Five Poems from Manyoshu
translated by Ad Blankestijn
(1) Song, by Emperor Yuryaku
your basket, with your pretty basket,
your trowel,
with your pretty trowel,
girl picking herbs
on this hill:
tell me your house,
tell me your name.
in the sky-filling Land of Yamato,
it is I who rules wide and far,
it is I who reigns wide and far,
so let it be me who tells you
my house and my name
komo yo mikomochi
fukushimo yo mibukushimochi
kono oka ni na tsumasu ko
ie kika na norasene
soramitsu Yamato no kuni wa
oshinabete ware koso ore
shikinabete ware koso imase
ware kosaba norame
ie o mo na o mo
篭もよ み篭持ち 堀串もよ み堀串持ち この岡に 菜摘ます子 家聞かな 告らさね そらみつ 大和の国は おしなべて 我れこそ居れ しきなべて 我れこそ座せ 我れこそば 告らめ 家をも名をも
(2) Climbing Mt Kagu, by Emperor Jomei
and when I climb up to look at the land
on the plain of the land
smoke rises and rises
on the plain of the sea
the sea gulls rise and rise
what a splendid land
the dragonfly island
the Land of Yamato
Yamato ni wa murayama aredo
toriyorou ame no Kaguyama
noboritachi kunimi wo sureba
kunihara wa keburi tachitatsu
unahara wa kamome tachitatsu
umashi kuni zo akizushima
Yamato no kuni wa
大和には 群山あれど とりよろふ 天の香具山 登り立ち 国見をすれば 国原は 煙立ち立つ 海原は 鴎立ち立つ うまし国ぞ 蜻蛉島 大和の国は
Yearning for Emperor Tenji, Lady Nukata
While waiting for you,
my heart is full of longing -
the bamboo blind
of my lodging sways,
as the autumn wind blows.
kimi matsu to
a ga koi oreba
waga yado no
sudare ugokashi
aki no kaze fuku
君待つと我が恋ひ居れば我が宿の簾動かし秋の風吹く
On Looking at Mount Fuji
by Yamabe no Akahito
Since the divisionof heaven and earth,
it has stood godlike,
towering and noble,
rising in Suruga ,
the lofty peak of Fuji.
When I gaze afar
across the high plain of heaven,
the wandering sun -
all its beams blotted out,
the shining moon -
all its light lost to view,
the white clouds
fear to drift over it,
and in all seasons
snow falls upon it.
I shall tell about it
and pass on the word
of Fuji's lofty peak.
Envoy
Going out on Tago bay,
when I look,
it is pure white:
on Fuji's lofty peak
snow is falling.
ametsuchi no wakareshi toki yu
kamusabite takaku tafu toku
Suruga naru Fuji no takane wo
ama no hara furisakemireba
wataru hi no kage mo kakurai
teru tsuki no hikari mo miezu
shira kumo mo iyuki habakari
toki jiku zo yuki wa furikeru
kataritsugi iitsugi yukamu
Fuji no takane wa
Tago no ura yu
uchi-idete mireba
mashiro ni zo
Fuji no takane ni
yuki wa furikeru
天地の 別れし時ゆ 神さびて 高く貴き 駿河なる 富士の高嶺を 天の原 振り放け見れば 渡る日の 影も隠らひ 照る月の 光も見えず 白雲も い行きはばかり 時じくぞ 雪は降りける 語り継ぎ 言ひ継ぎ行かむ 富士の高嶺は
田子の浦ゆうち出でて見れば真白にぞ富士の高嶺に雪は降りける
Otomo no Yakamochi
My spring arbor
in crimson gleam -
on the path where
a young woman steps in view,
peach blossoms shine down.
haru no sono
kurenai niou
momo no hana
shitateru michi ni
idetatsu otome
[Feather-Decorated Screen Panels of Beauties Under Trees
(Torige ritsujo no byobu), 8th c., Japan (Shosoin repository) - poem 5]
Just as in the case of China with the Classic of Poetry, Japanese literature begins with an anthology of beautiful lyric poetry, and not with epic poems about men bent on war and destruction as the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad, the Aeneid, the Beowulf, the Edda, and the Mahābhārata (although that last work also contains philosophical material as the Bhagavad Gita) - to name just a few. Clearly, the rice paddy based civilizations of East and South-East Asia were more peaceful and serene than the violent cultures of, for example, Europe, where warlike tales proliferated. In contrast, China and Japan both have poems about soldiers who complain about their hardship, not narratives about warriors who are praised for their capacity to slay countless enemies. The Elegies of Chu from China contains an elegy on the soldiers who lost a battle and whose dead souls have to be pacified.
The Manyoshu (literally "Collection of a Myriad Leaves") is the oldest extant collection of Japanese poetry, compiled sometime after 759 CE, the year from which the last datable poem in the collection stems. The collection includes poems from the mid-7th c. to mid-8th c. Unlike later Japanese anthologies, the Manyoshu was not created by imperial order, but by private initiative. The court poet and government official Otomo no Yakamochi (a great number of whose own poems are included in the anthology) is generally accepted as either the compiler, or the last of a series of compilers.
