Part 4

THE _minmin-zemi_ begins to sing in the Period of Greatest Heat. It is called "_min-min_" because its note is thought to resemble the syllable "_min_" repeated over and over again,--slowly at first, and very loudly; then more and more quickly and softly, till the utterance dies away in a sort of buzz: "_min--min--min-min-min-minminmin-dzzzzzzz_." The sound is plaintive, and not unpleasing. It is often compared to the sound of the voice of a priest chanting the _sutras_.

VII.--TSUKU-TSUKU-BOSHI.

ON the day immediately following the Festival of the Dead, by the old Japanese calendar[28] (which is incomparably more exact than our Western calendar in regard to nature-changes and manifestations), begins to sing the _tsuku-tsuku-boshi_. This creature may be said to sing like a bird. It is also called _kutsu-kutsu-boshi_, _choko-choko-uisu_, _tsuku-tsuku-hoshi_, _tsuku-tsuku-oishi_,--all onomatopoetic appellations. The sounds of its song have been imitated in different ways by various writers. In Izumo the common version is,--

Tsuku-tsuku-uisu, Tsuku-tsuku-uisu, Tsuku-tsuku-uisu:-- Ui-osu Ui-osu Ui-osu Ui-os-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-su.

[28] That is to say, upon the 16th day of the 7th month.

Another version runs,--

Tsuku-tsuku-uisu, Tsuku-tsuku-uisu, Tsuku-tsuku-uisu:-- Chi-i yara! Chi-i yara! Chi-i yara! Chi-i, chi, chi, chi, chi, chiii.

But some say that the sound is _Tsukushi-koishi_. There is a legend that in old times a man of Tsukushi (the ancient name of Kyushu) fell sick and died while far away from home, and that the ghost of him became an autumn cicada, which cries unceasingly, _Tsukushi-koishi!--Tsukushi-koishi!_ ("I long for Tsukushi!--I want to see Tsukushi!")

* * * * *

It is a curious fact that the earlier semi have the harshest and simplest notes. The musical semi do not appear until summer; and the _tsuku-tsuku-boshi_, having the most complex and melodious utterance of all, is one of the latest to mature.

VIII.--TSURIGANE-SEMI.[29]

THE _tsurigane-semi_ is an autumn cicada. The word _tsurigane_ means a suspended bell,--especially the big bell of a Buddhist temple. I am somewhat puzzled by the name; for the insect's music really suggests the tones of a Japanese harp, or _koto_--as good authorities declare. Perhaps the appellation refers not to the boom of the bell, but to those deep, sweet hummings which follow after the peal, wave upon wave.

[29] This semi appears to be chiefly known in Shikoku.

III

JAPANESE poems on semi are usually very brief; and my collection chiefly consists of _hokku_,--compositions of seventeen syllables. Most of these _hokku_ relate to the sound made by the semi,--or, rather, to the sensation which the sound produced within the poet's mind. The names attached to the following examples are nearly all names of old-time poets,--not the real names, of course, but the _go_, or literary names by which artists and men of letters are usually known.

* * * * *

Yokoi Yayu, a Japanese poet of the eighteenth century, celebrated as a composer of _hokku_, has left us this naive record of the feelings with which he heard the chirruping of cicadae in summer and in autumn:--

"In the sultry period, feeling oppressed by the greatness of the heat, I made this verse:--

"Semi atsushi Matsu kirabaya to Omou-made.

[The chirruping of the semi aggravates the heat until I wish to cut down the pine-tree on which it sings.]

"But the days passed quickly; and later, when I heard the crying of the semi grow fainter and fainter in the time of the autumn winds, I began to feel compassion for them, and I made this second verse:--

"Shini-nokore Hitotsu bakari wa Aki no semi."

[Now there survives But a single one Of the semi of autumn!]

Lovers of Pierre Loti (the world's greatest prose-writer) may remember in _Madame Chrysantheme_ a delightful passage about a Japanese house,--describing the old dry woodwork as impregnated with sonority by the shrilling crickets of a hundred summers.[30] There is a Japanese poem containing a fancy not altogether dissimilar:--

Matsu no ki ni Shimikomu gotoshi Semi no koe.

Into the wood of the pine-tree Seems to soak The voice of the semi.

