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2009-02-12T17:03:00.002-05:00

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Mana 101 真名の基礎

2007-02-28T09:12:00.000-05:00

Matt at No-Sword introduced me to a text called the Shinji (or Mana) Ise Monogatari, an edition of the Tales of Ise written entirely in kanji. I at first assumed it was the creation of some mad Edo-era Confucian, but it’s actually credited in the text to Prince Tomohira, a famous poet of the turn of the tenth century. This attribution is almost certainly false, as the introduction to Nara Women’s University’s scan of the text states, but it is still believed to date back to before the fourteenth century (note however that the scanned copy is a much later woodblock print, published in 1643).

The text is written in “mana,” sometimes called “man’yôgana” in modern scholarship, but the meaning of these terms can seem very fuzzy at times, so I thought it would be useful to go through a section of it to introduce some of the orthographic techniques it uses.
Here we have the main text of the first few lines of the tale:

昔男裹頭為而平城京春日郷知由為而雁
徃遣利其郷尓最媚有女朋比住遣利此壯士
垣間見而遣利不取念古郷尒最強而有希礼波
心地迷尓遣利

Here is the kana gloss, which runs parallel to the kanji text in this edition:

むかしおとこういかうふりしてならのきやうかすかのさとにしるよししてかりに
いにけりそのさとにいとなまめいたるをんなはらからすみけりこのおとこ
かいまみてけりおもほえすふるさとにいとはしたなくてありけれは
ここちまとひにけり

Here is the same passage as it appears in a modern edition of the text (the Iwanami Bunko edition edited by Ôtsu Yûichi):

むかし、をとこ、うひかうぶりして、平城〔なら〕の京、春日の里にしるよしして、狩に往にけり。その里に、いとなまめいたる女はらから住みけり。このをとこ、かいまみてけり。おもほえずふるさとに、いとはしたなくてありければ、心地まどひにけり。

A translation into English:

Long ago, a man, having reached the age of maturity, went hunting at Kasuga Village in Nara where he had some land. In that village a nubile pair of sisters lived. This man caught a glimpse of them. So unexpectedly incongruous were they in this ancient village that his heart was thrown into confusion.

If we punctuate the kanji following the modern edition we get something like this:

昔、男、裹頭為而、平城京春日郷知由為而、雁徃遣利。
其郷尓、最媚有女朋比住遣利。
此壯士、垣間見而遣利。
不取念古郷尒、最強而有希礼波、心地迷尓遣利。

A few things are immediately obvious. First, there is extensive use of kanji here purely for their phonetic value. For example, every sentence ends with the characters 遣利 (Early Middle Chinese kʰjian-liʰ), used to phonetically represent the classical Japanese verbal suffix keri (indicating retrospection), and the character 尓 (simplified variant of 爾, EMC ɲi) is used for the case marker ni.* On the other hand, many characters are used for their meaning to represent Japanese words, as in the first few words of the passage: 昔 mukashi (long ago), 男 otoko (a man), and the compound 裹頭 (Mandarin guotou), a term for the crowning at a coming-of-age ceremony, here representing the Classical Japanese uhikauburi [初冠]. For the most part, this corresponds very closely to the mixed orthography of modern Japanese, which uses kanji for substantives and verbal stems, and phonetic graphs for particles and suffixes. But there are several interesting peculiarities to this “mana” writing:

Not all particles are represented phonetically: the character 而 is repeatedly used to write the Classical Japanese particle te. This has no phonetic basis, but is rather because the connective use of 而 in Chinese roughly corresponds to the use of the gerund suffix te in Japanese.
In the first sentence, 雁徃遣利 is read as “kari ni inikeri” [he went hunting]. “Kari” means “hunt” in Classical Japanese, but it is homophonous with the word for goose, so the Chinese character for goose 雁 is used here to phonetically represent the homonym. (David Lurie has referred to these as vernacular phonographs, as opposed to the more common sinitic phonographs like 尓 as に).
The text does not always maintain a one-to-one correspondence between kanji and vernacular words. The word otoko [man] is represented both by 男 (as in modern orthography) and by the compound 壯士 (which means something like “a man in his prime”).
Occasionally, as in the beginning of the fourth sentence, the text adopts Chinese grammatical order to represent a phrase. Here the negative marker 不 comes at the beginning of the phrase omohoezu, though it corresponds to the suffix zu at the end of the Japanese phrase.

This text is a great example of the richness of premodern Japanese writing practices, and of the problems with trying to draw a neat line between kana and kanbun writing.

* Early Middle Chinese reconstructions taken from Edwin Pulleyblank’s Lexicon (UBC Press 1991).

When the Master sighed

2007-02-22T08:54:00.000-05:00

Another entry from Kôko nichiroku:

老学菴筆記曰、蜀人見人物之可誇者、則曰嗚呼。可鄙者則曰噫嘻。嗚呼の者、此間ノ書ニ古来ヨリ散見ス。俗言ニ、イキスギ者ト云ハ、噫嘻過〔イキスギ〕ナランカ。（好古日録・九十八）

The Laoxuean biji says, “When the people of Shu saw someone admirable, they would say ‘wuhu’ (J. oko). At something base they would say ‘yixi’ (J. iki).” I have been seeing this phrase “oko” all over the place in contemporary writing for a while now. The colloquialism “ikisugimono” is perhaps derived from “too yixi” (ikisugi).

I too have seen wuhu/oko all over the place in contemporary Japanese writing. It’s usually glossed as “aa”, and according to the standard Sino-Japanese dictionaries I’ve checked, the second compound should be vocalized the same way.
    Morohashi’s Dai Kan-Wa jiten defines “wuhu” as “the sound of a sigh,” and gives several early citations from it, including one from the Analects: 「子曰，嗚呼，曾謂泰山不如林放乎」(“The Master said, ‘Alas! Who would have thought that Mount T’ai would suffer in comparison with Lin Fang.’” Lau trans.). “Yixi” is defined as a sound of admiration, of frustration, or of disdain, but the only example given for the latter is the same source that Teikan cites, Lu You’s (1125–1210) Laoxuean biji, which seems a little suspicious. Both Ciyuan and the Wang Li gu Hanyu zidian take the safer route of simply defining it as a “exclamation/interjection” (歎詞).
    Edwin Pulleyblank gives the Early Middle Chinese (ca. 5th-6th centuries C.E.) reconstructed pronunciation of “wuhu” as “?ɔxɔ”, where ɔ represents a “lower mid back rounded vowel”, so we get something like “ah-ha” but with a glottal stop at the beginning. “Yixi” is similarly “?ɨxɨ”, so the same opening consonants but with a close central unrounded vowel instead (ehe?). Of course, Early Middle Chinese is still centuries after the earliest recorded uses of these words, so we can only turn to Karlgren for a reconstruction of the Zhou-era pronunciation. He gives “˙o χo” (which is pretty much the same as Pulleyblank’s corresponding EMC version) and “˙ḭəg ngḭəg” (which is very different). I’m a little wary of the latter just because its hard to imagine a sigh ending with a guttural consonant, but maybe it’s something like “argh!”
    As for Teikan’s theory about “ikisugimono”, which according to the Kinsei kamigatago jiten means someone forward, arrogant, or impudent, I guess it seems unlikely.

