Part 3

So much we can understand, but the “pillow” and “pivot” words are without parallel in our own language. By means of them the subject may be diverted to some idea which appears, to our way of thinking, totally unconnected. For instance, in the _Sumida River_ (see p. 83) the use of the root word for _repute_ by the Ferryman makes the Mother, in the following line, recall and quote a classic poem on quite another subject which has the same root word in it. The link connecting the two subjects being merely the one root word which is common to both, and which is called the pivot word, the value of which is, of course, entirely lost in translation. In English, unconnected ideas alone are left. Some examples of such devices are mentioned in the notes following the translations of the plays at the end of the book, but throughout the _utai_ they are of perpetual recurrence and are far too frequent to be mentioned every time they appear. In his _Classical Poetry of the Japanese_, Prof. Chamberlain gives an account of the pivot words, and he admires their “dissolving view” effects, but Aston thinks them frivolous and a sign of decadence. These “pivot words” as well as the “pillow words,” though they are so prevalent in its literature, are not at all confined to the _utai_ of the _Nō_, but are characteristic of the whole of the early Japanese verse. The “pillow words” (called _makura-kotoba_ in Japanese) have been collected by Prof. F. F. V. Dickins[3] recently, and he says, “The _makura-kotoba_ form the characteristic embellishment of the early _uta_ of Japan, and of all subsequent Japanese, as distinguished from Japano-Chinese verse.”

As regards rhyme, there is no use of such rhyming as characterises our own verse; and this may partly depend on the structure of the Japanese language. Japanese words are not composed of letters as they are with us, but of syllables; every consonant is associated with all the vowels. Thus the words are compounded of a larger number of elements than with us, but each ends in one of the five vowels or in _n_. The elements are _ka_, _ki_, _ko_, _ta_, _ti_, _tu_, _te_, _to_, and so on. This will at once be evident if we examine a few words of romanised Japanese. For example, the first line of the play _Tamura_ is _Hina no myakoji hedate kite_.

In the _utai_, though there is no terminal rhyming, there is sometimes a tendency to repeat the same syllable more than once in a phrase, with the deliberate intention of accentuating it.

Concerning the Difficulties of Translation

Only half-a-dozen of the complete _Nō_ and portions of a few others have been translated into English from all the many Japanese originals that are available. But this is scarcely surprising. In translating any of the _Nō_ there are two supreme difficulties to be encountered. The first depends on the organic remoteness of the Japanese language from our own, which is common to any translation from the Japanese; and the second is the peculiar difficulty of translating the _utai_ because the exact meaning of many portions of them is disputed even by Japanese authorities, and then even where the meaning may be clear to a Japanese expert the compression of the language is so great that it cannot literally be rendered into a European language. From a French or German, even from a Russian original, a literal translation is comprehensible even if it is not beautiful in English. A literal English translation from a Japanese original is arrant nonsense. The Japanese language is not merely unlike ours; the whole mode and order of the thought upon which it is founded is on an entirely different plan from our own. The more conscientious the translator the greater his difficulty. It is easy enough to translate “_O yasumi nasai_” as “good-night,” but how are we to say in English what it really means, _i. e._ approximately “honourably deign to take rest,” without appearing remote and stilted? And that is just a simple little common phrase; when the Japanese to be translated is contorted and coruscated with “pillow words” and “pivot words,” with a phrase from an old classical poem of which the reader is supposed to know the whole, and cannot “see the point” unless he does so, what is the translator to do? But suppose, further, that a couple of the words are the subject of learned controversy, as is frequently the case, is it likely two translations will coincide?

Concerning the Translations of others, as well as those in this Book

There are three principal lines that a much-to-be-pitied translator may take. (1) He may give up in despair any attempt at being literal. He belongs, let us say, to the school that think it best to translate “_O yasumi nasai_” as “good-night.” He has this pre-eminent virtue that he will give us at least a version which can be read as English. And there is much to be said for this mode of treatment. (2) On the other hand, a great contrast to translator No. 1 is he who desires to give a literal version of the Japanese, and who does not care in the least whether it sounds smooth and finished in English. (3) Then there is the last, and perhaps the most misguided of all, who cares a great deal to convey the true Japanese impression and also tries to polish and round off the English so that it may not appear too stilted or too rough, but may convey to the English reader something of the true spirit of the Japanese without always diverting his attention to some peculiarity of the rendering’s bodily form. As I myself have endeavoured to supply the third type of translations, I may be allowed to enlarge a little on the attitude of mind of one making the attempt.

M. Bergson, in his inimitable book on laughter, says, “Where lies the comic element in this sentence, taken from a funeral speech and quoted by a German philosopher: ‘He was virtuous, and plump’? It lies in the fact that our attention is suddenly recalled from the soul to the body.” The sudden intrusion of the body, particularly the imperfect or ill-managed body, is the source of most of the comic element in human life.