Manyoshu contains 20 volumes and more than 4,500 waka poems, varying from songs at public banquets and trips, and love songs, to funerary songs. These songs were written by people of various status, from the Emperor down to anonymous soldiers. The number of anonymous poems comprises almost half of the collection; among the 561 named poets are 70 women.
The poems are divided into four periods. The early period comprises poems dating back to legendary times, beginning from the reign of Emperor Yuryaku (r. 456-479). In the second period, the last part of the 7th c., the focus is on court poet Kakinomoto no Hitomaro. The third period brings together poems from the years 700-730, including such well-known poets as Yamabe no Akihito, Otomo no Tabito, and Yamanoue no Okura. In the last period, 730-760, the focus is on the above mentioned poet/compiler Otomo no Yakamochi.
The Manyoshu is one of the greatest monuments of Japanese literature.
Notes on the Poems Cited
(1)
The first poem cited above is also the first poem in the Manyoshu. It has been attributed to the late 5th c. Emperor Yuryaku, perhaps because it is a love poem and Yuryaku was known in legend as a great lover. But the diction of the poem is too new for it to date from the 5th c. It is possibly a later adaptation of an old courtship song, containing folk elements. Note that asking the house and name of a young woman was in fact a proposal of marriage (or lovemaking). As it is the emperor who rather emphatically makes that request, while boasting of his might, one could say there is a certain amount of "power harassment" included.
The maiden, presumable the daughter of a powerful local family, is engaged in the spring ritual of collecting herbs and green shoots that would become a courtly New Year rite associated with regeneration. For further explanation, see my comments on Poem no 15 by Emperor Koko in the Hyakunin Isshu.
In this poem we also encounter a makurakotoba, a so-called "pillow word," an ancient epithet of which the precise meaning is often not clear anymore, but which adds grandeur and venerability. In this poem it is the term "sora mitsu", "sky-filling" or perhaps "sky-seen," which is always paired with Yamato.
(2)
The second poem, ascribed to Emperor Jomei (r. 629-641), is about a "land-looking" (kunimi) ritual, in which the sovereign would climb a mountain to look over the land and affirm its prosperity as well as his own power over it. This was also a ritual spectacle meant to promote prosperity and avert misfortune. Mt Kagu is a sacred mountain (at about 150 meters in fact more a hillock!), one of the famous Three Mountains of Yamato, which during the Asuka period were located close to the imperial palace. For more information, see my discussion of this topic in Poem 2, by Empress Jito, in the One Hundred Poems, One Poem Each series. Yamato is not only the Province of Yamato (present-day Nara Prefecture), but also a poetic indication for the whole of Japan - as the court was established in Yamato, it was the cultural center of ancient Japan.
(3)
The third poem is by Lady Nukata (c. 638-690s), who had a relationship with Prince Oama (the later Emperor Tenmu) - she even had a daughter by him - , but then seems to have entered the service of his elder brother Emperor Tenji - a situation to entice fantasies about a triangular relationship. It is a sensitive and lyrical poem about a woman yearning for her lover to arrive. But what arrives first is the autumn wind, as a sort of premonition of that lover - perhaps bringing as much excitement as the actual visit.
(4)
Together with Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, Yamabe no Akahito (fl 724-737) is considered as the best poet of the Manyoshu. We know almost nothing about his life, but from his poems it can be inferred that his strength was in the description of landscape. The poem cited above is the first poem in the Manyoshu dedicated to Mt Fuji. In the 8th c., Mt Fuji - although now the symbol of Japan - was located in the "eastern provinces", far from the Nara capital in Yamato. It can be read as a land-looking poem like our second poem above, written with the purpose to draw majestic Mt Fuji closer to the Nara court. The poem describes Mt Fuji in mythical terms. It ends with an envoy (a single tanka poem) which is a variant version of Poem 4 in the One Hundred Poems, One Poem Each series.
The fifth and last poem cited above is by Otomo no Yakamochi (718-785), one of the Manyoshu compilers, who served at court but also as provincial governor of Etchu (present-day Toyama Prefecture). The poem quoted, composed at Etchu, is one of Yakamochi's most famous works. It was written on the first day of the third month of the year 750, when the peach trees in his garden were blossoming. The poem reminds us of a popular genre of painting in East Asia, that of "a beautiful woman under a tree" - there is one such painting in the Shosoin repository in Nara (see above photo). That one was painted in Japan, but the genre originated in China during the Tang Dynasty as other examples show (such as a painting in the MOA Museum of Art). When the poet looks at peach trees blossoming in his garden (perhaps reminded of the Chinese poet Tao Yuanming's story about Peach Blossom Spring) a young woman suddenly stands on the garden path in the gleam of the peach blossoms, a gleam which even reaches the shade under the trees. Is she real or is she a peach nymph?
Translations of the Manyoshu:
A Waka Anthology, Volume One, the Gem-Glistening Cup, by Edwin A. Cranston (Stanford, 1993)
Traditional Japanese Literature, An Anthology Beginnings to 1600, ed. Haruo Shirane (Columbia, 2007)
The Manyoshu, the Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai Translation of 1,000 Poems (Columbia, 1965)
Love Songs from the Manyoshu, tr. Ian Hideo Levy, comment by Ooka Makoto (Kodansha International, 2000)
Online Japanese text in The Japanese Text Initiative.
Photos:
Lady Under a Tree: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons