I could catch the green lantern o f the firefly
I could see to w rite you a letter.

To a Husband
Brighter than the fireflies upon the U ji R iv e r
A re your words in the dark, B elo ved .1

In diese examples the words are poetic, but the verses do not
have the quality o f a haiku, for the reason I have given. Th ey
suggest rather the shorter links o f 14 syllables in a linked-verse
series, w hich, how ever, never stand alone, and cannot be con­
sidered complete poems. There is an art to w riting these shorter
links as w ell, and although Bashö today is famed chiefly for his
haiku in 1 7 syllables, he was also a master o f the 14-syllable link.
A s I have mentioned, the haiku itself originated as the opening
verse o f a linked-verse series, and it in fact never lost the poten­
tiality o f serving as a poetic building block. Thus, to Bashö s
haiku, “ T h e ancient pond, a frog jum ps in, the sound o f the
water ” , his disciple K ikaku added a link in 14 syllables :

ashi tio wakaba ni O n the young shoots o f the reeds

kakaru kumo no su A spider’s w eb suspended.

This link fulfils the purpose o f complementing the opening one.

1 From Pictures o f the Floating World. Miss Lowell’s best haiku arc
probably the ones on modem themes in What’s O'Clock ?
In the m ention o f the yo u n g shoots it tells us that the season
is mid-spring, not specified b y Basho, and in the im ag e o f the"
spider s w eb strengthens the im pression o f stillness suggested by
the w ords “ the ancient pond B u t, as w e m ig h t expect, it
w as Bashö him self w h o com posed the second verse, w h ich is
generally considered the m odel o f its kind. H is p u p il Kakei
had given the opening verse :

shimotsuki ya N ovem b er—

kö no tsukuzuhu T h e storks tentatively
narabi ite Standing in a ro w .

T o this Basho a d d e d :

fu yu no asahi no T h e w in ter sunrise

aware narikeri So touching a sight.

In adding this link Bashö not o n ly supplied a n e w im age o f

his ow n, but greatly increased the effectiveness o f the opening
verse. T h e red w inter’s sun, rising o ver the landscape, casts
its harsh light 011 the miserable little flock o f storks, uncertainly
standing in the cold. I f it had been said directly o f the storks
that they w ere a ** touching s ig h t” , it w o u ld have killed the-
suggestion o f the im age, but the unexpectedness o f referring
to the sunrise as touching ” gives freshness and force to the
statement, and the unspoken com parison is left to the reader.
It m ay be wondered h o w often it was possible to assemble a
group o f linked-verse enthusiasts capable o f p rodu cing a series
o f real merit. It cannot have been v e ry often. Bashö, in his
travel diary, The Narrow Road o f Oku, gives us the circumstances
o f one series:

As it was our plan j o sail dow n the M o g am i R iv e r , w e

waited at a place called Oishida for the weather to clear. The
 seeds o f the old school o f haikaf had been scattered here, and
the days o f its flow ering, unforgotten, still brought the sound
o f the northern flute to the solitary lives o f the poets o f
Oishida. T h ey said, ‘ W e are groping ahead on the road o f
poetry, uncertain as to whether to follow the old or the new
w ay, but here no one can guide us. W ill y o u not help ? *
I w as unable to refuse them, and joined in m aking a roll o f
linked-verse. O f all the poetry-gatherings o f m y journey,
this showed the most taste.”
W e m ay im agine the effort put forth b y the local poets to be
w orth y o f the honour o f join in g w ith the great master, and they
did not do badly. Bashö began the series w ith :
samidare wo Gathering seawards
atsumete suzushi The rains o f M ay, coolly flows
Mogami-gawa M ogam i R iv er.

kishi ni hotaru w o '' The little fishing boats tie

tsunagu funagai Their firefly lights to the bank.
I chiei .

uribatake Th e melon fields

izayou sora ni W ait fo r the moon to shine from
kage machite The hesitant sky.
S o ra .

sato wo mukai ni G oing o ff towards the village

kuwa no hosomichi A path through the mulberry-trees.
S en su i .

These verses have charm and blend w ith one another suitably
to describe scenes in Oishida during the spring rains. B u t often,
even w hen Bashö him self was taking part, the linked-verse
tended to break up into unrelated fragments, and one has the
impression then that the participants are more anxious to express
their happy thoughts than to fit links into a poetic chain. This
m ay be illustrated b y the beginning o f another series :

tsutsumi kanete T h e w in try show er

tsuki toriotosii . U nable to hide the m oon
shigure ka rta Lets it slip fro m its grasp.
T okoku.
köri futniyuku A s I step o ver the ice
ntizu no inazuma Lightning flashes in the w ater.
J ugo.
shtda no ha wo T h e early huntsmen
hatsu karibito no T ie fronds o f the w hite fern
ya ni oite T o their arrows.
Y a s u i.
kita no mikado wo Pushing open the northern
oshiake no ham Palace gates— the spring !
B a sh ö .
bafati kaku A b o v e the rakes
ögi ni kaze no For sw eeping horse-dung, the air
uchikasumu Appears hazy.
K a k e i.

This is unhappily a ’ m ore representative exam ple o f linked-

verse m aking than any I have given thus far since, in the nature
o f things, it was almost impossible to produce a really successful
series. Here, some o f the links have great individual merit,
but die connections between them are poor. Thus, the im age
o f the lightning flashes, a characterization o f the fam iliar jag g ed
white patterns left around footprints in the ice, is m ade the m ore
brilliant b y the overtones o f the sharp sound o f the cracking ice,
and the apprehension aroused in the w alker, like that on hearing
thunder. B u t the verse has unfortunately nothing to do w ith
 the case, as far as the total poem is concerned. The next three
verses are ostensibly linked because they all treat o f early spring ;
it is then that the hunters decorate their arrows w ith fern, and
then, too, that a haze appears in the air— although the conceit
o f having the fumes o f the horse-dung called haze certainly
does not com e o ff so successfully as the lightning im age. I f one
recalls the effortless flowing beauty o f the poetry composed at
Minase, these carefully contrived bits hardly seem to be w orthy
o f the nam e o f linked-verse. It is small wonder, then, that
,this form o f poetry gradually died out. For linked-verse to
be as successful as those made at Minase, it was necessary for
at least three poets o f exceptional talents to jo in efforts, and to
try, in so far as possible, to subordinate every other consideration
to the perfection o f die whole. W e are reminded in this o f a
string quartet, w here the music can as easily be spoiled b y the
ostentatious virtuosity o f one member as b y die incompetence
o f another. The man w ho composed the verse about the light­
ning flash was thinking m ainly o f creating an effect w ith his
brilliant im age ; a true master o f linked-verse w ould have fore­
gone this pleasure in favour o f the harmony o f the entire series.
A t its best the linked-verse was a unique medium for the expres­
sion o f die successive images evoked in the minds o f different
poets, a multiple stream o f poetic consciousness, as it were,
producing an effect akin to music. The fact that it lacks the
form al structure o f more conventional kinds o f poetry was ot
help to die Japanese, w ho have never been strong on the con­
struction o f poetry or prose, and w ho w ere enabled b y the
linked-verse to extend their lyricism beyond the b rief compass
o f a tanka or haiku without danger o f formlessness. That is,
as long as each verse fitted securely into the next, ahd the poetry
was maintained at a high evocative level, there was no need for
a carefully w orked-out beginning, middle and end, a develop-
m ent and a climax, o r any such requirem ent. B u t w hen the
art o f properly fitting the verses w as lost, linked-verse dropped'
im m ediately to w hat it had been at its inception, a p arlour game,
and as such was abandoned b y the im portant Japanese poets.
Such men as Issa (17 6 3-18 28 ) preferred to devote their energies
to the haiku, w hich became and has rem ained the favourite
poetic form o f the Japanese people.
It was the haiku also w hich first attracted the attention o f
Western poets, particularly those o f the ixnagist school. Alm ost
all the poets represented in the first im agist an th ology w ere
fascinated b y the miniature Japanese verses w ith their sharp
evocative images, and some com posèd im itations.1 R ich ard
Aldington tells h o w

O ne frosty night when the guns w ere still

I leaned against the trench
Making for m yself hokku
O f the m oon and flowers and o f the snow .2

w/11//011? 105 V^ L SUcl1 revealin g titles as Pictures o f the Floating

f o r, ^ Japanese Prints indicate h o w co n g en ial these poets
oun t e haiku, and, alth ou gh the m ain thesis o f this school,
at poetic 1 eas are best expressed b y the ren d erin g o f con crete
im ages rat er than b y com m ents, need n o t h a v e been learned
m Japanese poetry, it is h ard to th in k o f a n y o th e r poetic
erature w h ich so com pletely incarnates this v ie w y ''

p o e t r v I t W n W h T ”1 I£^ 5 ab° Ut the origim o f the imagist school o f

was a dissati-tfa *■' * W, rou£kt the real nucleus o f this group together
b it w ^ ^ P0etr^ was then < " * is sM , alas !)
libre ■ b v the T ^ ProP°sed at various times to replace it b y pure vers
Itbre , b y the Japanese tanka and h a ik a i ; we all wrote dozens o f dae latter
as oanm amusement.”
, (Quoted m
k^uotea in Hughes, Imagism,
T \
p. 11 .)
The Complete Poems o f Richard Aldington, p. 86 I
T h e drama is the branch o f Japanese literature which has attracted
the widest attention in the W est, meriting the praise it has w on
b y its beauty and b y a diversity scarcely to be matched in any
other country. A t least four major types o f theatrical entertain­
ment exist today : the N ö, with a repertory chiefly o f four­
teenth- and fifteenth-century plays ; the puppet theatre, for
w hich Japan’ s most celebrated dramatists w rote in the seven­
teenth and eighteenth centuries; the kabuki, or lyrical drama,
w hich was the popular theatre from the seventeenth century to
recent times ; and, finally, the m odem drama, written at first
largely under W estern influence, but now independent, and
possessing considerable merit.
O f these four types o f theatre, the N o has most interested
W estern readers, largely as a result o f the translations of Ezra
Pound and Arthur W aley. It was to the No^that .? °f
Yeats turned about 19 15 for a form o f drama “ distinguished,
indirect and symbolic ” , as he put it, and the continued interest
in the N o is reflected b y performances during recent years m
Paris and Berlin. B u t before discussing those qualities in the
‘ N o w hich have most appealed to Western readers and audiences,
some w ord must be said about the history o f this dramatic form .
T h e name Nö itself means “ talent ” , and b y a derived associa­
tion, the exhibition o f talent, or a performance. It was not by
this name, however, that the theatre was generally called until
recent times. Previously, this most aristocratic of ^theatrical
mediums w as know n as sartigaku, or m onkey-music , a name
perhaps indicative o f its origins. The earliest mentions o f tins
“ m onkey-m usic " show that it was a lively mixture o f song and
47
dance com bined w ith a certain a m o u n t o f m im in g . S o m e
people b elieve that there w as C h inese in flu en ce in the n am in g
o f this entertainm ent, i f n o t in its fo rm as w e ll, b u t th e ea rly
m on key-m u sic w as o f so elem en tary a n atu re th at it is
alm ost im possible to p ro v e w h eth er o r n o t it u n d e rw e n t fo reig n
influence. Perform ances under this n am e g o b ack at least as
far as the tenth cen tu ry a .d ., and tliere n o d o u b t w e r e sim ilar
form s o f entertainm ent fo r m a n y years p re vio u s. T h e re w a s also
a rival school o f theatrical perform ances called dengaku, o r “ field -
music , w h ich flourished especially in the thirteen th an d fo u r­
teenth centuries, and w h ich seems to h ave h ad its o rig in s in the
festivities attending h arvest celebrations and. o th er agricu ltu ral
holidays. Field-m u sic ” cam e to b e associated, w ith vario u s
shrines and consisted o f elaborate p ro g ram m es o f d an cin g and
singing, together w ith p laylets acted b y the dancers. O u r
k n ow led ge o f the theatre o f the thirteenth ce n tu ry and. b efo re
is so im perfect that w e are unable to ascertain ju s t w h a t relation ­
ship existed betw een the “ m o n k e y -m u s ic ” an d th e “ field -
f 111^ u an^ m ^aCt ^ 1S °^ ten difficult to distinguish th e tw o ,
or ot cam e to be perform ances o f m u ch th e sam e nature.
W hat is perhaps m ost significant is that the N ö dram a, in spite
o its ater t emes, w as apparently o f secular o rig in , a lth o u gh
‘ ‘ r * i j OU tC » underw ent som e religious in fluen ce th ro u g h the
fid d -m u a c and other dram atic form s.
B y the m iddle o f the fourteenth cen tu ry the N o h ad assum ed
m uch o f its present shape ; that is, it w a s a co m b in a tio n o f
an.cm £ ai* music, differing fro m earlier dram atic fo rm s
c ie y in that it had plots w h ich u n ified th e three elem ents.
, C en,.r° ,C e Sarf e century this rather sim ple entertainm ent
had been lifted to its highest p ow ers o f expression b y t w o m en :
K an am i K iy o tsu g u (13 3 3 -8 4 ) and his son Seam i (or Z e a m i)
M o to k iy o ( 13 6 3 - 14 4 3 ) . T h e N ö p lay, as it to o k fin al fo rm
 THE J A P A N E S E T H E AT R E 49
\

in their hands, h ad a principal dancer (or protagonist), and

assistant (or deuteragonist), and variou s accom pan yin g person­
ages, usually not m ore than fo u r o r fiv e actors in all, plus a
chorus. T h e texts o f the in d ividu al plays are short, gen erally
n o t even so lo n g as a single act o f a n orm al W estern p lay, but
the sin gin g and dancing m ade them take about an h ou r to
p erfo rm . I th in k that the best introduction to the technique
o f a N o p la y is the brilliant pastiche o f one w ritten b y A rth u r
W a le y o n the subject o f the Duchess o f Malfi.

“ T h e persons need not be m o re than tw o — the

w h o w ill act the part o f the waki [or deuteragonist], and the
D uchess, w h o w ill b e shite o r Protagonist. T h e chorus takes
n o p art in the action, but speaks fo r the shtte w h ile she is
m im in e the m o re engrossing parts o f h er role.
“ T h e P ilg rim com es on to the stage . . . and then names
h im se lf to the audience thus (in prose) :
‘ “ h m a p ilg rim fro m R o m e . I h ave visited all the other
shrines o f Italy but h ave n ever been to Loretto. I w ill jo u rn e y
on ce to the shrine o f Loretto. _
“ T h en fo llo w s (in verse) the Song o f Travel m w h ich the
P ilg rim describes the scenes th rough w h ich he passes on e
w a y to the shrine. W h ile he is kneeling at the shnne, the
P ro tagon ist com es on to the stage. She is a y o u n g w o m an
dressed, ‘ con trary to the ItaUan fasliion , m a loose-bodied
g o w n . She carries in her hand an u n n pe apncot She calls
to the P ilg rim and engages h im in conversation. H e asks her
i f it w e re n ot at this shrine that the Duchess o f M alfi to o k
refu ee. T h e y o u n g w o m an answers w ith a k in d o f eager
exaltation, h er w ord s gradually rising fro m prose to po etry.
She tells the story o f the Duchess’ s flight, adding certain
intim ate touches w h ich force the priest to ask abruptly, W h o
is it that is speaking to me"? ’ A n d the girl, shuddering (for
it is hateful to a ghost to nam e itself), a n sw ers: ‘ Hazukashi
ya ! I am the soul o f the D u k e Ferdinand’s sister, she that
w as once called Duchess o f M alfi. L o v e still ties m y soul
to ^the earth. P ray for m e, oh, p ray fo r m y release ! ’
“ Here closes the first part o f the play. In the second the
youn g ghost, her m em ory quickened b y the P ilg rim ’s prayers
. . endures again die m em ory o f her final hours. She
mimes the action o f kissing the hand, finds it v e ry cold. A n d
each successive scene o f the torture is-so v iv id ly m im ed that
though it exists only in the Protagonist’ s brain, it is as real
to the audience as i f the figure o f dead A ntonio la y propped
upon the stage, or as i f the m adm en w ere actually leaping and
screaming before them. Finally she acts the scene o f her
ow n execution :

Heaven-gates are not so h igh ly arched

A s princes’ palaces ; they that enter there
M ust go upon their knees. (She kneels.)
Com e, violent death,
Serve fo r m andragora to m ake m e sleep !
G o tell m y brothers, w hen I am laid out,
Th ey then m ay feed in quiet.
{She sinks her head and folds her hands.)

