Part 9

Resurrection--the recurrence of spring and the renovation of fame--crowns the final movement of this transcendental ballet. The Hideyoshi monument, as it partly is and wholly shall be, rises tier above tier on heaven-scaling stairs, approached by temples and groves which will one day vie in splendour with the carven gateways, the gigantic cryptomerias of Nikkō. In a joyous finale the dancers pose, wreathed about the central summit of the monument, while cascades of red and green fire play on them from the wings; then, strewing the steps with cherry-blossom and waving provocative clusters in the faces of the spectators as they pass, the double stream of geisha flows back with graceful whirls and eddies between banks of deafening minstrelsy; the curtains rustle down, the fires flicker out; the Miyako-odori is no more.

As I ponder on this fascinating little spectacle, planned by artists and presented by fairies, the memory returns of a ballet, incalculably more magnificent, which the rich municipality of Moscow organised in honour of Nicholas II., Emperor of all the Russias, on the occasion of his coronation. I remember that thousands of roubles were expended; that the decorations and costumes blazed with ostentation; that armies of half-dressed women performed acrobatic feats in searching electric light. If any flowers of imagination had bloomed in the contriver’s mind, they had been pitilessly crushed by costumiers, scene-painters, and ballet-masters. The result was a meretricious chaos of meaningless display. Hidden from the eyes of Moscow merchants and revealed to the patient artisans of Kyōto is that spirit of beauty, which, out of cotton and paper and Bengal lights can fashion a poem, so lovely that its simple schemes of form and colour haunt the memory like music, so profound that the deepest instincts of the beholder may be stirred by communion with the faith in which his fathers laboured and died.

It may well have been, however, that the shaven stripling beside me who so kindly unravelled threads of occasional doctrine from the glistening web of Terpsichore was almost alone in his desire to be edified. As he formally took his leave, most of the pittites rushed with laughter up the hill to the Chionin Temple, before which stands a marvellous and patriarchal cherry-tree. Lamps were hung in its far-reaching boughs, and all night long the light-hearted Kyōto citizens chattered and sang beneath its multitudinous blossom.

The connection between Buddhism and geishadom was recalled to me in a much less poetic setting by a peculiar play, which for seven nights filled the commodious theatre of Tsuruga, a delightful port overlooking the finest harbour on the Sea of Japan. The piece was called “Shimazomasa,” and the audience was moved to extraordinary demonstrations of delight by a very long soliloquy delivered for at least ten minutes by a Buddhist priest, who, seated on a mat in the centre of the stage and tapping his knees with a fan, excited my liveliest curiosity as to the purport of his tirade. Could it be a parody on pulpit eloquence? Would these pious townsmen, whose bay was lined with temples, tolerate such mockery of sacred things? The curtain fell and drew up again: the actor was forced to repeat his glib soliloquy. Then, to my extreme bewilderment, the priest was no more seen, and a tortuous but intelligible melodrama ensued, revealing the thefts and treacheries of a geisha, who came in the last act to a miserable end. The next night I returned, and being in time for the first act, which I had missed on the previous occasion, discovered that the plausible preacher was the geisha disguised. She had escaped from prison, and was recounting to herself the advantages which she expected to reap from the garb of a friar. “Young girls will come to me, craving amulets and charms for their lovers. Thus I shall know the names of honourable young men, who will not be slow to make my acquaintance. And, when we have sipped tea and talked of many pleasant things together, at the right time I shall whisper that it is no priest who is honoured by their august friendship, but Shimazomasa, the geisha. Moreover, I am sure to succeed, for a preacher ought to be a good-looking man. It is then easier for the hearers to keep their eyes fixed on his face; otherwise their eyes wander and they forget to listen.” It has been pointed out to me since that passages in this delectable sermon were taken bodily from the “Makura Zoshi” (“Pillow Sketches”), the work of a lady-novelist of the eleventh century. But plagiarism is no sin in the eyes of a Japanese dramatist, and the great merit was to have hit on an original situation. The manager of the theatre was so conscious of this, that, when a second play, entitled “Pistorigoto” (“Robbery under Arms”), failed to draw as well as its predecessor, he boldly transferred the incident without rhyme or reason to the plot, which was neither improved nor worsened by the addition. I was grateful, too, to the author of “Shimazomasa” for a touch of fancy, which redeemed the realism of his sensational story. During a love scene between three suitors and the heroine, who had regained for a time prestige and prosperity, a symbolic geisha, bearing no relation to the personages of the piece, chanted in an upper barred chamber, adjoining the outer wall of the tea-house in which the action was proceeding, snatches of erotic song, praising the joys of love but foretelling the heavy Nemesis which, sooner or later, overtakes light women. In a play of Æschylus this would have been Erinyes on the Atridean roof, terrible and invisible, presaging doom. But I fear that he who wrote “Shimazomasa” had no deeper design than the interpolation of a taking song, since popular drama is as untroubled as the popular mind by haunting shadows of death and destiny.