Reading of a Late Tang Poem

2007-01-03T09:24:00.000-05:00

A Japanese prose interpretation of Li Shangyin’s “The Inlaid Harp” [Jin se], by Takahashi Kazumi.

    いま、ここに、奏すべきその人をうしない、空しく残された錦模様の大琴がある。昔、伏羲氏は、その音調のあまりの悲しさゆえに、五十絃の瑟を壊したというが、はからずも、この錦瑟はそれに一致する五十絃のものである。その数多い一線一線の絃、それを支える一つ一つのことじに、私の華華しかった日日の記憶がかかっている。たとえ絃は絶ち得ても、こわせないだろう愛の思いが。
    昔、荘子は蝶になった夢を見て、その自由さに、暁の夢が醒めてのち、自分が夢か、蝶が夢なのかを、疑ったという。夢のようだった愛の生活は、醒めざるを得ぬ今も、独りとり残された我が身の方を却って疑わせる。また昔、望帝は、肉朽ちて後も、春めくその思いを杜鵑〔ホトトギス〕に托したという。愛の執着は、そのように、昼夜も分たず哀鳴する鳥の声となって残るのだ。
    思う、昔。あなたがこの錦模様の瑟を爪弾いた時、私はその音色を聴き分けるよき鑑賞者だった。奏するあなたの心が海の彼方に向う時、私はすぐさま、月の煌煌と照る滄海を思い、あなたの思いが山にある時、また直ちに、その音は玉山に暖かく日の射すようだと指摘したものだった。だが今は、月夜に思い浮べる滄海にも、かの人魚の涙珠のように、面影はひたすら涙をのみしたたらせ、白昼の夢にその姿を追えば、かの紫玉の如く、抱くより先に烟と化して燃えうせる。
    だが、思い廻らせば――この失意、朦朧としてあやめ知れぬ私の思いは、今、追憶をなすこの時間において、始めてそうなったのだろうか。そうではない。何故なら、いま見定め難きものは、昔においても見定め難く、あの当時からして、はやすでに私たちの現実が朦朧としていたのだったから。

    Now, here is a brocade-patterned harp that lost he who was meant to play it and lies abandoned. It is said that long ago, Fu Xi once destroyed a fifty-string harp because its sound was so sad, and strangely enough this inlaid harp has fifty strings as well. Along each of these many strings, and the frets that support them, lie the memories of my glorious youth. Though these strings may break, they cannot perish, these memories of love.
    Long ago, it’s said that Zhuangzi dreamed he had become a butterfly, such was the freedom he felt that, when he had awakened, he did not know whether he or the butterfly was the dream. Those dreamlike days of love, even now when I must awaken from them, make me rather doubt the truth of my life now, left behind alone. So too, it is said that long ago the Emperor Wang, even after his flesh had rotted away, consigned his vernal thoughts to the cuckoo. The obsessions of love in this way remained behind as the voice of a bird weeping day and night.
    I think of long ago. When you plucked upon this brocade-patterned harp, I was a keen audience for its sounds. When, playing, your thoughts traveled beyond the seas, I immediately thought of the ocean glimmering under the bright moon; when your heart was in the mountains, I knew at once that the music was the warm sunlight on Jade Mountain. But now, even in the blue sea that comes to mind this moonlit night, your image only makes me drip tears like mermaids’ pearls, and when I chase you in my daydreams, like Zi Yu you turn to smoke before we can embrace.
    But I wonder: my despair, these thoughts of mine so dim and indistinct, have they only become this way now in my memory? No. For, these things now so difficult to pin down were no different long ago; already in that time our reality was swathed in haze.

Going Home

2006-12-22T10:19:00.000-05:00

Final three pages of a diary, kept by Nagai Kafû during his years in the United States and France, 1903–1908.

March 18. Feel a cold coming on, couldn’t focus on reading.
March 19. Made a plan for a novel describing the lives of Japanese living in the U.S.
March 20. Received another letter from father. It appears my fate has been sealed, and I’m to return to Japan once and for all. Though I have already come to terms with this, I nonetheless felt a sudden shock.
March 21 (Saturday). As dawn came, neither awake nor asleep I mulled over my future. There are two options before me: Shall I return to my country and become a writer in wretched poverty? Or shall I go back to New York where Edith awaits me, and resume a life of sin? I wracked my brain, but could not come to a decision.
March 23. Saw Professor Anesaki.
March 24. I’ve felt ill for several days, and find the preparations for my journey so tiresome I can’t bear it. In the afternoon I took to bed to recover.
March 25. No matter what I do, I still don’t feel like I’m actually leaving France. My bags are already packed, and yet I feel as though were going to remain forever in Paris, instead of merely passing through as a tourist.
March 26. Took a last walk through Lyon for old time’s sake. Still feel rotten. I’m worried that my fatigue is such I won’t even be able to make the journey.
March 27. Went to dinner with Mr. Nakasa, assistant manager at the bank. Walking home late I crossed the Pont Lafayette and for some reason on this night the sound of the Rhone was not wild and thrashing, but instead I found the lapping of waves against the ships along the shore indescribably peaceful. The night was clear, warm, and still. Thinking I would never see the Rhone again, I leaned against the railing and wept.
March 28 (Saturday). Clear all day today, like it was summer. I wanted to stay just one more day in Lyon, but finally made up my mind to board the train for Paris. The sun was just about to set as we passed out of Dijon, when I thought of what awaited me upon my return home and felt a bottomless melancholy. Will arrive in Paris at twelve o’clock. I plan to spend the night at an inn near the station and then move to the Latin Quarter tomorrow morning.
March 29 (Sunday). Walked around the city all day. Exhausted, I fell asleep and for some reason had a dream in which I saw my mother in the beauty of her youth. I was startled and awoke. It was three o’clock in the morning, and I could hear rain falling.
March 30. In the afternoon saw sculpture of Maupassant in Parc Monceau. Evening, went to opera.
March 31. Day, Musée du Luxembourg. Evening, Montmartre.
April 1. Day, Musée du Louvre. Evening, the Odéon.
April 2. Day, the boulevards. Evening, the Concert Rouge.
April 3. Day, Musée du Luxembourg. Evening, the Opéra-Comique.
April 4 (Saturday). Day, Boulevard, Stock Exchange, La Madeleine. Evening, .
April 5 (Sunday). Day, Père Lachaise Cemetery. Night, Concert Rouge.
April 6. Day, Montmartre Cemetery. Night, Casino Montmartre.
May 28. Left Paris. Arrived in London after dark.
May 29. Stayed in London.
May 30 (Saturday). Set sail at twelve o’clock.
＜西遊日誌稿＞

