[In the following excerpt, Ueda discusses Yoshimoto's views on particular aspects of linked verse, including how it should be judged, its social and personal usefulness, and how to seek elegance in its composition.]

Japanese linked verse is a rare verse form in which a poem is the product of a combined effort by a team of poets. Most commonly, the poem consists of one hundred stanzas with, alternately, seventeen (5-7-5) and fourteen (7-7) syllables each. A small number of poets, directed by a leader, compose one hundred stanzas usually at one sitting; they may take turns to contribute a stanza, or they may wait for a volunteer, stanza by stanza. It is much like a group game; in fact it was a game in the early stages of its development, and lyric poets played it in their more relaxed moments. Slowly, however, linked verse came to take on a more sober color, and eventually in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it occupied the most prominent place in all the genres of Japanese literature. The poet who helped most in elevating linked verse to the level of a serious art form was Nijō Yoshimoto (1320-88), an eminent courtier and statesman who compiled the earliest anthology of linked verse in history. He also wrote a number of essays on the art of linked verse, thereby providing its theoretical basis for the first time. Many of the ideas presented in the essays had been known before him, but he was responsible for collecting, refining, and codifying them in definitive terms.

The poetics of linked verse is a unique one, for it requires, as it must, an extreme of pragmatic theories. The poet and the reader are nowhere more closely related than in linked verse, because here the reader of one stanza may become the poet of the stanza immediately following. To compose a stanza for linked verse the poet must first try to become a perfect reader of all the stanzas preceding his; he has to put himself in the positions of all his fellow poets sitting around him. One obvious consequence of this is a demand for the poet to suppress his individuality: the poet must work within the framework set by other poets as well as by the contemporary rules of poetic composition. In this respect the theory of linked verse stands directly opposite from that of lyric poetry; instead of speaking out his personal emotion, the poet must dissolve it for the sake of the team of which he is a member.

Yoshimoto's poetics is built around such pragmatism. He repeatedly emphasizes “an appeal to the people present” as the primary principle of composition. “In the final analysis,” he says, “the aim of linked verse is to delight the people present.” “In lyric poetry,” he explains elsewhere, “there are secrets of composition handed down from antiquity. But linked verse has no such ancient model; its main concern is to entertain the people present. The participants should never use a crabbed, ceremonious, or quaint expression in the name of an expert poet.” “Since linked verse is for the entertainment of the party,” he reiterates, “a good poet would compose a verse which delights the people present. Any verse which sounds uninteresting to the audience should be considered mediocre, however insistently the poet may claim to know the secrets of composition.” The basic assumption is that the poem exists not in the poet's mind nor in the text but in “an appeal to the people present,” in the excited mind of each participant in the game. Yoshimoto is quite clear about this: he goes so far as to suggest that the poet needs to have no thought of future readers in composing linked verse since his work will disappear when the game is over.

However, it would be dangerous indeed to pass an evaluative judgment on a verse by such an elusive standard as “an appeal to the people present.” Each individual has a different taste and responds differently to the same work of art. Yoshimoto is well aware of the subjective nature of literary criticism, particularly when he holds a pragmatic view of poetry as he does. He says: “In linked verse it is difficult to talk of good and bad lines in decisive terms, even for one who is an expert in that art. It frequently happens that a stanza which a poet thinks is mediocre receives a high mark from a critic with a different taste. It is not that the critic is at fault, nor that the poet has no critical ability. It is only that one feels different from moment to moment.” This leads him to the affirmation that to be a good critic is more difficult than to be a good poet. But Yoshimoto does not subscribe to relativism. Keenly aware of the subjective nature of an individual's judgment, he goes on to set up the standard of evaluation outside of the individual. It is not a personal feeling but the opinion of the majority that finally counts. He says: “You can safely assume that a verse is good if it is widely acclaimed in the world. Opinions of two or three men amount to nothing. Mencius, too, has taught us: ‘That which makes all men follow is good.’ You will eventually attain your goal, whatever it may be, only when you follow the way in which all men do it. Lone deviation will lead you nowhere.” The merit of a poem is conceived as something objective, something agreed upon and sanctioned by many. Indeed, there would be no linked verse at all if one did not presume certain standard norms commonly accepted by poets; without accepted norms, the poets would lose the way to unify their efforts.

