SOURCE: "A Web in the Air," Monumenta Nipponica: Studies in Japanese Culture, Vol. 43, No.3, Autumn, 1988, pp. 332-52.

[In the following excerpt, Cranston evaluates McCullough's translation of the Kokinshu and directly compares some of her versions of particular poems with those of other translators.]

… People who have practiced translation, especially poetic translation, tend to have strong opinions on the subject; others couldn't care less. I belong to the former category. Miller, pp. 758-59, makes it clear that he regards literary scholarship and translation as sciences. I do not. Not at least in the sense 'science' has acquired since it came to be applied to the exact natural sciences, rather than to knowledge in general. 'The results of science,' Miller says, p. 758, 'whatever the field or discipline, are significant only to the extent that they prove themselves capable of being replicated.' I am sure that is true. But it is not true of literature, or of writing about literature, and emphatically it is not applicable to the translation of poetry. The mind of the scholar/translator, in its interpretive mode (when not dealing with mere fact), confronts the mind of the poet with imponderable consequences. No one could predict, no one could replicate Stephen Owen's. Omen of the World,⁴² to take a recent example. The essence of humanistic activity is precisely that it cannot be replicated. Not, that is, without simply copying what someone else has done.

I suspect that proponents of 'scientific' translation would prefer prose glosses, as literal as can be made. If so, they miss the whole challenge of recreating a poem. Admittedly, the enterprise has a special status, is dubious as a strictly scientific activity, and is fraught with aesthetic hazard. Fortunately, it's also fun. It's something extra the art historians and other historians, the linguists and other scientists don't have. For some of us, it does indeed provide adequate reason to learn a language: translation, the interface of two languages, remains the heart of the matter. Anyway, crusty critics who prefer their toast unbuttered will always be around to remind us of our self-indulgent ways. They serve an essential function: translators need a bad conscience.

McCullough puts forward her own views on translation in her 'Translator's Preface' (Anthology, p. vi). Hers is essentially an either-or position: 'A waka may be treated as a point of departure for a very different poem in another language, or an effort may be made to reproduce content, form, and tone as faithfully as possible.' She regards herself (pace Miller) as having followed the second method. Alas, she does not admit the real problem: an 'effort' must be made to produce a 'poem', or there will be no fidelity to her three criteria. Every translator who aims for more than a prose gloss will be compelled to produce a poem. Trying to be 'faithful' (which doesn't mean that the result won't be 'very different') should provide the 'net'—not a safety net, but the net of the tennis-match metaphor—that gives the game its rules; or the mold that the vigor of the poem tries to break and fly out of. The writer of a sonnet experiences tensions at least as great. As Joseph Brodsky has said, writing poetry provides a unique pleasure that once tasted cannot be forgone.⁴³ So does poetic translation. And the reason is the same: the experience pushes you into 'solutions'—words, thoughts, patterns—that are exhilarating, unpredictable. Impossible to replicate.

Arthur Waley had words of wisdom on this subject: the type of translation desirable depends on what is being translated.⁴⁴ Obvious, but true. People who are drawn to material-culture studies are naturally drawn to certain kinds of texts; those who are drawn primarily to poetry per se, to other kinds—waka among them. Both tend to extrapolate their preferences. My preference is for waka, a short poem highly susceptible to what might be called metamorphic translation. This poem creates itself anew in the crucible of the translator's mind more readily than most. Here I must part company with Waley, who considered it 'of all poetries the most completely untranslatable'.⁴⁵ I would rather say, one of the most rewarding. But I do agree with his dictum that 'whether the translator's style is contemporary or archaic does not matter.⁴⁶ What matters is that it work.

What would work for waka? Waka has a syllabic form, and that is a place to start. Over time, that syllabic rhythm will imprint itself in the translator's mind, and his translations come to mimic it. Short-long-short-long-long. That pulse, that sinuosity, is the 'groove' into which to pour Waley's 'quicksilver'.⁴⁷ But the syntax of the Japanese will fight against that of English, setting up a polar tension in this little tube. Out of that tension will come the best translations. And the imperative to run true to form will cut across literalistic fidelities, wherein lies the bad conscience referred to above. The choices shouldn't be too easy. But, since all this activity is a form of play, not too difficult, either.

Let's get down to cases. I shall start with a translation I have admired for many years, one by Donald Keene. The poet is Saigyō.

SSKS 12:1199

… Living all alone
In this space between the rocks
Far from the city,
Here, where no one can see me,
I shall give myself to grief.⁴⁸

I cannot imagine how this could be improved. It has the stamp of authentic taste and that simple inevitability that is the rarest of achievements. It also scans precisely, 5-7-5-7-7.

Here is another, by E. Bruce Brooks, whose little article 'A Yakamochi Sampler' has much to teach about taste, restraint, and natural flow in translation.

MYS 8:1567, Ōtomo no Yakamochi

… Hidden in the clouds
the geese call, passing over
  the fields of autumn
whose ripening crop of grain
is no more full than my love⁴⁹

If Brooks (who consistently scans with exactitude) and Keene show one possibility, Brower and Miner have long established another:

KKS 15:747, Narihira

… What now is real?
This moon, this spring, are altered
 From their former being—
While this alone, my mortal body, remains
As ever changed by love beyond all change.⁵⁰

On the scale of things, this must be accounted 'a very different poem'. It is a reading, expansive, conceptual, exuberantly Byronic, of Narihira's fragment of sad puzzlement.

McCullough's own practice has been illustrated in a number of examples already quoted. Her poems scan, and many read exceptionally well. It is impossible to know how much credit must be given to Stephen D. Carter, to whom McCullough acknowledges an indebtedness in her 'Translator's Preface' (Anthology, p. vi), but I think it would be remiss not to mention his name. McCullough has provided in the 'wit, refinement, and conservatism' by which she epitomizes the 'mature Kokinshū style' (Brocade, p. 207) the most apt description of her own manner. The following illustrates this style at its best:

KKS 11:484, Anonymous

… For love of someone
as remote as the heavens,
  I muse in the dusk,
my thoughts vagrant as dark clouds
forming their fleeting banners.

This version is excellent in the way that it scans (characteristically in an exact 5-7-5-7-7), flows, and beautifully restates the original. But it came about from dissolving the original and letting it reform: the miracle of metamorphosis. In the process the order of exposition and images has altered. 'Vagrant as dark clouds', strongly harmonic in sound and image, does not 'translate' anything, but transmutes the first two lines. 'Forming their fleeting banners', the real stroke of this version, interprets one word—hatate. Is this too 'a very different poem'? It is a poem, and that is what matters.

McCullough's might truly be called 'classical translations'—they sit firmly in their form. But she does allow herself elbow-room, as in the following, for a line that lives:

KKS 3:166, Kiyowara no Fukayabu

… Now that dawn has come
while the evening lingers
 on this summer night,
in what cloudy hostelry
might the moon have gone to rest?

'Hostelry' is of course derived from the verb yadoru ('to lodge').

The following permits itself even more latitude.

KKS 11:528, Anonymous

… Because of this love
my body has been transformed
 into a shadow,
but not, alas, the shadow
that follows your every step.

This is a clever translation, one that indulges in rendering one word, kage ('shadow'), twice. Those who think such licence improper will be displeased, but a poet might be pleased to be so rendered.

Rhythms are seductive, and 5-7-5-7-7 can be as seductive for the translator as 4-6 p 'ien-wen was for Tsura-yuki and his Chinese models. The following is a case in point.

KKS 12:574, Tsurayuki

… Might dew have settled
on the dream paths I followed
 throughout the long night?
My sleeves, drenched before I slept,
even now remain undried.

'Before I slept' is an interpretation handy for the scansion requirements but not called for otherwise. Over-fidelity to form can make for dull reading if it goes on too long; the perfect, smooth eggshell sometimes cries to be broken.

So let's open things up a little, and let out whatever creature lurks inside. First, two more of McCullough's 'classical' translations:

MYS 6:925, Yamabe no Akahito

… When night settles in,

black as leopard-flower seeds,
  a plover's ceaseless cry
sounds where hisaki trees grow
along the clean river beach.

This version (Brocade, p. 108) is so honest that it ruins the rhythm of the fourth line by refusing to English an obscure botanical item. But the makurakotoba proved irresistible. Nubatama, probably not less obscure than hisaki, is out on the prowl as 'leopard-flower seeds', one of the things Kenkyūisha's Wa-ei says hiōgi (whose black berries nubatama may have been) is the Japanese name of (the other being 'blackberry lily'). Suggestive of swart night, a black panther, the image is wildly inappropriate in its associations—and yet so right. It crops up again in another Man'yō poem translated by McCullough (Brocade, p. 147):

MYS 8:1646, Oharida no Azumamaro

… How sad it would be
were it to melt tomorrow!
 Let us drench ourselves
in the snow that has fallen
on this seed-black evening.

Ho hum, the leopard seems to be put off by the snow, leaving only the seeds. Nothing particularly wrong with the translation, though. But how well I recall the sudden release I experienced on a late, dark night when I turned the page to the following, by my student, the poet Carl Kay:⁵¹

HHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Snow!
                         SNOW!
          lets you and I go play in the
 snow
          we cant wait for tomorrow we gotta do it NOW
    anthracite night anthracite night in the
 anthracite night like leopards
    like leopards like leopards running like
 leopards like leopards LEAPING
           and landing
                           blackberries
 blackberries blackberries

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHYEAAHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

                                     are
you nice and wet
                                     I'm
nice and wet

A quite different poem? Or the late flowering of a leopard seed from the carboniferous forest of the mind, buried under the drifts of fallen years? Come, poet-translators, don't be afraid. The leopards won't bite—they're too happy leaping in the snow.

Mention of wild animals brings to mind McCullough's explanation of how kakekotoba work (Brocade, p. 221): 'It is as though one were to say in English, "The animal appeared to be a bare-faced lie had been told."' Precisely. She has provided a model that in fact will work in translation, although she seems not to entertain that possibility. Let's try a few 'bare-faced' translations. One has already been given, but I'll repeat it here, as my menagerie is still lean:

KKS 1:20, Tsurayuki

… A catalpa bow
Bent and strung to spring rain
 Falls at last today:
If it rains tomorrow too,
We'll be picking the young greens.
[EAC]

McCullough's version runs:

Today there fell rains
of spring, season recalling
 tautened birchwood bows.
If they but fall tomorrow,
we will be picking young greens.

Here are a couple of others:

SW 62; MYS 10:2211, Anonymous

… Once I had loosened
And retied my sister's sash
 I stood up to go
High across Tatsuta Mountain
The fall leaves had grown brighter.
[EAC]

Here the translation provides an expanded counterpart for the kakekotoba (tatsu ['get up to go'] / Tatsuta Mountain) rather than rendering it directly.

McCullough, Anthology, p. 307:

Autumn foliage
takes on deeper colors now
  at Mount Tatsuta,
whose name recalls how I leave,

having loosed and tied her sash.

This is fine, too, except that 'leave' makes an unintended (and unwanted?) engo. But the 'whose name recalls' technique for handling this kind of jo goes better, I feel, in chōka than in the compactness of tanka.

KKS 5:263, Mibu no Tadamine

… Once the rain begins,
Dress for the Wet Mountain now
 Wears fall leaves so bright
Even they who come and go
Shimmer to their very sleeves.
[EAC]

Again, the effect has been rendered, rather than the exact word.

McCullough, Anthology, p. 66:

 At Kasatoriyama—
Umbrella-Wielding in rain—
 the brilliant colors
of autumnal foliage
set travelers' sleeves aglow.

The first waka translations I recall reading by Helen McCullough were those in her 1968 Tales of Ise. Many were of Kokinshū poems translated again in the work under review. It may be of some interest to compare versions and see how her practice has altered.

KKS 1:8, Fun'ya no Yasuhide

… As I rejoice
In the sunlight of spring
I regret only
That my hair has grown
White as this snow.
In Tales of Ise
[Tol]

Rare is the fortune
of one who basks in the sun
 on this springtime day,
yet how can I not lament
that snow should whiten my head?
In Kokin Wakashā
[KW]

The unpretentious simplicity of the earlier version will probably appeal more to some readers. Obviously, rhythmic considerations have yet to enter in. For all its simplicity, the first version is not necessarily any closer to the original, which remains a tertium quid.

KKS 1:27, Henjō

… Pale green
Twisted threads
Piercing beads
Of white dew—
Willows in spring.
[Tol]

It twists together
leafy threads of tender green
  and fashions jewels
by piercing clear, white dewdrops—
the willow tree in springtime.
[KW]

The first version, in the imagistic tradition, is haiku-like, and effective in its way. Loyalty to the image will inevitably clash with the imperative to work out a connected statement in a set form.

KKS 5:292, Henjō

… Faithlessly
The tree
Chosen to shelter
A man hard-pressed
Sheds its scarlet leaves.
[Tol]

Autumn foliage
has scattered from the branches,
 leaving no shelter
where the lonely recluse
comes looking for a haven.
[KW]

Again, a modem minimalism and freedom have been sacrificed for a classical form.

KKS 12:554, Komachi

… When longing for him
Tortures me beyond endurance,
I reverse my robe—
Garb of night, black as
 leopard-flower berries—
And wear it inside out.
[Tol]

When longing for you
torments me beyond my strength,
 I reverse my robe,
raiment of seed-black night,
and put it on inside out.
[KW]

The adjustments here are quite interesting. 'Him' has changed to 'you', illustrating one of the many ambiguities of this poetry. The second line had been tautened and strengthened, the third left as it was, except for indentation and punctuation. The long explanatory fourth line has been curtailed and improved by leaving out the leopards. It is worth observing that the translator has not cared to insert a definite article in the revised line to achieve a perfect syllable count. Evidence that other criteria can override syllable count is always welcome. 'And wear it inside out' in line five is right, although a syllable short; 'and put it on …' is weak and puttery, seven syllables and all.

KKS 12:557, Komachi

… Tears that but form gems on sleeves,
Must come, I think,
From an insincere heart,
For mine, though I seek to repress them,
Gush forth in torrents.
[Tol]

 Tears that do no more
than turn into beads on sleeves
  are formal indeed.
Mine flow in a surging stream,
try though I may to halt them.
[KW]

The first version is prosy, and the second an improvement in that regard, although still a bit stiff in the joints. 'Formal' is an interesting translation of oroka ('foolish'). Perhaps a third attempt is in order.

 Shallow tears are they
That falling on a person's sleeves
 Form in little beads;
I cannot even dam the flood,
For mine are a gushing stream.
(EAC)

KKS 14:708, Anonymous

… Captured by the gale,
The smoke from the salt-fires
Of the fisher folk at Suma
Has drifted off
In an unforeseen direction.
[Tol]

 Yielding to the gale,
it has drifted to a place
  I never dreamed of—
the smoke rising from salt fires
tended by Suma seafolk.
[KW]

Here the second try has resulted in a real poem, and a fine one. The rhythm, pacing, and the s-alliteration of the last lines make it 'work'. The gasp of realization in the -keri ending is reflected in the strong middle line of the translation.

In her Tales of Ise McCullough used some of the most impressive of the Brower-Miner translations from Japanese Court Poetry, perhaps feeling it was futile to try to improve on them. With new confidence, she now provides her own versions of such poems as the following:

KKS 13:656, Komachi

… In waking daylight,
Then, oh then it can be understood,
 But when I see myself
Shrinking from those hostile eyes
Even in my dreams: this is misery itself.
[Brower-Miner]

 In the waking world
you must, I suppose, take care,
 but how it pains me
that you should keep out of sight
even in the realm of dreams.
[McCullough]

McCullough's translation follows the standard commentaries in understanding Komachi to be referring to her lover, but the Brower-Miner reading is not ruled out by anything in the original, and is psychologically more interesting.

KKS 15:797, Komachi

… Find mutability
In that being which alters without fading
  In its outward hue—
In the color, looks, and the deceptive flower
Of the heart of what this world calls man!
[Brower-Miner]

 So much have I learned:
the blossom that fades away,
  its color unseen,
is the flower in the heart
of one who lives in this world.
[McCullough]

McCullough has done something quite fine with this beautiful Komachi poem. Her restraint reads very well opposite the Brower-Miner flamboyance, and is touching and personal in a way that the 'philosophical' version cannot match. The first line is especially praise-worthy, bringing across as it does the effect of the ni zo arikeru (whereas Brower and Miner have again chosen an abstraction).

KKS 18:938, Komachi

… Misery holds me fixed,
And I would eagerly cut loose these roots
 To become a floating plant—
I should yield myself up utterly
If the inviting stream might be relied upon.
[Brower-Miner]

 In this forlorn state
I find life dreary indeed:
  if a stream beckoned,
I would gladly cut my roots
and float away like duckweed.
[McCullough]

McCullough's version avoids the fault of over-interpretation ('if the … stream might be relied upon') characteristic of this particular type of Brower-Miner translation, and her astringency creates a lower-keyed and more wistful effect. Her first two lines are rather 'explanatory', however. Neither version approaches the intricate complexity of the original.

KKS 19:1030, Komachi

… On such a night as this
When the lack of moonlight shades your way
 to me,
 I wake from sleep my passion blazing,
My breast a fire raging, exploding flame
While within me my heart chars.
[Brower-Miner]

 On those moonless nights
when I long in vain for him,
 love robs me of sleep
and my agitated heart
burns like a crackling fire.
[McCullough]

Brower and Miner's all-stops-out translation of this poem is a hard act to follow, to say the least. Every fire image is exploited to the full, and after the translators have laid claim to 'blazing … raging … exploding … chars', what is there left to work with? Their Komachi sets the world on fire. McCullough's is quieter, more passive; her fire burns only within her, in the last line. It is another case of more from less: not a tumultuous sexual inferno (on a hot tin roof?), but a lonely woman suffering in the dark from desire. How long it took to come up with the perfect last line is a question I would like to ask. Until that fell into place it must have been impossible to proceed. 'Within me my heart chars' needed an answer. It found one. Kokoro yakeori with its crackling k's also found its metamorphosis.⁵²

For some reason, McCullough refrained from using the most spectacular of the Brower-Miner versions in her Ise. Still, a comparison will be of interest:

KKS 15:747, Narihira

… What now is real?
This moon, this spring, are altered
 From their former being—
While this alone, my mortal body, remains
As ever changed by love beyond all change.
[Brower-Miner]

 Is this not the moon?
And is this not the springtime,
 the springtime of old?
Only this body of mine
the same body as before …
[McCullough]

The difference between the famous Brower-Miner formulation of this poem and McCullough's (and probably any other) is betrayed in the opening question. It is perverse not to focus on the moon, wither the poet bends his gaze. But since the poem is difficult only in regard to what it means, not what it says, why not follow the words? There is a distinction after all between aranu ('not exist') and naranu ('is not'). Narihira uses one of each, for his own paradoxical purposes. Let's allow him his paradox, and not be so ready to pluck out his mystery:

 Is there no moon?
And is this springtime not the spring
 Of times gone by?
My self alone remaining
Still the self it was before.…
(EAC)

The questions may be rhetorical, or they may be real. In the state of passionate confusion it is hard to be sure. We should leave them open, and imply no answer.

Since I do for the most part admire McCullough's translations, let me pick out a few more I think are particularly good:

KKS 3:145, Anonymous

… O cuckoo singing
amid the summer mountains:
 if you have feelings,
do not harrow with your voice
one whose heart already aches.

KKS 5:283, Anonymous

… Were one to cross it,

the brocade might break in two—
  colored autumn leaves
floating in random patterns
on the Tatsuta River.

KKS 11:519, Anonymous

… How painful it is
to cherish a secret love—
  but whom shall I tell
of my yearnings for someone
who never dreams that I care?

Ōe no Chisato (Brocade, p. 255)

… The sun of autumn
approaches the mountain rim.
  Walk along, red horse,
that my mother may see me
before night's shadows descend.

KKS 4:193, Chisato

… Autumn does not come
for me alone among men—
  yet I am burdened
with a thousand vague sorrows
when I gaze upon the moon.

KKS 13:661, Ki no Tomonori

… I shall not show it
as a safflower flaunts its red—
  not though I perish
of a love kept as secret
as streams in a hidden marsh.

All these please me by their liquid flow, their rhythm, pacing, elegant or otherwise appropriate tone, and the way they run smoothly into the tanka form. Kokoro and kotoba in balance, they are truly classical translations. Many others in these volumes are as good.

Others please me less. 'Minding of rock-creeping vines' for tsuno sahau, line one of MYS 2:135 (Brocade, p. 105) minds me uncomfortably of J. L. Pierson.⁵³ The end of the translation of this poem ('wept into my sleeve /…/ cried until the tears soaked through') is a touch too lachrimose for my taste. This is a bit too much for the simple tōrite nurenu ('were all wet through [with tears]'). Perhaps 'snuffle the snot in my nose' (Brocade, p. 111) is too Anglo-Saxon even for Okura's hana bishibishi ni (MYS 5:892, line 12). In MYS 12:3034 kiri is 'mist', not 'smoke', despite the speaker's flames (Brocade, p. 124).

KKS 13:644, Narihira

… Grieved that last night's dream
should have ended so soon,
 I try to doze off—
and now with what poignancy
its evanescence strikes home!

What interpretation lies behind the last two lines? The poem is supposed to be about a frustrated attempt to recapture the fragile moment of bliss by means of a dream. Anyway, 'strikes home' is too centered, sharp, and powerful for the vague feeling state involved.

KKS 9:411, Narihira

… If you are in truth
what your name seems to make you,
 I will put to you,
capital-bird, this question:
do things go well with my love?

The translation scans, but, alas: let's try to see if we can get it closer:

Well, let me ask you,
If you bear this as your name,
  Capital Bird:
Is the one for whom I long
Still there, or is she not?
[EAC]

Ari ya nashi ya to. More specifically, 'Is she alive, or is she not?' Is she is, or is she ain't?

KKS 16:861, Narihira

… Upon this pathway,
I have long heard others say,
  man sets forth at last—
yet I had not thought to go
so very soon as today.

This reads well, but fails in its responsibility to kinō kyō, the nugget of the poem. (It leaves out kinō altogether.) The orthodox interpretation of kinō kyō is as a unitary expression meaning 'these days'. This vitiates the poem, in my opinion. In any case, the words should be kept together. An unorthodox reading:

 It is a road
That we go on at the end—
 Oh, I had heard that,
But I never realized,
Yesterday, today.
[EAC]

KKS 14:724, Minamoto no Tōru

… Do you not know it?
You alone can set my heart
 astir with feelings

confused as moss-fern patterns
on cloth from Michinoku.

The first line of the translation is itself whole cloth, and quite unnecessarily so:

 Random-patterned cloth
From Shinobu in the Northland—
 Pray because of whom
Will the turnmoil now begin?
Surely not because of me!
[EAC]

KKS 19:1036, Tadamine

… Please do not object
if I come to visit you:
  it would be painful
were others to discover
how you deny me your bed.

The poem is based upon a jo presenting the image of a water plant called nenunawa (now called junsai, 'water shield'), impinging on the echoic nenu na wa… ('a name for not sleeping [with you]'). (The novelist Tanizaki describes this plant, and comments on both names, in his Yume no Ukihashi.)⁵⁴ McCullough's translation has let the jo sink to the bottom—it is nowhere in sight. The poem calls for a little more dokyō:

 In hidden marshes
Bedded under water grows
 The slumbrous roperoot:
Rootless must the rumor be
That I've never bedded you.
[EAC]

KKS 4:244, Sosei

… Can it be fitting
that none but I should stand here
  to feel emotion?
Wild pinks blowing where crickets
chirr in the gathering dusk!

'To feel emotion' fits the syllable count, but it is a curiously 'explanatory' rendering of aware to omowamu. 'Can it be fitting' is also wide of the mark. This is not an inquiry about propriety, but a cry for a kindred spirit. There is a feeling of a hammered-together translation here. And yūkage. yūgure!

  Am I then alone
In knowing what it is to sigh
  Over these wild pinks
Flowering where crickets chirr
In the evening light?
[EAC]

It is fairly amazing that two complete English translations of the Kokinshū should have appeared almost simultaneously. Whatever the respective translators may feel, the reader can only benefit from alternate versions of this classic anthology. Laurel Rasplica Rodd and Mary Catherine Henkenius have shown themselves more experimental than McCullough in their approach to translation. As the examples below will illustrate, they dispense with punctuation and substitute open spaces for pauses and breaks in the flow of prosody. The pauses are sometimes of their own making—they seem to be asking the reader to rest and meditate a while before proceeding. The effect takes getting used to, and perhaps I still have some way to go in that regard. Unquestionably, they are trying to reach the inner essence of the poem; with what success can be debated.

KKS 15:797, Komachi

… that which fades within
without changing its color
 is the hidden bloom
of the heart of man in
this world of disillusion
[Rodd-Henkenius]

  So much have I learned:
the blossom that fades away,
  its color unseen,
is the flower in the heart
of one who lives in this world.
[McCullough]

I admire the McCullough version in ways already mentioned. Yet Rodd-Henkenius show themselves to be more sensitive to the inner fading that the poem is about. Which having said, I am led to wonder what game, if any, Rodd-Henkenius are playing with 'within/without'. None, I suspect—'without' probably carries no double load. If it did, there would be a paradox: an outward color fading, yet not fading. If it does not, the placement of the two words is fortuitous, and a bit unfortunate. 'Of disillusion' is the kind of overly explanatory addition that, in principle, is best to avoid. It will be noted that Rodd-Henkenius also more or less adhere to 5-7-5-7-7, although to achieve it here, the 'rest' in the fourth line must be counted as one beat. There is considerable inconsistency in their practice in this latter regard.

KKS 1:1, Ariwara no Motokata

… spring is here before
year's end when New Year's Day has
 not yet come around
what should we call it is it
still last year or is it this
[Rodd-Henkenius]

 Springtime has arrived
while the old year lingers on.
 What then of the year?
Are we to talk of 'last year'?
Or are we to say 'this year'?
[McCullough]

Here is the notorious first poem of the Kokinshū, so roundly denounced by Masaoka Shiki.⁵⁵ Indeed, it would be hard to make a defense of the Kokinshū on the basis of this poem alone… As for the translations, McCullough surely has the better version, the layout of her final lines matching that of the original.

KKS 20:1078, Anonymous

… from Adachi in
far Michinoku comes this
  spindle bow as its
tips draw together silently
come to me now and always
[Rodd-Henkenius]

  If I should draw you,
as men draw mayumi bows
  from Michinoku,
pray yield to me forever—
but secretly, secretly.
[McCullough]

Of these two versions, I rather prefer Rodd-Henkenius, although it fails to render the seductive bed-time song of shinobi shinobi. The open spaces here create tensions that work quite well. And McCullough for some reason omits Adachi. But both versions interpose an 'as' when none is needed. This kind of zeugma-based jo can be rendered clean of simile:

  From famed Adachi
In far Michinoku come
  Bows of spindlewood:
When I draw you, bend to me,
Softly, softly, always bend!
[EAC]

KKS 15:782, Komachi

… it's over I know
for I've grown old and tiresome
  as the chill autumn
rains even his words of love
fade and wither like the leaves
[Rodd-Henkenius]

  Even your pledges,
leaves of words, have lost their green
  now that falling tears
dim my youth as drizzling rains
transform autumnal foliage.
[McCullough]

Were it not for the overdose of self-pity in the first two lines, I would prefer the Rodd-Henkenius version here, 'it's over I know' is a valiant attempt to do something echoic and otherwise effective with ima wa tote. But both versions fail again by stubbornly recasting Komachi's statement into an overt simile. It is not:

 Now that I am old
And fallen into years
 Of wintry rain,
The very foliage of your words
Is but a wrack of withered leaves.
[EAC]

KKS 12:605, Tsurayuki

… days pass into months
and still I have not touched my
 true white bow at night
drawn taut I tremble rising
resting unable to sleep
[Rodd-Henkenius]

  Sleepless in the night,
I rise and sink down again,
  my thoughts lingering
on the white spindlewood bow,
untouched after all these years.
[McCullough]

This is my favorite poem by Tsurayuki, and the one that tells me clear as clear that he was more than a skillful technician and an aristocratic arbiter of taste. I can think of no more powerfully erotic poem in the courtly tradition. The jo here has a seductive force that goes beyond mere technique, and strikes the underlayers of libido. The Rodd-Henkenius version is particularly masterful, its spacing creating almost unbearable tensions. The McCullough version is also full of passion, more plaintive and less breathless. Poems based on jo are the most fun to work with: there is an alternative universe in them waiting to be touched into life. The translators have been unable to resist. Neither could Tsurayuki. Nor can I:

 Hands have not touched,
Months and days gone by, white
 Spindletree bow:
Drawn taut, I quiver in the night,
Rising, sinking, far from sleep.
[EAC]

Notes

… ⁴² Stephen Owen, Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics: Omen of the World, University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.

Owen's essays on Chinese poetry in this volume are exceptionally rich in insights into the poetic process, and into how poems 'work'.

⁴³ 'One who writes a poem writes it because the language prompts, or simply dictates, the next line. Beginning a poem, the poet as a rule doesn't know the way it is going to come out; and at times he is very surprised by the way it turns out, since it often turns out better than he expected, often his thought carries further than he reckoned. And that is the moment when the future of language invades the present.… The one who writes a poem writes it above all because verse writing is an extraordinary accelerator of consciousness, of thinking, of comprehending the universe. Having experienced this acceleration once, one is no longer capable of abandoning the chance to repeat this experience.… '

Nobel Lecture, Stockholm, 1987, as excerpted in 'The Poets' Theatre Presents an Evening with Joseph Brodsky', 15 February 1988, Cambridge, Mass.

⁴⁴ Arthur Waley, 'Notes on Translation (1958)' in Ivan Morris, ed., Madly Singing in the Mountains: An Appreciation and Anthology of Arthur Waley, Harper & Row, New York, 1970, p. 152.

⁴⁵ Waley, 'The Originality of Japanese Civilization', in Madly Singing, p. 134.

Waley, like Reckert…, mentions the coplas of southern Spain in connection with waka.

⁴⁶ Waley, 'Notes on Translation', p. 162.

⁴⁷ 'An uta runs into its mould like quicksilver into a groove.' Waley, 'The Originality of Japanese Civilization', p. 334.

⁴⁸ Donald Keene, ed., Anthology of Japanese Literature, Tuttle, Rutland, Vermont, & Tokyo, 1955, p. 196.

⁴⁹ E. Bruce Brooks, 'A Yakamochi Sampler', in East-West Review, 3:1 (Winter 1966-1967), p. 83.

⁵⁰Japanese Court Poetry, p. 193.

⁵¹ Carl Kay, 'The Translation of Classical Japanese Poetry', Senior Thesis, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, 1978, p. 91.

Kay 'offer[s] "anthracite night" as an English phrase that approximates the kind of magical incantational effect that [nubatama no] might have had in the age of kotodama' (p. 90). He remarks that his translation is 'a bit looser [than Pierson's]' (p. 91).

For the record, Pierson's translation is as follows:

'(1/2) In the snow of this night (black as a nubafruit), / (3) come let us all get wet!/ (4/5) For the next morning, if it disappears, how regrettable it would be.'

J. L. Pierson, tr., The Manyôśû, Brill, Leiden, 1954, 8, p. 252.

Pierson's numbers in parentheses refer to corresponding lines in the original.

⁵² McCullough is amusing at the expense of her own achievement when, explaining why the Kokinshū compilers may have thought it best to include Komachi's poem with the haikaika …, or 'Eccentric Poems', she says, 'It was permissible to compare smoldering passion to the hidden fires in Mount Fuji, but a heart could not snap, crackle, and pop' (Brocade, p. 488).

⁵³ Pierson favors this formula for rendering metaphorical makurakotoba in his Man 'yōshū translations, for example, Manyôśû, 2, p. 78.

⁵⁴ Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, Yume no Ukihashi, in Tanizaki Jun 'ichirō Shū (Gendai Nihon no Bungaku 7), Gakushū Kenkyūisha, 1976, p. 374.

⁵⁵ In McCullough's quotation from the Brower article referred to … above: 'The poem is so silly that it fails to rise even to the level of vulgar wit, as if one were to say, "This child of mixed blood, born between a Japanese and a foreigner—are we to call it "Japanese," or should we call it "foreigner"?' (Brocade, p. 4).