VULGAR SONGS

VULGAR SONGS

“As for the common people, they have songs of their own, which conform as far as possible to classical models, but are much mixed with colloquialisms, and are accordingly despised by all well-bred persons. The ditties sung by singing-girls to the twanging of the guitar belong to this class.”--B. H. CHAMBERLAIN.

Poetry is the most meretricious of arts. Among its adherents are more unconscious snobs than in any of the classes distinguished and damned by Thackeray. This is because extrinsic ornament, the use of words to dazzle or conceal, like jewels or cosmetics, has more effect on most readers than intrinsic beauty, be it depth of feeling or exactitude of thought. Poets are to be excused, and often applauded, for pandering to our eyes and ears instead of ministering to our souls. It is better to admire a mean thought or paltry emotion, draped in exquisite folds of melody and colour, than to deplore a fine theme, marred by vile and clumsy treatment, just as a plain woman, dressed to satisfy the most critical arbiter of elegance, is more pleasing to contemplate than a bank-holiday belle, however comely, in discordant frock and feathers. Now, a beautiful woman beautifully robed is as rare as a poem of which the sense is æsthetically equal to the form; hence, words being cheaper than ideas and pretty things more plentiful than pretty features, we delight in second-rate women and in second-rate poetry, for want of first-rate, until, the taste being corrupted, we are inclined to endorse Théophile Gautier’s canon, _La perfection de la forme c’est la vertu_. The farther we follow this misleading maxim, the farther we leave behind us that most vital poetry, life itself. Often this fact is not perceived, for secondary art has generated secondary emotion: we derive pleasure from allusion rather than illusion, from sleight of wit rather than strength of spirit. Tennyson tells an Arthurian story, or wishes to, and his listeners are so charmed by the irrelevant embroidery of sound and simile that they do not perceive that what they obediently consider a _naïf_ barbarian, the hero, is really a Broad Church country-parson in fancy dress. Mr. Swinburne writes an Athenian play, or intends to, and his readers are so ravished by the splendour of intrusive rhetoric that they are in no mood to distinguish between archaic piety and nineteenth-century free-thought. Thus the modern crowns his Muse with paper roses, cleverly manufactured, while the true flower blushes undisturbed or fades in humbler keeping.

Fortunately it happens from time to time that the caprice of fashion lights upon a real rose, which is at once admired not only by the connoisseurs, but by the uncultivated crowd, which has never been taught to appreciate paper roses. Only it is to be observed that the former class retain their reputation by denying the name of rose to the new flower: it is a cowslip, a daisy--nothing more. Having ceased to be meretricious, the kind of verse I mean has ceased to be poetry, in the opinion of these judges; on the contrary, they insist that, in their eyes, by discarding the frippery of language, which they rate so highly, the author of it is no poet, but a vulgar writer. And so, in the highest sense of the word, he is. He has touched the heart of the vulgar; he has found a common factor, which will “go” successfully “into” any assemblage of figures. Take, for instance, three capital instances of vulgar songs, which, as it seems to me, comply with the conditions demanded of poetry, that it shall communicate at once a vivid picture and a direct emotion. When Mr. Albert Chevalier sings--