[30] Speaking of his own attempt to make a drawing of the interior, he observes: "Il manque a ce logis dessine son air frele et sa sonorite de violon sec. Dans les traits de crayon qui representent les boiseries, il n'y a pas la precision minutieuse avec laquelle elles sont ouvragees, ni leur antiquite extreme, ni leur proprete parfaite, _ni les vibrations de cigales qu' elles semblent avoir emmagasinees pendant des centaines d'etes dans leurs fibres dessechees_."

A very large number of Japanese poems about semi describe the noise of the creatures as an affliction. To fully sympathize with the complaints of the poets, one must have heard certain varieties of Japanese cicadae in full midsummer chorus; but even by readers without experience of the clamor, the following verses will probably be found suggestive:--

Ware hitori Atsui yo nari,-- Semi no koe! --BUNSO.

Meseems that only I,--I alone among mortals,-- Ever suffered such heat!--oh, the noise of the semi!

Ushiro kara Tsukamu yo nari,-- Semi no koe. --JOFU.

Oh, the noise of the semi!--a pain of invisible seizure,-- Clutched in an enemy's grasp,--caught by the hair from behind!

Yama no Kami no Mimi no yamai ka?-- Semi no koe! --TEIKOKU.

What ails the divinity's ears?--how can the God of the Mountain Suffer such noise to exist?--oh, the tumult of semi!

Soko no nai Atsusa ya kumo ni Semi no koe! --SAREN.

Fathomless deepens the heat: the ceaseless shrilling of semi Mounts, like a hissing of fire, up to the motionless clouds.

Mizu karete, Semi wo fudan-no Taki no koe. --GEN-U.

Water never a drop: the chorus of semi, incessant, Mocks the tumultuous hiss,--the rush and foaming of rapids.

Kageroishi Kumo mata satte, Semi no koe. --KITO.

Gone, the shadowing clouds!--again the shrilling of semi Rises and slowly swells,--ever increasing the heat!

Daita ki wa, Ha mo ugokasazu,-- Semi no koe! --KAFU.

Somewhere fast to the bark he clung; but I cannot see him: He stirs not even a leaf--oh! the noise of that semi!

Tonari kara Kono ki nikumu ya! Semi no koe. --GYUKAKU.

All because of the Semi that sit and shrill on its branches-- Oh! how this tree of mine is hated now by my neighbor!

This reminds one of Yayu. We find another poet compassionating a tree frequented by semi:--

Kaze wa mina Semi ni suwarete, Hito-ki kana! --CHOSUI.

Alas! poor solitary tree!--pitiful now your lot,--every breath of air having been sucked up by the semi!

Sometimes the noise of the semi is described as a moving force:--

Semi no koe Ki-gi ni ugoite, Kaze mo nashi! --SOYO.

Every tree in the wood quivers with clamor of semi: Motion only of noise--never a breath of wind!

Take ni kite, Yuki yori omoshi Semi no koe. --TOGETSU.

More heavy than winter-snow the voices of perching semi: See how the bamboos bend under the weight of their song![31]

[31] Japanese artists have found many a charming inspiration in the spectacle of bamboos bending under the weight of snow clinging to their tops.

Morogoe ni Yama ya ugokasu, Ki-gi no semi.

All shrilling together, the multitudinous semi Make, with their ceaseless clamor, even the mountain move.

Kusunoki mo Ugoku yo nari, Semi no koe. --BAIJAKU.

Even the camphor-tree seems to quake with the clamor of semi!

Sometimes the sound is compared to the noise of boiling water:--

Hizakari wa Nietatsu semi no Hayashi kana!

In the hour of heaviest heat, how simmers the forest with semi!

Niete iru Mizu bakari nari-- Semi no koe. --TAIMU.

Simmers all the air with sibilation of semi, Ceaseless, wearying sense,--a sound of perpetual boiling.

Other poets complain especially of the multitude of the noise-makers and the ubiquity of the noise:--

Aritake no Ki ni hibiki-keri Semi no koe.

How many soever the trees, in each rings the voice of the semi.

Matsubara wo Ichi ri wa kitari, Semi no koe. --SENGA.

Alone I walked for miles into the wood of pine-trees: Always the one same semi shrilled its call in my ears.

Occasionally the subject is treated with comic exaggeration:--

Naite iru Ki yori mo futoshi Semi no koe.

The voice of the semi is bigger [_thicker_] than the tree on which it sings.

Sugi takashi Saredomo semi no Amaru koe!