Hence, recognising this fatal pitfall, I have felt it essential to make the _body_ of my translations as little irritating and noticeable as possible, while at the same time preserving, as far as the language will allow, complete truthfulness to the spirit of the original. All my sympathies are with the translators in class No. 2, and were our universe not organised in the humorous way that M. Bergson has pointed out, I should have ranked myself with them, and attempted to give only a literal rendering of the Japanese. But such translations never allow us for a moment to forget the English body of the original Japanese spirit, because the body they give it is out of joint, abnormal in our eyes, and therefore it absorbs our attention or renders ridiculous the hints it conveys that the spirit it encloses may have aspired to soar.

Let me illustrate by quotation--

Dickins’s[4] most scholarly and valuable translation keeps one’s attention always in the realm of intellectual interest, and it is his intention to be strictly in accord with the original. His version is partly in prose and partly in this form--

“across the surf he upon the shipway oareth, gentle the skies are, the spring-winds softly blowing-- what tale of days shall his bark in the cloudy distance sail o’er the sea-plain till Hāruma he reacheth.”

With this it is interesting to compare Aston’s translation, which is largely prose. The lines quoted above from Dickins are rendered by Aston[5] as follows: “With waves that rise along the shore, and a genial wind of spring upon the ship-path, how many days pass without a trace of him we know not, until at length he has reached the longed-for bay of Takasago, on the coast of Harima.”

This play of _Takasago_ is often quoted and is much beloved by the Japanese, and some of the verses from it are invariably chanted at the wedding festivals. The beginning of the famous chorus is thus rendered by Aston (p. 209)--

“On the four seas Still are the waves; The world is at peace. Soft blow the time-winds,[6] Rustling not the branches. In such an age Blest are the very firs, In that they meet To grow old together.”

Captain Brinkley’s translation of _Ataka_ is in somewhat similar style to the preceding, a mixture of prose and “verse” of short lines like the following example--

“From traveller’s vestment Pendent bells ring notes Of pilgrims’ foot-falls; And from road-stained sleeves Pendent dew-drops presage Tears of last meetings.”

To the same school of translators belongs Mr. Sansom,[7] though he is slightly less literal than Mr. Dickins. He renders the exquisite fragment from the _Sakuragawa_ as follows--

“The waters flow, the flowers fall, forever lasts the Spring, The moon shines cold, the wind blows high, the cranes do not fly home. The flowers that grow in the rocks are scarlet, and light up the stream. The trees that grow by the caverns are green and contain the breeze The blossoms open like brocade, the brimming pools are deep and blue.”

All the time we are reading this the magic of suggestion is working, and we would fain let our minds float away into the land of spring; but our attention is brought plumping down to the bodily presentation of the thoughts and our intellect is set at work to see how the lines might have been made to scan, or to run in some form of rhythm. So long as they do just scan and have a passable rhythm, we do not think of the poetical qualities of the translation, but when they jolt us along our attention is constantly diverted from the higher theme to the lesser subject of English grammar and versification.

So that I have endeavoured in my translations to make the lines run smoothly enough to be read aloud without much irritation; and though I have doubtless not fully succeeded, I have tried to give them as much verbal beauty as was possible within the narrow limits afforded me by the literal Japanese meaning. In this my collaborator, Prof. Sakurai, has held the rein on me at times when I would have liked to run away with some poetical conceits, and it is owing entirely to his tireless exertions that the result has a fair degree of accuracy. I must relieve him of too great a responsibility, however, for I confess that here and there where it seemed to me imperative to put in a word or two more than was in the original in order to convey the necessary impression to an English reader, or where several lines of metre would have been upset if he wouldn’t let me have the word I wanted, I have just taken the bit between my teeth and run away from him. But this has happened seldom, and on the whole I think it will be found that the English version bears close comparison with the Japanese.

Now a word regarding the type of verse that is used by those who translate into a recognisable English form. Of these the translations in Prof. Chamberlain’s _Classical Poetry of the Japanese_ of four of the finest and most renowned _utai_ of the _Nō_ are models to be considered by any later translator. Prof. Chamberlain puts the “words” into prose, and the “songs” into rhymed verse.

The chorus at the end of the _Robe of Feathers_ is a good example of this easily flowing verse (p. 146)--

“Dance on, sweet maiden, through the happy hours! Dance on, sweet maiden, while the magic flow’rs Crowning thy tresses flutter in the wind Rais’d by thy waving pinions intertwin’d! Dance on! for ne’er to mortal dance ’tis giv’n To vie with that sweet dance thou bring’st from heav’n: And when, cloud-soaring, thou shalt all too soon Homeward return to the full-shining moon, Then hear our pray’rs, and from thy bounteous hand Pour sev’nfold treasures on our happy land; Bless ev’ry coast, refresh each panting field, That earth may still her proper increase yield!”