T h e chorus, taking up the w o r d ‘ qu iet ch an t a phrase

fro m the Lotus Sutra, ‘ In the T h re e W o rld s there is n o quiet­
ness o r rest B u t the P ilg rim ’s p rayers h ave been an sw ered.
H e r soul has b ro ken rts bonds ; is free to depart. T h e gh ost

from l i g h t 1 “ d dimmCr tiU at IaSt iC vanishes

1 Waley, The N ö Plays o f Japan, pp. 53-4.

 In m a n y respects the N o resem bled the G re ek dram a. First
o f all, there w a s the com bination o f text, m usic and dance.
S eco n d ly, b o th theatres used a chorus, alth ou gh in the N o the
chorus n ever takes a n y part in the action, con fin in g itse lf to
recitations fo r the principal dancer w h en he is in the m idst o f
his dance. A g a in , the N o uses masks, as did the G reek dram a,
b ut their use is restricted to the principal dancer and his co m ­
panions, especially w h en th ey take the parts o f w o m en . M ask -
carvin g has been considered an im portant art in Ja p an , and
to gether w ith the gorgeou s costum es, the masks add m uch to
the visu al b eau ty o f the N o. In contrast, th e scenery is b arely
sketched, consisting usually o f n o m ore than an im pressionistic
ren dering o f the m ain outlines o f the objects portrayed . T h e
m usic, at least to a W estern listener, is not o f great distinction,
v e r y ra rely rising to the level o f m elod y, and m ost often little
m o re than an accentuation o f the declaim ed or intone w ° r
A flute is p layed at im p ortant m om ents in the p lay, and there
are several drum s, som e o f w h ich can serve to heighten e
tension o f the audience. T h e actual theatres in w h ich the No
plays are p erfo rm ed are sm all. T h eir m ost striking features are
the haskigakari, a raised p assage-w ay leading fro m the actors
dressin g-room th rough the audience to the stage, and the square,
p o lish ed -w o od stage itself. T h e audience sits on three o r som e­
times o n ly tw o , sides o f the stage, w h ich is covered b y a root
o f its o w n like that o f a tem ple. T h e actors m ake their entrances
th rough the audience, but above them , and pronounce their first
w o rd s b efore reaching the stage, an extrem ely effective w a y
o f in trod u cin g a character.
T h e perform ances in a No theatre last about six hours. F iv e
No plays are presented in a program m e, arranged as established
in the sixteenth century. T h e first p lay is about the gods, the
second about a w arrio r, the third about a w o m an , the fourth
about a m ad person, and the final play about devils, o r sometimes
a festive piece. Each o f the plays in the N ö repertory is classified
into one o f these groups, and the purpose o f having this fixed
program m e is to achieve the effect o f an artistic w hole, w ith an
introduction, development and clim ax. T h e third, or w om an -
play, is the most popular, but to present a w hole p rogram m e o f
such plays w ould m ar the total effect as m uch, say, as having
an Itahan opera w ith five m ad scenes sung b y successive
coloratura sopranos.
The tone o f the N ö plays is serious, and often tragic. T o
relieve the atmosphere, the custom arose o f having farces per­
form ed in between the N ö dramas o f a program m e, often
parodies o f the pieces that they follow . It m ight be im agined
that the alternation o f m ood from the tragic tone o f the N ö
to a broad farce and then back again w ou ld p rove too great
a wrench for the sensibilities o f the audience. This is not m erely
a case o f comic relief in the manner o f Shakespeare, fo r the farces
last almost as long as die serious parts, an d 'o ften specifically
deride them. B u t the Japanese audiences have apparently
enjoyed the very sharpness o f the contrast betw een the tw o
moods.
O n the whole, however, die hum our o f the Japanese farces
is not very interesting to us, and when a W estern reader thinks
o t e N o theatre, it w ill be o f the tragedies. W h at are the
qualities most to be admired in these w orks ? Th ere is first
° ii u e Poetry* This is written in alternating lines o f 7 and 5
syllables, like most other Japanese verse, but in the plays attains
heights otherwise unknown in the language. T h e short verses
are sometimes miracles o f suggestion and sharp im agery, but,
at least for a W estern reader, lack the sustained p o w er o f the
greatest poetry. T h e N ö provides a superb fram ew ork fo r a
dramatic poet. It is in some w ays an enlarged equivalent o f the
tin y haiku , p o rtra y in g o n ly the m om ents o f greatest intensity
so as to suggest the rest o f the dram a. L ik e the haiku also, the
No has tw o elem ents, the in terval betw een the first and second
appearance o f the principal dancer serving the function o f the
b reak in th e haiku, and the audience h avin g to su pply the link
betw een the tw o . Som etim es there is also the intersection o f
the m o m e n tary and the timeless w h ich m a y be noted in
m a n y haiku. T h u s, fo r exam ple, in the first part o f the p lay
Kumasaka, a travellin g priest meets the ghost o f the robber
K u m asak a, w h o asks h im to p ra y fo r the spirit o f a person w h o m
he w ill n o t nam e. Later that n igh t the priest sees the robber
as he w a s in fo rm er days, and the robber rehearses the circum ­
stances o f his death in im passioned verse, ending :

“ O h , help m e to be born to happiness^

{Kumasaka entreats the Priest with folded hands.)
T h e cocks are cro w in g . A whiteness glim m ers o ver the night.
H e has hidden under the shadow o f the pine-trees o f Akasaka,
(Kumasaka hides his face with his left sleeve.)
U n d er the shadow o f the pine-trees he has hidden h im self a w a y .1

In this p la y the m eeting o f the priest and robber is fortuitous,

the h ap p en in g o f a m om ent, but the desperate struggle o t ie
ro b ber to escape fro m his past into the path o f salvation goes
on and on.
B eh in d these plays, as behind the haiku, w e re the teachings
o f Z e n B ud d h ism , w h ose greatest influence is p ro b ab ly foun d
in the fo r m o f the No itself— the bareness o f the lines o f the
dram a, and the sim plicity o f the stage and sets. T h ese teachings,
w h ic h inspired so m uch o f Japanese literature and art in the
fourteen th and fifteenth centuries, p ro b ab ly cam e to the No
larg ely w ith K a n am i and Seam i, w h o w ere closely associated
1 W aley, The Nö Plays o f Japan, p. 101.
w ith the court o f the shoguns, w hich wUs deeply influenced
b y Z en masters. Th e use o f Z en ideas takes various form s in
the plays. In most o f them the secondary character (the waki)
is a priest, and sometimes he uses the language and ideas o f Zen
Buddhism. In the play Sotoba Komachi, one o f the greatest,
it is the poetess K om achi w ho voices the Z en doctrines, rather
than the priests. She declares, confounding them :

“ N othing is real.
Betw een Buddha and M an
Is no distinction, but a seeming o f difference planned
F or the w elfare o f the humble, the ill-instructed,
W hom he has v o w ed to save.
Sin itself m ay be the ladder o f salvation.” i
(Chorus) So she spoke, eagerly ; and the priests,
A saint, a saint is this decrepit, outcast soul.”
A nd bending their heads to the ground,
Three times did hom age before h er.1

Th e same play contains some o f the most beautiful lines o f

e entire body o f N ö plays. This is the story o f the poetess
Kom achi, w ho when youn g w as noted fo r her beauty and for
the cruelty she showed to her lovers. In the p lay she is a hag,
a an oned b y the w orld, w h o suffers fo r her cruelty o f form er
days. The chorus recites o f her :

The cup she held at the feast

l ik e gentle moonlight dropped its glint 011 her sleeve.
O h h o w fell she from splendour,
H o w came the white o f winter
T o crow n her head ?
W here are gone the lovely locks, double-twined,

1 W aley, The Nö Plays o f Japan, p. 155.

 Th e coils o f je t ?
Lank whisps, scant curls wither now
O n wilted flesh ;
A n d twin-arches, m oth-brows tinge no more
W ith the hue o f far hills. “ O h cover, cover
From the creeping light o f dawn
Silted seaweed locks that o f a hundred years
Lack n ow but one.
O h hide me from m y shame.” 1

It is such poetry as this, and the hard and form al structure

o f the plots, w hich have most attracted Western readers to the
N o. Yeats, in explaining w h y he had adopted the form o f die
N ö for his series o f plays on Irish legends, declared, It is natural
that I go to Asia for a stage-convendon, for more formal faces
for a chorus that has no part in the action . . . A mask
enable me to substitute for the face o f some commonplace player
. . . the fine invention o f a sculptor. A mask . . . no matter
h o w close y o u go is still a w o rk o f art . . . and w e shall not
lose b y staying the movement o f the features, for deep feeling
is expressed b y a m ovement o f the w hole body. In t e
poetry itself, as revealed to him in translation, Yeats discovere
patterns o f symbols which also attracted him gready. But not
even in W aley s fine translations can the full pow er o f the poetry
o f the N ö be revealed, and judgm ents on its quality must be
based on the originals.
In the styles used in the N ö plays w e have another parallel
w ith the Greek theatre. There is a marked difference in the
language o f quiet and em otionally important scenes, a difference
like diat between the iambics and the choral songs o f a Greek

1 Ibid., pp. 156-7.

2 Yeats, introduction to Certain Noble Plays o f Japan, p. vii.
B
drama. Th e quiet scenes are in prose w hich m ust have been
v e ry close to the colloquial o f the time, but the p oetry o f the
sung parts is o f extraordinary com plexity and difficulty. It
abounds in allusions and puns, and especially in the kake-
kotoba or pivot-w ords ” already discussed above.1 A s an
exam ple o f the poetry o f a No play, w e m ay consider a short
passage from Matsukaze, w ritten b y K anam i and revised by
Seami. This is the story o f tw o fisher-girls, M atsukaze and
Murasame, w h o lon g ago in the past w ere befriended b y a
nobleman banished to their lonely shore. In the first part o f
the play a travelling priest asks shelter at their house after seeing
them dip w ater from the sea. H e discovers their identities, and,
in the second part, Matsukaze, the ch ief dancer, appearing in
the hunting-cloak left behind b y the noblem an, enacts their
story. D u ring one part o f her dance the chorus recites fo r her:
okifushi wakade A w ake or asleep,
makura yori From m y p illow
ato yori koi no A nd in m y footsteps
semekureba L o v e pursues me.
semukata namida ni Helpless, in tears
fushi shizumu I fall and sink
koto zo kanashiki O sorrow ful.
This passage depends for its full effect on the recognition o f
an allusion and on a “ p ivot-w ord ” . T h e allusion is to a poem
in the Collection o f Ancient and Modern Poetry o f 905 a .d . :
makura yori From m y p illow
ato yori koi no A nd from the fo o t o f thebed
semekureba L ove comes pursuing.
semu kata nami zo W hat am I to do ?
tokonaka ni oru I’ll stay in the m iddle o f the bed.
1 See above, p. 5.
 T h e allusion to this g a y p o em in a m om ent o f extrem e distress
is a p sych o lo g ically effective device ; a sim ilar use o f incongruous
p o etry is fo u n d in O phelia’s m ad scene, and, in ou r o w n day,
in The Waste Land, w h ere E lio t quotes O phelia s g o o d night,
ladies, g o o d n igh t, sw eet ladies, g o o d night, g o o d n igh t , after
a sordid low er-class scene.
The p iv o t-w o rd ” in the passage I h ave cited is one o f the
best, a splendid exam ple o f the use o f this device. T h e w ords
semukata nami m ean “ h elp less” ; b y addition o f the syllable
** da ” , w e g o t the w o rd itatnida, tears . Th u s the bridge
is m ade betw een the helplessness o f the girl and her tears, the
m ean in g shifting im p erceptibly fro m one im age to the other.
It m a y b e w on d ered to w h at degree such passages, w ere
in telligible to the audience. A rth u r W a le y has contended that
general fam iliarity w ith the old poem s, especially in e ° rm
o f songs, m ust h ave m ade com prehension far m ore gener t an
w e m ig h t suppose. N evertheless, it is true that the N o increas- -
in g ly becam e the pastime o f the court aristocracy, the S ro *^P
best trained in recognizing poetic allusions and feats o f verbal
dexterity. T h e m iddle and lo w er classes had to w ait until the
end o f the sixteenth century fo r form s o f theatrical entertain­
m ent w h ich w e re designed p rim arily fo r their tastes. Thes^
n ew fo rm s included the kabuki, a m odernized, expanded, and
rather debased fo rm o f the No, and th ejdruri, o r puppet theatre,
in m y opin ion a far m ore im portant literary m edium . Jap an
is far fro m b ein g the on ly country in w h ich the puppet theatre
has a lo n g h istory, but elsewhere it is seldom considered a v e ry
exalted fo rm o f art. T h e puppet-plays produced in E u ro p e are
usually either adaptations o f plays o rigin ally w ritten fo r actors,
o r else are trifles calculated to delight o r amuse b y their ingenuity.
In Ja p a n the puppet theatre has been a serious m edium
fo r creative a rtis ts ; in fact, the greatest Japanese dramatist,
Chifcaniatsu (16 5 3 -17 2 5 ), w rote all o f his famous plays fo r the
puppets, and even today, w hen this theatre has fallen rather out
o f public favour, it remains at an artistic level p robably un­
equalled b y the theatre o f livin g actors.
T h e joruri w ould have been impossible w ithout the N o before
it, even though the methods o f the tw o are in som e w ays so
dissimilar. The tradition o f masks made it easier fo r audiences
to accept the expressionless faces o f the puppets, and the chorus
reciting for a N o dancer led the w a y to a chanter delivering lines
or voiceless puppets. Indeed, in its early days the jöruri was
not only easier to understand, but m ore realistic than the N o, in
Tlf-6 — ^aCt t^lat t^le PuPPets w ere rather crudely made.
This is indicated b y the account w e possess o f a perform ance o f
1647. A philosopher visited a theatre w here he saw w ooden
puppets dressed as men, w om en, m onks or laity, immortals,
soldiers, horsemen and porters. Th ere w ere dancers and
musicians w ho beat time w ith fans and drums. Som e leapt
about and some row ed boats and sang. Som e had been killed
m battle, and their heads and bodies w ere separated. Som e w ere
dressed in the clothes o f the gentry. Som e shot arrow s, some
w ave stic and some raised flags or bore aloft parasols.
1 here w ere dragons, snakes, birds, and foxes that carried fire
in their tails, at which all die spectators m arvelled. . . . The
puppets w ere just as i f they w ere alive ” 1 C ertainly this per-
ormance sounds more lively than a N o tragedy, w ith its gloo m y
poetry and slow ly executed dancing. T h e tricks o f the puppet-
operator, such as having fire in the foxes’ tails as in Japanese
g ost stories, w ere undoubtedly meant to capture the interest
o t i e au ence y their realism. T h e philosopher declared that
t e puppets seemed to be alive. H ow ever, although such facile
reahsm undoubtedly appealed to the audiences, it w as rejected
1 Quoted in Keene, The Battles o f Coxinga, p. 20.
b y all the m en w ho contributed im portantly to the advance o f
the art o f the puppet theatre, and the history o f the develop­
ment o f this art m ight almost be made in terms o f steps away
from realism. Take, for instance, the technique o f handling
the puppets. A t first the operators were hidden in such a
w a y that the audience could see only the puppets, w hich were
either manipulated b y strings from above, like our marionettes,
or, m ore com m only, held up from below b y an operator w ith his
hands inside the puppet’s body. T h e chanter was also con­
cealed, to increase the illusion that it w as the, puppet w ho was
acting and talking b y himself. As time went on* however, the
size o f the puppets increased until they w ere 'about two-thirds
that o f the operators, and various developments made it necessary
for three men to w ork each o f the important puppet figures.
This they did in full v iew o f the audience. The chanter also
emerged from his place o f concealment. W hen w e see pictures
o f the puppet theatre w ith the three men clad in bright or sombre
costumes standing beside each puppet and the row o f musicians
seated to the side, it seems impossible that any semblance o f
dramatic illusion could be preserved. W h y, w e m ay wonder,
did a great dramatist like Chikamatsu, w ho had already written
successful plays for actors, choose this unlikely form, and w h y
did the Japanese public, for at least a century, find the puppet
theatre m ore enjoyable dian any odier ? The answer m ay be
found in die fact that although in Europe the attempt has been
to m ake puppets seem as lifelike as possible, in Japan actors
to this day imitate the movements o f puppets. It was only b y
turning its back on realism, as the N ö before it had also done,
that the puppet theatre could achieve its high dramatic purpose.
T h e best European marionettes are almost human. This means
that the more proficient the operators get the less point diere is
in having marionettes, except as a pure exercise in manual
d e x terity . In d e p rivin g the m arionettes o f th eir u n reality, they
fo rfe it e v e ry artistic possib ility. A s Y e a ts said, “ all im agin ative
art keeps at a distance, and this distance on ce chosen m u st be
firm ly h eld against a pu sh in g w o r ld *\ T h is is the secret o f the
N o and the puppet theatre. B y k eep in g us at a distance fro m
the stage the Japan ese dram atists adm it us to th eir special dom ain
o f art. W h a t tHe pu ppet theatre can m ean to a sensitive W estern
observer, is revealed b y this statem ent o f the F ren ch p o e t Paul
C lau del : T h e liv in g actor, w h a te v e r his talent m a y b e, alw ays
bothers us b y a d m ix in g a fo reig n elem ent in to th e p a rt that he
is p layin g, som eth ing ephem eral and co m m o n p lace ; h e rem ains
alw ays a m an in disguise. T h e m arion ette, o n the oth er hand,
has no other life o r m o ve m en t b u t that w h ic h it d raw s fr o m the
action. It com es to life w ith the sto ry. It is lik e a sh a d o w that
one resuscitates b y describing to it all it has don e, w h ic h little
b y little fro m a m e m o ry becom es a presence. It is n o t an actor
w h o is speaking ; it is a w o r d w h ic h acts. T h e creature m ade
o f w o o d is the em bodim ent o f the w o rd s spoken fo r it. By
other means the jom ri arrives at the sam e result as the N o .” 1
It is not really to be w o n d ere d at, in v ie w o f th e effect C lau d el
describes, that C hikam atsu p referred to w r ite fo r th e puppet
theatre. It appears that he w an ted first o f all a d ram atic fo rm
w c i w o u ld free h im fro m the liberties taken w ith his texts
b y actors, w h o regarded their parts m e re ly as vehicles fo r the
exh ibition o f their special talents. H is understan din g o f the
potentialities o f the puppet stage co n vin ced h im th at h e could
better entrust his plays to dolls than to h u m an b ein gs. B u t
C h ikam atsu w as w e ll aw are that the p u ppet theatre required
a special ty p e o f w ritin g . H e said, “ Jo m ri differs fr o m other
fo rm s o f fiction in that, since it has p rim a rily to d o with, puppets,'
1 Claudel, introduction to Contribution & r Etude du Thédtre des Poupées,
pp. xu—xiv. (Quoted in Keene, p. 93.)
the texts must be alive and filled w ith action. Because jdntri
is perform ed in theatres that operate in close competition with
those o f the kabuki, w hich is the art o f living actors, the author
must im part to lifeless w ooden puppets a variety o f emotions,
and attempt in this w a y to capture the interest o f the audience.”
That Chikamatsu had mastered the requirements o f the puppet
theatre was demonstrated b y the series o f plays he w rote between
1705 and 17 2 5, the most brilliant period in the history o f the
jöruri. . . ,
There must have been in Chikamatsu s day critics w ho
believed that realism was the one thing most to be sought by
dramatists and producers. Chikamatsu understood that realism
ran counter to the art o f the puppet theatre and the kabuh as
well, as the follow ing account o f one o f his conversations
demonstrates.