High though the cedar be, the voice of the semi is incomparably higher!

Koe nagaki Semi wa mijikaki Inochi kana!

How long, alas! the voice and how short the life of the semi!

Some poets celebrate the negative form of pleasure following upon the cessation of the sound:--

Semi ni dete, Hotaru ni modoru,-- Suzumi kana! --YAYU.

When the semi cease their noise, and the fireflies come out--oh! how refreshing the hour!

Semi no tatsu, Ato suzushisa yo! Matsu no koe. --BAIJAKU.

When the semi cease their storm, oh, how refreshing the stillness! Gratefully then resounds the musical speech of the pines.

[Here I may mention, by the way, that there is a little Japanese song about the _matsu no koe_, in which the onomatope "zazanza" very well represents the deep humming of the wind in the pine-needles:--

Zazanza! Hama-matsu no oto wa,-- Zazanza, Zazanza! Zazanza! The sound of the pines of the shore,-- Zazanza! Zazanza!]

There are poets, however, who declare that the feeling produced by the noise of semi depends altogether upon the nervous condition of the listener:--

Mori no semi Suzushiki koe ya, Atsuki koe. --OTSUSHU.

Sometimes sultry the sound; sometimes, again, refreshing: The chant of the forest-semi accords with the hearer's mood.

Suzushisa mo Atsusa mo semi no Tokoro kana! --FUHAKU.

Sometimes we think it cool,--the resting-place of the semi;--sometimes we think it hot (it is all a matter of fancy).

Suzushii to Omoeba, suzushi Semi no koe. --GINKO.

If we think it is cool, then the voice of the semi is cool (that is, the fancy changes the feeling).

In view of the many complaints of Japanese poets about the noisiness of semi, the reader may be surprised to learn that out of semi-skins there used to be made in both China and Japan--perhaps upon homoeopathic principles--a medicine for the cure of ear-ache!

* * * * *

One poem, nevertheless, proves that semi-music has its admirers:--

Omoshiroi zo ya, Waga-ko no koe wa Takai mori-ki no Semi no koe![32]

Sweet to the ear is the voice of one's own child as the voice of a semi perched on a tall forest tree.

[32] There is another version of this poem:--

Omoshiroi zo ya, Waga-ko no naku wa Sembu-segaki no Kyo yori mo!

"More sweetly sounds the crying of one's own child than even the chanting of the sutra in the service for the dead." The Buddhist service alluded to is held to be particularly beautiful.

But such admiration is rare. More frequently the semi is represented as crying for its nightly repast of dew:--

Semi wo kike,-- Ichi-nichi naite Yoru no tsuyu. --KIKAKU.

Hear the semi shrill! So, from earliest dawning, All the summer day he cries for the dew of night.

Yu-tsuyu no Kuchi ni iru made Naku semi ka? --BAISHITSU.

Will the semi continue to cry till the night-dew fills its mouth?

Occasionally the semi is mentioned in love-songs of which the following is a fair specimen. It belongs to that class of ditties commonly sung by geisha. Merely as a conceit, I think it pretty, in spite of the factitious pathos; but to Japanese taste it is decidedly vulgar. The allusion to beating implies jealousy:--

Nushi ni tatakare, Washa matsu no semi Sugaritsuki-tsuki Naku bakari!

Beaten by my jealous lover,-- Like the semi on the pine-tree I can only cry and cling!

And indeed the following tiny picture is a truer bit of work, according to Japanese art-principles (I do not know the author's name):--

Semi hitotsu Matsu no yu-hi wo Kakae-keri.

Lo! on the topmost pine, a solitary cicada Vainly attempts to clasp one last red beam of sun.

IV

PHILOSOPHICAL verses do not form a numerous class of Japanese poems upon semi; but they possess an interest altogether exotic. As the metamorphosis of the butterfly supplied to old Greek thought an emblem of the soul's ascension, so the natural history of the cicada has furnished Buddhism with similitudes and parables for the teaching of doctrine.

Man sheds his body only as the semi sheds its skin. But each reincarnation obscures the memory of the previous one: we remember our former existence no more than the semi remembers the shell from which it has emerged. Often a semi may be found in the act of singing beside its cast-off skin; therefore a poet has written:--

Ware to waga Kara ya tomuro-- Semi no koe. --YAYU.

Methinks that semi sits and sings by his former body,-- Chanting the funeral service over his own dead self.