But to my ear such consistently rhymed verse does not convey any suggestion of the sound of the Japanese chants. As Captain Brinkley has it, “by obeying the exigencies of rhyme, whereas the original demands rhythm only (‘the learned sinologues, their translators’), have obtained elegance at the partial expense of fidelity.” It is true that a less formal versifying, such as I have used, does not represent truly the Japanese effect either--nothing can; but it seems less out of harmony with its character than do the rhyming stanzas. Then also I found that short rhymed lines render one liable to strain the sense a little in order to make things fit in. Longer lines, without such regular rhyming, allow one more play, and this enables one to follow the words suggested directly by the Japanese. Since then also Prof. Chamberlain’s own taste has changed and he has “gone over to the camp of the literalists.”

In two of the pieces I have put the “words” into a longer metre to indicate the difference between them and the “songs.” But I find this makes an added difficulty for any one reading aloud, without much enhancing the accuracy of the whole, so that in _Kagekiyo_ I have made no distinction between the various parts of the text. In listening to a Japanese _Nō_ performance one could not really tell where the “words” left off and the “songs” began, and also, as I have previously noted (p. 24), the poems are connected to the prose by irregularly dispersed poetical lines. Finally,

In Conclusion

as none of the prose in the least corresponds to our prose, and as it is not given in the ordinary speaking voice of the Japanese, but is always specially intoned, it seems to me much more suitable and harmonious to render the whole _utai_ in verse of various kinds.

Even this little book has been the task of years, despite its many imperfections. It was undertaken primarily because I delighted in the _Nō_, and the labour of bringing it through the Press was rendered lighter by the hope that it might give pleasure to the English reading public to see, even “through a glass darkly,” something of the beauty of this unexplored literature. I have already described the effect these plays have on the Japanese and on me. That I have caught perhaps an echo of their spirit I am encouraged to think, because on the two occasions when one or other of these translations have been read to audiences it has been reported to me that several of those who heard them were in tears. That strikes the right note. For with all their literary richness and their descriptions of beautiful scenes and of heroic deeds, the ground note of the _Nō_ is human tragedy. Their tragedy is of the fundamental, elemental kind that depends upon the very nature of our being, that turns upon the terrible fact which the trivialities of the material world so readily delude us into forgetting--that we are fleeting as a drop of dew.

MARIE C. STOPES.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _The Sumida River_ formed the subject of a paper read before the Royal Society of Literature. The translators acknowledge with gratitude the kindness of the Council in allowing them to republish the major part of the verse in the form in which it appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature in 1909.

[2] _Trans. Roy. Soc. Literature_, _London_, vol. 29, pp. 156-7.

[3] _Trans. Asiatic Soc. Japan_, vol. 35, pt. 4. 1908.

[4] _Primitive and Mediæval Japanese Texts_, p. 399.

[5] _History of Japanese Literature_, p. 207.

[6] The land and sea breezes, which blow regularly only in fine weather.

[7] _Trans. Asiatic Soc. Japan_, vol. 38, pt. 3, p. 174.

THE MAIDEN’S TOMB

Authorship of the Play

This piece is now commonly attributed to _Kiyotsugu_, and is supposed to have been produced at the end of the fourteenth century. Its exact date is not known, but Kiyotsugu was born in 1354 and died in 1406; yet it is most likely that he was an adapter and not the original author of the _utai_, parts of which were probably written long before his time. The play is still one of the most important of the _Nō_, and is indeed a test piece, as parts of the _Shite’s_ chanting are exceptionally difficult. A foreigner cannot judge of this, but from my own point of view it is perhaps the finest of all the _Nō_.

Outline of the Story

The play is based on a story told--or rather written down, for it was probably told long before then--a thousand years ago in the _Yamato Monogatari_, or _Tales of Japan_. It is the story of the love of two men for one woman, and the fatal consequences thereof for all concerned.

UNAI, a maiden living near Ikuta, was loved by two equally gifted men. On the selfsame day they each sent her a letter declaring their passion, but she could not decide between them, fearing the anger of either rejected suitor. Her father determined that the one who shot most accurately should win her, but in the contest the two men pierced the same wing of the same bird with their arrows. This bird was a mandarin duck, a creature whose lifelong faithfulness to its mate was proverbial in Japan. The girl felt bitterly that she was to blame for the death of the bird and the misery its mate endured, as well as for the strife between the two men. Hence she drowned herself. Then the two men, visiting her tomb, were filled with remorse, and killed each other beside her grave. This, however, only added to the girl’s guilt, and much of the play is taken up with vivid descriptions of her agonising torments in the eight hells believed in by popular Buddhism.