Song Overheard

2006-12-12T09:27:00.000-05:00

There is a scene in Tamenaga Shunsui's Shunshoku umegoyomi (The Spring-colored Plum Calendar, 1833), in which erstwhile gang-leader Oyoshi, who has just discovered that the man she loves has been involved with her younger sister, the geisha Yonehachi, overhears a girl next door singing a popular song:

梅に鶯アレきかしやんせ　すゐなゆかりとわれながら、我つま琴を掻きならす、思ひの丈の尺八も、一夜ぎりとはきにかゝる　凧の糸目も花の邪广
'Cuckoo in the pines, let me hear that one again. "What a strange attraction, despite myself I'm strumming my lute, my flute the length of my desire, one night is not enough." The kite string is only in the flowers way.' Hearing this song, she wondered if it were an omen, a sign to break the "kite string" of her relationship with Tobei, and thus keep the flowers from scattering, as it were.

Nakamura Yukihiko suggests in his commentary that this song is lifted from an 1816 jōruri called "Sono kouta yume mo Yoshiwara" 其小唄夢廓 (more commonly referred to as Gonpachi, after the name of the protagonist). The passage is at the beginning of part two, where Gonpachi is troubled by a dream he's had of sharing a last drink with the geisha Komurasaki before his own execution:

間夫といふも廓の名、客といふも廓の名、嘘と誠の分隔て　それも鳴く音の鶯も梅に三浦の小紫、粋な由縁と我ながら我がつま琴とかき鳴らす思ひのたけの尺八も　恋慕流しは権八が一節切とは気にかゝり
Lover is just a quarter name, and customer is just a quarter name, the difference is in lies and truth. And singing this the cuckoo in the pines, Komurasaki of Miura. What a strange attraction, despite myself I'm strumming my lute, my flute the length of my desire. Surging with longing, for Gonpachi one night is not enough.

On this sight you can view an image of the historical Gonpachi's grave. He was the son of a Tottori samurai, who killed one of his father's comrades and became a bandit in Edo, but eventually turned himself in and was executed. Komurasaki, who committed suicide over his grave, is buried next to him.
If you're curious, there's an excellent translation of part of Shunshoku umegoyomi in the Columbia Early Modern Japanese Literature anthology.

Old Things

2006-10-20T09:45:00.000-04:00

My current favorite book is Kōko nichiroku [An antiquarian’s daily record], by the late-Edo archeologist and philologist Tō (sometimes Fujiwara or Fujii) Teikan 藤貞幹 (1732-1797). I became interested in him last year because of a famous debate he had with Motoori Norinaga, where he distinguished himself by insisting that everything of value in Japanese culture came over from Korea (contra Norinaga’s own, rather different position). Kōko nichiroku and its sequel, Kōko shōroku, are both anthologized in the Nihon zuihitsu taisei, and I’ll try and post a few choice excerpts from them here. Both works are collections of short notes on relics he’d discovered or records of ancient practices like this one on go:

“During the Tenryaku period [947-957], when the Ichijō Regent [Koretada] was still Head of the Storehouses, the emperor played a game of go with him for a belt. Koretada kept losing and the number of the emperor’s stones grew, so his majesty wrote this poem asking when Koretada would win back the belt:
    While waiting for the white waves to strike back upon them,
    How numerous have grown the fine sands of the bay
    (Shūi wakashū, vol. 9)”
The Gōke shidai (c. 11th century) says, “Two secretaries take four round straw mats and lay them out to the north and south of the board. The higher ranked pair sits to the north. The higher-ranked takes black and the lower white. The nobleman assemble around the playing area and watch, splitting up to root for the two teams.”
In ancient go, the higher ranked or more skilled player used black, but that is no longer the case.

But what I really appreciate is stuff like this careful drawing of an amethyst inkstone said to have belonged to the poet Mibu no Tadamine.

A Catalogue of Flowers

2006-10-05T08:56:00.000-04:00

Ozaki Kōyō’s 尾崎紅葉 breakthrough hit was a novella called “The Erotic Confessions of Two Nuns” (Ninin bikuni iro zange). In my opinion, the work doesn't quite measure up to its title, but it has an excellent epigraph:

罌粟は眉目容すぐれ髪長し。常は西施が鏡を愛して粧台に眠り。後世なんどの事は露ばかりも心にかけぬ身の。一念の恨によりて。ごそと剃こぼして尼になりたるこそ。肝つぶるゝ業なれ……百花譜―許六

“Poppy has magnificent eyes and long hair, and loves her mirror like Xi Shi, often falling asleep at her nightstand. Hers was a life that paid no mind to the world beyond; how horrible that a single betrayal should lead her to chop off her locks and be a nun” – “A Catalogue of Flowers,” Kyoriku

The “Catalogue” is from Fūzoku monzen, a collection of haibun put together by Morikawa Kyoriku 森川許六 (1656-1715), which contains assorted works by Bashō and his disciples divided into formats in imitation of old Chinese anthologies like the Wenxuan. In this piece Kyoriku lists a series a flowers, comparing each to a woman (usually a prostitute of some kind):

牡丹は。寵愛時を得たる妾の。天下にはゞかれる。心なげに打ほこり。常は嫉妬我執のいかりふかくして。青天にむかつて吐息をつきたる風情に似たり。

Peony is a mistress in favor: the world at her feet, thoughtlessly triumphant. Yet she seems to be always sunk in jealousy, sighing to the heavens in her wrath.

杜若は。のぶとき花也。うつくしき女の盗して。恥をしらぬに似たり。

Iris is an impudent flower, like a beautiful woman who steals and feels no shame.

桔梗は。其色に目をとられり。野草の中に。おもひかけず咲出たるは。田家の草の戸に。よき娘見たる心地ぞする。

When a Bell Flower catches one’s eye, unexpectedly blooming among the grass, it feels like coming across a beautiful girl at the door of a country hut.