“We’ve been together naow for forty year, And it don’t seem a dy too much; There ain’t a lydy livin’ in the land As I’d swop for my dear old Dutch,”

the pathos of life-long love is conveyed quite as poignantly, if not so verbosely, as by Goethe in “Hermann and Dorothea.” It is not literature, but it is poetry. When Mlle. Yvette Guilbert sings--

“J’ termine ma lettre en t’embrassant, Adieu, mon homme, Quoique tu ne soy pas caressant J’ t’adore comme J’adorais l’ Bon Dieu comm’ Papa, Quand j’étais p’tite, Et que j’allais communier à Ste. Marguerite,”

the pathos of recollected innocence in a prostitute of Montmartre is more intense, because less diffusely obtained, than by Victor Hugo in the case of Fantine. The chanson of Aristide Bruant is not literature, but it is poetry. The highest instance of non-literary poetry is afforded by “The Barrack-room Ballads.” It is impossible to deny that the best of them are as vivid and as poignant as any poems ever written. Yet they deliberately distress conventional ears by their substitution of power for beauty as governing principle. But even they retain too much literary skill to illustrate my theory. How surprised were many Londoners when Alphonse Daudet was touched by the rollicking doggerel of “Her golden hair was hanging down her back!” To them there was nothing pathetic in the refrain--

“Oh, Flo! What a change, you know! When she left the village she was shy; But alas! and alack! She’s come back With a naughty little twinkle in her eye.”

But the distinguished novelist, with his fine sense of the thinly-veiled tragedies of life, was touched. The young gentleman from college, the labourer’s daughter; the visit to London, the descent of the girl from stupid simplicity to knowing naughtiness--the whole sordid, pitiable tale lay for him in a badly-written ditty, cynically set to a dancing tune. It takes a foreigner, whose ears have been sealed by fate to the siren-voices of an alien literature, to make such discoveries as this, to discern poetry where literature is woefully wanting. Therefore I am not in the least disconcerted to learn that the Japanese “common people have songs of their own ... despised by all well-bred persons,” but which illustrate for me this familiar phenomenon of non-literary poetry. As a foreigner, I am better fitted to appreciate them. When O Wakachio San sings--

“Andon kakitate Negao mozoki Yoso no onna no Horeru-hazu,”

it may be that she tortures a refined ear by “colloquialisms,” but to me her words disclose this graphic thumb-nail sketch of a jealous wife, leaping in one miserable moment from surmise to certainty:

I, with trimmed lantern, Scan thy face, sleeping: By a strange woman Thou art beloved.

If the singing-girl’s vulgar song can stir at times as keen a throb of sympathy as the ditties which celebrate a “coster’s courtship” or a gigolette’s captivity, yet this effect and colloquial phrasing are the only points of resemblance. The points of difference are so numerous that, before quoting other specimens from a geisha’s _répertoire_, something should be said of the characteristics peculiar to this and all Japanese verse.

The most obvious trait of recognised and unrecognised poems is their brevity. The great majority of them consist of three, four, or five lines, in which the number of syllables is either five or seven. Even the so-called Naga-uta (long songs), which enjoyed a short period of popular favour, seldom ran to more than a few dozen lines. Oldest and most classical of metres is the Tanka, a stanza of thirty-one syllables, and a Tanka competition is held every New Year, for which a theme is chosen by the Emperor. In January 1896 thousands of amateur poets composed “Congratulations Compared to a Mountain”; in the following year they sang of “Pine-trees Reflected in Water.” The Royal Family itself takes part, and the whole nation thus inaugurates the year with libations of lyrical enthusiasm. Motoöri’s famous comparison of Japanese patriotism to cherry-blossom radiant on the hills at sunrise is a good example of the Tanka:

“Shikishima no Yamato-gokoro wo Hito towaba, Asahi ni niou Yama zakura bana.”

This may be rendered--

Heart of our Island, Heart of Yamato, If one should ask you What it may be; Fragrance is wafted Through morning sunlight Over the mountain, Cherry-trees bloom.

