Anthology of Japanese Literature/Poetry and Prose in Chinese
Poetry and Prose in Chinese
Longing to attack the southern barbarians
[Directed against the Spanish and Portuguese soldiers and missionaries, who had arrived in Japan from the south.]
False religions delude the land with a ceaseless clamor.
I would strike the barbarian tribes, but the time comes not.
When will the great roc rise and southward soar?
Long have I waited the wind of his ten-thousand-mile wings.
The rainy season
How many days of spring rain since I have seen the sun?
Yet I delight in the new pools that shine before my porch.
Last year the burning drought continued through the fall.
Even in river towns I heard the water-seller’s cry.
Dutch ships (1818)
In Nagasaki Bay, where sky and sea meet to the west,
At heaven’s edge a little dot appears.
The cannon of the lookout tower sounds once;
In twenty-five watch stations, bows are bared.
Through the streets on all sides the cry breaks forth:
“The redhaired Westerners are coming!”
Launches set out to meet their ship, we hear the drums echo;
In the distance signal flags are raised to stay alarm.
The ship enters the harbor, a ponderous turtle,
So huge that in the shallows it seems sure to ground.
Our little launches, like strung pearls,
Tow it forward amid a clamorous din.
The barbarian hull rises a hundred feet above the sea,
The sighing wind flapping its banners of felt.
Three sails fly amid a thousand lines,
Fixed to engines moving up and down like well-sweeps.
Blackskinned slaves,[1] nimbler than monkeys,
Scale the masts and haul on the lines.
The anchor drops with shouts from the crew;
Huge cannon bellow forth again and again their roar.
The barbarian heart is hard to fathom; the Throne ponders
And dares not relax its armed defense.
Alas, wretches, why come they to vex our anxious eyes,
Pursuing countless miles in their greed what gain?
Their ships pitiful leaves upon the monstrous waves,
Crawling like gigantic ants after rancid meat.
Do we not bear ox-knives to kill but a chicken,
Trade our most lovely jewels for thorns?[2]
Weeping for Tatsuzō: today spring ended
[On the death of his small son.]
Spring is gone, the boy is gone;
Two griefs this day.
Spring returns.
And this dead child?
Flowers of illusion one moment bewitch the eye—
How toys the crafty Creator with men!
Next year in the eastern fields when I search the paths of spring,
Who will carry the wine gourd and follow the old man?
Hearing of the earthquake in Kyoto (1830)
By post news from the capital, terrible beyond recall:
“This month, the second day, earthquakes from dusk to dawn.
Seven days and nights the tremors, until the earth must sunder.
We beseech in tears the sky.
Of ten houses nine destroyed;
Families cower in the streets as roof tiles shower down….”
Of my home no word.
Dumbly I scratch my head and gaze
East toward my home on the Kamo banks:
The youngest clinging to my frail wife,
They flee to the river sands,
Fearful for the abandoned house,
While stone embankments topple,
Laying the willow roots bare.
Through deep tides to distant flats
Which way escape?
The eldest boy wades the stream,
The youngest on his nurse’s back.
From the nest upturned though the eggs be spared,
The mother sickens with care, bearing alone a family’s burden.
How can I face you again?
I speed this letter back,
And wait an answer that may never come.
Your death or life unknown,
In this chaos whom shall I entreat?
When dread fate crushes the multitudes,
How can I ask of him or her? …
I watch the clouds hurrying north.
Dragons of the sea-rain howl as,
Trembling in dark fear,
I beat out the bars of this long dirge.
No title
[An attack on the Shogunate]
You, whose ancestors in the mighty days
Roared at the skies and swept across the earth,
Stand now helpless to drive off wrangling foreigners—
How empty your title, “Queller of Barbarians”!
A song of history: Peter the Great
He pushed back the eastern borders three thousand miles,
Learned the Dutch science and taught it to his people.
Idly we sit talking of our long dead heroes—
In a hundred years have we bred such a man?
On hearing that the port of Shimoda has been opened to the foreigners
For seven miles by the river hills the dogs and sheep forage.[3]
The hues of spring visit the wastes of quake-ridden earth.
Only the cherry blossoms take not on the rank barbarian stench,
But breathe to the morning sun the fragrance of a nation’s soul.
I sought to drive back the clouds, with these hands sweep clear the evil stars,
But the ground beneath me faltered, I plunged to Edo Prison.
