[In the following essay, Teele critiques assorted translations of the Manyoshu, using many different verses to illustrate his conclusions.]

The Manyo Anthology or Anthology for a Thousand Ages is not a “new” book to Asian specialists, but it is unknown to many general readers who have some association with a term like “noh play.” Yet it is a magnificent work, and continued study and teaching of it have convinced me that it is one of the supreme collections of lyric poems in all world literature, with a range of expression quite unparalleled elsewhere. Why is it so little known? One reason is the fact that Ernest Fenollosa did not discover it, but instead divided his literary attention between Chinese lyric poetry and Japanese noh plays. As a result, his literary executor, Ezra Pound, did likewise, pushing further, however, to complete a translation of the Shih Ching or Chinese Classic of Poetry. Academic specialists are certainly indebted to literary men who have brought Oriental works to wide audiences. At the same time, it is a wry rather than a happy smile with which we must contemplate the irony that Fenollosa's literary advisers in Japan did not guide him to the Manyo Anthology, for it could readily have provided the aristocratic appeal he sought and found in noh plays as well as the folk appeal of some Chinese poetry he came to know. Moreover, the Manyo Anthology, having many distinct voices, might legitimately be translated with the variety of styles Pound rather arbitrarily assigned to different poems in the Confucian Classic.

This is not to say that other translators have not devoted much time and effort to translating the Manyo Anthology. They have, yet the fact remains that there is no paperback edition of any of their translations, as there is of the Confucian Odes, of a number of noh plays, and of the Tale of Genji. Under difficulties far greater than those facing modern scholars the British triumvirate, W. G. Aston, B. H. Chamberlain, and Frederick Dickins, carried on their pioneering work. Not “literary” men, however, they left behind translations which are unreadable today. A few lines will show this clearly. From the opening of Aston's translation of a long poem by Hitomaro come these lines—but it is clear their only source is not the Japanese text:

When began the earth and heaven,
By the margin of the River
Of the firmament eternal,
Met the gods in high assembly,
Met the gods and held high counsel.

In translating from Musimaro's version of the “Tale of the Maiden of Unai” Chamberlain committed this verse:

With jealous love these champions twain
          The beauteous girl did woo;
Each had his hand on the hilt of his sword,
          And a full-charged quiver, too.

Last of the three, Dickins used these lines to represent the final lines of another poem by Hitomaro, to be considered at greater length later:

When, lo! there bloweth          from holy Watarahi
a wind divine          the froward folk confounding
the skies and all the land there          in darkness wrapping
as of the under-world—

Let us not consider verbal accuracy at all, and merely say that no contemporary literate reader could find anything attractive in such lines.

Of another generation, Jan Pierson, the Dutch scholar, has singlehanded made what is probably the only complete English version of the Manyo. Unfortunately, as the excerpt will show, Pierson's pedantic literalness and unpoetic non-English is even less attractive than the preceding examples:

Lo: from the Palace of Purification of Wataravi, it was as a divine wind, blowing and putting in disorder [the enemy], and they [the Gods] covered the sky in eternal darkness so that even the sight of the sun was invisible by the sky-clouds [sent by the Holy Tempest].

Naturally Arthur Waley's name cannot be entirely omitted from even this brief list of translators of the Manyo. Like Fenollosa and Pound, Waley did more with Chinese poetry and noh plays (in addition to the Genji). However, he included more than fifty Manyo poems in his little book, Japanese Poetry: The Uta. Regrettably he felt that the long poems (naga uta or choka) of such men as Hitomaro “were unsuccessful experiments” and concentrated his attention on the thirty-one syllable tanka which, in fact, make up the larger number of the poems in the Anthology. One of Waley's few errors in taste, this error is perpetuated in at least one widely distributed Treasury of Asian Literature.

Among more recent translators Kenneth Yasuda has prepared a version of the first book and collected a hundred of the tanka from the Manyo in a little book called The Land of the Reed Plains, but they fail to represent the poetic power and range of the original Japanese poems. Perhaps Kenneth Rexroth's One Hundred Japanese Poems should be mentioned, for it has some bright pages, but there are too frequent inaccuracies and too few Manyo poems to call for much attention.