Fu Shan

2006-09-26T09:59:00.000-04:00

Over the weekend I visited the Met to see their new exhibit on Chinese calligraphy. It is a subject about which I wish I were less ignorant. Near the end of the exhibit (right before several pieces by Xu Bing), is a large and extremely eye-catching piece by the writer and intellectual Fu Shan (1607-1685). I’ve photographed a section of it for you to see. His most famous theoretical writing on calligraphy is an epilogue attached to a poem dedicated to his children. In it, he describes how his own technique was “ruined” by attempts to imitate the Yuan calligrapher Zhao Mengfu, instead of following the old masters of the Jin and Tang eras. He then continues:

然又須知趙卻是用心於王右軍者，只緣學問不正，遂流軟美一途。心手不可欺也如此。危哉！危哉！爾輩慎之。毫厘千裏，何莫非然。寧拙毋巧，寧醜毋媚，寧支離毋輕滑，寧真率毋安排，足以回臨池既倒之狂瀾矣。

But we must be aware that Zhao was actually devoted to [the sage of calligraphy] Wang Xizhi, but due to his studies being unorthodox, he eventually fell into sappy aestheticism. This is what I mean when I say that the heart and the hand cannot be deceived. Beware! Beware! This is where you must be cautious. A tiny misstep will eventually carry you a thousand miles off course. It is better to be clumsy than have artifice, better to be ugly than ingratiating, better to be incoherent than slick, better to be sincere than calculating—this is the only way to step back from the brink of disaster in your calligraphy.

Of course, try saying that to your 3rd grade cursive instructor and see where it gets you.

On reflection though, probably ink is toxic

2006-09-21T09:02:00.001-04:00

A few years ago I read a translation of a famous story by Tanizaki Jun’ichirō called “Yume no ukihashi”—“The Floating Bridge of Dreams” (a reference to the last chapter of The Tale of Genji). There was one brief passage that stuck with me at the time:

Years later, after I was grown up, I came across this line of Chinese verse:
When she washes the inkstone,
the fish come to swallow ink.
Even as a child I thought how pleasant it would be if the fish in our pond came gliding playfully around her beautiful feet, instead of coming only when we fed them. (translation by Howard Hibbet)

The other day I remembered this fragment for some reason, and decided to track down the story to see the original:

後年私は大人になつてから、
洗硯魚呑墨（硯を洗へば魚墨を呑む）
と云ふ句を何かで見かけたが、その池の鯉や鮒どもは麩にばかり寄つて来ないで、この美しい足の周囲で戯れたらいゝのにと、子供心にもそんなことを思つた。

Like, I guess, every Tanizaki story, the foot fetish is always lurking just above the surface, but I really liked this scrap of poetry he quoted, and decided to track it down. If you put the characters in the quotation above into Google, you will get lots of Japanese and Korean sites about tea connoisseurship, as it’s apparently a very classy catch phrase to hang in the tokonoma of your tea room. (I eventually figured out that the character for “swallow” was giving me trouble—it’s subtly different in contemporary Japanese, and apparently that was enough to keep Google from seeing Chinese pages carrying the poem.) The source poem I finally located was the following, by the Song poet Wei Ye (960-1019):

書友人屋壁　魏野

達人輕祿位　居處傍林泉
洗硯魚吞墨　烹茶鶴避烟
閑惟歌聖代　老不恨流年
靜想閑來者　還應我最偏

Written on the wall of a friend’s house

This great man disdains wealth and rank,
Rather by a woodland spring he dwells.
Washing his ink stone, the fish swallow ink;
When he boils tea, cranes flee the smoke.
Idle, but for singing of a golden age,
Old, he does not begrudge the passing years.
But quietly thinking on his idle visitor,
He may yet consider me the hermit.

There appear to be numerous variant texts of this poem, so I’ve used the one from Li E’s Songshi jishi 宋詩紀事.

Murder of a Loyalist

2006-09-17T11:57:00.000-04:00

To celebrate finally finishing Shitaya sōwa, I thought translate one more little bit from it. Much of the book takes place in the years leading up to the Meiji Restoration, when political tensions were running very high in Japan. This part is actually itself a quoted passage from something by Mori Shuntō (Mori Kainan’s father), about Iesato Shintarō 家里新太郎, referred to here by another name Seiken 誠県:

...Enshuku was a retainer for the Matsuyama prefectural administration, and is now known by the name [Mishima] Chūshū. Afterwards, I returned to Owari. Seiken often sent me letters urging me to visit again, but I was busy with household matters at the time and couldn’t manage it. At this time with the “expel the barbarians” movement, the public mood became very agitated, and people tried to lay all the blame on the shoganate. But Seiken was of a totally different viewpoint on these matters. At the time, the governor of Matsuyama, General Shōsō, was a veteran supporter of the shoganate. Enshuku was sent here and there performing various missions on behalf of the shoganate. Because of this, some people became suspicious of [his associate] Seiken. Right then, Fujimoto Tesseki and Matsumoto Keidô were championing reverence for the emperor, and attempting to secretly raise an army; these were all nervous, rash men. One day, they were drinking and discussing citizens of Kyoto. Tesseki jokingly said, “Ieri Shōtō [Seiken]’s heart is in two places. So there’s nothing wrong with putting his body and head in different places.” At the end of the table was a man who hated Seiken. Hearing this, he was delighted, and that very night he unsheathed his sword and broke into [Seiken’s] home. There he found bare wall-hangings and a lonely pile of luggage; Seiken was sitting blankly in the bright lamp light. Worried about the strange direction events were taking in the capital, he must have planned to return to his hometown of Matuzaka to lie low, and was only waiting for the morning to set out. Seeing the arrival of the assassin, he was too shocked even to react. He only cried, “I have done nothing! My heart is pure and honest, I have nothing to hide! [kōdai-seidai hakujitsu-seiten nari]” But before his words were even finished, he’d already been cut down. It was the evening of the 19th, in the 5th month, Bunkyū 3 [1863]. He was 37 years old.

I really like the idea of a guy who’s such a pedant that his last words are not one, but two four-character compounds (chengyu), but this is probably Shuntō taking narrative liberties. 公明正大 and 青天白日 both mean something like blameless, but I haven’t tracked down a source text for either of them.
When I was looking him up online, I found that Ienari was actually the older brother of Ienari Tsuguo 家里次郎, who was one of the Rōshigumi, a precursor to the Shinsengumi, the famous rōnin supergroup assembled by the shoganate to clamp down on the royalist movement. It’s funny Shuntō and Kafū don’t mention this, because it seems like it probably bears some relation to Ienari getting iced.

Dubious Etymologies of the Demimonde

2006-09-13T11:20:00.000-04:00

From Tokyo suisho 東京粋書 [Notes on Tokyo chic] (1881), by Nozaki Sabun:

Ōraigi ["ōrai" courtesans]: What does ōrai mean? Perhaps to come by invitation, or perhaps to be expected to come? But this is not the case. According to my investigations, this word derives from the English phrase “all right.” “All right” is equivalent to “sore de yoroshi” or other expressions of possibility or assent in Japanese. So, when a customer wants to tumble a courtesan, if he pays a little cash and asks “How about it?”, the courtesan quickly gives assent. This assent is “all right”...