What, then, are those norms? They differ considerably from society to society, from age to age, just as ethical and moral norms do. “It seems that the style of linked verse has changed as many as four or five times during the last fifty years,” Yoshimoto himself has observed. “In this respect linked verse is different from lyric poetry. Follow the style favored by your contemporaries.” In Yoshimoto's time and the prime days of linked verse, there seem to have been two principal norms. The one is yūgen, and the other is unity in variety.

Yūgen is a term frequently used in medieval Japanese aesthetics, although it meant somewhat different things to different ages and people. In Yoshimoto's usage the term seems to designate a certain idea roughly equivalent to elegance, gracefulness, or polished beauty. Important here is the fact that yūgen is conceived not as a personal, human emotion like joy or grief, but as a mood or atmosphere, as an objective feeling generated from an external object. “There is nothing more pitiful,” says Yoshimoto, “than to see an elegant object destroyed by a poet who uses crude words to describe it.” An elegant object yields the mood of yūgen around itself; the poet should carefully preserve and reproduce it in his verse. The poet's personal emotion should be suppressed, so that the mood of the object of nature on which his mind focuses will reveal itself most clearly. “Essential to linked verse are the word and the style,” one of Yoshimoto's disciples said. “Do not search for emotion. A verse written in crude words and in an unrefined style must be considered mediocre, no matter how interesting the poet's emotion may be.” Three factors, then, are necessary to create the mood of yūgen in a verse: elegant objects, elegant words, and an elegant style.

As for elegant objects, here is Yoshimoto's remark: “Scenes such as the spring haze thinly covering the blossoms and a warbler singing in the blossoms are celebrated in lyric poetry. They should be treated in the same way in linked verse, too.” Inevitably he has chosen seasonal objects in nature, universally accepted as lovely and graceful, for his examples of elegant objects. Elsewhere he enumerates objects that he believes can be recommended for themes of linked verse. For instance, the objects he suggests for themes of the opening stanza are:

In the First Month: the lingering winter, the unmelted snow, plum blossoms, warblers.

In the Second Month: plum blossoms, cherry blossoms. Cherry blossoms can become a theme as soon as one begins to wait for them, and should be made the most favored topic throughout the Third Month. They remain an important theme until they fall.

In the Fourth Month: cuckoos, deutzia flowers, trees with fresh green buds, thick grass.

In the Fifth Month: cuckoos, early summer rain, orange blossoms, irises.

In the Sixth Month: the summer shower, fans, summer grass, cicadas, glow-worms, the evening cool.

In the Seventh Month: scenes of early autumn, bush clovers, the Festival of the Stars (on the Seventh Day only), the moon.

In the Eighth Month: the moon, various kinds of flowers, wild ducks.

In the Ninth Month: the moon, tinted leaves, scenes of late autumn.

In the Tenth Month: the frost (through the Twelfth Month), the early winter rain, fallen leaves, anticipation of the first snowfall, winter grass (through the Eleventh Month), the chilly gust (through the Twelfth Month).

In the Eleventh Month: the snow, the hail.

In the Twelfth Month: the snow, the year-end, early plum blossoms.

The list sufficiently shows what sort of objects were considered elegant.

Elegant objects should be depicted in elegant words; it would be pitiful otherwise. “In choosing words,” Yoshimoto says emphatically, “search for the flower among flowers, the jewel among jewels.” He continues: “Ancient and old-fashioned works of linked verse seldom have a pleasant rhythm or a delightful line, because the poets were so intent on the clarity of meaning that they neglected to polish their words. Works produced by the people of rural areas sound lowly and coarse, too, because those poets are too absorbed in the technique of linking and pay little attention to the words they use.” Crude words can be distinguished from elegant ones by the way they sound. The former sound lowly, rough, fat, and untidy, while the latter are fluent and smooth. Neither the words of peasants nor the clichés of pedantics will do. What specific words are elegant is difficult to say: all one can do is to study standard classics and try to “memorize elegant words that great poets constantly use.” Yoshimoto suggests that a beginning poet study The Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems, The Tale of Genji, and several other classics of Japanese court literature. One can rest assured that words which appear in those books are all elegant.