This leaves two translations to consider seriously. First, the selection of one thousand poems published by the Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai, The Japanese Classics Translation Committee, under Dr. Seiichi Taki, published in 1939. The English was supervised by Dr. Sanki Ichikawa, assisted by the British poet Ralph Hodgson, and the translations are models of clarity and smoothness. These are the versions which George Anderson and Donald Keene chose for their respective anthologies, and consequently have had the widest circulation. For this committee's work one can have only the highest admiration, for it is the same which has recently given us the superb three-volume Japanese Noh Drama. Yet two qualifications to this praise must be noted. For one thing, it is only a selection, one thousand out of over four thousand poems. The other is that close comparison with the original Japanese shows that these are sometimes paraphrases rather than exact translations. This is to be seen, for example, in the omission of some of the admittedly troublesome makura kotoba or “pillow words” and also in the rearrangement of some of the lines. Where languages differ syntactically as much as English and Japanese this would seem to be inevitable, yet it may be vitally important, occasionally destructive of poetic effect, when the rearrangement requires a change in the order and form of imagery. No doubt both these facts can be accounted for by examining the working method of the Committee, which as I understand it, was to have the literal versions prepared by scholars later reworked by literary men. Doubtless this is an over-simplification, yet it represents a safe generalization to say that scholars tend to translate general meaning rather than precise imagery or rhetorical effects.

Second are the poems from the Manyo used in Brower and Miner's Japanese Court Poetry. The examples in this critical work are translations of great beauty and subtlety, based as they are on the best and the most recent Japanese scholarship and related to poetry in English and European languages. The cooperation of a scholar of Japanese literature and a scholar of English literature (who also knows Japanese) has been most fruitful. How extensive their promised anthology will be I do not know, but I look forward to seeing it in print.

A comparison of the opening lines of Hitomaro's poem “On Parting from his Wife as He Set out from Iwami for the Capital” in the Classics Committee's version and in Brower and Miner's version will clarify these points. The former begins:

In the sea of Iwami,
By the cape of Kara,
There amid the stones under sea
Grows the deep-sea miru weed;
There along the rocky strand
Grows the sleek sea-tangle.
Like the swaying sea-tangle,
Unresisting would she lie beside me—
My wife whom I love with a love
Deep as the miru-growing ocean.
But few are the nights
We two have lain together.

In Brower and Miner these same lines are translated:

          It was by the Sea of Iwami
Where the clinging ivy creeps across the rocks,
          By the waters off Cape Kara,
A land remote as the speech of far Cathay—
          Yes, there where the seaweed grows,
Clinging to rocks fathoms beneath the waves,
          And where on the stony strand
The seaweed glows like polished gems.
          My young wife dwells there,
Who like seaweed bent to the current of love,
          The girl who slept beside me
Soft and lithesome as the gem-like water plants.
          Now those nights seem few
When we held each other close in sleep.

Though there are many differences between these two versions, and perhaps some arguable interpretations, the chief addition in the second version is the translation of the makura kotoba or pillow words which were employed so frequently by Hitomaro that they are one of his unique characteristics. Most striking is the use of tamamo, “seaweed,” a compound word whose first part is tama, “gem.” Brower and Miner emphasize the “gem” both in its application to the seaweed and to the young wife. If etymology alone would not justify this emphasis, the frequent use of tama in other compounds used as pillow words would surely do so. Allied to this is the insistence on words for “depth,” because fuka, “deep,” is not only used twice in the name of the plant fukamiru, it is also used in the verb, fukamete. There are fewer cases of transposition of lines in Brower and Miner as well as a careful continuance of the alternating long and short lines of the original, not to mention that the Classics Committee's version in its paraphrasing is actually two lines shorter than the original.

With some justification, perhaps, the second version has been criticized as over-translation, though it does seem to me that we can find textual justification for every line. But even if the charge should be to some extent true, this kind of translation is still desperately needed. For too long a time now translations, following Pound's Cathay in using free verse, have tended to be chopped-up prose so irregular as to convey a sense of formlessness and so simple as to convey a sense of a primitive lack of rhetorical devices in the original. This is so far from the truth (and from Pound's intention), that some exaggeration in subtlety is more than justified, even demanded. And if not demanded in every single poem, at least in a sufficient number of examples to make clear to the reader untrained in the original language the fact that the original poetry is often dazzling in its technical proficiency and brilliant in its literary sophistication.

In translating a magnificent anthology like the Manyo, which covers several centuries and employs many styles, even more than accuracy, fullness, and good English style are necessary; in addition, the translator at some points must make a clear distinction between those different periods, styles, and poets in turning the Manyo into English verse. Though this is carrying Pound's method further than he himself did, yet it may be justified by a simple analogy. Imagine reading in Japanese translation such poets as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton and Dryden—and finding them all speaking in the same voice, using the same verse forms, employing the same style. Without discovering any serious verbal mistranslation, the reader would still have been seriously misled. Great as the Classics Committee's translation is, it does mislead in precisely this way.

Two qualifications seem necessary immediately. First, Hitomaro may or may not be as great and varied a poet as Chaucer; Okura is not Milton any more than Tabito is Donne or Yakamochi Shakespeare. Nevertheless they are entirely distinct as poetic personalities, just as clearly distinguishable in Japanese as the English poets in English. Then, too, for the second point, in an absolute sense poetry cannot be translated. Nevertheless, poetry must be translated and in fact we constantly make use of more or less satisfactory translations—of Homer or Virgil or Dante—when unable to read the original language. And being dissatisfied, new generations turn to new translations. What is needed is a more conscious and elaborate theory of translating. One point would be that suggested by Pound in his varied verse forms, changing dialects, and shifting of tone, whereby in the Confucian Odes he tried to distinguish one poem from another. How well he did it, and whether he was justified at all by literary and linguistic considerations, need not be argued here. The need for such variation is far greater in the case of the Manyo Anthology. As in any translation, the validity of such “experiments” depends on the translator's scholarship in the literature from which he is translating, his sensitivity to poetic values in that literature, and his taste and skill in English versification.

To be more specific, let me set the problem of translating Hitomaro's great ode on the death of Prince Takechi, first quoting the opening lines in the Translation Committee's version:

Forthwith our prince buckled on a sword,
And in his august hand
Grasped a bow to lead the army.
The drums marshalling men in battle array
Sounded like the rumbling thunder,
The war-horns blew, as tigers roar,
Confronting an enemy,
Till all men were shaken with terror.
The banners, hoisted aloft, swayed
As sway in wind the flames that burn
On every moorland far and near
When spring comes after winter's prisonment.
Frightful to hear was the bow-strings' clang,
Like a whirlwind sweeping
Through a winter forest of snow.
And like snow-flakes tempest-driven
The arrows fall thick and fast.
The foemen confronting our prince
Fought, prepared to a man to perish,
If perish they must, like dew or frost;
And vying with one another like birds upon the wing,
They flew to the front of battle—
When lo, from Watarai's holy shrine
There rose the God's Wind confounding them,
By hiding the sun's eye with clouds
And shrouding the world in utter darkness.

This is a magnificent poem, even seen in this fragment, and is effectively translated. But something more might be done to show Hitomaro's own particular voice. Here Hitomaro, like Virgil in his use of the epic simile, for example, is using a traditional technique which was to disappear in later Japanese poetry, and using it reverently and powerfully. It is not his ordinary style but something out of the past. Compare this with Chaucer in a quite different example, the satirical fragment about Sir Thopas. Clearly Chaucer is using traditional technique for a special purpose. Suppose that in translating these lines we were to use an approximation of the Anglo-Saxon poetic style rather than the loose free verse of the Classics Committee's version:

Girding great sword on his majestic girth,
Bending mighty bow in his holy hand,
Our Prince calls forth and leads his valorous troops.
The booming sound of the dinning drums
Threatens the foe like the voice of thunder.
Strong-blown squeals of the harsh horns
Like the terrible roar of the foe-surrounded tiger
Cause every foeman to faint with fear.
As when spring clears away the clouds of winter
High hoisted flags flutter aloft;
And every field is filled with flame,
So the banners bend in the bristling breeze.
The bowstrings twang in the warriors' clasp;
As the great flakes scream through the wintry trees
In the twisting turning whirlwind's blast,
So frightening and fierce comes the awful sound
Of the whirring arrows shot in showers.
Unfaltering the foe arise before us:
If melt they must like frost or disappear like dew,
As bold as winging quarreling birds beside the battle.
Then from the Watarai Shrine of Itsuki
The wind of the gods blows forth and bewilders,
The heavenly cloud seals up the sun's eye
Shrouding them all in eternal darkness.(1)

For a second and quite different problem, let us examine a selection of Tabito's work, a short prose tale followed by poems exchanged by the characters of the tale. The prose is Chinese, modeled on a T'ang romance called Yu Hsien K'u or “Visit to the House of Beauties,” which Brower and Miner refer to as “a mildly improper little romance.” Tabito's tale is not at all improper; it is an elegant exercise in ornate prose, followed by charming lyrics in Japanese. It exemplifies one aspect of the contemporary Japanese court, which Sansom calls “Chinesified.” Must this quite special stylistic aspect be entirely lost in translation? The dominance of Chinese influence on certain aspects of Japanese style as well as content is a literary fact of the utmost importance, one which can scarcely be conveyed adequately in a footnote. For such literary influence in English literature we might turn to the Elizabethan period. Then, as some of Shakespeare's comic characters show, or in a more extreme form in the almost unreadable horn books, Italianate or Latinate terms invaded English with scarcely any linguistic change, resulting in pages scarcely more English than Tabito's prose was Japanese. Or the Euphuistic style might represent Tabito's “voice” in this particular piece, for it must be noted that the erudite statesman was the master of many voices. This and his charming drinking songs are as Chinese as his laments on the death of his wife are purely Japanese. In the Committee's not quite complete version we find:

Once I wandered for a while in the district of Matsura. When I visited the abyss of Tamashima, I happened to meet some girls fishing. Their flowery faces and radiant forms were beyond compare. Their eyebrows were like tender willow leaves, and their cheeks were like peach flowers. Their spirits soared above the clouds, and their gracefulness was not of this world. I asked, ‘Where do you live? What is your father's name? Are you, if I may ask, fairies?’ They answered, smiling, ‘We are a fisherman's daughters. Being of low birth, we live in a grass-thatched cottage. We have neither land nor house of our own. How can we give you our names? But, by nature we are kin with the water, and love the mountains. So, at one time, at Lopu we vainly envy the life of the giant fish; at another, lying at Wuhsia vainly do we look to the banks of trailing mists. Now, by rare chance, we have met with one so noble as you, and we are happy to have revealed ourselves. So, will you pledge yourself to us for life?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘gladly I will.’ Just then the sun set beyond the western mountains, and my horse was impatient to leave. Therefore I expressed my feelings in verse.

But a fisherman's daughters
You say of yourselves,
Yet your looks reveal
That you are girls of noble birth.

(by Tabito)

On the Tamashima River,
Here by its upper stream, stands our home.
But from bashfulness
We did not tell you where.

(by the girls)

In the river of Matsura,
You stand fishing for ayu,
Brightening up the shallows;
Your skirts are drenched.

(by Tabito)

When spring comes round,
Through the ford near our home,
The little ayu will shoot,
Impatient for you.

(by the girls)

Pleasant as this is, it does not convey the literary feeling of the original. This I have tried to do, not too successfully, by carrying out the parallelism which is a feature of the Chinese prose and by using slightly archaic diction to suggest the tone:

Wandering hither and thither, I whiled away the pleasant hours along the pine-clad shores of Matsuura. As I sauntered idly I came upon the magnificent sight of the gem-like pool of Tamashima and suddenly beheld some damsels fishing. Their countenances were like blossoms without compare; their forms were luminous without equal. Willow leaves seemed their brows, and like peach bloom their glowing cheeks. Their hearts eclipsed the snowy clouds; their elegance surpassed all worldly things. Questioning them, I said: “Whence do you come? Of what house are you the daughters? Surely, methinks, you must be nymphs or dryads?” And they, as if bursting into bloom, replied: “We are but daughters of fisher folk, living in a small thatched cottage. No lineage and no great house have we; whence should we have a name to give you? However, our essence is that of water, and our hearts joy in the mountains. Hence we stroll sometimes in the Fairy Queen's garden and long for the magic jade fish, or lie vacantly for a space in Avalon, staring up at the drifting mist. How fortunate that by chance we have encountered such an aristocratic stranger as you, and in unforced converse have revealed our minds. Henceforth, as old age creeps upon us, will you still be faithful?” And I replied, “Verily. Respectfully I shall obey your every wish.” Thereupon the sun dropped down below the western mountains, and my noble steed prepared to depart. To express the emotions hidden in our bosoms, we composed and exchanged these verses. I said:

                    Simple daughters of
Fisherfolk though you say you are,
                    One look reveals to me
                    You are of noble birth.

The maidens replied:

                    Here on gem-like Tamashima's
Upper reaches
                    Stands our home,
But from shyness, my lord,
We refrained from saying so.

Then the visitor to this paradise composed the poem:

                    In Matsuura River's
Current, radiant,
                    You fish for ayu.
Standing there, adorable creatures, you've wet
                    The hem of your dresses.

They replied:

When spring breaks forth again,
                    Then in this ford of the stream
Near our home,
                    The lonely little fish
Will wait for you.

In summary I wish to suggest that the only way to convey to general readers the wealth of styles, of “voices,” in the Manyo Anthology is to select parallel styles in English, for at least some of the poems. And I should like to urge the greatness of the Anthology, and consequent need to have it so well translated that at least selections from it may achieve the status of paperback publication.

Notes

1. Miss Ingalls' translation printed above succeeds brilliantly in evoking the sound of the Anglo-Saxon elegies so apt for this poem while yet keeping close to the Japanese text.