He goes on a bit to talk about the fashionable use of English words lately, including “kame” for dog. (This one is still in the Kôjien dictionary. It’s apparently derived from hearing foreign sailors yell “come here” at their dogs.)
I found this, by the way, in the incredible cornucopia that is the National Diet Library’s Modern Digital Library. I think it is no exaggeration to say that this is greatest thing ever put on an internet. Do you want to know what the style was in Shinbashi 125 years ago? Learn Esperanto through Japanese? Compare six different translations of the Arabian Nights?
Or maybe get this amazing illustration from Jinpingmei tattooed on your back? (If anyone does this by the way, you should send me a photo.)

Library Science of the Ancients

2006-09-10T14:02:00.000-04:00

I’ve been using RSS feeds a lot lately to waste time more efficiently. One that I really like is to Aozora Blog. As I suppose most of this blog’s readership is aware, Aozora Bunko is a website that archives modern Japanese texts in the public domain. Every month Aozora Blog posts an update detailing what they’ve added to the site over the previous month. If, like me, you’re a little timid or lazy about hunting through their whole archive, the newsletter is a great way to uncover some of the wonderful things they have available.
The most recent update mentioned a work by the East Asian historian Naitō Konan, called “Shina Mokurokugaku” 支那目録学 [Chinese Bibliography]. (“Shina” is a term for China that was used in the prewar period, and is generally considered politically incorrect in Japan today.) “Mokurokugaku” [muluxue] is an old Chinese term for the science or methodology of cataloging lists of texts (I believe the contemporary term for bibliography in Chinese is shuzhixue 書誌学, which parallels the Japanese usage). Naitō’s essay is very long and detailed (much of it beyond my own limited grasp of Chinese history), but I wanted to quote some of it here, as I was struck by what a passionate apologia it made for an easily overlooked field.

    Mokurokugaku has long existed in China, but even today does not exist in Japan. When I say mokuroku [catalogue] here, it’s not just a simple matter of taking inventory. The bibliographic studies of ancient China have a much deeper meaning. Without understanding it, there is no way to classify and describe documents. Indeed, in actual fact we are helpless to examine a great variety of [texts] today: much of Japanese bibliography is meaningless. Even Samura’s Kokusho kaidai seems to fail at its function, because it does not establish the individual characteristics of the works, but rather applies the same sort of description across the board.

The Beginnings of Mokurokugaku: In any event, the oldest extant example of ancient Chinese bibliography is found in the Han shu’s “Yiwen zhi” 芸文志. The Han shu was not completed in Ban Gu’s lifetime, but rather finished by his younger sister Ban Zhao, but the “Yiwen zhi” was probably written by Gu himself. It was completed in the middle of the Later Han, the end of the first century by the western calendar.
    However, the only part of the “Yiwen zhi” that Ban Gu actually composed himself was the opening preface; the vast majority of the text is derived from Liu Xin’s Qilüe 七略. Ban Gu included six of the work’s seven sections, but the first “Jilüe” 輯略 section is not included [this is apparently an introductory chapter explaining the work]. Liu Xin was himself actually not the true originator of the Qilüe, which was begun by his father Liu Xiang. Xiang began the work during the reign of Emperor Cheng of the Western Han, but it was completed by Xin under Emperor Ai. The final year of Emperor Ai’s reign is the year 1 B.C. by the western calendar, so the work was completed a little before the Year 0 by western reckoning.
    At this time scholarship was often passed down as a family occupation, as in Liu’s case, but Liu Xiang’s household was originally part of the Han imperial family, and mysteriously were actually a clan of scholars within the imperial family. His ancestor was King Yuan of Chu, the younger brother of Emperor Gao [founder of the Han dynasty]. Though he was brothers with Emperor Gao, who conquered the empire on horseback, Yuan was fond of learning, and his descendents continued this tradition. In Xiang’s time, Emperor Cheng entrusted him with the task of organizing and editing the documents filling the empire’s storehouses, and this is the beginnings of Chinese bibliographical method.

Liu’s Fundamental Principle: Of course this bibliographical method, as I explained above, is not a simple inventory (what’s called in China bulu 簿録). It’s true interest is in the branching lineages of literary texts. From a certain perspective, one can see this as the final culmination of scholarship 学問. Which is to say that, at least in China, scholarship had become progressively more advanced since the Spring & Autumn and Warring States Periods, but it is with Liu Xiang and Liu Xin that a science 学 was developed which could analyze this scholarship in its totality. Just from this fact, we can call [mokurokugaku] the endpoint of scholarship. However, if we consider its content more closely, when scholarship first achieved its full vigor in the Warring States period it was largely very philosophical, and took as its main objective the advancement of one school’s theory over the others; therefore, when attempts were made to classify learning, divisions were based mainly on the theories and contentions [of the various schools]. However Liu Xiang and Liu Xin did not stop at considerations of philosophical schools, doctrines, and theories in their classification, but also took into account the origin/derivation 由来 of [various bodies of] learning. They began to think of scholarship historically...

Quite a cliffhanger, I know. Please check out the rest on Aozora if you’re so inclined. Later on in the essay, he opposes the methodology of Liu père and fils to that of Sima Qian, but I’m not sure I understood that part too well.