“ Som eone said, ‘ People nowadays w ill not accept plays

unless they are realistic and w ell r e a s o n e d out. There are
m any things in the old stories which people w ill not now
tolerate. It is thus that such people as kabukt actors are con­
sidered skilful to the degree that their acting resembles reality.
T h e first consideration is to have the retainer in the play
resemble a real retainer, and to have the d a m yo look hke
a real daim yó. People w ill not stand for the childish nonsense
they did in the past.’ Chikamatsu answered Y o u r view
seems like a plausible one, but it is a theory which does not
take into account the real methods o f art. A rt is something
w hich lies in the slender m argin between the real and the
unreal. O f course it seems desirable, in view o f the current
taste fo r realism, to have the retainer in the play copy the
gestures and speech o f a real retainer, but in that case should
a real retainer o f a daimyö put rouge and pow der on Ins face
like an actor ? O r, w ould it p rove entertaining i f an actor,
on the grounds that real retainers do not m ake up thqir faces,
w ere to appear on the stage and perform , w ith his beard
grow in g w ild and his head shaven ? This is w h at I mean
b y the slender m argin between the real and the unreal. It
is unreal, and yet it is not u n re a l; it is real, and y e t it is not
real. Entertainment lies between the tw o.
In this connection, there is the story o f a certain court
lady w ho had a lover. T h e tw o lo ved each other very
passionately, but the lady lived far deep in the w om en ’s palace,
and the man could not visit her quarters. She could see him
therefore only very rarely, from between the cracks o f her
screen o f state at the court. She longed fo r him so desperately
that she had a w ooden im age carved o f the m an. Its appear­
ance was not like that o f any ordinary doll, but did not differ
m any particle from the man. It goes w ithout sayin g that
the colour o f his com plexion w as perfectly rendered ; Wen
the pores o f his skin w ere delineated. T h e openings in his
ears and nostrils w ere fashioned, and there w as n o discrepancy
even in the number o f teeth in the m outh. Since it w as made
wi t e man posing beside it, the only difference between
the man and this doll was the presence in one, and the absence
m e other, o f a soul. H ow ever, when the lad y d rew the
doll close to her and looked at it, die exactness o f the repro­
duction o f the living man chilled her, and she felt unpleasant
and rather tightened. C ourt lady that she was, her lo v e was
, ° , C Cj ’ ai* as S^e found it distressing to have the doll
by her side, she soon threw it aw ay.
In v iew o f this w e can see that i f one makes an exact
cop y o f a living being, even i f it happened to be Y a n g Kuei-fei,
one w ill become disgusted w ith it. Thus, i f w hen one paints
an im age or carves it o f w o o d there are, in the nam e o f artistic
 licence, some stylized parts in a w ork otherwise resembling
the real form ; this is, after all, what people love in art. The
same is true o f literary composition. W hile bearing resemb­
lance to the original, it should have stylization ; this makes it
art, and is w hat delights men’s minds. . . 1

In his puppet-plays Chikamatsu knew exacdy how to keep

w idiin the slender m argin between reality and unreality. In
his most popular w ork, The Battles o f Coxinga, there are scenes
o f horror w hich are tolerable to the audience only because o f
the stylization afforded b y the puppets; i f it w ere believed for
one m om ent that these events were actually taking place in the
theatre, only a person with a very strong stomach could hear
them. O n the odier hand, Chikamatsu could induce a suspen­
sion o f disbelief w ith the same means, thus producing an effect
o f reality w ithin basic unreality. (The suspension o f disbelief
is, o f course, nothing new to Western audiences.) For example,
in The Battles o f Coxinga there is a fight between the hero and
a tiger. Such a scene is unconvincing in print, and would be
ludicrous on die stage, where the spectator w ould be conscious
o f the tw o men inside the tiger skin, and could not take seriously
the hero’s wrestlings with so ungainly a creature. Such a
spectacle w ou ld be unreal without die admixture o f the real
that Chikam atsu insisted on. In the puppet theatre, however,
the tiger is 110 less realistic than the hero, and there is no reason
w h y a spectator w ho accepts the initial unreality o f a puppet
perform ing as a man should be unable to accept a puppet tiger
as w ell. Thus, in die same play the puppets could bring
unreality to a scene which would otherwise be too painful to
watch, or reality to a scene which would otherwise merely be
comical. In neither case is the effect achieved either reality or
1 Quoted in Keene, pp. 95- 6.
unreality, but that in-between state that Chikam atsu sought or
that Yeats meant w hen he spoke o f the distance that im aginative
art kept from the audience.
Th e puppet theatre, as m ight be deduced fro m the above, is
an extrem ely dem anding m edium . A s lo n g as the texts o f the
plays are first-rate, their value is enhanced b y h avin g them per­
form ed b y puppets w hich are, as Claudel said, the embodiment
o f the w ords. H o w ever, the faults in any second-rate play
become all too apparent under such treatment. It is like having
a com pany o f actors w hose exclusive concern is to pronounce the
lines o f a p lay perfectly, w ithout any attem pt at interpretation or
characterization, thus suppressing their o w n personalities fo r the
sake o f the texts. I f the plays thus being p erform ed are by
Shakespeare, they m ay w ell gain a great deal, but m ost plays
w ill not stand up to such treatment. This is alw ays true o f the
puppet theatre, for none o f the charm or individual talent o f the
accomplished actor can save the faulty text.
T h e texts o f Chikamatsu’ s plays, masterpieces though some
o f them are, do not always read v e ry w e ll because they were
designed w ith the special requirements o f the puppet stage in
mind. In contrast w ith the m uted w o rld o f the N o drama,
w e find elaborately fram ed speeches and descriptive passages,
w ell suited to puppet performance. H o w ever, Chikam atsu
w rote not only heroic plays like The Battles ofC oxinga, but also
domestic tragedies based on incidents o f contem porary life.
Th e principal characters o f these plays are from the m iddle and
low er classes -merchants, clerks, bandits, prostitutes. A lthough
these are unmistakably puppet-plays, the subjects and the texts
lend themselves far more readily to adaptation b y actors than
those o f the heroic plays, as m ay easily be im agined. A battle
between a man and a tiger can scarcely be m ade credible on a
norm al stage, but the tragic story o f the love o f a debt-ridden
tradesman fo r a prostitute, when performed b y actors, can
acquire additional pathos b y reducing the distance between the
audience and the character. The danger here is that the appetite
for realism w ill be whetted b y this first concession, and that the
poetic dialogue w ill be replaced b y more natural prose, that
the conventional dramatic usages such as the journey o f the two
lovers w ill be suppressed ; in short, that the play as conceived
by Chikam atsu w ill disappear in favour o f a w ork possessing
the kind o f realism he so deplored.
In Chikam atsu’ s ow n day, the most popular o f his w orks b y
far was The Battles o f Coxinga, one o f his most imaginative
creations. It is estimated that it was seen b y 240,000 people
at one theatre alone during the 1 7 months o f its initial run
this in a city whose population a d not exceed 300,000. The
play w as imitated b y various other writers, and in due course it
was adapted fo r use b y actors. B u t it was from about this time
that the actors began to imitate the movements o f the puppets,
thus attempting to preserve some o f the stylization. Yeats was
fascinated w hen he saw a Japanese actor perform in this manner,
and noted in the stage direction to his ow n play A t the Hawk s
Well that all the persons o f the w ork should suggest marionettes
in their movements.
Th e puppets eventually lost in popularity to the actors in
Japan, although the art continues to be practised on a small scale,
chiefly, like the No, fo r th e enjoyment o f connoisseurs. Com par­
ing the tw o, the N ö is clearly more poetic, and altogether
couched on a higher aesthetic plane than the jörtiri. It is noble
and remote— one m ight almost say Aeschylean. Or, to give
an analogy drawn from Western music, the No is like the operas
o f M onteverdi or Handel—beautiful and expressive, but not
particularly dramatic. The slow miming and dancing which|
u su a lly so w eary the foreign visitor to a N ö performance have
 the same function as one o f H andel’s lo n g arias ; n o t to advance
the action o f the play, but to com m unicate to us something
m ore than words alone can express about the character w h o is
singing or dancing. W ith the jdruri w e m o ve to a w o rld like
that o f the operas o f G luck or M ozart. It is interesting, in this
connection, that som e o f M ozart’s earlier operas have success­
fu lly been perform ed w ith marionettes, and critics often say o f
Cosi Fan Tutti, that it seems to have been w ritten fo r them.
In these operas, as in the jöritri, there is a greater fusion o f the
w ords and the music, a m ore obvious attem pt to interest the
audience in w hat w ill happen next. B u t there is still a styliza­
tion and a nobility w hich vanish in later operatic developments,
just as these qualities in jdruri tended to disappear in the kabtiki.
Thus, Eurydice, insisting that O rpheus turn around to lo o k at
her, remains distant and beautiful, w hile Fricka arguing with
W otan in Valhalla is som ehow com m onplace.
W e need not push this parallel any further— it is not an exact
one m any case. A lthough the N o and the jdruri plays can be
appreciated fully only in perform ance, they are not m erely the
libretti o f essentially musical productions. T h e y are w orks o f
poetic drama, and at a time w hen our playw rights seem increas­
in gly to be turning to this m edium, they m ay w e ll fin d help
i not inspiration in the achievements o f the Japanese theatre.
T h e novel has a longer history in Japan than in any other
country, and has sometimes attained heights rarely reached
elsewhere. It is difficult to say just when the first Japanese
novel was written, i f only because the definition o f the w ord
“ n o v e l” itself is so uncertain. I f w e adopt some arbitrary
definition, such as calling any w o rk o f fiction in prose over
ioo pages in length a novel, w e m ay then say that there are
Japanese novels as far back as the tenth century, and that the
tradition has remained unbroken to this day.
T h e Japanese novel had a double origin. There were first
o f all the anecdotes and tales such as are found in the earliest
books. M any o f these m ay have been passed down from
generation to generation as part o f the national folklore, but
there w ere also stories o f Chinese and Indian origin, which
came in w ith the introduction o f Buddhism. Such stories
ranged in length from a few lines to a dozen or more pages,
and, although their contents w ere highly varied, tales o f the
strange and miraculous predominated, as one might expect m
view o f the religious inspiration o f most o f them.
These stories, often o f a fantastic nature, furnished part o f
the background for the novel. The other important source lay
in Japanese poetry. I have mentioned the obscurity o f much
Japanese verse. The shortness o f the com m only used forms
was such that, in the attempt to impart as much suggestive
pow er as possible, the poets often left out such obvious infor­
mation as m ight be necessary for the comprehension o f their
verses. This m ay have been the reason w h y so m any o f the
early poems have short prose prefaces describing the circum-
67
stances under w hich they w ere com posed. Thus, i f the preface
says that die verse was presented to a friend about to depart
on a sea-joum ey, the w ords “ y o u m ay be tossed a b o u t” pre­
sum ably refer to the m otion o f the boat, rather than to any
other possibility w hich the unelucidated w ord s m igh t possess.
Sometimes the prefaces w ere lon ger than the poem s they intro­
duce ; w e can see h o w it m ight happen that a poet, instead o f
confining him self to the bare m ention o f his w ife ’s death, or
w hatever else had occasioned a poem , w ou ld tell in the preface
about the love w hich the tw o had shared. T h e verse that
follow ed then m ight be on the brevity o f life, o r an y other
suitable topic, the interest o f the verse being increased b y our
knowledge o f the particular circumstances under w h ich it was
written. In a similar manner, w e can im agine h o w in later
times someone, finding the poems left b y a fam ous writer,
m ight attempt in editing them to g iv e the backgrounds o f these
poems, either from stories he had heard about the poet, or from
his ow n intuitions. This m ay have been the origin o f The Tales
m a tendl‘ century w o rk often attributed to A riw ara no
Narihira. In this book w e have 12 5 episodes, each built around
one or more poems. There is no unified conception behind
t ese little stories, although i f w e assume that the unnamed
man w ho is the hero o f most o f them w as N arih ira himself,
w e m ay be able to consider The Tales o f Ise as a kind o f Vita
Nuova, w ith the prose parts serving as explanations fo r the
poems. B u t the organization o f the book is so loose, and the
connections between the episodes so tenuous, that no single
narrative can be evolved, even o f the kind w hich Shakespeare’s
bonnets have sometimes inspired.
T h e subject-matter o f the poem-tales (if so w e m ay style
w orks in the genre o f The Tales o f Ise) w as draw n, unlike the
fantastic tales, from ordinary life. M an y o f the episodes con­
cern some nobleman w ho, w hile hunting in a distant part o f
the country, falls in love w ith a village girl. Th e style and the
manner o f incorporating the poems into the episodes is most
easily revealed b y a section from The Tales o f Ise such as the
follow in g one :
“ There once lived a man in a remote village. One day,
announcing to his beloved that he was going to the court
for service there, he took a fond leave o f her and departed.
For three years he did not return, and the lady, having in
loneliness waited so long for him, finally consented to spend
the night w ith another man, w ho had been very kind to her.
T hat v e ry night her old lover returned. W hen he knocked
at the door, asking her to unbolt it, she answered him through
the door w ith this poem. ‘ For three years I waited in lone­
liness, and just this night someone else is sharing m y pillow.
H e replied, 1 T r y then to love him as much as I have loved
y o u through all these years.’ W ith this poem he started
aw ay, but the lady called out, * W hatever has happened or
not happened, m y heart is still, as it was before, yours.’ But
the man did not tufn back. Stricken w ith grief, she followed
after him, but could not manage to catch up. In a place
w here a clear stream flowed, she fell, and there with blood
from her finger she w rote on a stone, I could not detain
him— he went w ithout a thought fo r me, and now shall I
vanish.’ Thus she w rote, and there she died.”

I f one reads just the four poems contained in this episode,

one sees that they narrate the entire story, although not so
clearly as when supplemented b y the prose description. It m ay
have been originally b y w a y o f a commentary on the poems
that the tales w ere composed.
O ne o f the early novels which most clearly shows the tw o
sources, the strange story and the poem -tale, is The H ollow Tree,
a w o rk o f the tenth century. In the first part o f the book is
related the story o f a musician w h o jou rn eys to distant countries,
as far even as Persia, in search o f som e m agic w o o d w ith which
to make lutes. A fter m any curious adventures, the m an finds
the w ood, but it is guarded b y monsters. O n ly w ith the aid
o f supernatural intervention is he able to carry any w o o d back
to Japan to make his w onderful musical instruments. T h e rest
o f this part o f The Hollow Tree is conceived in the fantastic vein
o f the earlier short-stories. B u t in the second part o f the novel,
concerned mainly w ith an account o f the Princess A tem iya and
her suitors, w e are taken into a far m ore realistic w orld, and
the influence o f the poem -tale is conspicuous. The Hollow
Tree contains some 986 poems, w hich is almost as high a pro­
portion as The Tales o f Ise. It is a curious b o o k in every way,
representing an undigested set o f influences. B u t as it moves
towards its close The Hollow Tree acquires considerable power,
as i f the author w ere gradually gaining confidence in the new
literary medium. It is, in a sense, a history o f the development
o f the early Japanese novel. It has every feature o f a missing
link save that it is not missing. It affords us exactly the kind
o f transition which w e m ight have conjectured betw een The
Tales o f Ise and The Tale o f Genji, w ritten about 10 0 0 a .d .
W hen the first volum e o f Arthur W aley’s translation o f The
Tale o f Genji appeared in 19 23, W estern critics, astonished at
its grandeur and at the unsuspected w o rld w hich it revealed
to them, searched desperately fo r parallels in m ore fa m ilia r
literature. The Tale o f Genji w as likened to Don Quixote, The
Decameron, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Tom Jones, even to Le
Morte d Arthur ; in short, to almost every m ajor w o rk o f fiction
w ith such notable exceptions as Moby D ick. T h e relative
suitability o f such parallels w ill be clear after a b r ie f con­
sideration o f the nature o f the book, and o f its author, Lady
Murasaki.
The Tale o f Genji w ould seem to be a conspicuous exception
to m any o f the generalizations I have made about the qualities
o f Japanese literature. Far from being a w ork o f cryptic brevity,
it runs to some 2,500 pages in most editions. Older novels,
such as The Hollow Tree, were quite long too, but the faultiness
o f their construction generally resulted in the books falling into
clearly defined and almost independent segments. The Tale o f
Genji is not constructed in accordance w ith any Western novelist’s
conception, but possesses rather the form o f one o f the horizontal
scrolls for w hich Japan is famous. T h ey often start w ith just
a few figures, gradually develop into scenes o f great complexity
and excitement, and as gradually dwindle back into a cluster
o f men, then a horse, then, almost lost in the mist, a last solitary
soldier. hi its magnitude and its sureness o f technique, The
Tale o f Genji is indeed exceptional, yet the w ork is clearly the
product o f purely Japanese traditions. It represents the cul­
mination o f all that had gone before, and at the same time its
central importance makes it the most typical as w ell as the
greatest w o rk o f Japanese literature. It was a classic in its ow n
day and, devotedly read and annotated b y emperors and philo­
sophers, as w ell as b y all manner o f ordinary people, it has
inspired a great deal o f other literature and art. W hen in the
seventeenth century an era o f peace and prosperity follow ed
centuries o f terrible wars, it was to The Tale o f Genji that the
w ealthy merchants turned for the model o f the life they wished
to enjoy, and novelists forgot six centuries o f gloom in re­
creating Genjis o f their own. That the influence o f The Tale
o f Genji still survives, is evidenced b y its great importance in
the w o rk o f Tanizaki, perhaps the leading Japanese novelist o f
our day. N o w , thanks to Arthur W aley’s superb translation,
it is available to W estern readers, w h o can n o w ju d g e fo r them­
selves whether it is not o n ly the w o rld ’s first real novel, but
one o f its greatest.
A bout the author o f The Tale o f G enji, L ad y M urasaki (c. 975-
c. 1025), w e kn ow fe w facts, but w e fortunately still have her
diary, w hich affords us interesting insights into her character.
She says o f h e rse lf:

T hat I am v e ry vain, reserved, unsociable, w an tin g always

to keep people at a distance— that I am w rapped up in the
study o f ancient stories, conccited, livin g all the tim e in a
poetical w orld o f m y ow n and scarcely realizing the existence
o f other people, save , occasionally t o . m ake spiteful and
depreciatory comments upon them— such is the opinion o f
m e that most strangers hold, and d iey are prepared to dislike
me accordingly. B u t w hen they get to k n o w m e, they find
to their extrem e surprise that I am kind and gende— in fact,
quite a different person from the m onster they had im agined ;
as indeed m any have afterwards confessed. Nevertheless, I
kn ow that I have been definitely set d ow n at C o u rt as an
natured censorious prig. N o t that I m ind v e ry m uch, for
am used to it and sec that it is due to things in m y nature
w c I cannot possibly change. T h e Em press has often told
me that, though I seemed always bent upon not g iv in g m yself
aw ay in the royal presence, yet she felt after a tim e as i f she
knew me m ore intimately than any o f the rest.” 1

W e, too, as w e read The Tale o f Genji, feel that w e are learning

a great deal about Lad y M urasaki, especially in such asides as

Y o u m ay think that m any o f the poem s w h ich I here

repeat are not w orthy o f the talented characters to whom

1 The Tale o f Genji, introduction by W aley, p. xv.

\
 they are attributed. I can only reply that they w ere in every
case composed upon the spur o f the moment, and the makers
w ere no better pleased with them than you are.” 1

She was undoubtedly a most elegant and sophisticated lady,

aware o f her genius as a novelist, and possibly incurring enmity
fo r that reason. As a novelist, she stands without rival in her
time, but there w ere several other wom en w ho w ere excep­
tionally talented in poetry and essay-writing. Indeed, it was
an age o f wom en writers, principally because the men preferred
to devote themselves to writing in Chinese, leaving the wom en
to express the genius o f the time in the native language.
The Tale o f Genji is a novel o f a society, the extremely civilized,
perhaps even decadent court o f tenth-century Japan. W e
should not, however, be misled into imagining that Lady
M urasaki has given us a realistic portrayal o f contemporary
conditions. R ather, her novel is the evocation o f a w orl
which never quite existed. She tells us that the events she
describes occurred at some indefinite time in the past, and hers
was essentially a romantic view o f a now-faded golden world.
Even within the time covered b y the novel, w e find an increas-
in gly pessimistic tone, and when the hero, the peerless Genji,
dies, his successors are no more than likeable young men, no
more, in fact, than the kind o f people w ho really did live at
the Japanese court. In this respect and many others the novel
betrays an obsession w ith the idea o f time similar to that observ­
able in m uch o f Japanese poetry. The splendour and beauty
that marked every aspect o f the career o f Prince Genji fade
aw ay. E ve n as he watches some particularly graceful dancer
or the blossoms falling from a lovely tree, there is the almost
painful awareness that these diings must pass. O r when, riding

i Ibid., p. 483.
iii the country, Genji comes across som e old palace n o w over­
g ro w n w ith weeds, the sight stirs doubts w ith in h im about the
m agnificent mansion he h im self is building. A n d w hen, later
in the book, the light suddenly falls on the face o f one o f his
old mistresses, and he realizes that to any eyes but his ow n she
must seem no m ore than a m iddle-aged w om an , the passing
o f time is given its sharpest expression.
Although the novel is fu ll o f hum our and charm , the pre­
vailing impression is one o f sadness, in large part because o f
this insistence on the inexorable m otion o f tim e. Its beauty
is like that o f some o f the paintings o f W atteau, w here w e feel
something perishable and painfully sad behind the exquisite
scenes o f ladies and their lovers. T h e im pression o f sadness
is so dominant that w e w on der w h at conceivably could have
made critics liken the w o rk to Tom Jones or to The Decameron.
Probably it was no m ore than the large num ber o f love-affairs
treated in the course o f the novel. B u t w h at a difference
between the w om en G enji courts and those w e fm d in Fielding
or Boccaccio ! W hether they are haughty like A o i, o r humble
like Y ugao, possessive like R o k u jo , or yielding like the Lady
rom t e Village o f Falling Flow ers, they are all possessed o f
^ amazing degree o f sensitivity and delicacy. T h e society of
lh e Tale o f Genji was o f an almost unim aginable subdety.
People constantly exchange remarks as obscure as any conver­
sations in a novel b y H enry Jam es, and generally in poetry.
Love-affairs unlike the hearty adventures described in Tom
Jones, usua y involved more pain than pleasure, as the lovers
te f e * e impossibility o f being an entire w o rld fo r one
anot er. he conduct o f the love-affairs is extrem ely remote
from any described in W estern books. It w as never a matter
o boy meets girl, i f only because girl remained concealed from
boy until they w ere on the terms o f greatest intim acy. W hat
attracted a man to a wom an might be hearing her play a musical
instrument as he passed b y her quarters at night, or it might
be a note in her handwriting o f which he caught a glimpse, or
it m ight be just her name. A n y o f these things could persuade
a man that he was m adly in love w ith a wom an, and cause him
to pursue her until she yielded, aü this without ever having
seen her except at night, or perhaps b y the light o f fireflies.
The only W estern book o f w hich I am reminded in reading
The Tale o f Genji is Marcel Proust’ s A la Recherche du Temps
Perdu. There are striking similarities o f technique between the
tw o w orks, such as that o f casually mentioning people or events,
and only later, in a symphonic manner, developing their full
meaning. B u t above such resemblances in manner there are
the grand themes com m on to the tw o. The subject o f bo
novels is the splendours and decline o f an aristocratic society,
and in both the barons are noted less for their hunting an
fishing than fo r their surpassing musical abilities, their flawless
taste and their brilliant conversation. These were snobbish
societies, extrem ely sensitive to pedigree and rank. In The
Tale o f Genji, for instance, the young princess who is being
reared as a future empress is shocked beyond words when the
truth, carefully concealed from her until that moment, ^ d i s ­
closed that she was bom in the country and not in the capital
It is as i f the Duchesse de Guermantes discovered that she had
been bom in some industrial suburb ! In both novels, also
there is an overpowering interest in the passage o f time and
its effects on society. Proust is far crueller than Lad y Murasaki
in describing how, w ith the passage o f time, M m e de Ville-
parisis, fo r w hom fortunes were once squandered b y her lovers,
has become a wrinkled hag, or how the odious M m e. Verdunn
in time becomes Princesse de Guermantes. B u t i f Murasaki is
kinder, she is none the less insistent on the point the dashing
y o u n g m en becom e boring and p om pous state councillors, the
distinguished ladies becom e talkative old crones. W ith the
figures in the novel she really cares for, h o w ever, she is more
merciful, killing them o f f before they reach an unattractive
state. In contrast to Proust, w h o turns the glorious w o rld he
at first pictures into a miserable com p an y o f parvenus and
hideously aged aristocrats, M urasaki grad ually dissolves her
society into the em pty spaces o f her painting, leavin g only a
reduced figure here and there to show h o w great a falling-ofF
there has been.
M urasaki gave her view s on the art o f the n ovel in a famous
passage in The Tale o f G enji. G enji, discovering one o f the
court-ladies deeply engrossed in reading a rom ance, at first
teases her, then continues :

A s a matter o f fact I think far better o f this art than

I have led y o u to suppose. E ve n its practical value is im­
mense. W ithout it w hat should w e k n o w o f h o w people
lived in the past, from the A g e o f the Gods d ow n to the
present day ? For history-books, such as the Chronicles o f
J apan, sho w us only one small com er o f life ; whereas these
anes an romances w hich I see piled around y o u contain,
am sure, the most minute inform ation about all sorts of
peoples private affairs. . . .’ H e smiled, and w en t o n :
ut i have a theory o f m y ow n about w hat this art o f the
novel is, and h o w it came into being. T o begin w ith, it
does not sim ply consist in the author’s telling a story about
the adventures o f some other person. O n the contrary, it
lappens because the storyteller’s ow n experience o f m en and
^ g s , whether fo r good or iU - n o t o n ly w hat he has passed
through himself, but even events w hich he has o n ly witnessed
or been told of— has m oved him to an em otion so passionate
 that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart. Again
and again something in his ow n life or in that around him
w ill seem to the w riter so important that he cannot bear to
let it pass into oblivion. There must never come a time,
he feels, when men do not know about it. That is m y view
o f h o w this art arose.
“ ‘ Clearly then, it is no part o f the storyteller’s craft to
describe only w hat is good or beautiful. Sometimes, o f
course, virtue w ill be his theme, and he m ay then make
such play w ith it as he will. B u t he is just as likely to have
been struck b y numerous examples o f vice and folly in the
w o rld around him, and about them he has exactly the same
feelings as about the pre-eminendy good deeds which he
encounters : diey are important and must all be garnered
in. Thus anything whatsoever m ay become the subject ot
a novel, provided only diat it happens in this mundane^ Me
and not in some fairyland beyond our human ken.

Th e ideas in this passage are so familiar to us because o f the

w orks o f modern writers, particularly Proust, that w e cannot
perhaps imm ediately see h o w extraordinary they actually are.
Clearly, neither the strange story nor the poem-tale, the two
forerunners o f the Japanese novel, attempted to give us any
coherent idea o f the past in a desire to preserve it from oblivion.
N o r, for that matter, do w e find any such intent m The Decameron,
Tom Jones, nor in many other European novels before the
nineteenth century. T o tell a good story m such a w a y as
to keep the reader’s attention from page to page is an essential
feature o f every novel, but to make this story the vehicle for
one’s ow n thoughts, one’ s ow n memories and impressions, one s
o w n feeling fo r the past, seems a strikingly m odem met o
1 The Tale of Genji, pp. 501-2*
A gain , the dispassionate acceptance o f all m aterial, whether
good deeds or bad ones, w ith no attem pt at d raw in g a moral
fro m them, is also an exceptionally ad vanced idea, especially
fo r Japan, w here it w as shortly to be buried fo r m an y centuries.
It is when lookin g at The Tale o f G en ji in its historical sur­
roundings that w e feel m ost keenly its unique charm fo r us.
W e do not stand at a sufficiently great distance fro m the w orld
and time o f Proust to k n o w w h at fin ally happened to the kind
o f people he described, but the m elancholy fate o f the Japanese
c o m society is the subject o f m an y o f the novels o f the twelfth
to fifteenth centuries. T h e m ost fam ous o f them , The Tale of
the Heike, b e g in s:

“ In the sound o f the bell o f the G io n T em p le echoes the

impermanence o f all things. T h e pale hue o f the flowers o f
die teab-tree show the truth that th ey w h o prosper must
. T ö e proud ones do not last lon g, but vanish like a
spnng-m ght’ s dream. A n d the m igh ty ones too w ill perish
m end> like dust before the w in d .”

This is the m ood o f the times w hich succeeded Murasaki’s.

a ,a f ury aftf she f i s h e d The Tale o f G enji with
w a ff Ur u ° C ï m05t 8 ant society ever know n, the country
r J T WarS' T h e IoVely caPital ™ « e d by fires,
the old m Il: w as at one P oint decided to abandon
m om t^il % 7 <f lper? r WaS ^ o ff to a miserable
relieion fr> ^ f S terrible times m an y m en turned to
an imports ? ^ ^ Tak G ^ ‘ rel% i°n plays quite
m e e ltZ ^ C° ° ’ 3 rdigio 11 w hich ^ expression in
D Ïü d m T ; g re a t1ceremo“ “ “ w hich thousands o f priests
fo ^ th o se wh ” the, marvf ous o f Buddhist art created
cchurch.
W h T
Thh ee A * ° ° btT
Buddhism merft
o f the ^ rich follow
centuries do“ ations
ing “Lady
*>*
M urasaki was essentially a pessimistic religion. Som e sects
preached the doctrine that die w orld had entered its last degener­
ate days, and that the only course left open for the religious
rpan w as to flee the w orld altogether and live as a hermit in
the mountains. Salvation could be gained b y m urmuring one
simple phrase rather than b y costly rituals. The beautiful
temples w ere left to rot, or w ere broken up for firew ood by
the sufferers from wars and natural disasters. A t the end o f
the twelfth, century a military dictatorship was established
which, in one guise or another, lasted until 1868 and perhaps»
longer. F or much, o f this long period it was the soldier, and
not the aristocrat, w ho figured most importantly in Japanese
novels. T h e generals whose chief occupation in The Tale o f
Genji seemed to be blending perfumes, gave w ay to m en w ho
slept w ith their swords b y their pillows.
Th e quality o f m any o f the novels o f the period is perhaps
best suggested b y a fragmentary little story which, stricdy
speaking, does not belong to any novel at all. It is, however,
typical o f m any o f the episodes in such works as The Tale oj
the Heike. It is called The Tale o f Tokiaki.

“ W hen Yoshim itsu was serving as Captain o f the Guards,

w ord reached him in the capital that his elder rot er, t ie
Governor o f Mutsu, had attacked the rebellious barons.' He
asked leave o f the court to depart from the capital, and when
this permission was refused, tendered his resignation as Captain
o f the Guards. Slinging his bowstring-bag b y his side, he
rode out o f the capital towards the fighting. _
" J u s t this side o f Kagam i, in the province o f Om i, a man
w earing a dark-blue unlined hunting-cloak and green trousers,
w ith a strapless visor pulled dow n over his face, rode up
behind Yoshim itsu, whipping and urging his pony forward.
Y oshiinitsu w as at first disturbed, but as the rider approached
he could see that it w as T o yo h ara T o k iak i. ‘ W h y have you
com e here ? * Yoshim itsu asked. T h e b o y did not answer
the question, but said m erely, * I am go in g w ith y o u .’
Yoshim itsu attem pted to dissuade him . ‘ It w o u ld make
m e very happy to have y o u w ith m e, but the business which
has taken m e fro m the capital is v e ry grave, and y o u would
only be in the w a y i f y o u cam e.’ B u t the b o y w ou ld not
listen, to him , and insisted on fo llo w in g. Y oshim itsu could
do nothing to change his m ind, and thus th ey travelled
together as far as Ashigara M ountain in the p rovince o f
Sagam i. Here Yoshim itsu drew up his horse and said, ‘ That
y o u have com e thus far in spite o f m y efforts proves how
strong your determination is. H o w ever, it w ill b e an ex­
trem ely difficult matter to get through the barrier at this
mountain. I shall spur on m y horse and break through
somehow, fo r ever since leaving the capital I have placed
no value on m y life. B u t there is no sense in y o u r coming
any farther. Please turn back here.’ B u t T o k iak i still would
not listen to him.
N o further w o rd was said. Y oshim itsu understood then
ot what Tokiaki w as thinking. L eavin g the road a little,
t ie y headed through the fields to som e shady trees. There
Yoshimitsu cut aw ay the underbrush and dism ounted. He
men placed tw o shields on the ground, sat 011 one, and had
lo k iak i sit on the other. Putting all w o rld ly thoughts far
r? ? \ s drew from his quiver a piece o f paper
W C 1 . e s ow ed to Tokiaki. O n it w ere tw o pieces o f
music in the Arabian m ode w ritten in the hand o f T o kiak i’s
ather, Tokim oto. Yoshim itsu had been a pupil o f Tokim oto
and had learned from him the secret o f the arts o f flutes and
strings. okiaki s father having died before the b o y w as ten,
 he had never taught him the secret. Yoshim itsu asked, ‘ D o
y o u have yo u r Chinese flute w ith you ? ’ ‘ Y es, it is here/
and he took it from his breast pocket.
“ ‘ Y o u are already very good on the easy w orks. That
must be w h y you w ere so determined to follow m e.’ Yoshi­
mitsu then taught the b o y the tw o pieces. H e said, * M y
mission is so grave a one, that I cannot tell i f I shall survive.
B u t if, one chance in a hundred, I do return to the capital,
I hope I shall see y o u there. N o w , your fam ily has furnished
the C o u rt w ith musicians for m any generations, and are an
essential part o f it. That is w h y I want you to return to the
capital and become a master o f the art.’ W hen he had thus
spoken, the b o y yielded to reason and went back.