But the Hokku or Haikai, which dates from the fifteenth century, imprisons the soul of wit in a cell of even briefer dimensions. It gives the Tanka fourteen syllables start, and covers the course in three strides of five, seven, and five. The pace is so swift that it almost always requires an exegetic field-glass (a microscope and a race of animalcula were perhaps a fitter comparison) to estimate the astonishing triumphs of this wee Pegasus. One of the winners established this remarkable record:

“Asagao ni Tsurube torarete, Morai mizu.”

The naked eye perceives in this, indistinctly--

By convolvulus Well bucket taken: Gift-water.

Mr. B. H. Chamberlain’s powerful glasses reveal the merit and the secret of this achievement so clearly that I borrow them for the readers use. “The poetess Chiyo,” it appears, “having gone to her well one morning to draw water, found that some tendrils of convolvulus had twined themselves round the rope. As a poetess and a woman of taste, she could not bring herself to disturb the dainty blossoms. So, leaving her own well to the convolvuli, she went out and begged water of a neighbour.” Both Tanka and Haikai may enter for the prizes of polite literature, but the Dodoitsu, being reserved for vulgar songs, is “despised by all well-bred persons.” As reasonably might the plebeian “moke” of ’Enery ’Awkins aspire to run at Ascot or Goodwood, as the Dodoitsu be classed with Haikai and Tanka! Culture ignores it; society excludes it from the list of intellectual amusements. Yet its inferiority is sometimes more apparent than real. The metre is a happy medium between the two aristocratic favourites, since it consists of four lines, containing twenty-six syllables in all; three lines of seven syllables are clenched by a finale of five. It very often enshrines a sweet fancy, a delicate image, a chiselled exclamation of grief, or faith, or roguery. The nearest analogue to all three would be the epigram, were it not that the Oriental poet frequently aims at nothing more than a pictorial flash; a landscape seen by lightning, a life divined by instinct; a momentary miniature, not a condensed conclusion. I can think of but one English poem which partially follows the same method, Robert Browning’s “Apparitions”:

“Such a starved bank of moss Till, that May-morn, Blue ran the flash across: Violets were born!

“World--how it walled about Life with disgrace Till God’s own smile came out: That was thy face!”

Yet, bright and clean-cut though it be, this gem is clouded by metaphors which would puzzle the Japanese intellect. It would fail to grasp the meaning of “a starved bank”; it would miss the identity of “God’s smile” with a human face. Personification and metaphor lie outside its limits: even the simile is rare. In the forty or fifty Dodoitsu which I have collected and translated no simile is employed, unless both branches are plainly indicated. They abound in fancy; they lack imagination. They derive their very force from this limpet-like allegiance to fact, their suggestiveness from the assurance that the quick-witted but unimaginative reader will associate one fact with others of the same order and not be misled by the vagaries of Western vision. To the Western mind, on the other hand, this association, wanting in his experience, will sometimes need explanation; at other times the meaning is crystal-clear. There are shades of significance, touches of tenderness, which escape translation because dependent on grammatical peculiarities which no European tongues possess. The personal pronoun, generally unexpressed, by its absence generalises and so humanises the passion of a lover’s cry; a reticence is gained which accords well with the shrinking delicacy of a sensitive heart. When expressed, the word for “I” will connote submission, the word for “thou” lordship or lovership, by a double sense, impossible to convey. Thus, the very structure of Japanese verse, even in the case of vulgar songs, forbids that literary luxuriance which makes modern English poetry “meretricious” because tricked out with superfluous gewgaws. You cannot daub such a tiny profile with Tennysonian enamel or Swinburnian rouge. On the other hand, it were absurd to pretend that the Tanka, much less the Dodoitsu, is often of superlative value. For one which embeds in amber a scene or sentiment of exceptional worth, a thousand will deserve as much immortality as an ingenious riddle or far-fetched pun. Yet, it being conceded that their literary pretensions amount to nil, a foreign student will find in the hundreds of Dodoitsu, published anonymously in paper-covered volumes, which cost about three farthings, an inexhaustible fund of plebeian sentimentality and humour.