Idiot frogs fret at the bottom of their well;
The brilliance of the great moon falters on the horizon.[4]
I await the death sentence; from home no news.
In my dreams, the ring of swords; I slash at sea monsters.
When the wind and rain of many years have cloaked my stone in moss,
Who will remember this mad man of Japan?
The Biography of Snowflake
Rai Sanyō wrote this biography of Snowflake (Oyuki), a character famed in Osaka song and story, at the request of a friend who had come into the possession of a collection of her poems. Snowflake died about 1803.
Snowflake was a lady swashbuckler of Osaka. It was in Osaka that General Hideyoshi built his fortress, and it remains a city of spirited and prodigal people who love to affect a rough and ready manner. Many citizens of Osaka have made names for themselves as cavaliers, but Snowflake was the only woman among them. She was the daughter of the mistress of a wealthy merchant, but from an early age was brought up by the Miyoshi family, who were also rich tradesmen. The Miyoshi family adopted a son whom they wished to marry to Snowflake, but she despised the boy as a puny weakling, and would have none of it. At this time she took a vow never to marry. When her foster father died, she inherited the estate.
By nature Snowflake was of a high-spirited, gallant disposition. She devoted little attention to business affairs, but studied instead calligraphy and painting with the Master of the Willow Stream Garden, and took lessons in swordsmanship and judo. She was pale, large, and portly, with great strength in her limbs. Two women attendants named Tortoise (Okame) and Mountain Peak (Oiwa)—both of whom were very strong and brave—constantly followed Snowflake about. At this time she had just turned sixteen, and her two companions were likewise in the bloom of their beauty. Young idlers and ruffians meeting them on the street would often tease the girls and challenge them to a battle. At such times Snowflake would glance meaningfully at her attendants, and they would thereupon knock the boys to the ground, often so hard that they could not get up again.
The place called Snake Hill in the southern suburbs was at this time very wild and deserted, and even in the daytime no one dared walk there. Snowflake once took a short cut through the spot when two robbers came upon her and tried to seize her sash, but she knocked them flat. In no time the story got around, and everyone stayed out of her way.
Snowflake, not having a husband, was ambitious to become a lady-in-waiting and to be admitted to the inner palace. Her excellent calligraphy won her a post as clerk in the palace for five years, where she was engaged in recording past events of the court. When she gave up this post, she shaved her head and became a nun, living in the Moon River Temple next door to the Temple of the Heavenly Kings. Snowflake always wore white clerical robes, but continued as before to go wandering about with her female companions.
Once when the temple was having an unveiling of the inner shrine and a great crowd of men and women had come to worship, it suddenly began to rain. Snowflake immediately bought over a thousand umbrellas which she distributed, one to a person. On the occasion of another great ceremony at the temple, she bade the priest in charge of music to have the ceremony performed with the utmost splendor. When someone asked her the reason, she replied, “Today is the two hundredth anniversary of the death of my ancestor, Prime Minister Hidetsugu!” She also presented secretly a sum of money to the Hōkō Temple, asking that it be used as a personal offering to the spirit of General Hideyoshi. She was always giving herself such absurd airs.
Her fortune eventually ran out, and she built a little house in the village of Namba where she lived out the rest of her days. She bought a coffin and hung it up by the gate, and spent all day drinking with her friends nearby. One day she went out in the hot sun and dropped dead in the street. The villagers, recognizing her, carried her body into the shop where she had always bought her wine, and rushed off to inform her household. Her corpse was prepared and then laid away in the coffin. They buried her at the Temple of the Secret Spring in Namba. She was seventy-five when she died. A marker carved like snowflakes was set up for her, along with stones in the shape of a tortoise and a mountain peak, which are still there. For this reason people say that her two companions were buried with her.
The story of Snowflake cannot, of course, be taken as a model of conduct. But in her time there were women who conducted themselves like men, while today we see only men who behave as women. I have hoped herein to divine the rise and fall of Fortune and to elicit, perhaps, a sigh.
- ↑ Javanese servants of the Dutch.
- ↑ I.e., are not all the alarms and defense measures of the government unnecessary, and are we not losing by trading with the foreigners?
- ↑ To many Japanese of this period the meat-eating Westerners were no more than reeking animals. The author was a Buddhist priest.
- ↑ The frogs refer to the shortsighted statesmen of the Shogunate; the moon to the powerless Emperor in Kyoto.