This is the tone o f the medieval novels. It is one o f lone­

liness, o f single figures setting o ff for battle across landscapes
w hich n o w seem destitute o f the flowering trees and all the
other charms they possessed some hundred years before. The
music o f The Tale o f Genji was principally that o f the sweet-
toned lute. In die period o f civil wars that followed, the sad
notes o f a solitary flute played b y a soldier 011 some still battle­
field sound again and again in the literature, particularly the
novels. M an y o f the latter are war-tales, each w ith its burden
o f glo ry and ashes. T h e one w ith the most accounts o f bitter
fighting and disasters is ironically called The Chronicles o f Great
Peace. In such books die narrative is occasioned chiefly b y the
doings o f the principal historical figures o f the time, but there
are numerous digressions telling o f the deaths o f other brave
men, or o f the fleeting moments o f pleasure they enjoyed.
It w ou ld be misleading, however, to leave die impression
that die m edieval period, i f so w e m ay call the eleventh to
sixteenth ccnturies, was a time o f unrelieved gloom . Both
the em peror’s court and that o f the shogun k n ew years o f
prosperity, and there continued to be a fairly considerable
amount o f poetry turned out at these courts w hich, restricted
as it is to the fam iliar cliches, scarcely show s that changes had
occurred since the glorious days w hen L ad y M urasaki wrote.
Bu t in the characteristic literary products o f the period, such
as the No plays and the linked-verse, w e find the terrible sadness
and loneliness w hich so m ark the novels. A n other feature o f
the literature o f this time w as its decentralization. L i earlier
days almost all o f the im portant bopks w ere w ritten in the
capital b y members o f the aristocracy, but w ith the breakdown
o f the central governm ent, and the retreat to herm itages and
monasteries b y m any sensitive people, literature cam e to be
written in distant parts o f the realm , as w ell as at the courts.
Such literature does not have local colour in any cheerful sense
o f the term, but reflects the loneliness and resignation o f artists
cut o ff from the poetry-m aking society.
In 1600 a great battle w as fought on the plains o f Sekigahara,
as a result o f w hich the T o k u g aw a fam ily gained supreme power
in Japan. From that date until 1868, this fam ily exercised a
rule of generally benevolent but increasingly ineffectual despot­
ism. One o f the results o f the peace w h ich the T o ku gaw a
a y established, was a general econom ic prosperity and,
owards the close o f the seventeenth century, a great flaring-up
ot aU kinds o f cultural activity. In the field o f the novel, the
me eva t es o f warfare or o f the life o f itinerant monks no
onger suited the spirit o f the times. T h e greatest novelist o f
e new age, and the first im portant personality in this field
since the L ad y Murasaki o f some six centuries before, was
aku (1642-93). The w o rk w ith w hich he established his
reputation as a n o v e lis t-h e w as already w ell kn ow n as a haiku
poet was The Man Who Spent H is Life at Lope-waking, a gay,
sometimes pornographic w ork w hich shows in m any respects
Saikaku’ s indebtedness to The Tale o f Genji. The characters
o f his novels are drawn for the most part from the merchant
class, rather than from the aristocracy or the ranks o f the samurai.
M ost o f his so-called novels are in reality short stories o f varied
lengths based on the same general themes. Although the plots
o f these tales often show great invention, Saikaku’s outstanding
qualities as a novelist are his w it and^style. H e is often able
w ith a single sentence to catch a man’s character or to depict
his \vhole w a y o f life. For example, in describing h o w one
alert merchant never missed a chance to increase his fortune,
he says, “ E ven i f he stumbled he used the opportunity to pick
up flints fo r lighters.” Again, he says o f this same man,
“ N othin g delighted him more than watching over Ins daughter.
W hen the girl grew into w om anhood he had a marriage-screen
made fo r her and, since he considered that one decorated with
view s o f K yo to w ould make her resdess to visit places she had
not yet seen, and that illustrations o f The Tale o f Genjt or The
Tates o f Ise w ou ld encourage wantonness in her mind, he had
the screen painted w ith busy scenes o f the silver and copper
mines at Tada.” These excerpts are from the Treasury o f Japan,
a collection o f stories on the theme o f how to make (or lose)
a fortune. Th e heroes o f these stories are men w ho permit
themselves no extravagance, realizing that the w ay to wealth
lies in meticulous care o f die smallest details. W hen some
youn g men visit the rich merchant Fujiichi on the Seventh
D a y o f the N e w Y ear to seek his advice on how to become
millionaires, he at first has them kept waiting in his sitting-room.
Then :

“ W hen die three guests had seated themselves the pounding

o f an earthenware mortar could be heard from the kitchen,
 and the sound fell w ith pleasant prom ise on their ears. They
speculated on w hat w as in store fo r them . O ne thought it
w ou ld be miso soup and pickled w hale-skin. ‘ N o ,’ said the
second, * as this is our first visit o f the N e w Y e a r it should
be miso soup and rice-cakes.1 B u t the third, after careful
reflection, settled firm ly fo r m iso soup and noodles. . . .
Fujiichi then came into the roo m and talked to the three
o f them on the requisites fo r a successful career. Then he
concluded, Y o u . have been talking w ith m e since early in
the evening, and you m ay think it high tim e the supper was
served. B u t one w a y to becom e a m illionaire is not to
provide supper. T h e noise o f the m ortar w h ich y o u heard
when you first arrived w as the pounding o f starch fo r the
paper covers o f the great led ger/ ” 1

N o t all o f Saikaku s stories are as hum orous as this one, but

even in his accounts o f w om en w h o go m ad fo r love, or of
young men put to death fo r crimes o f w hich they w ere innocent,
T J* a a detachment from the story w hich may
tn shm 16 .n^^n Tom J°n es. A t every point he contrives
KnnVc A J :om ic/ eatures o f apparently serious tale. His
roll A l - i ° SC 0t^er novelists o f the tim e are sometimes
aUed uktyo literature. Ukiyo is a term w hich form erly had
a n o tW C r DSe ° f the “ Sad w o rld ” > but, by taking
m ean “ ^ ^ w o rd Y0 c a m e at this time to
« S W° rld ” • This W3S the Perfect description
•jprprl ew society. Change, which had form erly been con-
rW M S Phenomenon. ^ expressed in the falling o f die
ry ossoms or the scattering o f the autumn leaves, now
came to stand for all that was most desirable. Everyone wanted
to be up to date, and novelty was the goal n ot only o f the
1 From an unpublished translation b y G . W . Sargent.
writers o f popular fiction, but o f such eminently respectable
people as the poet Bashö. A frequent m o tif in the art o f the
time is that o f w aves, the most dramatically changing o f forms.
The fleeting pleasures o f life were more prized than the eternal
values w hich the medieval recluses had sought. In their desire
to recapture the pleasures o f the day, the writers and artists
sometimes went far beyond the bounds o f decency, and from
time to time the government adopted measures against porno­
graphic w orks. B u t in a society where the licensed quarters
w ere the centre o f artistic life, and their denizens the subjects
o f most novels, plays and prints, it was perhaps too much to
demand any rcticence in calling a spade a spade.
Th e hum our in the novels o f the late seventeenth and eigh­
teenth centuries is apt t o ' be topical, and much has therefore
perished, leaving us w ith little more dian an impression ot the
vitality and zest fo r living o f the authors. So much cannot be
said o f the w ritings o f Bakin (1767-1848), the last major novelist
before the M eiji Restoration o f 1868. Bakin, in reaction to
the im m orality o f the novels ö f his immediate predecessors,
declared that the purpose o f his books was to ‘ encourage
virtue and reprimand vice This he did in an inmxense bulk
o f w riting, m uch o f which is quite unreadable today. Bakin
not only w rote original novels, but also adapted some o t e
m ore famous Chinese works in this form . U p to 's time,
the influence o f the Chinese novel had been very slight in
Japan, w hich was a most fortunate thing. Although Chinese
influence was the essential factor jn the development o f many
aspects o f Japanese culture, in literature it often proved harmful,
unless thoroughly digested. Anything written m Japan in
direct imitation o f Chinese models, how ever highly valued it
m ay have been in its day, is n ow completely dead. Those
contemporaries o f Lady Murasaki w ho prided themselves on
their poems and essays in Chinese are n o w quite forgotten,
and the least interesting poem in any o f the fam ous anthologies
o f Japanese verse has p robably been read m ore often than the
best poem in the Chinese m anner. B ak in ’s novels, to the
degree that they are derivative fro m Chinese precedents, are
already falling into obhvion, even though fifty years ago he
was considered b y most Japanese to be the greatest o f their
noveHsts.
It is hard to give any idea w ith m ere extracts o f w hat Bakin
is like, because the w h ole effect o f his artistic m ethod was
achieved b y drow ning the inadequacies in the plot w ith a flood
o f beautiful words. T h e closest approxim ation to his style is
perhaps obtained in the h igh ly inaccurate V ictorian translation
o f the novel entitled The Moon Shining Through a Cloud-Rift
on a Rainy Night. T h e b o y Tajikichi has ju st shot a hawk,
and n ow rather regrets killing the bird. His sister speaks first.
A h ! sadly ejaculated T a ye ; then, noticing the scroll,
added, W hat is that tied to its leg ? ’
Her brother cut the silk cord, and, seeing the seal,
exclaimed—

lr*1l ^ 1S a letter k ° m our honourable father ! I have

, ? loyal messenger ! ’ As he spoke, he reverently
presse t ie scroll to his forehead, then, rem ovin g the fasten­
ing, read a few w o r d s ; when b ig tears dropped from his
re eyelids, and his bosom heaved w ith grief. A fter a moment
üe controlled his emotion, and said— ‘ H onourable elder sister,
s is rom our honourable father— w ritten w hen he was
about to start upon the lonely road.’ ” 1

This is bad enough to be at once a p arod y o f B akin and o f

translation from the Chinese in general. A lthough the language
1 Translated by Edw ard G reey, p. 205.
o f the original is Japanese, even metrical Japanese, the sentiments
are Chinese. O r, rather, w e m ay say that they are a Japanese
piece o f chinoiserie, bearing the iame relation to the originals
as our eighteenth-century porcelains and furniture to the real
Chinese style.
It must be admitted that the Japanese novel in the early
nineteenth century had dropped to its lowest level, tending
to be either collections o f jokes in doubtful taste, or else dreary
moralizing tales in m any volumes. It was a denatured literature, >
possessing little o f the elegance o f style or evocative power o f
the famous novels o f earlier days. The 250 years o f peace had
created interesting new problems which should have been the
subjects o f novels, but the censorship made it impossible for
writers to undertake them.. The peasant revolts, corrupt
governments, awakening interest in E u r o p e , - which m ark early
nineteenth-century Japan, could not be discussed b y novelists.
Certain contem porary events o f a politically inoffensive c ar
acter m ight be treated w ith impunity i f suitably disguised, but
nothing bordering on the nature o f dangerous thoug ts co
be treated. T h e writers w ere thus forced to restrict themselves
to hackneyed subjects which could not have engrossed them
very deeply, or to trivialities o f a most perishable nature.
It was the impact o f the W est which was to bring new Me
to Japanese literature, and w e have not yet seen the full effects
o f this, even in our ow n day.
 V. JA P A N E S E L IT E R A T U R E UND ER
W E S T E R N IN F L U E N C E

T h e first Europeans to visit Jap an w ere som e Portuguese

adventurers w h o reached one o f the ou tlyin g islands in 1542.
Seven years later St. Francis X a v ier introduced Christianity to
the country w ith considerable success, and fo r alm ost a hundred
years from the time o f the first Portuguese visitors, the Japanese
engaged in trade and other relations w ith Europeans, including
Portuguese, Spaniards, D utch and English. C onverts to Chris­
tianity w ere made even am ong im portant m em bers o f the
military aristocracy, and som e Japanese dignitaries w ent on
embassies to Europe and Am erica, chiefly in connection with
religious matters. B u t increasingly repressive measures against
Christianity w ere adopted b y the governm ent, beginning in
e ate sixteenth century, in an effort to w ip e out w hat was
considered to be a threat to the security o f the country. The
government feared that Christian converts m igh t divide political
loyalties, and m ight even facilitate the invasion o f the country
by a European pow er. T h e exam ple o f the Philippines, con­
quered b y the Spaniards in the sixteenth century after intense
missionary activity, served as a w arning to the Japanese, and
by 1639 both the Spaniards and Portuguese had been forbidden
to visit the country. O f the other nations w hich had traded
W1 En S and voluntarily, finding the business
unprofitable The Dutch remained and w ere the only Euro­
peans allowed in Japan until the country w as opened to foreigners
m the middle o f the nineteenth century.
D u ring the time that the Catholic missionaries w ere most
active m Japan, at the end o f the sixteenth century, they printed
a number o f books there, both to teach religion to their converts
and for their ow n use as manuals o f instruction in the Japanese
language. The only important European literary w ork o f a
non-religious character which was translated into Japanese at
this time was Aesop’s Fables, although some scholars believe
that at least die general outlines o f the story o f the Odyssey
w ere transmitted to their Japanese acquaintances b y the for­
eigners. This, they say, is evidenced b y the curious set o f
stories dating from the seventeenth century about a man named
Y u riw aka, whose name itself they derive in part from that o f
Ulysses. These stories tell o f the adventures o f a man w ho,
after scoring a great triumph abroad, is abandoned on the w ay
back to Japan at a lonely island b y his wicked companions.
W ith much difficulty the man Yuriw aka returns to his country,
to find his w ife the subject o f the unwanted attention o f vanous
suitors. H e arrives just at the time o f the N ew Year festivities,
and as part o f the amusements o f the day several men attempt
to bend the iron b o w that Yuriw aka left behind, but all tail.
W hereupon Y u riw ak a takes up the bow and bends it to good
effect, shooting the most troublesome o f his w ife s suitors. e
is thereupon recognized by members o f the court, reunited to
his w ife and granted high rank.
T h e resemblances in die story to die Odyssey are evident
and some o f the other episodes show similarity to parts ot
Camoens’ epic The Lusiads. H owever, certain Japanese scholars
have adduced arguments to show that the elements in the story
are indigenous, and that resemblances to European w o r 3 are
m ere coincidence. I f the story o f Yuriw aka was indeed a case
o f European influence on Japanese literature, it was die first,
and remained the only important one for 150 years, for w ith the
prohibition o f Christianity and the virtual annihilation o f die con­
verts in 16 37 -8 , Japanese lost all contact w ith European literature.
 From time to tim e in the seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries European w orks o f an obviously practical nature, such
as texts ó f astronom y or botany, w ere admitted to the country,
either in the original languages, or in Chinese translations made
b y the Jesuits in Peking. B u t it w as not until the close o f the
eighteenth century that any interest w as show n in European
writings o f a m ore literary nature. It w as at this time that
the Japanese first began to concern themselves w ith w hat they
m ight learn from the few D utch traders w h o w ere kept virtual
prisoners on an island o ff N agasaki, and a num ber o f scholars
went there to find out w hat they could about the W est. One
o f them heard this story :

Som e ten years ago a ship w as stranded on an island,

and tw o m en o f the crew w ent ashore to look fo r water.
There they encountered a giant over ten feet tall w id i one
eye in the middle o f his forehead. T h e giant w as pleased
t 0 l v t ^i e tW ° m e n ' s e *z e d t ^i e i n a n d t o ° k t h e m
with him to a rocky cavern. Inside there w as another giant,
t e mate o f the first one. T h e cave was spacious, with
cracks in the rocks serving as w indow s. There w ere many
beasts inside.
One o f the giants w en t out and the opening w as shut
as e ore. T h e other giant caught the tw o m en and stared
at them for a lon g time. Suddenly he seized one o f diem
an egan to eat him from the head dow nw ards. T h e other
man looked on in terror and astonishment as though he were
w atc ng emons in a nightmare. H e could not think how
he m ight escape. W hile the giant was devouring h a lf o f
the first man, the other covered his face and could not bear
^ ‘ ^ 1C glant then fell into a drunken sleep, snoring
 “ T h e man pondered how he might safely escape. Finally
he made up his mind and gouged out the giant’s eye with
his dagger. The giant let out a great cry and ran w ildly
about in his rage. He groped around for the man, who
was, however, lying flat on the floor o f the cave. The giant,
for all his ferocity, could not find the man because o f his
blindness. Then he opened the entrance to the cave a litde
and drove out the animals. One b y one he let them out,
apparently resolved thus to catch and kill the man. The
m an was trapped, but he quickly caught hold under the
belly o f a huge boar. The giant let the animal out, not
realizing die trick that had been played on him. The man
was thus able to escape to his ship, which at once set sail. 1

It is interesting to speculate how this bit o f the Odyssey hap­

pened to reach die ears o f a traveller to Nagasaki in 1774 -
Perhaps it was a final remnant o f the material which had been
used fo r the Y u riw ak a stories, or perhaps it came more direcdy
from one o f the Dutch traders. It was in any case the type
o f European literature most likely to interest the Japanese ; one
o f the first translations o f a w ork o f European belles-lettres was
the Record o f Wanderings “ written b y an Englishman, Robinson
Crusoe
F or the most part, however, the enthusiasts for European
learning in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
confined themselves to books o f science and general informa­
tion, i f only because a Dutch novel or play w ould have been
far too difficult for any but the most skilful interpreters, while
a Dutch mathematical book could be deciphered b y anyone
familiar w ith the general principles o f that science.
From about i860 there w ere Japanese translations o f European
1 Translated in Keene, The Japanese Discovery o f Europe, pp. 95-6.
novels and poetry, often crude, but v e ry popular. M ost o f the
translations w ere from English, the language preferred by
Japanese once they had discovered that the D u tch w hich they
had so painfully mastered in the days before the opening of
the ports was o f little use in d e a lin g w ith English and American
traders. Th e choice o f books fo r translation w as dictated in
part b y the necessity o f finding w orks w hich w ere readily
intelligible to Japanese readers. Thus, a novel b y Ju les Verne,
fo r all its fantasy, was not difficult fo r Japanese to understand,
fo r it required only the confidence in the progress o f science
w hich they quickly acquired. O n the other hand, a novel by
Dickens such as Bleak House w ou ld have been virtually un­
intelligible because the com plex society w h ich it described
could not be demonstrated to Japanese readers like the workings
o f a locom otive, nor did it represent a European version of
problems with w hich they w ere f a m il ia r px hom e.
The first important m onum ent in the creation o f a new
Japanese literature in w hich the lessons from the W est were
incorporated came w ith The Essence o f the N ovel written by
Tsubouchi Shöyö (18 59 -19 35), published in 1885. Tsubouchi,
deploring the poor quality o f the literature o f his rime, sought
to analyse w hat was w ron g w ith it, and h o w it m ight be
rectified. For the first time, he said, im p roved methods o f
printing had made it possible for there to be an almost un­
limited circulation o f books, and this had initially resulted in
the publication o f huge numbers o f clum sy imitations o f Bakin
and other early nineteenth-century writers, fo r w an t o f any
new ideas. Such w orks conform ed on the surface to the
doctrine that literature is for the encouragement o f virtue, and
contained various pseudo-moral elements, but they w ere in
reality o f an extrem ely lo w order. W hose fault w as this,
asked Tsubouchi, and answered that it resulted not only from
 the inferiority o f the writers but also from the lack o f dis­
crimination on the part o f readers. He wrote, “ It has long
been the custom in our country to consider the novel as a device
for education, and its chief function is frequently proclaimed
to be the encouragement or chastisement o f morals, but in
practice the only books which are read are horror stories or
w orks o f pornography.” According to Tsubouchi the w ay
out o f the literary difficulties in which Japan found herself was
to adopt the Western view o f literature and abandon the old
concept o f literature as an instrument o f didactic intent. He
had heard an American scholar speak in T o kyo about the
meaning o f art, and subscribed to his views. According to
him, art fulfilled its functions to the extent that it was com­
pletely decorative, for was not something which entertained
people and elevated their tastes an essential thing to society ?
Tsubouchi’s arguments approach die familiar belief in art foj:
art’s sake, but he was not content with merely urging Japanese
to abandon their old views on the function o f literature ; he
called for new forms which were better suited to the complexity
o f modern man than verses in 3 1 syllables or tales o f w ild
adventure. He declared, “ H ow extremely uncomplex a thing
Japanese verse o f all sorts appears when compared with Western
poetry . . . W hen I say this I m ay be slandering die poetry
o f the Imperial Land as being very crude, but w ith the general
development o f culture and the advance o f our knowledge b y
several stages, our emotions cannot help changing and becoming
m ore com plex. T h e men o f old were simple and they had
straightforward emotions. Thus they could vent their full
feelings w ith just 3 1 syllables,, but w e cannot completely express
all w e feel w ith so few words.
Tsubouchi’s remarks have been quoted at some length because
o f their great historical significance. H e was one o f the first
Japanese to have had a good understanding o f European litera-
ture, and, incidentally, made a com plete translation o f Shake­
speare’s w orks w hich remains the standard one in Japan. He
was perhaps the key figure in the dcvelopr/ient o f literary taste
in the country, attempting as he did to create a Japanese literature
w hich w ould bear comparison w ith that produced in England
and in other parts o f Europe. H e sought to find examples in
the earlier Japanese literature o f parallels to the tilings which
he praised in European literature, and so to g iv e a native tradition
for writers to follow . Thus, he rejected the plays o f Chikamatsu
w hich had fantastic elements, in favou r o f the dom estic tragedies
w hich could m ore easily be com pared w ith European plays.
R ealism and com plexity w ere the tw o things he advocated in
all form s o f literature.
The great problem fo r Japanese w h o sought to w rite in the
new style was also touched on b y Tsubouchi. W estem literature
in the late nineteenth century w as dominated b y the expression
° 111 u ^ *mPressions and beliefs. A century before, R.ous-
SCf U ‘u l eg,Un con^ess^ons w ith the assertion that regardless
° *7*- T j-cr 6 WaS k etter or w orse than other m en he was
31 y erent, and this attitude coloured the entire romantic
movement. In Japan there existed no such tradition o f in-
VI u sm at least not since the civil w ars o f the twelfth
century and afterwards had led to the form ation o f a rigid
eu soc^ty, where the claims o f the individual w ere sternly
denied W hen w e read L ad y M urasaki’ s diary, w ritten in the
early eleventh century, w e feel that she is a com plex living
eing, w orn w e can understand, but even the m ost personal
w ritings o f the eight centuries that follow ed her tim e seldom
arouse any sue feeling. One has the impression alw ays that
people are acting within a situation w hich has im plicit in it
certain regular reactions. A t first these reactions have to be
learned as a part o f everyday etiquette, but later they become
the spontaneous expression o f feelings. Thus, in taking leave
o f one’s host after a party one had to apologize for one’s bad
behaviour, and thus when view ing the falling cherry-blossoms
or foam on the water, one had to utter exclamations on the
brevity o f life. A pattern o f behaviour was developed which
all but cancelled out individual preferences. This gives a certain
ornamental flatness to the people o f history and fiction. "We
are perhaps most aware o f this quality in the plays, where
there is no real attempt at characterization. There is nothing
in the personalities o f the heroes o f Chikamatsu s plays to dis­
tinguish them one from the other. Given the different set o f
circumstances, they w ould behave in exactly the same manner
as their counterparts in other plays. In poetry too the prevail­
ing note is one o f impersonality, rather than that o f the romantic
cry from the poet’s heart. The reluctance to use die word
“ I ” m ay remind us o f our ow n Augustan poets, but the sub­
jects o f die poetry, unlike the general truths o f the Essay on
Man, are b rief flashes o f perception and w ould seem to us to
require a greater personal touch. In the long centuries between
Lady M urasaki’s day and the late nineteenth century, there is
seldom a voice that speaks to us w ith a truly personal note.
Th e blame for this situation m ay be laid on the feudal society
and its dictates, but it should not be imagined, however, that
Japanese writers w ere impatiently waiting for a liberaüon so
that they m ight express their pent-up individual sentiments.
As Tsubouchi indicated, com plex emotional reactions could be
developed only along w ith other W estern accomplishments.
A nd though it was relatively easy fo r poets to w rite stanzas
o f irregular lengths instead o f the tanka or for novelists to turn
from the style o f their predecessors in favour o f works closely
approaching European realism, the expression or creation o f
 individuality remained, and I think still remains, the great
problem. Again and again the European reader is likely to
ask o f a character-in a novel or a play, “ W h at is h e.really
thinking ? O n ly gradually does one com e to the conclusion
that he is really thinking just w hat he says, or i f he is silent,
just what the conventional response w ou ld be. This tends in
a w ay to make m odem Japanese w ritin g harder fo r us to under­
stand than the older varieties. That is, w hen w e read a book
describing the court Hfe o f the eleventh century, w e enter a
completely unfamihar w orld and are prepared to accept all its
curiosities. D id the ladies in The Tale o f G enji blacken their
teeth to attain greater elegance ? V ery w ell, w e say, they did.
But when w e read a n ovel in w hich the characters w o rry about
vitamin shortages, spend their Sunday afternoons taking photos
w ith a miniature camera, and model their coiffure on that o f
their favourite HoHywood star, w e do not expect to find
emotional blanks behind the characters, and w hen w e do it is
most disconcerting. Thus, in Tanizaki’s novel The Thin Snow
(1946-9), where the central theme is the finding o f a husband
or a young lady, w e are at no point told w hat her reactions
are to e search, w hat she thinks o f her different suitors, or
even of the man she is finally to m arry. W e expect at least
,° . . 0 Freudian repression or som e other literary
evice w c belongs to the same w orld as vitam in shortages.
remote SIVe ^ inarticuIate J a p ^ e lad y seems altogether

Tsubouchi s Essence o f the N ovel did not lead to any

general outburst o f individual emotions, it did encourage the
development o f types o f fiction previously unknown in Japan.
Uj 0f jrCan r sm’ as f ° und in the numerous translations o f
mi ictonan noveHsts and, to a lesser extent, certain Russian
writers, e Japanese to turn from the ponderous historical
rom ances o r the fantastic stories w h ich T subouchi so deplored
to accounts o f contem porary life. T h e first im portant n ovel
to fo llo w T su b ou chi’s essay w as The Drifting Cloud (1887-9)
b y Futabatei Sliim ei (18 6 4-19 0 9 ), a w o rk w h ich is often con­
sidered the pioneer n o vel o f the n ew literary m ovem ent. _ Th is
is the story o f a y o u n g m an, a m em ber o f the em ancipated
intelligentsia, w h o leaves his jo b in the C iv il Service to live
in the cou n try in his uncle’s house. H e is ineffectual and
irresolute, earning the scorn o f his aunt, a w o m an o f peasant
disposition, and eventually o f his cousin, w ith w h o m he is in
lo v e . T h e cousin fin ally marries another man, but the unhappy
hero is still unable to arouse enough energy to do anything.
The Drifting C loud can scarcely be said to boast a plot, but w hen
com pared w ith the other novels w h ich w ere being w ritten in
its d ay, its im portance can quickly be realized H ere w as a
leading character w h o , far fro m possessing the ability to quell
dem ons, lik e the heroes o f m ost o f B akin ’s novels, is thoroughly
m ediocre in e v e ry w a y . Som etim es he arouses our pity, but
seldom ou r real sym pathy. F o reign influence, particularly_the
w ritin gs o f T u rg en ev, w as im portant in Futabatei s w o rk . Hus
h e show s n o t o ü y in his m anner o f telling the story, b ut in the
lan guage he uses. N o v e ls w ritten in Ja p an d u r i n g previous
centuries w e re couched fo r the m ost part in the l i t e r a r y language,
an artificial, som etim es h igh ly ornam ented style. Futabatei s
readings in T u rg e n e v and other E uropean w riters convinced
h im that the language o f books m ust be the same as that w h ich
is used in speech. The Drifting Cloud is the first n o vel to h ave
been w ritten under this principle, and it exercised an enorm ous
influence, b oth in its subject-m atter and sty e W ith fe w
exceptions all subsequent novelists abandoned both the traditional
types o f subject and the traditionally em p loyed language.
T h e quantity o f literature produced during the M eiji era
(1868 19 12 ) w as vast. M uch o f it is 110 lon ger o f any real
interest, but this is not surprising, fo r neither is m uch o f the
literature produced in E ngland during the same period. Some
o f it, particularly the novels and p oetry w ritten in die first
flush o f enthusiasm fo r W estern w ays, is distinctly com ic today,
as for exam ple this poem translated b y Sansom :
O Liberty, A h Liberty, Liberty O !
Liberty, w e tw o are plighted until the w o rld ends.
A nd w h o shall part us ? Y e t in this w o rld there are
clouds that hide the m oon and w inds that destroy die
blossoms. M an is not master o f his fate.
It is a lon g tale to tell
B u t once upon a time
There w ere men w h o wished
T o give the people Liberty
A nd set up a republican governm ent.
T o that end. . . *

n f 'T l ™ fair to deride such poem s or the translation

o. f, rL ? ° f Lammermoor entitled “ A Spring Breeze Love
vori'fT V 1 r ere Products o f the dilem m a o f Japanese
ters faced at (he same time w ith an avalanche o f n ew ideas
how “ ™ o f expressing them, and w ith the problem o f
o w much, i f any tiling, to retain o f the old ideas and ways.
id l T u r ° te the ode tQ Mberty ’ ^ its utterly foreign
.nevertheless used the Japanese images o f the clouds that
a l t m 00n and w “ ds that destroy the blossoms.
w ere u s u a ll™ 1 “ “ Wn“ en ^ The Drif tinS C lo u i tfaere
w ere usually passages or themes or solutions w hich seem false
to the n ew medzum, although they are true to Japan.
T h e conflict between old and n ew form s o f expression is
1 Sansom, The Western World m i Japan, p. 428.
 apparent in the writings o f Natsume Söseki (18 6 7 -19 16 ), often
considered as the most important novelist o f the period. His
w orks are tranches de la vie in the naturalistic manner o f late
nineteenth-century European literature, b y which he was much
influenced. H owever, Natsume’s naturalism did not lead him
to the portrayal o f the low er depths o f society, as frequendy
in European w orks. H e preferred instead to treat the day-to-
day experiences o f quite ordinary people, usually o f the middle
class. Sometimes Natsume describes moments when the lives o f
such people are touched b y dramatic events, but he was especi­
ally interested in the quiet routine o f daily living. Natsume s
w orks still delight Japanese, largely because o f his beautiful
style, but a W estern reader m ay find die oriental calm achieved
b y Natsum e to be at times insufEciendy engrossing.
Th e novel o f the M eiji era which I believe has the greatest
interest fo r the Western reader o f today is The Broken Command­
ment (1906) b y Shimazaki Töson (1872-1943)* This is the story
o f a youn g man w ho is a member o f the eta or pariah class.1
A lthough discrimination against members o f this class has long
been prohibited b y law , feeling is still rather strong among
Japanese on the subject, and fifty years ago it must have been
far m ore intense. T h e young man o f die novel is commanded
b y his fadier never under any circumstances to reveal to others
that he is an eta, and he manages in fact to conceal it from even
his closest friends during the time that he is at school, and later,
w hen he becomes a teacher. But he cannot help showing his
sym pathy for the eta in spite o f all his efforts to keep the v o w

1 The eta are an outcast class in Japan, somewhat resembling the un­
touchables o f India. Their traditional occupations included those o f
butcher, tanner, sandal-maker, etc. Although it has been forbidden since
18 7 1 to discriminate against eta, or even to refer to them by that name,
the prejudice against them still persists.
h e m ade to his father. W h en an eta is th row n out o f the inn
w h ere Ushim atsu, the hero, lodges, he im m ediately moves,
even though he kn ow s that this action m ay arouse suspicion.
A gain , w hen an eta b o y at the school can fin d n o one else with
w h o m to play tennis, Ushim atsu jo in s w ith him . B u t it is
especially in the interest he shows tow ards the w ritin gs o f an
eta w h o has becom e a celebrated cham pion o f the class that
Ushimatsu, in his o w n eyes at least, reveals his identity. He
accordingly in a m om ent o f frigh t sells all the books he has
b y the eta author and denies to others that he has any special
interest in him . Later, w hen this author visits the town,
Ushim atsu sees him secretly. H e longs to tell, h im that he
too is an eta, but, rem em bering his father’ s comm andm ent,
controls him self. It becom es increasingly difl&cult fo r him to
hide his anxiety and depression fro m his friends, w h o almost
push h im to the point o f revealing his secret. Then, quite by
chance, the director o f the school, w h o is unfriendly to Ushi­
matsu, leam s that the yo u n g m an is an eta. T h e fact spreads
am ong the teachers o f the school, and finally to the pupils just
at the m om ent when Ushim atsu decides that he must break
s v o w to his father. T h e effect is beautifully m anaged, the
tw o currents meeting at the m om ent w hen Ushim atsu makes
ins supreme effort and tells the truth. W h at can the ending
o e nove be, w e w onder, as w e approach the last fe w pages
w it no so ution in sight. It comes, a pure deus ex machina.
e eta w ho was driven from Ushim atsu’ s inn at the outset
o e nove reappears w ith an offer o f a jo b on a ranch in
le x a s, and Ushimatsu accepts, setting o ff w ith the yo u n g lady
w o as remained faithful to him in spite o f the aw ful truth
o s ac ground. T h e ending vitiates the story fo r us, but
it was perhaps the only possible one fo r Japan. I think it likely
that in a European novel o f the same date, it w ou ld be far
 m ore usual that the hero, offered the choice o f a com fortable
jo b in Texas or badly paid w o rk as a battler fo r eta rights in
Japan , w ou ld have chosen die latter. In this the Japanese novel
is realistic as European w orks are not.
The Broken Commandment is an exam ple o f one im portant
result o f European influence o f Japanese literature, the increasing
interest in social problems. O n the w hole Japanese poetry
remained true to die old spirit, in spite o f the innovations in
the form s, but other branches o f literature came increasingly
to serve as vehicles fo r new thought. W hen w e look at lists
o f European novels translated in the early years o f M eiji, w e
are struck and perhaps amused b y the preponderance o f political
novels, such as those o f Disraeli or Bu lw er Lytton, and in the
w orks w ritten under European influence this political element
is equally conspicuous. T h e realism o f such writers as Zola
w as, initially at least, not o f great interest to the Japanese because
m any o f the subjects w hich Z o la treated w ere the most common
themes o f their ow n literature, and the realism w ith which he
shocked Europe w as quite matter-of-fact to the Japanese. The
real challenge fo r them lay in the field o f political and social
w riting, something quite new in their fiction. T ie ro en
Commandment attempted to discuss the problem o f the eta m
such a w a y as to arouse sym pathy for those unfortunate people,
but alw ays w ithin the limits o f an interesting story. Other
attempts at social questions w ere usually more crudely done.
T h e concern w ith social problems showed itself most clearly
in the adaptations o f European works. For example, A F o o ls
Love (1925) b y Tanizaki Junichiro seems to have been based
on M augham ’s O f Human Bondage. It tells o f a man w h o falls
in lo v e w id i a waitress and lives w ith her for a time. Her
essential coarseness often repels him, but he is so fascinated b y
her that even when she indulges in some particularly offensive
vulgarities he can find w ays to excuse her to him self. E ven­
tually he discovers that she is unfaithful to him , attempts to
break aw ay but cannot.- T h e n ovel ends w ith his abject sur­
render to her. H e agrees that she can have w hatever male
friends she chooses, can h ve as she pleases, and need o n ly remain
as his w ife. In M augham ’ s n ovel the emphasis w as on the
sensitive yo u n g m an and his struggles to discover som e w ay
o f surm ounting a passion w hich com pletely possessed him . In
Tanizaki’ s version o f w hat is essentially the same story, die
emphasis is rather on the terrible results o f a fondness for
W estern things. W h at attracts the hero to the waitress is first
o f all her European features, w hich m ake h im think o f M ary
Pickford’ s, and her curiously un-Japanese manners. W hen he
asks her i f she w o u ld like to go to the film s, she replies in
M ildred s w ords, “ I don’ t m ind i f I do,” instead o f w ith the
usual polite protestations. T h e hero is captivated b y her un­
usual behaviour and encourages her to be m odem — that is,
European. This accentuates her naturally w ay w ard inclinations.
A t the end o f the novel, w e find them m arried, livin g in a
W estem -style house, and his w ife’s n ew friends are European
men.
Tanizaki s novel thus represents a rather subde return to die
didactic w orks so scorned b y Tsubouchi. O f Human Bondage
oes not, as far as I am aware, seek to im part any m oral lesson,
but contents itself w ith describing a hopeless love-affair and its
eventual resolution. B u t in Tanizaki the hero is condemned
or his adulation o f die W est. H e is represented as being
ashamed o f his shortness, dark com plexion, protruding teeth—
all typically Japanese features. H e feels it som ehow an honour
even to be insulted b y his European-looking mistress, and the
thought that he possesses her fills him w ith pride, even when
he sees her coarsely made up, and lookin g fo r all the world
 like a Eurasian prostitute. Undoubtedly a feeling o f racial
inferiority existed and still exists in Japan, and Tanizaki's novel
w as an attempt to combat it, rather than a simple description.
His characters, when compared w id i those in O f Human Bondage,
lack com plexity and depth, but this is true, as I have indicated,
o f almost all Japanese literary personages.
Problems o f another sort were treated b y writers o f the
so-called proletarian literature, w ho flourished especially in the
1920’s. The most famous w ork o f this school o f w riting was
The Crab-Canning Boat (1929), b y Kobayashi Takiji (1903-33)-
This is the account o f a voyage to the coast o f Kamchatka by
a small combination fishing and canning boat fleet. There is
ve ry little plot, and no attempt at characterization, in The Crab-
Canning Boat, but the descriptions o f the conditions under which
the men live are extremely vivid. Am ong the crew are some
students, w ho are unaccustomed both to the disagreeable w ork
and to the uncouth sailors among w hom they live. The officers
and petty officers o f the ship are fiendish and take sadistic delight
in inflicting punishment on the crew, especially the students.
T h e com pany w hich sends them out is represented as an organiza­
tion o f monsters. W hen, then, the ship comes in contact with
a party o f charming Soviet subjects, and a Japanese-speaking
Chinese communicates the glad tidings o f M arxism , it spreads
w ith pow erful effect am ong the crew.
I f the Comm unist propaganda in such w orks as The Crab-
Canning Boat seems excessively crude, it should be remembered
that it was about the same time that in America such works
as Odets’ Waiting fo r Lefty (1935) were written. This play
features a scene in which a young man asks for bread and is
given a cop y o f the Communist Manifesto which, he is told,
is as necessary for his soul. Indeed, the similarities between
almost any aspect o f Japanese literature produced between 1900
and 19 4 1 w ith w orks produced at the same tim e in E urope and
A m erica are such that to give a fu ll account o f the trends in
Japanese literature during the period w ou ld necessitate an equally
lo n g study o f the European trends to w hich they are intim ately
connected. This is not to say that Japanese Kterature lost its
individuality, but it n o w assumed the shape o f local or regional
variations on the main stream o f m odern literature, and not,
as earlier, o f an entirely independent tradition. This w as par­
ticularly true o f the novels, som ew hat less true o f poetry where,
in spite o f vigorous n ew m ovem ents w hich follo w ed on the
heels o f European avant-garde experiments, the traditional forms
continued to exert a p ow erfu l attraction fo r w riters. In the
field o f the drama, European methods w ere m ost frequently
em ployed, even w hen the subjects w ere taken fro m medieval
Japanese history.
T h e older genres o f Japanese Kterature w ere not abandoned,
how ever. T h e diary, fo r exam ple, came back into its ow n as
a popular literary m edium w ith the publication o f a series o f
w ar diaries b y H ino Ashihei, w hich reflect the day-to-d ay life
o f a soldier during the so-called China Incidents in die 30’s.
T e popularity o f these w orks w as such that no Japanese soldier
or sailor w ould have dreamt o f being w ithout his diary, i f
o y to record that it rained, or that he got up at six o’clock.
B u t e diary was also used in the 30’ s for impressionistic reflec­
tions, as it was in earlier days. A n exam ple o f this use o f the
ary is H ori Tatsuo s The Wind Rises (19 38 -9 ), a sensitive,
poetic account o f the death o f his w ife b y a yo u n g writer.
T h e diary form is typically Japanese, but there is m ore than
one suggestion o f Gide’s Symphonic Pastorale in the m ethod o f
narration. The w o rk indeed represents a blending o f native
and foreign form s seldom so successfully achieved.
In the w ritings o f the early M eiji period there w as often
little to suggest that the author w as aw are o f the Japanese
literary traditions, and o n ly inadvertently, as it w ere, does he
betray in his use o f im a g e ry o r in his descriptions the non-
E u ro p ean aspects o f his w ritings. B u t som e w riters continued
deliberately to use the traditional styles, even w h en the subjects
w e re dictated b y the n e w tastes, and other writers w h o had
at first gained celebrity fo r their w o rk s in the m o d em vein
turned b ack to the o ld classics fo r inspiration. A fter Tanizaki
h ad w ritten A. FooVs Love , w ith its condem nation o f the mania
fo r W estern tilings, he h im self began to show in his w orks
a m o re active interest in traditional w ritin g. This tendency
culm inated in 19 3 8 -4 1 w ith the publication o f his m odern-
lan guage translation o f The Tale o f Genji. D u rin g this period
h e began also to plan the w ritin g o f a n ovel which would
bear th e sam e relation to the present time as The Tale o f Genji
did to that o f L a d y M urasaki. B u t w ith the advent o f w a r
in 19 4 1 and the adoption o f increasingly repressive measures
b y the Japan ese G overnm en t in an effort to eliminate all traces
o f w h a t th ey considered to be decadent culture, The Tale o f
Genji itse lf fell into disfavour, and Tanizaki s projected n ovel
h ad to b e p u t aside.
D u rin g the w a r itself little literature o f im portance w as pub­
lished and the production after the w a r at first prom ised to be
e x tre m ely sickly. In the terrible years o f 1946 and 1947, w hen
m ost o f the pecfple w ere forced to devote their entire energies
to the one question o f staying alive, there w as little interest
sh o w n in literary production. C ertain left-w in g w riters w h o
h ad been im prisoned o r exiled returned to w rite m em oirs, and
their bo oks, together w ith translations o f foreign w orks, especi­
a lly A m erican, to o k up a large part o f the booksellers lists.
B u t o f genuine literary production there w as v e ry little. P o rn o ­
graph ic n ovels, detective stories, and other types o f escapist
literature began to appear, reflecting the lo w standard o f the
tastes o f the reading public. O ne m agazine publisher I k n ow
of, in order to sell his m onthly, w as forced to put a nude figure
on the cover o f each issue, and to disguise even the serious
stories w ith titles o f a vagu ely indecent nature.
This phase o f post-w ar fiction w as succeeded b y that o f the
w ar memoirs, not as in this country b y fam ous generals and
admirals revealing h o w it all happened, fo r most o f the top-
ranking Japanese officers w ere dead or im prisoned, but by
ordinary soldiers. Som e o f them had been captured b y the
Americans and w rote o f their experiences as prisoners. Others,
and these w ere m ore interesting, told o f the return o f the con­
querors o f South-East A sia to the cold, miserable Japan o f 1945.
One o f the best o f these books w as b y a w om a.i, Hayashi
Fum iko (19 0 4 -5 1), and like an earlier n ovel b y Futabatei Shimei
was entitled The Drifting Cloud (19 5 1), this being a familiar
Japanese sym bol fo r a person w ith no aims or occupation.
T h e book tells o f a yo u n g w om an w h o goes to Indo-China
to serve as a typist w ith the Japanese arm y o f occupation. After
years o f austerity life in Japan, the lu x u ry , and luxuriance o f
Indo-China dazzles her, and under these exotic influences she
turns from a m ousy little typist to a femme fatale. In a small
tow n in the hills behind Saigon she has a tempestuous love-
affair w ith one o f the Japanese arm y em ployees. T h e intensity
o f their love is perhaps increased b y their feeling that, since
Japan w as fated to lose the w ar, they must exhaust the possi-
ty o f happiness which each m om ent gave them . "When the
w ar does end and they are repatriated, everything in Japan
seems mean and ugly. Their love is killed b y the drab sur­
roundings and thé difficulty o f earning a livin g. T h e man
returns for a time to his fam ily and the w om an has an affair
w ith an Am erican soldier. The, days pass m onotonously and
 meaninglessly, without pleasure and without hope o f better.
A nd it is always raining.
I can think o f few gloomier books than The Drifting Cloud.
A s an evocation o f the Japan o f 1945-7 it was extremely success­
ful, and in its tone it sometimes suggests the Japanese medieval
accounts o f the sorrows o f this world. But such a book is too
close to the facts w hich inspired it to permit any real literary
quality.
A b ove the mass o f Japanese post-war literature, with its cheap
pornography and its masochistic recollections, stands one w ork
to w hich I have several times referred already, Tanizaki’s The
Thin Snow. In Japan it has been acclaimed as a masterpiece,
and perhaps it is one, o f a kind, but to a Western reader it
never quite comes off, although at its best it approaches great­
ness. A s far as I am aware, Tanizaki has not divulged the
theory w hich he was follow ing when he wrote this w ork, but
i f one compares his monumental trilogy with, say, Jules Romains
Les Hommes de Bonne Volonté, one can see his methods quite
clearly. Rom ains, in attempting to portray a whole society,
rather than one or tw o individuals, declared his dissatisfaction
w ith the usual methods employed in long novels—having an
entirely unlikely number o f events happening to the hero or
perhaps to one or tw o families. H e instead preferred to take
a large number o f people, some o f w hom w ill never know
each other in the course o f his w ork, because only in this w ay
could a great variety o f experiences be naturally furnished.
Tanizaki’s method is the exact opposite. H e takes a few people
and allots to them only the number o f experiences w hich they
could norm ally have been expected to have in the course o f
five years, w hich means o f course that there is almost no plot.
The Thin Snow is as exact a recreation o f life as exists in
fiction, and Tanizaki, in choosing so photographic an approach,
 deliberately sacrificed all dramatic possibilities. H o w great a
change this represented from his earlier w o rk m ay be seen when
w e recall that his reputation w as built as a w riter o f gruesome
stories, and his middle period deals chiefly w ith h igh ly theatrical
monomaniacs. In The Thin Snow, Tanizaki is at pains to make
everything exacdy and com pletely true to Hfe. His naturalism
does not consist m erely in the presentation o f com monplace or
unattractive details, although the bo ok does contain a remark­
ably complete account o f an attack o f dysentery ; Tanizaki sees
to it that every dramatic m om ent is follow ed b y its natural
let-dow n, that the continuous m ovem ent o f life is not inter­
rupted b y the ends o f chapters. Here, then, is a true roman
fieuve, a slow and turbid river o f a b.ook, w hich m oves inevitably
and meaninglessly to its close.
It is difficult to give even an outline o f the plot o f the novel,
so ram bling and diffuse is it. T h e central figures are four sisters,
and the m ost im portant single theme is that o f finding a husband
fo r the third o f these sisters. B u t The Thin Snow is not really
a novel in w hich the plot is o f great im portance. It is an effort
o f m em ory to recreate w hat m ust have seemed to Tanizaki in
*9 4 7 to be a vanished w orld. Here w e have a prosperous
fam ily livin g in the Japan o f 19 3 6 -4 1, and Tanizaki lovingly
recalls each detail o f their lives, as some R o m a n historian might
have done five years after the fall o f R o m e under the Barbarians.
T h e people in the novel never go m erely to a “ restaurant ” ,
but always to the Oriental G rill ” or some other specific place,
and when they go to meet their friends or lovers, w e are told
the num ber o f the bus that they take. A t first the precision
o f Tam zald s reporting is likely to puzzle us, for accustomed
as w e are to the Proustian method o f sounding faintly leitmotivs
that must be retained in our minds until the m om ent o f their
full development, w e feel sure that there m ust be some reason,
for example, w h y D r. Kushida is carefully described as being
abrupt and short-tempered. Perhaps, w e think, there w ill be
a future moment at which the doctor’s abruptness w ill be the
focal point o f a great scene, but in so supposing w e are mistaken.
Tanizaki says that the doctor is abrupt because he is abrupt.
W hen people in other novels fall ill, they are likely to die, or
at least to reach the very brink o f death, but in The Thin Snow
people w ho are taken ill usually get better after a few days in
bed. T h e effect o f all this realism at the end o f 1,400 pages
is quite overpowering. W e feel exactly as i f w e have lived
w ith the fam ily, and w e are certain that w e should instantly
recognize any o f its members i f w e met them again. I do not
mean that w e have any deep insights into the characters o f the
personages o f the novel. Tanizaki does not claim any more
know ledge o f w hat they are really thinking than w e should
have had i f w e w ere Hving in the same house. I f they smile
on a sad occasion, w e can infer that they do not mean it, but
Tanizaki never informs us that the heroines heart was really
breaking. In fact, w e feel more strongly in this w ork than
any other that there m ay be an emotional blank behind the
Japanese. The author keeps nothing from us—not the brand
o f the toothpaste they use, nor the frequency with which they
go to the lavatory— but when the lover o f the fourth sister
dies, a man for w hom she was prepared to sacrifice everything,
w e have not the slightest indication o f what she felt. Perhaps,
w e m ay end up b y thinking, she did not feel anything at all.
T h e manner o f The Thin Snow m ay not appeal to many
W estern readers, but w e cannot fail to be impressed b y the
grand lines along which Tanizaki has conceived his story It
m ay be that Japanese literature, as exemplified b y this novel, is
entering a new period— one in which European influences have
finally been absorbed into the native traditions, and techniques
evolved w ith w hich w e are as yet unfamiliar. T h e level o f
accomplishment o f Japanese writers can n ow com pare w ith
that o f any country, and as there is every likelihood that it w ill
continue to im prove, it m ay w ell happen that Japan, w hich
has produced The Tale o f Genji, the N o plays, and other works
o f remarkable beauty, w ill again add to that small body o f
im m ortal w orks w hich belong not only to herself but to the
entire world.

P E flJ.-'U tfT A K ftA fti

i-AKULT AS _ CSA S T R A
 SELECTED B IB LIO G R A P H Y

General Works
Aston, W . G. A History o f Japanese Literature, London, 1899.
Florenz, Karl. Geschichte der japanischen Litteratur, Leipzig, 1906.
Revon, Michel. Anthologie de la littérature japonaise, Paris, 1910.
Sansom, G. B . Jap a n ; A Short Cultural History, London, 1931.
The Western World and Japan,~London, 1950.

Poetry
Bonneau, Georges. Anthologie de la poésie japonaise, Paris, 1935.
Chamberlain, B. H . The Classical Poetry o f the Japanese, London, 1880.
Henderson, H. G. The Bamboo Broom, Boston, 1934-
Manyöshü, published by Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkökai, Tokyo, 1940.
Miyamori, Asatarö. Anthology o f Haikti, Tokyo, 1932-
Masterpieces o f Japanese Poetry, Tokyo, 1936.
W aley, Arthur. Japanese Poetry, Oxford, 1919-

Theatre
lacovleff, A., and ElisséefF, S. Le théatre japonais, Paris, 1933.
Keene, Donald. The Battles o f Coxinga, London, 1951*
Peri, Noel. Cinq No, Paris, 1921.
W aley, Arthur. The No Plays o f Japan, London, 1921.

