SOURCE: “Five Poetic Sequences from the Man'yoshu,” in Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, Vol. XIII, No. 1, April, 1978, pp. 5-34.

[In the following essay, Cranston offers literary analyses of several series of poems found in the Manyoshu.]

Roy Miller has brilliantly demonstrated in his Footprints of the Buddha² that the arrangement of Japanese poetic sequences into artistically conceived patterns of association and progression antedates the era of the imperial anthologies. This paper is inspired by his work, and consists of a few footnotes to it. The sequences analyzed are drawn from the Man'yôshû, the eighth century anthology which contains most, but not all, of what we have from early Japanese poetry.

In the third month of 692, the sixth year of her reign, the express Jitô took members of her court on an excursion to the province of Ise. Not among her entourage was the poet Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, who stayed behind at the capital and wrote three poems in the conjectural mode. These have been preserved as Man'yôshû I: 40-42. Each presents an imagined scene of man or more precisely woman in nature, depicting the activities of the ladies of court on the shores of Ise. One of these ladies seems to have been a special friend of the poet. Hitomaro artfully devotes himself to his subject, letting his feelings emerge indirectly with hardly a whiff of sour grapes.

          Ami nö ura ni
Funanöri tsuramu
                    Wotömera ga
Tamamo nö tsutso ni
SiFo mituramu ka
          Out on Ami Bay
Where boats must now be launching,
          As the maidens board,
Up around their gemmy skirts
Will the salt-sea tide brim full?

MYS [Man’yôshû] I:40

This poem is cunningly made, based phonetically on altered repetition, with its ura, öri, ura, era, ura; its ami, amu, amo, amu. It firmly places the speaker at a useful distance from the scene by means of the double speculative-ramu. He can only imagine what goes on, innocent and deprived. Innocent certainly in comparison with the naughty tide that takes liberties of which he perhaps dreams. Amorous poetry may allow such familiarity to wind and waves. But the greatest interest of these five lines is how they form a miniature design: bay, boat, girls, skirts, tide, converging and diverging, with the girls in the middle where they belong, framed by expanding layers of man-made things and nature. The design is exquisite, the question ambiguous and only apparently naive, and the whole scene large, brisk, and sharply realized.

          Kusirö tuku
Tafusi nö tsaki ni
          KeFu mo ka mo
OFomiyaFitö nö
Tamamo karuramu
          On the braceleted
Arm of land Cape Tafushi
          Once again today
Are the ladies of court out gathering
The gemmy wrack of the sea?

MYS I: 41

Some time has gone by, at least in the poet's mind. Another day, another question about the scenes that occupy his thoughts. “Ladies” is an interpretation of the nonspecific Fitö in accordance with the opinion of Kojima, et al. in NKBZ.³ Marie Antoinette and her merry band amuse themselves at peasant games. Such romanticization of the life of the ama is a Man'yô staple. Poem 40 began with a place name. Here the place is preceded by a mock epithet, kusirö tuku, “braceleted,” modifying ta, “arm,” in Tafusi. A translation problem is always posed by this kind of thing, but that is for us, not Hitomaro, to fret about. Lest someone begin to mutter about “meaningless stylistic fripperies,” we may point out that kusirö tuku nicely decorates not only ta, but the female oFomiyaFitö, and that it resonates quite beautifully with the tama, “gem,” in tamamo. The poet confines himself to one speculative -ramu here, and relocates his questioning ka into line three, moving the subject down into line four. Otherwise the structure is quite similar to that of number 40. But the clever thing he has done to tie the two together is of course the use of tamamo, “gemweed,” a homophone of tamamo, “gemskirt.” The skirt, suitably elevated, has been established as the dominant image in number 40; thanks to juxtaposition it remains in the picture here: blue waves and sky, rugged headlands, white sand, brilliant red skirts (tucked up a bit?) worn by ladies who dangle glistening green gems of seaweed. Hitomaro must have been a bit green with envy himself.

          SiFosawi ni
Irago nö simabe
          Kögu Fune ni
Imo nöruramu ka
Araki simami wo
          In the brawling tides
Near the Isle of Irago
          The boats row out:
Might my darling be on board—
Around the island's rugged shore?

MYS I: 42

Here the poet shifts his concern from the many to the one. If the emotional distance is greatest in number 41, it is least here. The sequence concludes on its most personal note. Hitomaro seems suddenly alarmed, not merely bemused or envious. Nevertheless, he maintains the conjectural mode, and his artistry does not fail him. There is an onomatopoeic quality to this verse with its repeated sibilants that should not be overlooked. The word siFosawi itself is full of sea-sound, and gives a strong opening. Simabe and simamï echo it and each other. The woman⁴ is surrounded by these menacingly hissing sounds. Poem 42 balances 40 with its boating scene. The slightly amorous implications of number 40 are transmuted into lover's anxiety in 42. Poem 41 is by contrast more purely esthetic, and more tranquil. Thus we have a diminuendo followed by a crescendo. Not exactly jo-ha-kyû, but a pleasant sequence nonetheless. There is also a sense of movement, and a strong sense of place (though the geographical issues are predictably debatable), with a different location named in each poem. Irago is the western tip of Atsumi Peninsula, jutting out from the east across Ise Bay, and not really an island at all. But to approach it necessitated an exciting and dangerous sea voyage from the Ise coast. Its menacing shore is set off in the final line of the last poem by reversed syntax; we are left in the natural world, having moved on from Ami Bay past Cape Tafushi. The voyage and we are left in suspense on the wind-swept sea. Might it be pushing our reading too far to see here a treatment of the voyage as metaphor for life? We cannot forget Hitomaro's magnificent chôka, MYS II: 220, “On finding a dead man among the stones on the island of Samine.”

Book II of the Man'yôshû begins with a group of four poems attributed to Iwanohime, consort of Ôsazaki, the monarch known more commonly as Emperor Nintoku. Since Iwanohime and Ôsazaki lived around the end of the fourth century, should we give credit to this attribution we would be dealing with the oldest poems in the Man'yôshû. The poems are in regular tanka form, and although no doubt they belong to an early stratum of Man'yô verse, a date in the seventh century would be more likely for their composition than one in the fourth. They are an anonymous set on the theme of a woman's longing for her absent lover. As such they nicely balance the sequence by Hitomaro just considered.

          Kimi ga yuki
Kënagaku narinu
          Yama tatune
MukaFë ka yukamu
Mati ni ka matamu
          My lord's journey
Has lengthened into many days:
          Shall I go to him,
Go and meet him in the hills,
Or wait and keep on waiting?

MYS II: 85

The woman states her situation and ponders aloud over what she should do. The poem is structured in three discrete units (5-7, 5-7, 7); each line ends with a verb, and three of the verbs are in final form. It is a flat-footed, “naive” structure, based on repeated patterns, and whether or not “old” in fact, gives the impression of artless antique simplicity and sincerity. The woman has already gained the sympathy of those who are moved by such simplicity.

          Kaku bakari
KoFïtutu aradzu Fa
          Takayama nö
IFane si makite
Sinamasi monö wo
          Rather than this—
This constant yearning of love—
          Better had it been
To pillow on the mountain crags
And die, my head among the stones.

MYS II: 86

We move at a bound from indecision to despair. Depth and intensity of feeling are vastly increased, and the poem flows quickly from beginning to adversative end, a technique which matches the message: this thought overwhelms, it is not something to be examined. The topos is “better death than longing.” The strong imagery of desolation in the mountains links the verse to that major Man'yô genre, poems on dead bodies found in the wilds. At the same time takayama links it to yama in poem 85. Searching for her lover, the woman may die in the mountains, but better so than this. A choice between the alternatives stated in poem 85 is implied.⁵

          Aritutu mo
Kimi wo ba matamu
          Utinabiku
Wa ga kurokami ni
Simo nö öku made ni
          Here shall I abide
And wait the coming of my lord,
          Until the streaming
Banner of my long black hair
Is stiff and white with frost.

MYS II: 87

Two things have happened here. One is that the translator has started to take liberties (“banner,” “stiff and white”); the other, more important, is that the woman has made up her mind, and tells us so in ringing tones. No cry of despair, this poem is a strong assertion of fidelity. We begin to see how these “primitive” poems elaborate the shifting moods of the human mind not unskillfully—in a manner that makes us think of the mental wave-pattern in The Tale of Genji. They do this through their arrangement in a sequence. Poem 87 echoes in its aritutu, “abiding,” the koFïtutu, “yearning,” of number 86. It is also structured in a reversed syntax pattern, 5-7 being the syntactic conclusion of 5-7-7. This extends the adversative ending monö wo of poem 86. In utinabiku we have what should probably be considered a makurakotoba, i.e., an epithet, as “streaming” is no doubt presented here as an essential rather than a situational attribute of hair. The mode is declarative, the tone archaicly simple and “genuine.” The last two lines are clumsy with their repeated ni, but this artlessness paradoxically strengthens the effect of the poem. The poem of course is not artless, for it employs the device of an epithet, the rhetorical type of extreme reference (the “till all the seas gang dry” pattern), and the trope of double meaning in simo (frost/white hair). All this in a verse that manages to sound simple and sincere is not bad.

          Aki nö ta nö
Fo nö Fë ni kiraFu
          Atsakatsumi
IduFë nö kata ni
Wa ga koFï yamamu
          On the autumn fields,
Over ripening spears of grain,
          Drifts the morning mist:
Whither will it ever vanish,
My love, and be no more?

MYS II: 88

The concluding member of the quartet is undoubtedly the loveliest, with its gentle imagery of drifting mist, and its pensive farewell. We have returned to introspection, and to questioning, this time rhetorical, and a new note of resignation has been struck. Thus there is both balance and progression: indecision (85), despair (86), decision (87), resignation (88). Poem 88 employs the device of the jo or preface, a longer analogue to the preposited epithet in number 87, thus linking it to 87 as the latter did to 86 through reversed syntax. The 5-7-5 of poem 88 constitutes the jo, and line four is the swing phrase, going with what comes before and with what follows. A skillfully used jo such as this one explores the possibilities of analogy in a seamless joining. The restored F's give an aural pattern which is better experienced than described, certainly a prominent one. Poem 88 also mirror-reverses 87, in that its rhetoric is based on analogy to something transient, rather than to the extremity of endurance through time. The point, differently arrived at, is the same: a love, a loyalty, a longing that never fade.

Since these four poems must be considered anonymous, we do not know whether they were all composed at once by one person, or not. Poem 85 was drawn from the Ruijû karin, an anthology edited by Yamanoue no Okura, according to a note in the Man'yôshû text. The other three poems are not so noted. There are also variants, differently attributed, for 85 and 87. The possibility exists that we have here the work of what Roy Miller has called a “sequence architect,” somebody who put poems, presumably not of his composition, into an esthetically pleasing order.

Book XVI of the Man'yôshû text contains several anonymous poems, both chôka and tanka, dealing with folk or legendary characters, combined with prefaces in Chinese prose: the so-called yuen aru uta or “poems with a story.” Of these, numbers 3791-3802 form a sequence having to do with an old bamboo-cutter and nine mysterious maidens. The preface tells how the bamboo-cutter climbs a hill on a spring day and discovers nine maidens boiling broth. They tease him, and he retorts in a very long chôka and two hanka, numbers 3791-3793, glorifying his youth and admonishing his tormentors to show respect for age. The chôka is chock full of material culture items, and conveys well the garrulity and vanity of the old man. It employs metrical irregularities—groups of long and short lines—which together with its Confucian moralizing and general long-windedness have caused the whole sequence to be attributed to Yamanoue no Okura. The Chinese preface uses elegant balanced prose, including some phrases adapted from Yu-hsien-k'u, the spicy T'ang novelette so popular in Nara Japan. The ramifications of preface and chôka are interesting and many, but not to our purpose here. Translations of them are relegated to the appendix, enabling us to turn at once to the replies of the nine maidens in poems 3794-3802.

          Fasiki yasi
Okina no uta ni
          Obobosiki
Kökönö nö kora ya
Kamakëte woramu
          Dear oh dear oh dear,
What shall we nine maidens do—
          Silly as we are,
Shall we let ourselves be swayed
By this old man's song?

MYS XVI: 3794

Maiden one introduces the nine replies on behalf of all her fellows. Properly chastened by the old man, she exclaims Fasiki yasi, “oh dear,” as the old man himself had in his chôka. She asks the question which introduces the theme of submission, and applies the pejorative obobosiki, “dim, stupid, silly,” to herself and her companions. The poem divides into exclamation and question, 5 / 7-5-7-7, and is totally devoid of imagery. Its charm lies in its humility and impression of blushing confusion. Phonetically, the k consonants dominate, and patterns of kô and otsu-rui o's, with a's and i's especially in the exclamation. The effect of obobosiki / kökönö nö kora ya is perhaps beyond the reach of analysis, if not of speculation. Certainly the phonetic aspect of the verse is prominent. One need only get over one's squeamishness about extreme subjectivity in order to find the right terms of discussion for these matters, no doubt.

          Fadi wo sinöbï
Fadi wo modasite
          Kötö mo naku
Monö iFanu tsaki ni
Ware Fa yörinamu
          Enduring my shame,
Bearing my shame in silence,
          Without resistance,
Before even saying a thing,
I am going to submit.

MYS XVI: 3795

Maiden two answers the question in #3794, and begins the series of “submissions.” Yöru is the verb used, and it seems to mean something like “give in, rely on [the word of], obey.” Perhaps nothing so specific as “become his woman.” The poem is based on repetition, as flat-footed as can be: one-two, one-two, three, a little like a beginner's foxtrot. Again it is totally lacking in imagery or adornment of any kind. Its nouns are abstractions or generalizations: “shame,” “thing.” The verse is little more than a flat, prosaic statement. These girls are artless indeed.

          Ina mo wo mo
Fösiki manimani
          Yurutsubëki
Katati Fa miyu ya
Ware mo yörinamu
          Whether no or yes,
Anything at all he wants
          I shall not deny:
Can he see it in my face?
I too am going to submit.

MYS XVI: 3796

In this poem there are at least some obscurities—who will go along with whose desires, and who can read whose expression. Since these are poems of submission I have adopted what seems to me the most likely reading. But it is not one favored by Japanese scholars, who gloss, “We can see the face of the old man who will do whatever we want, whether we say no or yes; I too shall comply” (NKBT),⁶ or “All the others look like they'll leave it up to me whether or not to comply with the old man; I'll comply” (Kubota),⁷ or in some similar fashion. This verse too is based on repetition—ina mo wo mo, manimani—though less insistent than that in #3795. The manner continues to be flat and unadorned, with only the vague image of the “face.” The rhythm is 3-7-5-7/7, so that the last line stands out in what is obviously a refrain. Maidens two and three seem equally submissive, equally lacking in personality and poetic flair. We begin to feel the burden of a sameness.

          Sini mo iki mo
Oyazi kökörö tö
          Mutsubitesi
Tömö ya tagaFamu
Ware mo yörinamu
          Dying or living,
We all swore our hearts would be
          Bound into one—
How can friends like that fall out?
I too am going to submit.

MYS XVI: 3797

This poem closely echoes number 3796 in a way that I find interesting and pleasing. The first line is structured on a similar contrast of opposites, the second line like that in poem 3796 presents an identity or congruence, and is adverbial on the verb which occupies the entire third line, again as in the previous poem. Both fourth lines are questions—this one rhetorical. And the by now predictable refrain comes in at the end. The fourth maiden brings up the question of unanimity, thus escaping from an endless reiteration of individual submission with no change or development. Such are the verse's virtues, and they are totally those of juxtaposition. In itself, 3797 is arrant prose.

          Nani semu ni
TagaFi Fa woramu
          Ina mo wo mo
Tömö nö naminami
Ware mo yörinamu
          What good would it do
For me to go against the others?
          Whether no or yes,
I shall do just as my friends:
I too am going to submit.

MYS XVI: 3798

Maiden five continues her predecessor's plea for unanimity. Thus poems 3797 and 3798 belong together, just as do numbers 3795 and 3796, or rather more so. Poems 3796-3798 all consist of questions followed by final statements. Here the question is confined to lines 1-2, and the assertion is not limited to a choppy last line. This reapportioning of the basically identical structural elements saves the sequence from utter monotony, if only barely. There are more intricate links here, though, in that tagaFi relates to tagaFamu in 3797, ina mo wo mo harks back to the identical line in 3796, and naminami echoes manimani, also in 3796, both in sound and sense (“identically”/“just like”).

          Ani mo arazi
Onö ga mï nö kara
          Fitö nö ko nö
Kötö mo tukutsazi
Ware mo yörinamu
          There's no need for this.
Being the kind of girl I am,
          Unlike the others
I shall not go on wasting words:
I too am going to submit.

MYS XVI: 3799

In maiden six we have a determined individualist who will assert her uniqueness even when it doesn't exist. She submits like the others, but insists on appealing to disunity rather than unity. The others seem too disputatious, but she uses the same number of syllables, or actually more, as line one contains six before synaloepha takes over. The poem gains its impact, which is ironic as well as one of simple contrast, from its position after 3797-3798. The question of irony is interesting, for it demands that we consider the level of sophistication of poet and/or sequence architect. How clearly are we being asked to laugh at this maiden, more than at the others? Again, the interest of the poem is almost solely derived from its place in a sequence. There is little otherwise to distinguish it as poetry.

          Fadatsutsuki
Fo ni Fa na ide tö
          OmoFite aru
Kökörö Fa sirayu
Ware mo yörinamu
          Plumegrass in tassel,
Openly flaunting—not you,
          I said to my heart;
But my feelings now are known.
I too am going to submit.

MYS XVI: 3800

Hurray, at last a bit of technique! Fo, “tassel, head, spear, spike” is a metaphor, albeit a well established one, for “prominent, open, undisguised.” Fadatsutsuki, “tasseled pampas grass,” is a makurakotoba on Fo, a type which might be called an associative epithet, relating as it does to the vehicle of the metaphor. The whole phrase Fadatsutsuki Fo might be described as an expanded metaphor, or as an objective correlative. Whatever, it gives the poem life. We see here by contrast how dull endless simplicity can be. Here we have an image, some invention, and suddenly the poem is more deeply felt. The speaker is not unitary; she speaks to herself. She has personality. Thus the main function of this verse in context is to provide a bracing contrast. It does share the refrain, however, and kökörö Fa sirayu, “my heart is known,” harks back to katati Fa miyu ya, “is my face seen?” in #3796. Metrically the poem follows the pattern 5-7-5-7/7.

          Tsuminöye nö
Kïsino nö Fari ni
          NiFoFuredö
NiFoFanu ware ya
NiFoFite woramu
          Though I were stained
With the alder of Kishino
          In Suminoe,
I would not stain, not I—
Who from this time shall go stained!

MYS XVI: 3801

This is the smart sister. She drops the refrain and gives us a real poem. It has rhetorical riches and effective sound play. It has paradox, in fact a double paradox, which is something quite beyond the grasp of at least the first six speakers. The rhetorical situation is of emphasis through negative reference to the usual case, and then to herself. It ties in to the references to the alder of Suminoe in lines 28-31 of the chôka, and thus is more skillfully integrated than the other replies. The idea of the stained maid is an exciting one, involving a double literal-figurative sense of niFoFu—to take on coloration, and thus to lose one's (white) detached purity. The botanical image relates to the metaphor in the previous poem, bringing these two close together into a pair. Three inflections of the key verb give a forward-pressing pattern through altered repetition: positive-negative-positive. The rhythm flows quickly: we have left the flat-footed sisters far behind. The poem is not extraordinary in the total Man'yô context, but it surely is in this sequence, of which it serves as climax.

          Faru nö no nö
Sitakutsa nabiki
          Ware mo yöri
NiFoFiyörinamu
Tömö nö manimani.
          The under-grasses
Bending in the fields of spring:
          I too submit,
I am stained and shall submit,
Even as my friends have done.

MYS XVI: 3802

Then, and finally, there is this. The ninth maiden brings the sequence skillfully to a close by bridging the patterns of 3795-3799 and the innovations of 3800-3801. She continues the vividness and rhetorical complexity of the previous two verses by her natural imagery, and the use of a jo. The jo occupies the first two lines, and is disjunct—this is an equation-type structure, with no swing line. The analogy between bending grasses and yielding woman is a common one in the Man'yôshû. The speaker combines it with a reference to the metaphorical dyeing in 3801. But in addition she reintroduces the verb yöru from the now abandoned refrain, and uses it twice, once independently, and again in combining form with niFoFu. The refrain is transmuted, relocated, reasserted. Line four gives the assertion, and line five, echoing tömö nö naminami in 3798, but changing naminami to manimani as in 3796, is left as a reversed-syntax ending, bringing the sequence to a quiet close like a gently receding wave. Maiden nine has brought the best of everything together, and unanimity reigns.

A close reading of these nine poems reveals how they benefit from juxtaposition. Basically, the first six are plain and even insipid: the qualities of the last three stand out all the more clearly by contrast. We have ji and mon, not interspersed, but with the best saved for last. But even between the less interesting poems there are echoes and patterns which give esthetic pleasure. Poem 3794 introduces the theme. Poem 3795 introduces the refrain and the internal repetitions. Verses 3796-3797 form a structural pair, and 3797-3798 a thematic one (unity); 3798 also echoes 3796 in ina mo wo mo. Poem 3799 is the abrasive break in the harmony (assertion of difference). Verses 3800-3802 introduce imagery and figurative language: expanded metaphor (3800), paradoxical (negative) analogy (3801), positive analogy (3802). The final verse (3802) then ties the sequence together in the way already described. We may agree that Okura or some other “architect” has done something interesting with rather humble materials.

A more glamorous and polished boy-meets-girl sequence is found in Book V of the Man'yôshû. MYS V: 853-863 consists of a Chinese preface and eleven tanka. They have been attributed to Okura's friend Otomo no Tabito (665-731), to Okura himself, some to Okura and some to Tabito, and to various others. My feeling is that they are probably all Tabito's work. The series is certainly elegant enough for that connoisseur of Chinoiserie. The scene of the set is northern Kyûshû, where Tabito became Governor-General of Dazaifu in 728, and where Okura was serving as governor of Chikuzen province during the same years. The last three poems of the set are attributed in the text to “the old man, the Governor-General.” But the whole thing is a romantic fiction, and it seems likely that Tabito was playing the persona game, as Ki no Tsurayuki did later in Tosa nikki.

The prose preface, like that of the Taketori poems, looks back to Yu-hsien-k'u, and to such Chinese poems as Lo-shen fu by Ts'ao Chih (192-232). The situations of all these works are to this extent the same: a male traveler discovers one or more females out in the country, who may or may not be supernatural. The girls in Tabito's poems (if they are his) are discovered fishing in the Matsura River. They claim to be only fisher girls, but their speech in the preface is curiously Chinese. A translation of the preface will be found in Appendix B. In the eleven poems which follow, the girls are still somewhat mysterious, but if nymphs, are at least Japanese ones. The sequence is a series of exchanges, beginning with a verse by the wanderer.

          Atsari tsuru
Ama nö kodömo tö
          Fitö Fa iFedö
Miru ni sirayenu
UmaFitö nö ko tö
          Fisher girls, they say,
Daughters of the river folk—
          But with one glance
I know them for what they are:
Children of a highborn clan.

MYS V: 853

In the Chinese literary-linguistic context of the preface, the maidens had perhaps been hsien, “immortals.” Here the speaker declares them to be wellborn, umaFitö. There is a sly, self-satisfied flattery about the verse, a playful triumph which no doubt stems from the fact that the maidens have already identified themselves (in the preface). “Tell me your name, tell me your home,” says the speaker in MYS I: 1 in a similar situation. Getting her to tell is the premier pas qui coûte, equivalent to getting behind a woman's curtains in Heian times. This is not a terribly distinguished verse, but it has its points, one of which has just been mentioned. Then there are the o and ö clusters in lines two and five, the F's in line three, the generally choppy rhythm suddenly replaced by silky smoothness in line four (with no o's, ö's, or F's). There is a nice low-key word play between ama, “fisher,” and uma, “of quality”: “they say they are ama, but really they are uma.” This play is made more prominent by umaFitö being placed in a reversed syntax last line.

          Tamasima nö
Könö kaFakami ni
          IFe Fa aredö
Kimi wo yatsasimi
AraFatsadzu ariki
          Though we have a home
Upstream from here along this river
          Of Tamashima,
From bashfulness before our lord
We did not let him know of it.

MYS V: 854

This is the maidens' modest reply—en masse? Coyness answers the wanderer's flattery. We may recall that ama girls have a weakness for visiting courtiers. Matsukaze and Murasame come to mind; but even the goddess of the River Lo fell for a traveling man. The 5-7-5/7-7 structure of this verse, with a concessive in the middle line, ties it into a pair with the preceding poem. The concept is the same: both poems are based on contrast between true and false.

MaturagaFa
KaFa nö se Fikari
          Ayu turu tö
Tataseru imo ga
Mo nö tsutso nurenu
          Where Matsura River
River-shallows flash in the sun,
          Angling for trout
The darling girl stands in the stream,
Her skirts all wet along the hem.

MYS V: 855

This is the first of three poems under the title “three more poems by the wanderer.” It suddenly shifts to the descriptive mode after the declarative of the previous two. It presents a bright, sharp, charming image in straightforward syntax, in contrast to the concessives of numbers 853-854. We have the setting (flashing shallows), the activity (fishing), the image-detail (girl's skirt-edge). This latter will remind us of Hitomaro's MYS I: 40. There is already something sensuous about this bright, open, outdoor scene. The affectionate term imo (“sister/sweetheart”) is used, and we can discern the direction of the man's thoughts. The structure though not concessive is bi-polar (stream—girls), and there is a use of repetition in MaturagaFa / kaFa, as well as a prominence of a's (bright vowels?) and F's. Matsura and Tamashima are names for the same river.

          Matura naru
TamasimagaFa ni
          Ayu turu tö
Tataseru kora ga
IFedi siradzu mo
          Here in Matsura
Along Tamashima River
          Angling for trout
The young girls stand, alas,
I know not where to find their home.

MYS V: 856

Here we have a partial repetition of the previous poem, with an advance to an implied request for the girls' addresses. The poem is less descriptive, more pointed toward an end. Lines 1-2 echo the first lines of 854-855. Line three is identical to line three of 855, just as 853-854 were tied together at this point. Line four is almost identical to line four of 855. But line five, instead of the vivid descriptive detail of 855, is a statement of inner, mental fact—a declaration rather than a description. Lacking the descriptive details which gave life to its predecessor, the verse might be thought of as ji, not mon. One other thing begins to emerge about these piscatorial poems—the repeated mention of the ayu, the trout, provides an image in itself sensuous and of a hardly disguised sexuality.

          TöFotuFitö
Matura nö kaFa ni
          Wakayu turu
Imo ga tamotö wo
Ware kötsö makamë
          Waiting as for one
Far off, this Matsura River:
          Angling for young trout
The darling girl upon whose arm
I would be the one to pillow.

MYS V: 857

This poem is the climax of the sub-series; the speaker openly declares his desire. It is also the first to contain a makurakotoba (unless we choose to regard atsari tsuru in verse 853 as such), the mock epithet töFutuFitö, “a person far off,” which impinges on matu, “wait,” in the place name Matura. This mock epithet functions as an associational image—that of waiting for a far-off loved one. That this sequence is based on close echoes from poem to poem is by now evident. Line two echoes 855, line one, as well as 856, lines 1-2. Line three is a variation of the middle lines of the last two. Line four again introduces the girl as in numbers 855 and 856 (there plural, here surely singular?). Tamotö, “sleeve,” harks back to mo nö tsutso in 855. Line five is again a declaration, as in 856. But the speaker has advanced to a specific statement of intent, and the garment is not now just a sensuous detail. The unbroken forward-pressing syntax of this poem emphasizes its climactic role. Likewise, there are no pace-slowing internal repetitions.

The next three poems are labeled “three further poems in reply by the maidens.” They begin:

          Wakayu turu
Matura nö kaFa nö
          KaFanami nö
Nami ni si moFaba
Ware koFïmë ya mo
          If you are to me
A wave among the river waves
          Of Matsura River
Where we angle for young trout,
Why should I so yearn for you?

MYS V: 858

The replies begin properly with a jo in answer to the wanderer's makurakotoba. The first three lines are the jo, a relevant one using the established imagery, but technically introducing nami, “average, ordinary,” in line four through nami, “wave,” in line three. The repetitions outdo anything in the wanderer's series. Here we have feminine ude, a display of virtuosity in a male-female poetry match. The repetitions are threefold: turu/Matura, kaFa/kaFanami, kaFanami/nami. There are also echoes among kaFa, moFaba, and koFïmë. The three successive nö phrases have a cumulative effect in strengthening the rhetorical question at the poem's end. Lines one and two are almost a reversal of lines two and three in 857, and line five with its izenkei future -më also echoes the final verb of that poem. Cunningly integrated, and skillfully spun out, this verse certainly holds up the women's side in this kôhaku utagassen. But at the same time, it shows the women, like the nine maidens, overcoming their shyness and ready for love.

          Faru tsareba
WagiFe nö tsato nö
          KaFato ni Fa
Ayuko tsabasiru
Kimi matigate ni
          When spring arrives
The little fish go darting
          In the river ford
Beside the village where we live
All eager for our lord to come.

MYS V: 859

This one breaks the pattern established since 855, in that the girls are not standing in the river, and the fish are not being fished for. It harks back to 854 with its mention of iFe, the home, and more particularly to 856, also the middle member, of the wanderer's series. The speaker of this poem “invites” the wanderer home, by referring to it. She also employs pathetic fallacy in a productively ambiguous way—the fish are also metaphors for the girls. The real message is plain enough, but the last line is left deliciously ambivalent in its significance. Reversed syntax in the last line again breaks the pattern, though it harks back to 853. The kinetic energy in this poem is itself a metaphor for the eagerness of love. F's and a's dominate the phonetic scene.

          MaturagaFa
Nanase nö yödö Fa
          Yödömu tö mo
Ware Fa yödömadzu
Kimi wo si matamu
          On Matsura River
Below the seven shallows are still pools:
          Let them be still!
I shall not still this eager heart,
But wait the coming of my lord.

MYS V: 860

Like 858, this is based on contrast with nature (unlike the waves / unlike the stagnant pools). In its word play it also resembles 858, which it thus balances, with 859 in the middle. The technique here resembles a jo in that the natural element of the comparison comes first, but the contrast is overt, not merely phonetic, or juxtaposed, or telescoping. We have a semantic contrast, with phonetic repetition. The repetitions are MaturagaFa / matamu, and yödö / yödömu / yödömadzu, forming an a/b¹-b²-b³/a' pattern as against the a-a'/b-b'/c-c' pattern of 858. Here too the last poem in the sub-sequence is its climax, with final assertion -mu and emphasis through repetition. The coyness of the rhetorical question in 858 and of the metaphorical technique in 859 has been dropped. All systems are go, and the lady will consume her heart in waiting if she must.

The final three poems are headed, “three poems added in reply by a later person (the old man, the Governor-General).”

          MaturagaFa
KaFa nö se Fayami
          Kurenawi nö
Mo nö tsutso nurete
Ayu ka tururamu
          In Matsura River
The river-shallows are so swift,
          Do those girls now stand,
Angling for trout, their scarlet skirts
All wet along the hem?

MYS V: 861

With this final set of three we shift to a different voice, that of a person removed from the events, a listener to a told tale, and his conjectural mode. Cleverly, the opening poem echoes 855, the first of the traveler's set of three. Poem 855 opens with MaturagaFa / kaFa no se Fikari; here we have MaturagaFa / kaFa no se Favami, the only difference being a three-syllable word beginning with F and ending with i. The wet skirt is also from 855, and ayu turu tö is expanded into ayu ka tururamu. On the other hand, there is also a link with 860—the opening line, and se, “shallows,” in the second line. Poem 861 also establishes the color of the skirt.

          Fito mina nö
Miramu Matura nö
          Tamasima wo
Midzute ya ware Fa
KoFitutu woramu
          The others all have seen
Tamashima in Matsura—
          Must I alone
Forego the sight, stay where I am
Merely yearning for the place?

MYS V: 862

In his second poem the Old Man asks another question, this one rhetorical and much more personal. He evokes the self-pity of the stay-at-home, sedentary (scholar?) listener to tales, thus distancing the story. The poem is less imagistic than 861—as with the second poem in the wanderer's sequence. (It is notable that the girls all use natural imagery in their emotional statements.) This is the third poem in a row with a -mu ending. Phonetically it is notable for its m- alliteration.

          MaturagaFa
Tamasima nö ura ni
          Wakayu turu
Imora wo miramu
Fitö nö tomositsa
          How envious I am
Of those who see the darling girls
          Angling for young trout
Where the Matsura River
Winds past Tamashima!

MYS V: 863

Here is the exclamatory conclusion of the sequence. The verse contains both place names, the young trout, and the girls. It places the whole scene in focus again, the maidens in the stream as they were at the beginning, and gives the hearer's reaction. This final poem is a one-syntactical-unit noun clause, the whole weight impending on the final noun, tömositsa, “enviability.” It bears certain resemblances to the final poem of the wanderer's set, 857—the structure of the second line, an identical third line, mention of imo in the fourth line. There is a pleasant vowel harmony in imora wo miramu. This is also a convenient place to observe that poems which begin with MaturagaFa always have a noun beginning the next line, giving the name a formulaic quality. This final sub-sequence is built, like the others, on increasing intensity: relatively detached question (861), emotionally involved question (862), exclamation (863).

To summarize the structure of the entire sequence, it may be divided into four parts. Poems 853-854 begin the series and form a pair. They are statements of recognition and admission, and are bound together by similar conception (truth/falsehood, or revealment/concealment) and reversal after the third line. Poems 855-857 give a progression. The degree of esthetic distance decreases as the emotional intensity mounts: objective description; partial repetition with a personal, subjective note (implied complaint); amorous declaration in a rhetorically decorated verse. These three by the wanderer are answered with three by the maidens which also form a set based on increasing intensity. At the same time they also constitute an internally balanced structure, appropriately for their central position in the series. Poem 858 opens with a similar rhetorical device to 857, plus the use of repetition tying it to 855, the first in the previous set. It is an amorous reply, continuing at the emotional level attained by the wanderer's 857. Poem 859 is a metaphorical-descriptive amorous reply, employing no repetition but instead an intense kinetic image. Its locus—the home—refers to 856, the middle member of the wanderer's series. With 860 we return to a highly developed repetition pattern in an intense amorous declaration. Finally, as described above, the Governor-General's set changes the esthetic distance, but repeats the pattern of increasing intensity, and reestablishes the setting and scene as they were at the beginning. The total artistic entity of these poems provides the exhilaration of observing the work of a quite meticulous architect.

Our final stop on this excursion through Man'yô poetic integration takes us back to near where we began, with Hitomaro in Book I. So far we have looked at poem-groups composed of tanka preceded by brief or extensive prose headnotes. Now we shall take a glance at tanka as hanka, i.e., as envoys for long poems (chôka). I have chosen MYS I: 45-49 to illustrate some of the possibilities for meaningful grouping. This poem—for it is one artistic whole—was composed by Hitomaro “when Prince Karu lodged on the fields of Aki.” Prince Karu was the future Emperor Mommu (693-707; r. 683-707). He was a grandson of the mighty sovereign Temmu (d. 686) and son of Prince Kusakabe (662-689), one of Temmu's several male children who died without succeeding to the throne. Kusakabe, who at a tender age followed his father through the perilous Jinshin Disorder of 672, was made heir apparent in 681, but the succession went to his mother, Temmu's consort, who reigned as Empress Jitô from 686 to 697. Kusakabe died in 689 at the age of 28 by the oriental count. He was known by the honorific title Hinamishi, “Peer of the Sun.” At some time subsequent to his father's death, but before his own accession in 697, the young Prince Karu made an excursion to the hunting grounds of Aki east of Asuka across the Tônomine and Otowa ranges. It is this expedition which Hitomaro commemorates in his poem. It seems to have been a rite of remembrance, as the late prince had often hunted on those fields. Whether it truly had a ritual character, or was merely a sentimental journey, Hitomaro brings out both its symbolism and its humanity. Since MYS I: 45-49 is one poetic whole, it will be best to quote the chôka first before proceeding to the links existing between it and its hanka, and among the hanka themselves.

          Yatsumisisi
Wa go oFokimi
          Takateratsu
          Fi nö miko
5 Kamunagara
Kamutsabisetsu tö
          Futosikatsu
Miyako wo okite
          Kömöriku nö
10 Fatuse nö yama Fa
          Makï tatu
Arayamamiti wo
          IFagane
TsaFëkï osinabë
15 Tsakatöri nö
Atsa koyemasite
          Tamakagiru
YuFu tsarikureba
          Miyuki Furu
20 Akï nö oFono ni
          Fatatsutsuki
Sinö wo osinabë
          Kutsamakura
Tabiyadöri setsu
25 InisiFe omoFite
          Our mighty lord
Who rules the land in all tran-quility
          The Divine Child
          Of the high-shining sun,
          He who is a god
In action godlike now departs
          The firm-established
City of the sacred rule,
          And up mountain slopes
By hill-secluded Hatsuse,
          On rough mountain tracks
Where the bristling timber stands,
          Brushing to the earth
The rooted rocks and tangled trees,
          Like a soaring bird
In the morning clears the crest;
          And when evening comes
That gleams as softly as a glinting gem,
          On the snowy plain,
The vast fields of Aki,
          He spreads the ground
With bannergrass and small bamboo,
          And grass for pillow
Takes a traveler's shelter there,
Thinking of the days gone by.

MYS I: 45-49

A detailed analysis of the chôka itself will not be essential to our purpose. The most prominent structural characteristic of this poem is the high incidence of formulaic phraseology. At least six and possibly nine of the twenty-five lines are makurakatoba, and there are in addition paired nouns such as iFagane/tsaFëki and Fatatsutsuki/sinö, and the formulaic combination kamunagara/kamutsabïsetsu tö. All of this creates an overriding modifier-modified or more broadly one-two pattern, which in turn emphasizes the exposition of forward movement in irresistible stages. There is a sense of speed, of some dreadful urgency. The poem is one long narrative sentence, with a reversed-syntax last line whose incomplete grammar gives a receding feeling, a penetration into the mind. Now the action is over, and the examination of feeling begins. InisiFe omoFite, “thinking of the past,” is what the hanka, and really the whole poem, are about. In a sense the chôka is merely the overture.

          Akï nö no ni
Yadöru tabibitö
          Utinabiki
I mo nuramë ya mo
InisiFe omoFu ni
          The travelers who take
Shelter on the fields of Aki—
          Do they lie at ease,
Are they able to find sleep,
When they think of days gone by?

46

This hanka is related closely to the chôka. Line one echoes line 20 of the chôka, line two reflects line 24, and line five slightly alters line 25, so that both chôka and hanka end in the same way. This is thus a reprise poem, but there is a significant modal shift from narration to ironic questioning. The speaker is now a commentator, one who stands aside and addresses the listener. He is no longer an omniscient narrator looking down from above. We are now concerned with feeling, and not only of the prince, but of his men (tabibitö). Hitomaro is characteristically reaching out to a broad humanity, to the feelings that bind men together.

          Makutsa karü
Arano ni Fa aredö
          Momitiba nö
Tsuginisi kimi ga
Katami tötsö kösi
          This place is desolate,
A moorland where men cut wild grass,
          But to these fields
We come in memory of him,
Our lord who passed like the yellow leaf.

47

Here the focus has shifted from people to place. Wild, brooding nature is evoked, recalling the rough imagery of the chôka. But here there is something deeper—a feeling that the scene matches death. Yet paradoxically (as indicated by aredö) it is an inappropriate place to come to look for one known as “Prince Peer of the Sun.” This irony is at the heart of the poem. The wild fields are the dead man's katami, the thing by which to remember him. The dead always have their katami—a palace, a river, an orphaned child. And the bereaved in Hitomaro's poetry go looking for the dead in a ritual of demented grief. There is a trace of this searching-for-the-dead here too, though the implication is that time has passed. The poem is half banka (“elegy”) in mood, though classed as zôka (“miscellaneous”). This verse is not closely related to the chôka by repetition or adaptation of lines, as was verse 46. But it contains two makurakotoba, thus relating it in technique. Karu, “cut,” may be an engo for karu, “hunt”; these are the dead prince's hunting grounds. The speaker has shifted his stance again. Now he seems to speak as one of the group. Both poems 46 and 47 have a prevalence of i's mixed in with a's and o's, and ö's.

          Fimukasi nö
No ni kagiroFï nö
          Tatu miyete
KaFerimi tsureba
Tuki katabukinu(8)
          Eastward on the fields
A flickering of flame begins
          To rise against the dark,
And looking back the sunken moon
Is seen to rest upon the land.

48

This is one of the most admired verses in the Man'yôshû. It could easily stand as an independent poem, and a breathtaking one at that. The sense of vastness, darkness, light; the contrast of the reddening east and the setting moon (also ruddy in hue, no doubt)—these seize upon the visual imagination in a compelling way. But Hitomaro did not write nature poetry, and this verse grows out of the situation of the chôka, though it goes far beyond it. We are here in the realm of time and symbol as well as of place. The travelers have spent the night in the open, and now the first flicker of dawn comes. The full moon goes down in the west, and there is an ineffable moment when silence and light reign over both horizons. The sinking moon is too obviously a symbol for death to reject—and yet Kusakabe was called Hinamishi—Peer of the Sun. Hitomaro the ironist is evident again.

          Finamisi nö
Miko nö mikoto nö
          Uma namëte
Mikari tatasisi
Töki Fa kimukaFu.
          Peer of the Sun,
His Highness our most noble Prince
          Would line up his steeds
And start upon the royal hunt
At this very hour that now has come.

49

With this final hanka Hitomaro rounds off his poem. When we approach a creator of Hitomaro's amplitude and evident artistic complexity we can never be sure we have fully understood his intent. A great artist preserves his mystery. In verse 49 we explore further the realm of time and memory. All the hanka deal with the meaning of time as it impends on human life and death, but this theme is more particularly the burden of numbers 46 and 49, while place is prominent in 47-48. Both 48 and 49 grow out of the situation established at the end of the chôka. In 48 the eye-witness viewpoint of 47 is continued, while 49 combines this with the commentator's stance of 46. Verse 49 echoes and grows from 48 in a quite beautiful way. The syntactic structure of the two verses is nearly identical, beginning with nö-phrases, reaching a middle point with a—te continuative, going on to a noun and a verb, another noun and a final verb. Finamisi nö echoes Fimukasi nö, and there is a similar consonance between tuki and töki. These two verses are clearly a pair, and on the semantic level they match each other equally well. In a way, 49 is the reading or commentary for the symbolism of 48. Verse 48 establishes the circularity of time—the movement of moon and sun, and we know that both moon and sun somehow stand for the fallen prince. That prince is at last named in the first line of 49. Fi-namisi, “sun-peer,” following tuki katabukinu, “the moon has sunken.” Verse 48 has brought the dawning hour when the prince once set out on the hunt, and his hunting is now evoked in all its royal dignity. So much we can see in the first four lines of 49. But in the last line we are specifically told that “the hour comes to meet us” (töki Fa kimukaFu). I think the circularity of this expression is significant. The rising sun comes over the horizon, a new day begins. It is the day which in the past would have seen Hinamishi off on the hunt. But now only the hour comes. The prince will never come again. At best his son (“sun”) may stand in his place. The dead prince and his horses vanish into the dreams of night as day breaks over the fields of Aki. It is an ending worthy of a nô play, and it tells us what Hitomaro always tells us about human life: nature renews itself, but man passes from the scenes he loves so well, and in that fact we feel the sadness of our common humanity, and the mystery of the world.

.....

I would like to thank the students with whom I studied these poems in the spring of 1976. A rare rapport existed among us, a mutual stimulation from which all the thoughts in this paper sprang. It was a moment when teaching and learning seemed the best of all possible lives.

Some of the poems included here were first published elsewhere: MYS II: 87 and MYS I:45-49 in “The Dark Path: Images of Longing in Japanese Love Poetry,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 35; MYS V: 853-863 and “Preface to an Excursion,” in “The River Valley as Locus Amoenus in Manyô Poetry,” Nihon bunka kenkyû rashu: Studies on Japanese Culture, the Japan P.E.N. Club, 1973.

Notes

1. This paper was prepared for presentation before the Japan Seminar at the University of Washington on November 17, 1978. I would like to thank the Faculty and students who attended the seminar for their helpful comments.

2. Roy Andrew Miller, The Footprints of the Buddha: An Eighth-Century Old Japanese Poetic Sequence. American Oriental Society, New Haven, 1975.

3. Kojima Noriyuki, Kinoshita Masatoshi, Satake Akihiro, eds., Man'yôshû I, 86. Nihon koten bungaku zenshû II (Shôgakukan, 1971).

4. Imo, by its etymology and orthography asks to be translated “sister,” but I have resisted the temptation (with its evocation of incestuous marriage practices) because the term is used too widely for “dear girls” to be suitable as “sister” on all occasions.

5. Death among the rocks is a fate too ironic to escape notice for someone named Rock Princess (Iwanohime). Gari Ledyard makes much of rock elements in the Homuda line in his article, “Galloping Along with the Horse-riders: Looking for the Founders of Japan,” The Journal of Japanese Studies 1.2.

6. Takagi Ichinosuke, Gomi Tomohide, Ono Susumu, eds., Man'yoshu IV, 127. Nihon koten bungaku taikei VII (Iwanami Shoten, 1962, 1969).

7. Kubota Utsubo, ed., Man'yôshû hyôshaku XI, 34. (Tôkyôdô, 1952).

8. Before the studies of Keichu (1640-1701) and Kamo no Mabuchi (1697-1769) the first three lines of this poem were read Azuma no ni [or no] / Keburi no tateru / Tokoro mite; there is also a Heian tradition of reading the last line Tsuki nishi wataru. These variant readings could be combined to give the following version, which is actually more plausible in terms of the poem's orthography:

             Adumano ni
   Keburi no tateru
             Tôkôrô mite
   KaFerimi tsureba
   Tuki nisi wataru

             On the orient fields
   We see where lines of risen smoke
             Stand still in air,
   And looking back the coursing moon
             Goes down into the west.

   Such a rendering would of course require adjustment of the discussion. For details on the problems surrounding this poem and its various readings see Kojima, et al., Man'yôshu I, 89, and Omodaka Hisataka, ed., Man'yôshû chûshaku I, 324-327. (Chûô Kôronsha, 1957).