Tanizaki on Japanese Orthography

2006-09-05T16:10:00.000-04:00

I received a lot of guidance from observing Mori Ōgai’s [orthographic] method, and tried as best I could to learn from it and carry it out myself. And certainly even today most of my writing reveals his influence in this respect, but nevertheless I frequently find myself questioning my judgment, so that I end up just as confused as ever. But this is not necessarily just a problem of my own ignorance and laziness. I don’t want to go on and on, so I’ll refrain from giving a lot of examples, but to put it simply, no matter what methodology one chooses to follow, ateji and kana usage nevertheless remain persistent problems. If, for instance, one were to follow Ōgai’s method exactly, one would have to write hitoe [under-robe] as 一と重 rather than 単衣, awase [lined kimono] as 合わせ rather than 袷, and uchi [home] as 内 rather than 家, but I can’t bring myself to take things that far. Anyway, kun originally took the meaning of a Chinese character and read that character with a Japanese word which fit with that meaning, and so when people today read 卓子 as テーブル [table] or 乗合自動車 as バス [bus], nothing’s really changed. And if that’s the case, then there’s no reason to say that 家 can’t be read any way but “ie,” or that recently invented readings aren’t genuine. One can even accept that hitoe and yukata are just the readings that have been given to the compounds 単衣 and 浴衣. If one extends this line of reasoning, then there’s no such thing as a set kun reading, and in the end it would seem that one can use any sort of reading one likes, as long as it’s not flat out wrong. Similarly, even following Ōgai’s method doesn’t solve the problem of whether or how much to use okurigana, as in words like kuimono [food], deiri [movement], or ukeoi [contract]. Even if it did, we would be left with the problem of words like 寝台, for which the readings shindai or nedai [bed] are both legitimate. So in the end, there is no way to avoid the problem of multiple readings in written Japanese.
    For this reason, I have given up on trying to use characters logically for certain readings, and recently am pursuing another method entirely. That is, to select them based entirely on the visual and musical effect they will produce in my writing. I look at ateji and kana usage entirely in terms of tone, and in terms of the beauty of the characters themselves, and attempt to use them in harmony with the sensibility of the work’s content.
    To speak first of the visual effect, asagao [morning glory] has two different ateji, 朝顔 and 牽牛花, but I use the former when I want a Japanese, soft effect, and the latter to create a more Chinese, hard effect. The holiday tanabata is usually written 七夕 or 棚機, but if one were writing a story about China one could just as well use the characters 乞巧奠. Today we write the ateji for ranbō [violent] and josainai [tactful] as 乱暴 and 如才ない respectively, but in the Sengoku Era they were written 濫妨 and 如在ない, so in writing a historical novel this is the usage I follow. I follow the same principle in my use of kana, employing extensive okurigana when I want a passage to be clear, or pruning the okurigana when I am more concerned with achieving a particular tone. For this reason sometimes furumai [behavior] becomes 振舞, and sometimes 振る舞い. For example, in Shiga Naoya’s “At Kinosaki,” ateji like 其処で, 丁度, 或朝の事, and 仕舞った are used, but when he wants to give the text a more gentle feel, like kana writing, nothing stops him from writing そこで, ちょうど, 或る朝のこと, and しまった.
    ...However, [these orthographic decisions] are made based on how they harmonize with the work’s content, and I make no allowance whatsoever to the reader’s needs. Once one starts to worry about whether every reader will read a word properly, there is no end to it, so I simply leave it all up to the reader’s literary understanding. As I see it, a reader who lacks that sensibility or common sense wouldn’t grasp the substance of the work anyway.

From Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, Bunshō tokuhon (1934).

Bokutō Cafe

2006-09-03T10:41:00.000-04:00

Time perhaps to take a break from books and talk about food.
The last time I was in Tokyo I visited this cafe in Kameido 亀戸 several times. It’s called Samurai 侍 and is located immediately south of the JR line Kameido station, east exit (one stop east of Kinshicho). By any objective measure, the shop is a conceptual mess. The name suggests some sort of warrior -blend coffee, and there are swords on the wall if I recall correctly, but what I liked was faux Sengoku-era language used in the placards decorating the walls (the whole interior is done in very subdued wood, which I must admit adds to the effect). Of course, any battle-weary samurai, after taking off mud-stained boots and blood-stained katana, does not want to sit on an uncomfortable bar stool. So the bar at Samurai is lined instead with rocking chairs (see the photograph). But my favorite element in this thematic mélange is the collection of English-style tea cups, of which the shop seems to have several dozen, no two of which match. The coffee was excellent, the barista well-groomed, and the breakfast special a steal.
I had never spent much time in the eastern part of Tokyo before my last visit. The best part about it is the rivers and canals which run through the city east of the Sumida. These are an endless source of walks (and great atmosphere for reading certain old books). But mostly, I think I probably like the area because there aren’t so many young people around.

How to read a Tang poem

2006-09-01T12:01:00.000-04:00

As is well known, Ernest Fenollosa’s “The Chinese written character as a medium for poetry” is the single most fantastic, least accurate thing that has been written on the subject. It contains the following charming paragraph in its introduction:

One modest merit I may, perhaps, claim for my work: it represents for the first time a Japanese school of study in Chinese culture. Hitherto Europeans have been somewhat at the mercy of contemporary Chinese scholarship. Several centuries ago China lost much of her creative self, and of her insight into the causes of her own life; but her original spirit still lives, grows, interprets, transferred to Japan in all its original freshness. The Japanese today represent a stage of culture roughly corresponding to that of China under the Sung dynasty. I have been fortunate in studying for many years as a private pupil under Professor Kainan Mori, who is probably the greatest living authority on Chinese poetry.

The reader will no doubt be curious to know just how the Japanese school has come to interpret Chinese poetry. (The reader may also be curious to know, if the Japanese had only achieved a Song level culture, just how far back the unfortunate Chinese had regressed. Northern Wei, maybe?) Anyway, I looked around a bit.
Mori Kainan 森槐南 (1863-1911) was the son of Mori Shuntō, one of the most famous poets of the late Edo period. Unfortunately, if he had his own ideas about written Chinese’s absorption of the “poetic substance of nature," he doesn't seem to have set them down in any real accessible format. However, I did get my hands on Tōshisen Hyōshaku 唐詩選評釈, an annotated edition of Li Panlong’s Tangshi xuan, the most widely used anthology of Chinese poetry in Japan during the Edo and Meiji periods. So, if I cannot give you Kainan’s own view on the relative advantages of pictographic writing, we can at least get a taste of the Japanese school’s method by seeing what he has to say about The Most Famous Chinese Poem of All Time:

What poetry accomplishes with its “spirit” 神 is to allow one to grasp its “meaning” 意 outside of its “language” 言. It is as if it were both far and near, both absent and present, like the clouds in the sky or the moon in the water, even if one grasps it with the mind, it is impossible to speak it aloud: this is how the jueju should be, especially those in the pentasyllabic form. Thus Hu Yinglin once declared that Cao Zhi’s gushi, Du Fu’s lüshi, and Li Bo’s jueju were gifts from heaven utterly beyond human capability. And with a work like “Thoughts on a Quiet Night,” it is as if the author’s thoughts as the pen touches the page have already moved beyond the horizon, and it is quite beyond any one else to follow him to his destination.

Kainan goes on to praise the interpretation of one Kyokuen Yuetsu 曲園兪樾, who argues:

First he sees the bright moonlight before his bed but thinks it’s only frost, then he looks up and sees the moon, then he lowers his head and thinks of home: all of this is actually because looking upon the moon’s beauty affects him deeply. If one tried to explain how deeply affecting it was by simply saying, “Oh, how moving,” it would actually be quite shallow. Feeling emerges when one speaks of emotion unemotionally, and the meaning is only true when one describes it unintentionally. ［無情を以て情を言へば則はち情出て、無意より意を写せば則はち意真なり］

Kyokuen is the Qing scholar Yu Yinfu (1821-1906) 兪蔭甫, of whom I know nothing, but at least one can assume Kainan probably didn’t have quite the contempt for contemporary Chinese scholarship Fenollosa expressed (especially since he goes on to disparage the interpretation of the Japanese monk-scholar Daiten 大典—but maybe that’s just politics).
Of course, the best part about the Japanese school, as others before me have noted, is that Fenollosa’s essay (or at least Pound’s recension of it) contains only one complete poem, and it is Japanese. The poem (which begins 月耀如晴雪) is the first item in the collection of Sugawara no Michizane, who records that he wrote it for a class assignment when he was eleven.