However, it is not that words are elegant in themselves. Any elegant word can be made coarse by improper use. In this respect the poet can be compared to a carpenter:

A word can be appropriate or inappropriate, depending on the way you use it in your verse. An unskilled artisan can produce only poor handiwork, no matter what good lumber he may use for his material. A work of a master artist is always superb, even though the lumber used may not be of the highest quality. In linked verse, too, you should try to make your expression elegant, slender, and smooth. Avoid a gnarled, rough expression. You must first plane and polish your words. A poem that still shows the trace of your hatchet is not a good one.

Just as a desk, and not the lumber used to make the desk, is what finally matters, it is the poem, and not the words which make up the poem, that is at stake. The gracefulness of poetic style supersedes that of words or of milieu. Yoshimoto illustrates the same point by another comparison: “In linked verse the style is of the foremost importance. Whatever interesting thing you may say in it will not impress the reader if it is said in a tasteless style. Such a poem can be compared to a lovely lady in a hemp dress. Make your verse elegant and graceful. A poem written in a coarse style is always mediocre, even when it is on an elegant theme such as the snow, the moon, or the blossoms.” Neither poetic vocabulary nor poetic subject matter is enough to make a good poem. It needs the poet's art—a style that would properly control both words and material. And what underlies a proper style is the spirit.

Yoshimoto repeatedly refers to the importance of the spirit in linked verse. The spirit is inseparable from words. Without an elegant spirit, there could not be an elegant word or style. “Drive away,” says Yoshimoto, quoting from a Sung writer, “a crude spirit, a crude word, and a crude style from your verse.” “Words can be hurt by the spirit,” he says elsewhere, “and the spirit can be hurt by words.” “There is often a poet,” he continues, “who composes a poem with no elegant spirit and who tries to make it look elegant by the use of elegant words. He would constantly refer to ‘the spring dawn’ and ‘the autumn dusk’ and claim to be fashionable. Such a poet is always among the beginners.” Indeed, some great poets in the past made frequent use of such words as the spring dawn or the autumn dusk, and there is no harm in knowing such words and others like them. But more important is to know the spirit in which to use those words. “Learn the spirit above all else,” says Yoshimoto. “Wording is a superficial matter. Imitate the way in which great poets used the spirit.”

If one possesses the elegant spirit, one does not have to mind even the principle of elegant words. “In the use of words,” Yoshimoto says, “the poet should not as a rule go beyond the vocabulary of the imperial poetry anthologies. However, newly created words and colloquial words are also permissible in linked verse.” Even the principle of yūgen should not be a restricting factor here. “A poet who composes only elegant pieces without a fresh, striking feature should at times try a new style,” says Yoshimoto. “One cannot go wrong with yūgen, but sometimes one's verse may look trite and stagnant. Be very careful.” A poet who possesses an elegant spirit will not be restricted by precedents or by traditional and contemporary rules; he will go beyond them.

The idea that the poet should first follow the rules and then transcend them is also observed in the second of two main principles of linked verse, unity in variety. This principle is characteristic of and essential to the nature of linked verse as a literary genre. In fact, the core of this unique verse form with multiple authorship lies where variety is stretched to a point not accessible to a single poet. The linked-verse poet must risk unity for the sake of variety, but he can hope for a great variety within unity. The poet's individuality must be suppressed to serve the unity of the whole poem, but he would at the same time be required to contribute his uniqueness to help create variation.

Unity in linked verse is achieved on four levels primarily. First, there is the unity of verse form: the participating poets must each compose a stanza with either a 5-7-5 or a 7-7 syllabic pattern, whichever is required of him at the moment. Secondly, there is the unity of progression: each poet is obliged to compose a stanza that is in some way related to the preceding stanza contributed by one of his fellow poets. Thirdly, there is the unity of tone: all the participants must take care so that the whole poem, when finished, will have an unbroken tone throughout its one hundred stanzas. And finally there is the unity of mood: all the poets are expected to compose stanzas that will produce the mood of yūgen for its tonal impact.

Within those restrictions each poet must do his best to make a contribution unique to his poetic talent. Obviously he can do nothing about the syllabic patterns, which are predetermined. But as for the other three, he may be able to do a great deal.

We have already noted Yoshimoto's remark that the poet can and should exercise a considerable amount of liberty as to the principle of yūgen. Provided that he knows the essential spirit of linked verse, the poet is even permitted to use some unrefined colloquial words that, under ordinary circumstances, would sound too vulgar. In fact he should at times try to break away from the principle of elegance and experiment with a fresh new style. Yoshimoto advocates “freshness” as an element counterbalancing yūgen. Of course, “one should not indiscriminately select the new”; a beginner, therefore, ought to avoid a rare expression or a quaint word. But the ideal is to express an old, familiar truth in a new, refreshing way. “In the final analysis,” Yoshimoto concludes, “the aim of linked verse is to make ordinary facts appear new.” The poet's inspiration in this respect is not to be suppressed; it should be crystallized as it comes upon him, and with no intervention of the convention. “If you are a beginner,” Yoshimoto teaches, “don't indulge in unnecessary speculation. In all artistic creation there is the so-called ‘first flash of inspiration’; you should speak out your inspiration in that very instant, without being disturbed by your speculative thinking.” Classical learning, while necessary, may do harm to those who do not know how to handle it, for it may interfere with their fresh, individual feelings. If the poet decides to base his verse on a Classical model, he should do it lightly; otherwise his verse would look like an antique object. All in all, a linked-verse poem of one hundred stanzas would show a considerable amount of variation in mood if each stanza were the result of each poet's effort toward freshness in word, expression, and motif.

Likewise, a successful piece of linked verse will never be monotonous in tone. Its syllabic pattern is the same throughout, but its tone is different at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end. Here are Yoshimoto's words:

In an ordinary work of linked verse, which has one hundred stanzas, the first twenty-two stanzas should be made to have a placid mood. Even in such little things as the choice of grammatical particles, be cautious so that the lines will not look flamboyant. In the next twenty-eight stanzas, compose more light-hearted lines. Then, finally, make the remaining fifty stanzas especially exciting. Every work of music has an introduction, an elaboration, and a finale. In a work of linked verse, too, the first twenty-two stanzas make up an introductory part, the middle twenty-eight an elaboration, and the last fifty a finale. Experts in Japanese football say this is the same in their sport, too.

A piece of traditional Japanese music has three parts: the first part with a quiet tone and a slow tempo (jo), the second part with a lighter mood and leisurely changes of pace (ha), and the third part with a heightened rhythm and a forceful impact (kyū), somewhat like the three movements in contrasted rhythms of a Western sonata—exposition, development, and recapitulation. The football played in the early Japanese court also had such changes of rhythm: in the early part of a game the player would be quite orderly in his play, making each kick a long, carefully aimed one; but as the game proceeds he would step forward and make a shorter, and often curved, kick; in the last part of the game he would enjoy a freer, more irregular play, uttering cries and making the game lively and exciting. This principle in music and in sports is taken into linked verse, too. To overcome the monotony of the repeated syllabic patterns, the poets would compose slow-paced, somber lines in the early stage; they would become more casual and free in the next stage; and finally they would cast away all restraints, creating a mood full of change, gaiety, and excitement. Thus the entire poem, as the product of such a practice, will show a great variety of tones and rhythms within its coherent whole.

The poem is safeguarded against monotony by yet another scheme: the rules prohibiting a repetition of certain words. For instance, such words as the morning sun, the evening moon, the winter gust, the summer shower, a glow-worm, a cicada, a night-ingale, a deer, a wistaria, or an iris can be used only once in a hundred-stanza poem; the poet cannot use any of these words if it has appeared in any of the preceding stanzas, whether composed by himself or by someone else in the team. Words like the spring moon, the autumn wind, the native village, or a wild duck can be used twice, provided that they occur at different parts of the poem. In no case can the same word be used twice within a span of five stanzas, and this is true of two different words designating two things of the same category, whether they may be trees, beasts, birds, or insects. There are many other rules like these, helping to ensure a certain degree of variety in any work of linked verse.

The idea of variety within unity, however, is revealed most clearly in the ways in which a poem is made to progress from one stanza to another, for it is here that the participating poets can most freely display their individual talents. Yoshimoto, drawing on the contemporary practice, lists a number of ways in which one stanza can be integrated with another. Among them the method closest to the common Western practice is “linking through meaning,” which roughly corresponds to logical progression. For example, when the preceding stanza is:

Although I have a horse here
I would rather go out on foot.

one might compose a stanza like:

          For, at daybreak
I had a glimpse of the snow
          Piled during the night.

But one could ignore the logical meaning of the foregoing stanza and pick out a single word in it as a connecting link. This is called “linking through word.” For instance, to a stanza like:

By trying to hate her
I consoled myself a little.

one may add a stanza:

          The spring haze hangs
Over the pine trees along the coast
          Ahead of my way.

The first stanza deals with love, and the second with travel; apparently the only connecting link is a Japanese word urami, which happens to mean either “to hate” or “to see a coast.” But if one ponders on the second stanza awhile one will note that it does develop a feeling embodied in the first stanza—a mixed feeling of hatred and consolation. The second stanza is saying: “I do not like the spring haze hiding my way, but I am consoled by the lovely spring scene that the haze has created.” “Linking through word” could be subtle.

One may not even need a linking word; one may connect two stanzas through a mood alone. There is, for instance, “linking through a mood of nature”:

An old path, almost hidden,
Extends on the desolate heath.
          Tilting the leaves
Of a bamboo bush, plum blossoms
          Are in bloom.

It is neither logical progression nor a linking word that binds the second stanza to the first; it is a mood of nature, rustic and lonely, which prevails over both. The poet of the second stanza caught the desolate feeling of the foregoing couplet and made it the dominant mood of his own lines, with plum blossoms lonesomely blooming in the shade of bamboos. Linking, however, does not always have to be through a similar mood. For instance:

The beauty of springtime
Is felt in the sky of daybreak.
          The sorrowful autumn
Forever has the feeling
          Of the evening dusk.

Whereas the first stanza has a mood of loveliness characteristic of spring, the second has that of loneliness found only in autumn. Such a method of linking is called “linking by contrast.”

Yoshimoto lists many more ways of joining one stanza to another, such as flat linking, mosaic linking, comic linking, linking through a buried word, linking through an aftereffect, or linking by an allusion to a poem, to a legend, or to a famous place of interest. Since so many ways of linking are permitted, it almost seems that each poet can compose practically any kind of verse he likes if it has the slightest relationship to the foregoing stanza. And, in fact, the way of linking highly favored by expert poets is of such a kind as to bring out the poet's individuality to the fullest extent possible. Yoshimoto calls it “linking through an unusual association.” He is referring to a case such as when “one longs for the rain in a moonlight night or desires a gust at a cherry-blossom time.” For instance:

          My memory of her face
Has dimmed into a dream
          Of that night.
After seeing the blossoms
I long for clouds over the moon.

The couplet is quite unconventional, for no one who can appreciate the beauty of the moon would wish for a cloudy sky. The poet has dared to break the convention, and for a good reason. He has just returned from blossom-viewing; now looking at the moon, he recalls the lovely clouds of blossoms and wants them over the moon in the sky. Innumerable cherry blossoms spreading all over the sky in a moonlit night is indeed a lovely dream image. His feeling is somewhat related to that of the maker of the first stanza who finds the lovely face of his lover slowly dimming in his memory now that the rendezvous is over. Both stanzas present an imaginary world of beauty, in which one is not sure where the reality ends and where the dream begins.

Time and again Yoshimoto stresses the importance of the unusual and the unconventional in the making of linked verse. “The success of linking depends on the poet's individual style and individual talent,” he says. “There cannot be any fixed rule.” Even the most unconventional sentiment could be made use of by a master poet; this, indeed, is what distinguishes a good poet from a poor one. To use Yoshimoto's comparison, a verse composed by a mediocre poet is like handiwork made by patching wooden pieces together; it has “no power of its own and is therefore not interesting at all.” Such a work will neither look fresh nor create any appeal to the people present. Yoshimoto explains why this happens:

A stanza composed by an expert poet is integrated with its preceding stanza through an interesting turn of a spirit, though at first sight it may not seem to be linked at all. It may be said that a good stanza ignores conventional ways of linking and yet is linked through a spirit nevertheless. A stanza composed by an inexpert poet turns away from the foregoing stanza, so to speak, despite its appearance of being technically well linked. This is what I mean when I say: “Rules are to be transcended, and not to be followed, whether they are the rules of linked verse or of this grief-laden world.”

Elsewhere he observed: “An expert's verse rides on the preceding stanza without the appearance of doing so. A nonexpert's stanza turns away in spirit, with all its appearance of being closely linked.” In the end, the question is that of the spirit. It is this spirit which creates yūgen, which produces freshness, and which links one stanza to another in a delightful way. Yoshimoto advocates unconventionality in linked-verse writing because the conventional rules often destroy the spirit.

This explains why Yoshimoto, who does not recognize any poetic principle unchanged through the ages, believes in the permanence of the poet's spirit. Outward principles may change, but the poet's inner spirit does not. “When I advised you to abandon your teacher,” Yoshimoto explains, “I meant that you should stop imitating your teacher's style. You should retain his spirit, which is the same with all poets. A good poem always has a truthful, undistorted, and elegant spirit, whether the poet is that great Zenna¹ or anyone else. It is words and styles that should change.” All great poems have something in common—the spirit.

As for what this spirit means, Yoshimoto says very little; one can only guess its nature from his casual comments touching on it, most of which have been cited already. One may safely assume, however, that it is distinctly different from Tsurayuki's emotion, for, though it lies within the poet, it is not impulsive and does not manifest itself except at the time of poetic creation. In this sense it is something like creative imagination. But it is creative imagination of a specific kind: it is especially gifted in visualizing elegant beauty and hearing a subtle change of tones. If yūgen and unity in variety are principles existing outside of the individual poet, the spirit remains within and sensitively responds to them. It is, one may say, a spirit in search of elegant tonal beauty.

The spirit of linked verse, therefore, does not concern itself directly with a philosophical truth, religious insight, or moral idea. It aims neither to reproduce life as it is, nor to build a world of transcendental reality; it only endeavors to create a series of lovely scenes with changing tones. External reality comes into the world of linked verse primarily as the ingredients for elegant, graceful beauty. “Work day and night on the given scene,” Yoshimoto advises, “so that your product out of it would move the reader to exclaim ‘Indeed!’” The selection of a site for a verse-writing party becomes important. Yoshimoto says: “When you plan a verse-writing party, first of all select a good time and a good location. Looking at the snow and the moon, the blossoms and the trees, and all the other things of nature which change with time, the poets will feel something moving in their hearts and trying to express itself in words. Choose a lovely spot if you choose at all. Good poems are most likely to come out when the poets admire a lovely view of the mountains and waters.” The writer of linked verse probes into nature for its beauty, and not for its mysterious hidden truth or for its metaphysical implications. Knowledge, similarly, would not be of prime importance to him. Yoshimoto observes: “The poets of today often equate learning, discussion, witticism, or epigram to linked verse. But any of these is not an essential element of poetry; it is just a piece of logical argument.” Argument would better be presented in a work of prose.

The human experience embodied in a work of linked verse is in quality no different from that of ordinary life. It is only that the poet presents it in a new, refreshing way. We have already heard Yoshimoto say that an expert poet makes ordinary things look new. He says elsewhere: “The essence of linked verse lies in making everyday things look fresh.” He observes, too: “Linked-verse poets, even more than lyric poets, should not go counter to the ways of the world.” The writer of linked verse would neither probe an unusual, extraordinary aspect of human life nor search for a message from some strange superhuman world; such things are to be carried out by some other art form in which the artist can indulge in his personal idiosyncrasy to his heart's content. Linked verse deals with human experiences shared by every individual, with the kind of truths known to an average man. But it presents those common experiences and known truths in a wider perspective and on a firmer ground than an individual can; it has broadness of scope and depth of feeling provided only by the wisdom of many. A truth sanctioned by many may be a commonplace truth but has so much firmer reliability and broader application; the kind of beauty approved by many may be too ordinary but has so much less subjectivity involved in the judgment. This is an advantage of a pragmatic theory in any field.

Linked verse, then, has its social usefulness in that it contains truths widely tested and universally accepted. It shows the norms of the society, whether good or bad; when the verse is corrupt, the society is corrupt, too. Where linked verse has a truthful spirit and straightforward expression, there is a well-governed state; it is the mirror of the society, and political leaders should make use of the fact. In this respect linked verse is even more useful than lyric poetry, as it reflects the feelings of many rather than of one.

Linked verse, furthermore, has personal usefulness. It helps man to attain a state of religious enlightenment. This is a function lyric poetry cannot well manage, for it is inherent in the very form of linked verse. Yoshimoto says:

If one carefully studies the form of linked verse, one will note that it has little continuity of thought from one stanza to the next. A great variety of things, some thriving and others declining, some joyful and others grievous, are set side by side and move onward together; this is precisely the way of this world. The past becomes the present, spring turns to autumn, blossoms are replaced by tinted leaves, all in an instant of time; the feeling of ever-flowing change naturally emerges therefrom. Lyric poets are so much attached to their art that there have been cases in which the poet sacrificed his life for the sake of a poem, or died an untimely death as his poem was criticized.² There is no such thing in linked verse. Since it aims at nothing beyond the entertainment of the people present, linked verse causes no strong attachment in the poet's mind. Moreover, no person can think of other things while he participates in the making of linked verse; no malignant thought, consequently, has a chance to enter into his mind.

Linked verse helps man to attain the Buddhist way of salvation. Its form has the rhythm of actual human life, with its swiftly changing pace, its totally unpredictable turn, and its apparently chaotic arrangement of events. This life is in reality as changeful and unpredictable as linked-verse lines, so each man should try to find happiness beyond all that. To do this, he will have to purge all his worldly attachments, and linked verse will help him in this matter, too. Unlike lyric poetry, which could be an attachment in itself, linked verse is primarily a pastime with little bearing on the prestige of individual poets. It is an enjoyable game, after all, in which the participants forget all the worries of the world awhile. It helps men to transcend this mire, to look at it from a distance, even for a brief period of time.

All in all, Yoshimoto's theory of poetry is a consistent, well-founded one. If it seems to lack weight and impressiveness compared with some other poetics, it is because Yoshimoto's is a pragmatic theory that claims no extraordinary value for the poet or poetry. In his view poetry fits perfectly into the scheme of things in actual life. Verse-writing is a pastime, no more and no less. People gain pleasure out of poetry, through the process of both composing it and reading it, and these two can be done simultaneously in linked verse. Linked verse is not obliged to embody a profound truth or to present an impassioned emotion; it is asked only to be pleasurable. However, since something as subjective and elusive as the pleasure of the moment cannot be made into the criterion of poetry, Yoshimoto introduces an affective value, beauty, as the source of pleasure and makes it the standard of evaluation. of many types of beauty the two he places above all are the beauty of elegance and the beauty of unity in variety. These are conceived largely as tonal qualities created by a subtle interplay of images and rhythms. Through words and images linked verse tries to do what music does through sound. But, unlike some Western poets of the late nineteenth century, Yoshimoto never attempts to escape from the moral implications of words; on the contrary he believes that poetry teaches universally accepted truths in a fresh, new way. This is partly due to the fact that both the beauty of elegance and that of unity in variety are not purely tonal qualities but possess moral implications in themselves. Yoshimoto is partly aware of this when he says the variety of linked-verse lines is suggestive of the rhythm of life. He says nothing about the implications of yūgen, but, as will be seen in the next chapter, yūgen does involve a distinct attitude toward life. Yoshimoto's writings on the nature of linked verse include those and other ideas that would, if he had pursued them further, have thrown more instructive light on the essence of poetry. But we should not blame him for not probing the issues further, for he had his own doctrine, pragmatism, which could conveniently resolve them for him. After all, he was writing his theory for a single art form with its own laws, and he was most successful in doing so.

Notes

1. Zenna, a Buddhist monk, was one of the earliest pioneers in linked verse. Some of the best poets of the time studied linked verse under him. He lived in the early fourteenth century.

2. It is likely that Yoshimoto had actual cases in mind here. Minamoto Yorizane, an eleventh-century poet, is said to have died young when a god responded to his prayer that he would give up his life if he could compose one good poem. Fujiwara Nagatō, another eleventh-century poet, became ill and finally died when one of his poems received sharp criticism from a distinguished critic of the day.