The play opens with a traveller Priest passing the village of Ikuta on his way to the capital. It is early spring, and the village maidens are out gathering the first green shoots of the “seven herbs,” which used to be eaten at the beginning of the year as a kind of ceremony. The city folk make this herb-gathering a pleasure picnic, but the poor girls going out of necessity into the biting cold of January are envious of those who are better off in cities. The spirit of the long dead UNAI has joined them in the form of a young girl, but she takes part in the opening dialogue. The “Maiden’s (_i. e._ UNAI’S) Tomb” is one of the famous places in the district, and the Priest asks to see it. UNAI’S spirit remains behind when the village girls have been driven home by the cold, and she conducts the Priest to the tomb, conversing with him, and telling him the story of UNAI. Her spirit’s materialisation as a maiden then vanishes, and UNAI appears as a Ghost, for whom the Priest prays. The Ghost laments over the tomb, and the Chorus gives expression to her longing for the human world. The Ghost expresses her thankfulness for the prayer uttered by the Priest, and recounts her agonising sufferings in the eight hells. The Priest makes some effort, but not a very determined one, to inculcate in the poor Ghost the higher Buddhistic belief that all these things, even the hells, are delusions, and her mind could free herself of them. The play closes with the Chorus telling of her miseries in hell.

Comments on the Play

In its construction, and its presentment of the story as a whole, this play resembles strikingly one of the beautiful tryptic colour prints of Japan, in which an exquisite, softly coloured garden or woodland foreground, shaded with delicate mists, brings into intense relief the vivid figure of an armoured warrior going out to battle. In the opening passages of this play we have the soft, misted foreground, with the tender green shoots of the early spring-time. One sees the thin, frosted ice pushing aside the sprouting plants, and the scene is enhanced and the description of it embroidered by poetic references to the details of the picture. But among the maidens is one, outwardly like others, so that they do not recognise the difference themselves, but yet one who is a tragic figure, a temporary reincarnation of a spirit from hell. Then with the Priest the spirit converses, and paints in vivid colours this central figure, for whom the whole scene forms but the setting.

To us in the West the moral attitude of the play seems very strange. From her initial ‘sin’ in being sufficiently beautiful to attract the love of two men, and her guilt in causing the death of the mandarin duck (in a Buddhistic country no small crime), we see crime after crime laid upon the maiden’s head. And all the time in our eyes she appears utterly innocent of everything save a too ready yielding to a tender conscience, and a willingness to take blame upon herself. Hapless maiden, how different is this treatment of hers from that accorded in the West to charming girls. In Old Japan not all the eight hells would have been accounted sufficient for Helen of Troy.

In its religious attitude we see the popular beliefs of Buddhism contrasted with the higher form of the same religion. The circumstantial details of the hells and punishments were believed in by the common folk, but as the Priest says (on p. 49) all was delusion, both in the world and in heaven or hell, and the soul could escape from its torments by a recognition of this higher fact.

If only thou wouldst once but cast away The clouds of thy delusions, thou wouldst be Freed from thy many sins and from all ills.

THE MAIDEN’S TOMB[8]

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

The Maiden UNAI (really her spirit temporarily incarnated as a maiden) (_Shite_)

Two of the Village Maidens (_Tsure_)

A Priest (_Waki_)

The Ghost of the Maiden UNAI (_Nochi-jite_)

Chorus

SCENE

The fields of ONO near the hamlet of IKUTA in Settsu, in the early spring.

[_The PRIEST enters_]

PRIEST

Far through the country has my journey lain, Far through the country has my journey lain, And to the capital I speed my way.

I, a priest, am from the country, from the Western districts coming.[9] To the capital, which hitherto my eyes have never seen.

The paths along the coast are manifold, The paths along the coast are manifold, That on this journey I have traced, and oft My way has lain by boat across the sea. Over the sea and mountains stretching wide I watched the sun rise up and set again, And now I reach Ikuta which I know Only by name as in Tsu province fair, The hamlet of Ikuta now I reach.

SPIRIT AND MAIDENS

Green shoots we gather, young green shoots of spring, And here in Ono by Ikuta blows The morning breeze so chill, so chill and strong It turns and billows out our flapping sleeves.[10]

MAIDENS

While in the distant mountains, on the pines The snow has even yet not disappeared.

SPIRIT AND MAIDENS

Oh, near the Capital the time has come To gather in the fields the shoots of spring. It makes our hearts glad just to think of that.

SPIRIT

But from the Capital this place is far,

MAIDENS

And we are country folk and therefore live A humble life here by Ikuta’s sea. Our lives and work are of the lowliest And to the field of Ono every year Without the thought of pleasure do we come.[11] The footmarks of the many village folk That go to gather the young shoots of spring Have left wide tracks across the snowy field.

And tread a path, where else there would be none. And tread a path, where else there would be none.