certainly that the English mind is differently rooted from the Japanese mind, even in the matter of poetry which is said to have no East or West. When I appear to unkindly expose Mr. Porter’s defects (excuse my careless use of word) to the light, that is from my anxiety to make this Japanese poetry properly understood. To take a poem or two from his book at random:
Uzumibi ya
Kabe ni wa kyaku (not kaku) no
Kage-boshi.Basho.
Mr. Porter translates it as follows:
“Alas! My fire is out,
And there’s a shadow on the wall—
A visitor, no doubt.
I should like to know who would ever think of the above as poetry, even poor poetry, in his reading of it in one breath; what does “no doubt” (which the original hasn’t) mean except that it rhymes with the first line; and the rhyme cheapens the poetry at least to the Japanese mind from the reason of its English conventionality. The first line of the original is not “my