Echoes of Jarrell I Think

2006-08-30T18:58:00.001-04:00

I came across this interesting passage in Shitaya sôwa:

This winter Yokoyama Kozan published Selections from the Zhapu Collection. The original Zhapu Collection was edited by a man named Shen Yue [apparently an error for Shen Yun], who collected works by poets affected by the war after the English attacked the southern areas of Qing and forced the secession of Hong Kong in 1842 (that is, Tenpō 13). Obviously Kozan published this work to make a literary appeal for the importance of strengthening Japan’s naval defenses... Luckily this work did not meet with the bakufu’s displeasure.

Zhapu was one of the coastal towns raided by Britain during the first Opium War. This collection sounded interesting, but unfortunately I haven’t managed to get my hands on a copy of it, which as far as I know hasn’t been republished. I did, however, find a couple poems excerpted from it on this fairly dubious bulletin board, so enjoy:

山下鬼　清•黃金台

九峰磷火飛青熒，戰血幻作苔花腥。
怒潮夜打荒山腳，過客驚聽啾啾聲。
韋公韓公能死職（注），壯士糜軀同報國。
狼析骸，鷹攫肉，新鬼煩冤一齊哭。
十圍松櫟風蕭蕭，白晝飛出貓頭鴞。
長安遠隔萬裡外，家人何處招魂拜。
（注）乍浦海防同知韋逢甲、水師營把總韓大榮均陣亡於抗英戰役。

Ghosts at the Mountain’s Base, by Huang Jintai

The Nine Peaks shine with flying phosphoric light
And battle seems to make the flowers stink of blood.
This night the raging tides surge against the lonely hill,
And passing travelers startle at the eerie wail.
Generals Wei and Han have died for their commission,
The heroes begrudged not their lives to repay their country.
Wolves tear up the bones,
Hawks snatch at the flesh,
And the new ghosts weep together in their rage.
The wind whistles through pines and oaks ten feet around,
While owls fly now even in the midday sun.
Chang’an from here’s ten thousand li away,
To where shall their kin then call home their dead?

It kind of reminds me of the "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Meiji Flamewars

2006-08-28T13:21:00.000-04:00

Saitō Ryokuu (1867-1904) is a writer and literary critic who is little remembered today, except perhaps for being one of several creepy guys hovering around Higuchi Ichiyō in the months before her death. I came across a collection of book reviews published in Mesamashigusa [Wake-up Weed], a journal he edited with Kōda Rohan and Mori Ōgai. Unfortunately the reviews only cover the years 1896-98, and it’s not an era I know much about, so I didn’t find too much of interest. I did, however, learn one thing: everyone hated Izumi Kyōka. Personally I have nothing but respect for Kyōka as a writer, but to purge any negative energy I have from slogging through his Kōya hijiri [The Saint of Mount Kōya] with insufficient Japanese, I’ll now post him getting repeatedly panned:

The Demon Bird [Kechō]
Leader: A woman who was once wealthy and respected has become a bridge-keeper, and teaches her only son that people of this world are no better than beasts. When he asks her who saved him when he fell in the river, she tells him it was a woman with beautiful wings, but he wonders if in fact the winged woman was his mother. It’s Kyōka’s “Ketchō,” and was published in Shincho gekkan.
A Human: It’s idiotic for a mother to teach her son that we’re like animals, and it’s pretty hilarious when the kid repeats it in front of his teacher. This kind of thing might be interesting if you used it in something like Aesop’s Fables, I guess, but it’s absurd to try and make a moving tale out of it. First Kyōka was a demonic gingko tree [Bake-ichō, another Kyōka story] and now a demonic bird—he’s turning into a real weirdo. Who knows what he’ll transform into next? We can only hope he’ll turn back into an actual human being again soon.
Gen Sanmi: This might as well be a stand-up routine... [abbreviated]
Indifferent: Kyōka’s got ideas, terrifically abundant ideas. And, he has no ability, absolutely no ability.
A Classicist: The title “Kechō” is a bit too Chinese. “Bake-tori monogatari” would have been better.

Hard Bread [Katapan]
Leader: “Dumb Ken” the coachman everyday brings two loaves of hard bread to Orei, a poor innkeeper’s daughter, to see her smile, but is distraught when she is married to someone else, and develops the habit of biting off hard bread with his front teeth and spitting it out to crush it under his shoes. Soon after Ken disappears. Three months later there is a sideshow at Asakusa featuring an Indian who is said to boil oil on top of his head and such. A coachman friend of Ken’s goes to the show where he sees a man called Ringmaster John come out chomping on bread and stomping it underfoot, and realizes it’s Ken. A Kyōka piece.
A Humble Man: I guess a guy like me just can’t manage to bite into bread this hard.

Old Gen, by Kunikida Doppo [Gen oji]
Leader: Ikeda Gentarō, who runs a ferry on Katsura Bay near Saeki, after losing his beautiful wife in childbirth...[abbreviated, read the story]
Uninhibited: This guy makes a great pair with Kyōka’s “Dumb Ken.”
A Supporter: He finds the poetic in that which is nothing out of the ordinary, and though the writing is not other than crude, it is full of clever aphorisms. This is very rare in a maiden work these days, and the reason I get something out of Kunikida’s work. In the work of someone like that bizarre Kyōka, even if the events are strange and the writing is polished, there’s none of this poetry or epigram. (But the title is inappropriate, “oji” should be written in kana.)

Snake Eaters [Hebikui]
Leader: By the Jinzû River in Etchû, a group of beggars called the Ō live in Old Manor Field. Gripping their staves they make their way into town and beg at the houses of the rich. If one is refused food, he pulls a snake from his sleeve, chews it up and spits it [around the house]. Whenever these beggars come, a certain children’s song is heard around the town. A Kyōka piece.
A Heckler: How about you vomit snakes at the publishers who won’t buy your manuscripts?

Well, I’m with them on “Bake-tori monogatari” anyway. Has that been used?

Du Mu and Translation

2006-08-24T21:39:00.000-04:00

After coming across a reference to a poem of his in something else I was reading, I’ve been enjoying the poetry of Du Mu lately (who due to his surname has benefited from the sobriquet “Little Du” for over a millennium). The poem referenced was his “Releasing my thoughts”:

遣懷

落魄江南載酒行
楚腰腸斷掌中輕
十年一覺揚州夢
贏得青樓薄倖名

Roughly,

Wasted, with wine in hand, I made my way south of the Jiang,
and in the palm of my hand, desolate beauties danced.
Now wakened from this ten year Yangzhou dream,
A hustler’s repute in the brothels is all I have to show.

I was confused by a couple translations of the poem I saw, because I had been looking at the poem in the Three-hundred Tang Poems, the text of which varies somewhat from what I’ve quoted here.
I was recently home visiting my family, and when I mentioned this poem to my father, he showed me a poem attributed to Du Mu he had copied down a long time ago that he was very fond of:

THE GARDEN OF THE GOLDEN VALLEY

Stories of passion make sweet dust,
Calm water, grasses unconcerned.
At sunset, when birds cry in the wind,
Petals are falling like a girl’s robe long ago.

Out of curiosity, I looked up A. C. Graham’s version of this poem in his excellent Poems of the Late T’ang:

Shih Ch’ung’s ‘Golden Valley’ Garden

Scattered pomp has fallen to the scented dust.
The streaming waters know no care, the weeds claim spring for their own.
In the East wind at sunset the plaintive birds cry:
Petals on the ground are her likeness still beneath the tower where she fell.

Graham helpfully quotes from the biography of Shi Chong 石崇 from the Jin shu to explain the classical allusion being made in the last line. It was easy enough from the title to track down the original text of the poem, which is another heavily anthologized piece:

金谷園
繁華事散逐香塵
流水無情草自春
日暮東風怨啼鳥
落花猶似墜樓人

which made it clear that Graham’s version took fewer liberties with the source text, but that didn’t answer the real question: What had become of the “girl’s robe long ago” in my father’s beloved poem?
My recent experience led me to suspect some sort of alternate text at work here again, as in the first poem. But a quick glance through some annotated editions of Du Mu didn’t turn anything up. The magic of web-searching did turn up the source of my father’s poem, however: The Jade Mountain, a translation of the Three-hundred Tang Poems by Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-hu from 1929, so I borrowed a copy from the library.
Bynner and Kiang include a note to their translation of the poem in the back of the book, explaining the allusion:

The man who owned this garden, Shih Ch’ung of the Chin Dynasty, was the richest man of his time. The last line of this poem alludes one of many stories about him. A certain general coveted a favorite of his, a girl named Lu-chu, whom Shih Ch’ung refused to surrender. Presently the general, charging him with treason, sent troops to seize Lu-chu. She shut herself in her high chamber; and when they took Shih Ch’ung, she threw herself from the window to her death.

This is all very informative, but it tells me nothing about how that robe got into the poem (or what happened to the tower, for that matter). The earlier translation makes something vaguely erotic and decadent out of a much more straightforward historical lament (which Graham’s translation accurately reflects). I know which one I like.

Lives of the Edo Poets

2006-08-23T16:20:00.001-04:00

Nagai Kafû (1879-1959) wrote Shitaya sôwa in the late 1920’s, after the great Kantô earthquake had burned up most of what was left of old Tokyo. It’s an account of Washizu Kidô (Kafû’s maternal grandfather) and Ônuma Chinzan, two poets who were active in the mid-19th century. For Kafû, they seem to represent a culture lost in the modernization initiatives of his own lifetime, and this nostalgia is perhaps the only force holding together the book, which is essentially a piecemeal of biographical fragments Kafû has been able to dig out about the two men, arranged in roughly chronological order.
This nostalgia sometimes leads Kafû to start complaining about the declining character of this modern Taishô era, rather unbecoming for Japan’s first translator of Nana. However, this sort of speechifying is luckily scarce. Instead we get passages where Kafû tries to rather show us just what we are missing, what it is he feels driven to search through family archives and temple records to reassemble:

枕山の詩賦には毎篇酒の一字を見ざるは罕〔まれ〕である。この年枕山は「酒痴歌」と題する長句を作って梅痴上人に示した。その引〔いん〕に曰く「余ガ性、酒ヲ飲ンデ少シク量ヲ過スヤ則チ省記スル所ナク、殆〔ほとん〕ド健忘者ニ類ス。寓院ノ主梅痴上人毎夕飲ヲ許ス。上人ハ灯ヲ点ジテ韻ヲ検シ、余ハ座傍ニ酌ム。一句ヲ得ルニ及ンデコレヲ余ニ質〔ただ〕ス。余已〔すで〕ニ沈酣〔ちんかん〕シテ何ノ語タルヲ弁ゼズ。答フル所アルイハソノ問フ所ニ異ル。然リトイヘドモ上人ノ寛懐固〔もと〕ヨリコレヲ罪ゼズ。余醒メテ後赧然〔たんぜん〕トシテ自ラ愧ズ。因ツテ酒痴ノ歌一篇ヲ作リ以テ上人ニ謝シ兼テ自ラ嘲〔ちょう〕ヲ解クトイフ。」わたくしはこの引を読んで清絶言うべからざる思に打たれた。芝山内の僧房に老僧は端座して詩巻を攤〔ひら〕き、年少の詩人は酒盃を手にして灯下に相対している光景が歴然をして目に浮び来った故である。（84－85頁）

It’s pretty rare to find a poem of Chinzan’s that doesn’t use the word “wine” somewhere. This year [1843], Chinzan wrote a long piece called “The Drunkard’s Song” for the monk Baichi. In the preface he wrote, “I’m the sort of fellow that, whenever I drink a bit too much, I can’t remember a thing afterward. Abbot Baichi of the temple I’m staying at allows liqueur every night. He lights the lamp and puzzles over rhymes, and I sit beside him and pour the wine. Whenever he comes up with a couplet he asks my opinion, but I get so drunk I can’t follow him, and my answer is sometimes to a different question all together. However in his kindness the abbot has never blamed me for this. After I come to my senses I’m quite ashamed of myself, so I’ve written this ‘Drunkard’s Song’, both to apologize to the abbot and to relieve my humiliation.” When I read this preface I was struck by a feeling of unspeakable purity, for I saw clearly before me the image of a mountain monastery where an old monk kneels and unfurls a scroll, while a young poet with wine cup in hand sits across from him under the lamplight.

There’s something appealing, I think for Kafû as well, about this sort of idealized literati lifestyle that both (a) appears (ostensibly) to have continued largely unchanged for more than a thousand years from Li Po to Rai San’yô and (b) somehow became something completely out of reach for a writer in the early 20th century.

On a side note, Kafû was apparently inspired to do this sort of archival work by similar books of Mori Ôgai’s, whom Kafû deeply admired. I really find this pairing fascinating, they seem to relate to society in completely opposite ways, but they must have had something in common (apart from apparently each having abandoned a foreign mistress to return to Japan of course).

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2006-08-22T22:02:00.000-04:00

Hello, I hope to use this blog to practice writing about things I've seen, read and heard I suppose.