Novels and Other Prose

Omori, A. S., and Doi, K. Diaries o f Court Ladies, Tokyo, 1935-
Porter, W . N . The Tosa Diary, London, 1912.
Sansom, G. B . “ The Tsurcdzure Gusa,” in Transactions o f the Asiatic
Society o f Japan, Vol. 39, Tokyo, 1911.
Waley, Arthur. The Pillow-book o f Sei Shötiagoti, London, 1928.
The Real Tripitaka, London, 1952.
The Tale o f Genji (one-volume edition), London, 1935.

in
Modern Japanese Literature and the West
Elisséev, Serge. N euf nouveltes japonaises, Paris, 1924.
Futabatei Shimei. An Adopted Husband, N e w Y o rk , 1919.
Hino Ashihei. War and Soldier, London, 1940.
Hughes, Glenn. Imagism and the Imagists, Stanford, 19 3 1.
Matsuo, K ., and Steinilber-Oberlin. Anthologie des poètes japonais con­
temporains, Paris, 1939.
Natsume Söseki. Botchan, Tokyo, 1924.
L a porte, Paris, 1927.
Yeats, W . B ., and Pound, Ezra. Certain Noble Plays o f Japan, Dundrum,
1916.
 IN D E X

Aesop's Fables, 89 Essence o f the Novel (Shösetsu

Aldington, Richard, 46 Shinzui), 92, 96
Ariwara no Narihira, 68 eta, 99-101
“ field-music ” (dengaku), 48
Bakin, 85, 92» 97 Fool’s Love (CltijitinoAi),I 0 I -3>105
Bashö, 12, 1 5 -1 6 ,2 9 , 38- 44. 85 Futabatei Shimei, 97, 106
Battles o f Coxinga (Kokusenya
Kassen), 63~6 Genji, 73
Broken Commandment (Hakai), 9 9 - Greek drama, 51, 55
101
Buddhism, 9, 28, 39- 40» 53- 4. 67, haikai, haiku, 15» 25-6, 28-9. 31*
78-9 37- 46, 53
Buson, 15-16 Hayashi Fumiko, 106
Hino Ashihei, 104
calligraphy, 24 hokku, 34, 37
Hollow Tree (Utsubo Monogatan),
Chia Ch‘ung, 34
Chikamatsu, 3, 8, 18, 58-65, 94-5 70-1
Chinese literature, 1-3, 14, 17. 27. Hori Tatsuo, 104
34. 85-6 imagist poetry, 8, 41, 46
Christianity in Japan, 88-9 Issa, 21, 46
Chronicles o f Great Peace ( Tathciki),
81 jöruri, 57-66
Claudel, Paul, 6o, 64
Collection o f Ancient and Modern kabuki, 57» 61, 66
Poetry (Kokinshti), 22, 56 Kanami Kiyotsugu, 48, 53, 56
colloquial literature, 97 Kikaku, 41
Communist propaganda, 103 Ki no Tsurayuki, 22-5
Confucianism, 2 kireji, 40
Crab-Canning Boat (Kant Kosett), Kitasono Katsue, 19
103 Kobayashi Takiji, 103
Korea, 2
dcngaktt, 48 Kumasaka, 53
Drifting Cloud (Ukigumo), 97- 8.
106-7 Lawrence, D. H., 29
lien-cliu, 33-4
English literature, I7_ I9. 92» I0 I> linked-verse, 31-7. 41-6, 82
104-5 love poetry, 14, 23-5
L o v e Suicides at Sonezaki (Sonezaki Saikaku, 8 2 -4
Shinjü), 3 Sansom , G . B ., 1 7 , 98
L o w e ll, A m y , 4 1 sarugaku, 4 7-8
Seam i M o to k iy o , 48, 53 , 56
ManyÖshü, ix
S elf-H elp , 17
Matsukaze, 56
Shakespeare, 1 , 5, 18 , 52, 6 8 ,9 4
M augh am , Som erset, 1 0 1 - 3
S h ik i, 1 5 - 1 6
M e iji R estoration , 1 7 - 1 8 , 85
Shim azaki T ö so n , 99
M inase linked-verse, 3 5 -6 , 45
S ó g i, 35- ö
Mirror o f the Present (Ima Kagami),
Sotoba Komachi, 54 -5
33 suggestion, 7 - 1 0 , 2 8 -3 0
iniyabi, 14
“ m on k ey-m u sic ” (sarugaku), 4 7-8 Tale o f G en ji (G en ji Monogatari),
Moon Shining Through a C loud- 10 , 2 3 - 5 , 7 0 -9 , 8 1, 83, 96, 10 5,
R ift (Kumo no Taema), 86 no
M urasaki, 7 2 - 3 , 7 5 -9 , 82, 85, 9 4 -5 , Tale o f the Hetke (H eike Mono­
10 5
gatari), 78 -9
N arihira, 68 Tale o f Tokiaki (Tokiaki Mono­
Narrow R oad o f O ku (O ku no gatari), 7 9 -8 1
Hosomichi), 1 2 - 1 3 , 4 2 -3 Tales o f Ise (Ise Monogatari), 68, 83
N atsum e Söseki, 99 T an izak i Ju n ich iro , 1 1 , 7 1 , 96, 1 0 1 ,
N ew Collection (Shin Kokinshü), 6, 10 5 , 10 7 - 9
31-2 tanka, 26, 3 2 , 46, 95
N°> 7 , 4?-<So, 64.-6, 82, n o T hin Sn ow (Sasam e-yuki), n , 96,
10 7 - 9
Odyssey, 8 9-9 1 T o k u g a w a period, 82
O nitsura, 25 Treasury o f Ja p a n (N ippon Eitai-
gura), 8 3 -4
p iv o t-w o rd s ” (kakekotoba), 4 -5
5 6 -7 T su b ou ch i S h ö y ö , 9 2 -7 , 10 2
T su rayu k i, 2 2 -5
place-nam cs, 6 -7
P o C h ii-i, 27 ukiyo, 84
pornographic literature, 83, 85 87
10 5 - 6 v irtu o so approach to literature, 16 ,
Pound, E zra, 19 , 47 30
pro sod y, 3, 2 0 , 26, 3 1 - 4 1 , 93> 95
Proust, M arcel, 7 5 - 7 , 108 W a le y , A rth u r, ix , 1 , 27, 47, 49,
puns, 4 -6 7 0 -1
puppet theatre, 57 -6 6 W ind R ises (K aze Tachinu), 104

Record o f Ancient Matters (K o iik i) 3 1 Y eats, W . B ., 55, 60, 65

renga, 3 1 - 7 Y u r iw a k a , 89, 9 1
R o m a in s, Ju le s, 10 7
Z e n B u d d h ism , 9, 28, 39 -4 0 , 5 3 -4
T h e o b je c t o f th e E d it o r o f t h is s e rie s is a v e r y d e fin ite one.
H e d e s ire s a b o v e a ll th in g s t h a t th e se b o o k s s h a ll b e th e
a m b a s s a d o r s o f g o o d -w ill b e tw e e n E a s t a n d W e s t. He
h o p e s t h a t t h e y w ill c o n trib u te to a fu lle r k n o w le d g e o f th e
g r e a t c u ltu r a l h e rita g e o f t h e E a s t , fo r o n ly th ro u g h re a l
u n d e rs ta n d in g w ill th e W e s t b e a b le to a p p r e c ia te th e
u n d e r ly in g p ro b le m s a n d a s p ir a tio n s o f A s ia t o d a y . H e
is co n fid e n t t h a t a d e e p e r k n o w le d g e o f th e g r e a t id e a ls an d
lo f t y p h ilo so p h y o f E a s t e r n th o u g h t w ill h e lp to a r e v iv a l
o f t h a t t r u e s p ir it o f c h a r it y w h ic h n e ith e r d e sp ise s n o r
fe a r s th e n a tio n s o f a n o th e r c o lo u r o r cre ed .

Two New Volumes

JA P A N E S E L IT E R A T U R E

A n Introduction fo r W estern Readers

D o n a ld K e e n e , P h .D .

T h is b o o k is b a se d o n le c tu re s g iv e n a t C a m b rid g e , w h e re
D r . K e e n e is le c tu r e r in J a p a n e s e .

T H E M Y S T E R I E S O F

S E L F L E S S N E S S

P r o f e s s o r A . J . A r b e r r y , L itt .D .

T h e w r it in g s o f th e la t e S i r M u h a m m a d I q b a l w e re m o s t
in flu e n t ia l in p r e p a r in g t h e w a y fo r t h e in d e p e n d e n c e o f
P a k i s t a n . P r o fe s s o r A r b e r r y ’s t r a n s la tio n w ill b e w e lco m e d
b y a ll w h o w is h to h a v e a fir s t- h a n d s ta te m e n t o f th e
M u s lim a t t it u d e t o th e p ro b le m s o f p r e s e n t - d a y S o c ie ty .

E a c h 5 s. n e t
 C H IN E S E P O E T R Y
A F E A S T O F L A N T E R N S . R e n d e re d w ith a n In tro d u c tio n b y
L . Cr a n m er -B y n g .
T H E H E R A L D W IN D . T ra n sla tio n s o f S u n g D y n a s t y Poem s,
L y ric s and So n gs. B y Cl a r a C a n d l in .
A L U T E O F JA D E . S electio n s fro m th e C lassical P o e ts o f China.
R en d ered w ith a n In tro d u c tio n b y L . C r a n m e r -B y n g .
T H E R A P I E R O F L U . A Selection from th e P oem s o f L u Y u .
B y C l a r a C a n d l in . F o rew o rd b y D r . Q uo T a i -c h i .
T ’A N G D Y N A S T Y . Selection s fro m th e T h ree H un d red Poem s
o f. T ran slated b y S oame J e n y n s .
T ’A N G D Y N A S T Y . A F u rth e r Selectio n from th e T h ree H u n ­
dred Poem s o f. T ra n sla te d b y S oame J e n y n s .
C H IN E S E A R T
T H E F L IG H T O F T H E D R A G O N . A n E^ssay on th e T h eory
an d P ra c tic e o f A r t in C h in a an d Ja p a n , b ased on O riginal
Sources. B y L a u r e n c e B in y o n .
T H E S P IR IT O F T H E B R U S H . B e in g th e O utlook o f Chinese
P ain te rs on N a tu re . F ro m E a s te rn C h in a to F iv e D yn asties
. . T *-D- 3r7~ 9 6o. T ra n sla te d b y S hio S a k a n is h i , P h .D .
L A N D S C A P E P A IN T IN G . B y K u o H s i. T ran s­
lated from th e Chinese b y S hio S a k a n is h i , P h .D .
C H IN E S E P H IL O S O P H Y
C o n fu c ia n is m
T H E S A Y IN G S O F C O N FU C IU S. A new T ra n sla tio n o f the
greater p a rt o f th e C on fu cian A n alec ts. W ith Introd u ction
an d N otes b y L io n e l G i l e s .
A CONFTJCIAN N O TEBO O K . W ith footn otes an d b ib lio grap h y
T H P R T ' an d a F o re w o rd b y A r th u r W a l e y .
T H E BO O K O F M E N C IU S. T ra n sla te d fro m th e C hinese b y
L io n e l G ile s . 3
T a o is m
H E^ Y tIN+GS, ° F. L A 0 T Z Ü ' F ro m th e C hinese. T ran slated
m riTc«Jr^I“ ^ oductl°n b y L io n e l G i l e s .
S t ’ A CHI N5 S E M Y S T IC - Selection s fro m th e P h ilo-
T A O iS ttw I ?£ ? £ ? & • In tro d u ced b y L io n e l G i l e s .
T A O IST T E A C H IN G S. F ro m th e M y stic a l P h ilo so p h y o f L ie h
a ^ ;T
zV v ^ a n slate d b y L lo -'JEL G i l e s .
S S l O F C H IN E S E IM M O R T A L S . B io g ra p h ie s from
T A O T F r S 8, T ran slated b y L io n e l G i l e s . P
7 s 7 n e t? T ra n s la te d b y P r o fe s s o r D u y v e n d a k .
B U D D H IS M
T H ? ] & ™ DOFE ? } ™ ? ‘ ? y T ;-ChRISTMAS H u m p h r e y s .
r* - 5
ia t S a n tl‘ D e v a - A M an u al o f M aha-
Y S n a B u d d h ism . B y L . D . B a r n e t t , M .A ., L it t .D .
P ric e is 5s. n et each vo lum e unless otherw ise show n.
T H E R O A D TO N IR V A N A . A selection o f th e B u d d h ist scrip­
tures tran slated from the P a li b y E . J . T homas, M .A ., D .L itt.
T H E S P IR IT OF Z E N . A W a y o f L ife , W o rk an d A r t in the
F a r E a s t. B y A la n W. W a t ts .
T H E Q U EST O F E N L IG H T EN M EN T . A selection o f th e
B u d d h ist scriptures tran slated from th e S a n sk rit b y
E . J . T homas , M .A ., D .L itt.
PO EM S O F C L O IST E R AN D JU N G L E . A B u d d h ist A nthology.
B y M r s . R h y s D a v id s , M .A., D .L itt.
T H E P E R F E C T IO N O F W ISD O M . T he C areer o f th e P re ­
destined B uddh as. T ran slated from th e S an sk rit b y E . J .
T homas, M .A ., D .L itt.
H IN D U R E L I G I O N
H IM A L A Y A S OF T H E SO UL. T ran slations from th e S an sk rit
of the principal U panishads. B y J . M ascarÓ , M .A.
T H E SONG OF T H E LO R D : B H A G A V A D G IT A . T ranslated
w ith Introduction and N otes b y E . J . T homas, M .A ., D .L itt.
JA P A N E S E L IT E R A T U R E
T H E H A R V E S T O F L E IS U R E . T ran slated from th e Y su re-
Z u re G u sa b y R y u k ic h i K u r a t a . W ith an Introduction
b y L . A dam s B e c k .
S O U T H -E A S T A S IA N
M A L A Y P R O V E R B S . Selected P ro verb s, tran slated and
arran ged , together w ith an Introduction, b y S ir R ichard
W in s t e d t , K .B .E ., C .M .G ., D .L itt. T he M alay te x t printed
opposite the E n g lish version.
A N C IE N T E G Y P T
E G Y P T IA N R E L IG IO U S P O E T R Y . T ran slated by Marg aret
A . M u r r a y , D .L itt.
Z O R A S T R IA N R E L IG IO N
TH E H Y M N S O F Z A R A T H U S T R A . A T ran slation o f the
G&thds b y J . D u c h esn e -G u il l e m in . R endered into
E n g lish b y M r s . M. H en n in g . 7s. net.
IS L A M IC R E L IG IO N
T H E S A Y IN G S O F M U H AM M AD . B y A lla m a S ir A bd u llah
A l - mamun A l -S u h r a w a r d y . F orew ord b y Mahatma
G a n d h i. „ . , , , _ ,.
T H E M E S S A G E O F IS L A M . B ein g a résum é o f th e Teachm g
o f th e Q ur-an : w ith special reference to the sp iritu al and
m oral stru ggles of the hum an soul. B y A . Y u s u f A l i .
A R A B IC and P E R S IA N P O E T R Y
H A F IZ OF S H IR A Z . T h ir ty Poem s tran slated b y P eter
A v e r y an d J ohn H e a t h -S t u b b s .
P ric e is 5s. n e t each volum e unless otherwise shown.
T H E P E R S IA N M Y S T IC S . T h e In v o c a tio n s o f Sh eik h A b ­
dullah A n sari o f H e ra t, a .d . 10 0 5 - 10 9 0 . B y S a r d a r S ir
J o gendra S in g h . F o rew o rd b y M ah atm a G a n d h i .
T H E D IW A N O F A B U ’L - A L A . B y H e n r y B a e r l e in .
2s. 6d. net.
A R A B IC a n d P E R S IA N P H IL O S O P H Y
AN A R A B P H IL O SO P H Y O F H IS T O R Y . S electio n s from the
Prolegom ena o f Ib n K h a ld u n o f T u n is, 1 3 3 2 - 1 4 0 6 . T ran s­
la te d b y C h a r l e s I ssa w i , M .A . ys. net.
A V IC E N N A ON T H EO LO G Y . T ra n sla te d b y P r o fesso r A . J .
A r b e r r y L itt D
T H E S P IR IT U A L P H Y S IC K O F R H A Z E S . T ra n sla te d from
th e A ra b ic b y P ro fe sso r A . J . A r b e r r y , L it t .D .
GENERAL
E A S T E R N S C IE N C E . A n O utline o f its S co p e an d C ontribu­
tio n . B y H . J . J . W in t e r ,_ P h .D ., M .Sc.
T H E G L A D T ID IN G S O F B A H A ’U ’L L A H . E x t r a c t s from the
Sacred W ritin g s o f th e B a h a ’is, w ith 'an In tro d u c tio n and
N otes b y G e o r g e T o w nshend , M .A .
M A N IFO LD U N IT Y . T h e A n c ie n t W o rld ’s P e rce p tio n of the
P a tte rn o f H a rm o n y an d C om passion. B y C ollum .
. A L L . A n A n th o lo g y o f R elig io n fro m th e Sacred
scrip tu res o f the L iv in g F a ith s . C om piled b y E dith B.
S ch n a pper , P h .D . W ith a n In tro d u ctio n b y B aron E r ik
P a lm stier n a .
-k

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 K 102# Ja p a n e s e L i t e r a t u r e .
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 O N E IN A L L
A n A n th o lo gy o f R eligion
C om piled b y
E d i t h B . S c h n a p p e r , P h .D .
W ith an In tro d u ctio n b y
B a ro n E r ik P alm stiern a

H Y M N S

O F Z A R A T H U S T R A
i

Ja c q u e s
D u c h e s n e -G u ille m in
R en d ered in to E nglish b y
M rs. M . H en n in g

T H E P E R F E C T I O N O F
W I S D O M
T h e C a re e r o f the Predestined
Buddhas
E. J . T h o m as, m . a . , D .L it t .

E A S T E R N S C I E N C E
A n O u tlin e o f its scope and
contrib ution
H . J . J . W in te r , P h .D ., m .S c .

H A F IZ O F S H I R A Z
T h irty Poem s translated by
P e te r A v e ry an d
Jo h n H e a th -S tu b b s
 C H IN E S E P O E T R Y
A Feast o f Lanterns The Herald Wind
A Lu te o f Ja d e The R apier o f Lu
P ocins o f the T ’ang Dynasty— Vols. I and II
C H IN E S E A R T
T h e F ligh t o f the D ra g o n The Spirit o f the Brush
A n E ssay on Landscape Painting
C H IN E S E P H IL O S O P H Y
Confucianism
T h e Sayings o f C onfucius A Confucian Notebook
T h e B o o k o f Mencius
Taoism
T h e Sayings o f L ao T zü Musings o f a Chinese Mystic
Taoist Teachings Chinese Immortals
H IN D U R E L IG IO N
H im alayas o f the Soul The Song o f the Lord
B U D D H IS M
K arm a and R eb irth The Path o f Light
T he R o a d to N irvana ' The Spirit o f Zen
T h e Q uest o f Enlightenm ent • Poems o f Cloister and Juuglc
T h e Perfection o f Wisdom
JA P A N E S E L IT E R A T U R E
T he Harvest o f Leisure Japanese Literature
S . E . A S IA N
M alay Proverbs i
A N C IE N T E G Y P T
Egyptian R eligious Poetry
Z O R A S T R IA N R E L IG IO N ; “
T h e Hym ns o f Zarathustia
IS L A M IC R E L IG IO N
T h e Sayings o f M uham m ad T he Message o f Islam
T h e Mysteries o f Selflessness
A R A B IC A N D P E R S IA N P O E T R Y
Hafiz o f Shiraz T he Persian Mystics : A tafr
T h e Diwan o f AbuTala
A R A B IC A N D P E R S IA N P H IL O S O P H Y
A n Arab Philosophy o f H istory Avicenna on Theology
_Ti________ t* nhysick o f fthazes
Perpustakaan Ul ERAL • .
The Glad Tidings o f Baftt'ulU!*
One in AH* .
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