Apology should perhaps be offered for the very imperfect mould in which I have attempted to recast the Dodoitsu. If the reader will repeat to himself, dwelling equally on each syllable, the following poem, he will remark three things: first, the absence of rhyme; secondly, the liquid lapse of melodious words; thirdly, the sudden jerk with which it terminates:

“Nushi to neru toki Makura ga iranu Tagaï-chigaï no O te makura.”

I have adopted a metre which avoids rhyme and ends abruptly, but runs more swiftly than the original. I have prefixed a title. Thus the preceding poem becomes--

PILLOW SONG.

Sleeping beside thee, No need of pillow; Thine arm and mine arm, Pillows are they.

This being alternative to the method sometimes adopted of literal unrhythmical translation, I hope occasional licence will be condoned. This is what I might have written:

Lord-and-master (or Thee)-with-sleep-when, Pillow-indeed-no-go-; Mutual-different-of Honourable-Arm-Pillow.

To be quite literal is to be crudely unintelligible; the absence of all gender, number, and person makes certain interpolations inevitable. At the same time, the translator must take for his unvarying motto _Sancta simplicitas_.

Love, of course, inspires innumerable quatrains, which fly from mouth to mouth, from geisha to gejo, like butterflies from one blossom to another. Sometimes it is the man who speaks, as in the following:

SNOW SONG.

Careless of snow-drifts, Nightly I seek thee; Deeper the love lies, Heaped in my heart.

More often the woman, who does not allow her sense of humour to be atrophied by passion. But perhaps the humour is quite unconscious in this description of

LOVERS MEETING.

So much to talk of! Yet for joy weeping, Words, when we meet, fall Head over heels.

Bodily beauty is, of course, particularly fascinating to a race which cannot be pronounced less susceptible to its charm than those European peoples--Greek, Italian, French--whose feeling for line and colour is reckoned a superiority in them to their Northern neighbours. Yet the panegyric of his mistress’s hair or eyes or bosom is entirely banished from even vulgar songs. Innate refinement rather than cold indifference is probably the cause. The tree of the spirit is preferred to the fruit and flowerage of the flesh. Yet one seems to detect a flavour of apology in this:

CONFESSION.

Stylish appearance Does not bewitch me; Fruits pass, and flowers: I love the tree.

The Japanese word _ki_ signifies both “tree” and “spirit.” Quite commonplace, I own, is the consolation afforded by some lines engraven on a toothpick, but how many almond-eyed maidens visiting the tea-house which thus combined mental with carnal refreshment have tittered to read them!

CONSOLATION.

In mine ears linger Words said at parting; Sleeping alone, I Hope for a dream.

Rather quaint is the following lament over conjugal incompatibility. But the wife knows that she must submit, on pain of divorce; and the word _kigane_, which I have rendered “trouble,” is used of little inevitable domestic worries. The terms “fire-nature” and “water-nature” are taken from Chinese philosophy.

INCOMPATIBILITY.

Thou, cold as water, I, hot as fire; Till we to earth turn, Trouble is mine.

Mathematicians who revel in romance of the fourth dimension will note with pleasure this little sum in amorous arithmetic:

ADDITION.

Longing to meet thee, Longing to see thee, Six and four inches, Passion’s a-foot!

The exact translation being--

Longing to meet, six inches, Longing to see, four inches, These, indeed, being added together, Make a _shaku_.

The word _shaku_ has two meanings: (1) a linear foot; (2) a woman’s hysterical desire. Ten inches go to a Japanese foot.

The separation of lovers is a fruitful topic. I select three poems which treat of it in divergent but equally piquant manners. The first might be called--

AMANTIUM IRÆ.

Would that my heart were Cut out and shown thee! Quarrelling leaves me Deeper in love.

The second contains a hint of that fondness for trees and flowers which permeates all classes:

AMONG THE PINES.

If, from thee sundered, I roam the pine-wood, Can it be dew falls? Can it be tears?

The third frames a pretty fancy:

REFLECTION.

Far from each other, Yearning for union; Good, were our faces Glassed in the moon!