This cast-off skin, or simulacrum,--clinging to bole or branch as in life, and seeming still to stare with great glazed eyes,--has suggested many things both to profane and to religious poets. In love-songs it is often likened to a body consumed by passionate longing. In Buddhist poetry it becomes a symbol of earthly pomp,--the hollow show of human greatness:--

Yo no naka yo Kaeru no hadaka, Semi no kinu!

Naked as frogs and weak we enter this life of trouble; Shedding our pomps we pass: so semi quit their skins.

But sometimes the poet compares the winged and shrilling semi to a human ghost, and the broken shell to the body left behind:--

Tamashii wa Ukiyo ni naite, Semi no kara.

Here the forsaken shell: above me the voice of the creature Shrills like the cry of a Soul quitting this world of pain.

Then the great sun-quickened tumult of the cicadae--landstorm of summer life foredoomed so soon to pass away--is likened by preacher and poet to the tumult of human desire. Even as the semi rise from earth, and climb to warmth and light, and clamor, and presently again return to dust and silence,--so rise and clamor and pass the generations of men:--

Yagate shinu Keshiki wa miezu, Semi no koe. --BASHO.

Never an intimation in all those voices of semi How quickly the hush will come,--how speedily all must die.

I wonder whether the thought in this little verse does not interpret something of that summer melancholy which comes to us out of nature's solitudes with the plaint of insect-voices. Unconsciously those millions of millions of tiny beings are preaching the ancient wisdom of the East,--the perpetual Sutra of Impermanency.

Yet how few of our modern poets have given heed to the voices of insects!

Perhaps it is only to minds inexorably haunted by the Riddle of Life that Nature can speak to-day, in those thin sweet trillings, as she spake of old to Solomon.

The Wisdom of the East hears all things. And he that obtains it will hear the speech of insects,--as Sigurd, tasting the Dragon's Heart, heard suddenly the talking of birds.

NOTE.--For the pictures of semi accompanying this paper, I am indebted to a curious manuscript work in several volumes, preserved in the Imperial Library at Uyeno. The work is entitled _Chufu-Zusetsu_,--which might be freely rendered as "Pictures and Descriptions of Insects,"--and is divided into twelve books. The writer's name is unknown; but he must have been an amiable and interesting person, to judge from the naive preface which he wrote, apologizing for the labors of a lifetime. "When I was young," he says, "I was very fond of catching worms and insects, and making pictures of their shapes,--so that these pictures have now become several hundred in number." He believes that he has found a good reason for studying insects: "Among the multitude of living creatures in this world," he says, "those having large bodies are familiar: we know very well their names, shapes, and virtues, and the poisons which they possess. But there remain very many small creatures whose natures are still unknown, notwithstanding the fact that such little beings as insects and worms are able to injure men and to destroy what has value. So I think that it is very important for us to learn what insects or worms have special virtues or poisons." It appears that he had sent to him "from other countries" some kinds of insects "that eat the leaves and shoots of trees;" but he could not "get their exact names." For the names of domestic insects, he consulted many Chinese and Japanese books, and has been "able to write the names with the proper Chinese characters;" but he tells us that he did not fail "to pick up also the names given to worms and insects by old farmers and little boys." The preface is dated thus:--"_Ansei Kanote, the third month--at a little cottage_" [1856].

With the introduction of scientific studies the author of the _Chufu-Zusetsu_ could no longer hope to attract attention. Yet his very modest and very beautiful work was forgotten only a moment. It is now a precious curiosity; and the old man's ghost might to-day find some happiness in a visit to the Imperial Library.

Japanese Female Names

[Decoration]

I

BY the Japanese a certain kind of girl is called a Rose-Girl,--_Bara-Musume_. Perhaps my reader will think of Tennyson's "queen-rose of the rosebud-garden of girls," and imagine some analogy between the Japanese and the English idea of femininity symbolized by the rose. But there is no analogy whatever. The _Bara-Musume_ is not so called because she is delicate and sweet, nor because she blushes, nor because she is rosy; indeed, a rosy face is not admired in Japan. No; she is compared to a rose chiefly for the reason that a rose has thorns. The man who tries to pull a Japanese rose is likely to hurt his fingers. The man who tries to win a _Bara-Musume_ is apt to hurt himself much more seriously,--even unto death. It were better, alone and unarmed, to meet a tiger than to invite the caress of a Rose-Girl.