Michaelsan's Poetry Collection

 

I decided to try to organize the poems I chose in such a way that they created a story. Now this did mean that I didn’t necessarily choose my favorite poems of my lot, even though I do more or less like all the poems I chose for this anthology. Also, since each poem is by a different author it may not be exactly clear what the story is from the first reading. To counteract the latter, I split up my individual poem discussions into two parts: the first part will be explaining my thoughts on the poem itself, independently of all the others here, while the second part will be explaining how the poem connects to the overall plot I organized the poems around. However, I actually recommend not reading those discussions until after you’ve read all eight poems because I want you to try to piece together the story on your own first before I spell it out for you. 

1.)   Poem #111 by Ariwara no Narihira

How very foolish! / Shall I spend all of today / lost in pensive thought, / my heart bewitched by someone / neither seen or yet unseen?

I simply found this poem neat when I first read it and to this day I still find it neat. I see it as a very concise and effective way to illustrate how even a transitory glance at something can have so much influence over someone. It also have gained a new layer of depth in my eyes after having read In Praise of Shadows, specifically in how the sight of the woman Ariwara no Narihira sees is “neither seen or yet unseen.” That description sounds to me like the perfect way to summarize how Tanizaki described Japanese aesthetics. Perhaps this means that Narihira would not have been so infatuated with this woman if he saw her in full?

Here, our story begins with our protagonist catching a brief glimpse of a woman. His view of her was not clear whatsoever, with the reason for its unclarity being even more unclear than our protagonist’s view of the woman. Yet despite this our protagonist seems to fall head over heels for this woman. He’s so in love with her that he chastises himself for obsessing over a woman he doesn’t even know the full face of. So what will he do now?

2.)   Poem #4 by Emperor Yūryaku

O maiden / with a basket, / a pretty basket, / with a scoop, / a pretty scoop, / maiden picking greens / on this hillside: / I want to ask about your house; / I want to be told your name. / In the sky-filling land of Yamato, / it is I / who rule everyone, / it is I / who rule everywhere, / and so I think you will tell me / where you live, / what you are called.

I still find this poem absolutely adorable upon rereading it. While I imagine many people today would find it creepy or an abuse of power on Emperor Yūryaku’s end to write this, I frankly think it indicates a great deal of politeness and restraint on his part. After all, he was the Emperor of Japan (or at least of the area this girl lived in) at the time; even if the position was mostly a sinecure I can’t help but think that if he wanted to forcefully bed or marry this girl he could’ve done so and gotten away with it. Yet instead he tries to woo her via poetry, asking her to give up her name and location to him willingly; even his invocations to his imperial nature come across more as a guy flexing his muscles than one pointing a gun at another. The fact he’s willing to be so gentlemanly towards a girl who’s likely much lower class than him (as suggested by the manual labor she is doing) just make this poem all the more charming.

In the story, we discover that our protagonist is actually an Emperor of Japan itself! Not only that, but we learn that the woman who’s mere sight infatuated him is a peasant girl, who’s job is to pick crops on a hillside. With his clout the Emperor could easily find the peasant girl and take her for himself easily, yet due to his gentle nature he instead tries to win her over via poetry. Of course, he can’t help but flex all of his mighty power (even if said power is mostly symbolic) in an attempt to impress this woman, yet that is not the only reason he does so. For he wants the peasant girl to be as honest with him as he is with her—question is, however, will she be?

3.)   Poem #963 by Buson

“Please, give me a room!” – / he tosses his swords aside / in windblown snow.

            Even knowing that this poem was made during the twilight years of the power and prestige of the samurai class, I continue to find the image created by this poem ingrained in my mind. I think it’s because of how unnatural the image is; in nature/outside of civilization, it’s almost always the case where the stronger animal takes what it wants from the weaker one. Yet in this snowy poem, we instead see the presumably stronger man (he is at least armed), make himself weaker by disarming himself to obtain shelter from the weaker party (since the innkeepers probably do not have weapons). To reiterate, in the wild, a stronger animal that wants a weaker animal’s shelter would just drive the weaker animal out. Thus this situations strike me as one that could only happen in a civilization.

            Our Emperor has managed to find the Peasant Girl’s house due to her telling her its location, and he comes alone on a snowy and windy night, albeit while armed. Yet when he comes to the Peasant Girl’s house, he is rejected (most likely by her parents) and not allowed inside. Why the Emperor was rejected is a mystery: perhaps the girl is a member of a clan hostile to the Emperor, or perhaps they didn’t believe he was the Emperor, or maybe it was simply because of an unmentioned physical deformity the Emperor had? Regardless of the true reason, our Emperor is so desperate to be let inside that he begs and disarms himself in order to persuade the girl’s parents to let him in. He is not successful.

4.)   Poem on page 79 of Issa’s The Spring of my Life

Like a murderer, / the thirsty mosquito hides / in the musky well.

            On the surface, this poem is just a simple simile and I imagine whoever wrote it thought so too; yet the image this simple simile creates is incredibly potent, at least to me. For mosquitoes, due to them carrying several diseases, are estimated by current demographers to be responsible for half of all human deaths, with half of the humans who died from mosquito-borne diseases being children. In fact, it’s quite likely that Issa lost at least one of his children to such a disease; him adding a poem into the chapter where his beloved daughter died from smallpox (which to be fair isn’t a mosquito-transmitted disease) comparing mosquitos to murderers is quite fitting whether he realized it or not. In fact, here’s something interesting: mosquitoes are actually a type of fly and “Beelzebub” (which means “Lord of the Flies”) is either another name for the devil or that of another demon. Do what you will with this information.

            In a well frequented by the Peasant Girl, a mosquito hides and waits for prey to appear. When the Peasant Girl eventually makes her first trip to the well after the Emperor’s visit, this mosquito strikes. The girl is annoyed and itches, but otherwise pays so little mind to the assault that she forgets about it in a few hours. Yet little does she know that the mosquito has murdered her, for it has infected her with a disease that will take her life. It will take some time for the symptoms to start, keeping her and everyone around her oblivious to her fate.  

5.)   Poem #193 of the Kokinshu sequence (from Spring 2) by Anonymous

Could I give commands / to such breezes as might blow, / I would say to them: / “There is here a single tree / from which you must stay away

            I feel like most of humanity is aware that most change is entropic in nature, wittingly or otherwise, and thus we instinctively disdain change in that we care about most. Yet the thing about entropy is that it is very powerful, much more powerful than any man, and thus we are forced to come to terms with decay and rot due to our relevant powerlessness against them. This poem articulates a desire I know we have all had at least once in our lives before: to demand that death and decay spare at least one thing from its grasp. I imagine even cultures like Japan which find beauty and value in impermanence can’t help but feel such desires crawling up from within. For better or for worse, however, time cares not about the feelings of mere humanity, and it marches on regardless.

            Outside of the Peasant Girl’s family and neighbors, only one man knows of her illness: the Emperor himself. He knows that using his influence to sent doctors to an unknown peasant family will cause an outrage among the nobility—but he cares not for such things. Unfortunately, he knows that his doctors are useless, for the disease the Peasant Girl has caught is all but a death sentence with no cure known among his people and time. Even as the Emperor of Japan, all he can do is pray that the winds spare his beloved tree from their cold grasp.

6.)   Poem #124 by Ono no Komachi

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

            Rereading this poem after what we have read reminds me of the giri (obligations/duties) and ninjou (emotions) conflict often seen in latter Japanese stories. On one hand you have the formal, controlled tear droplets while on the other had you have the wild and frenzied stream of tears. These two types of crying strike me as corresponding to giri and ninjou respectively, even if it may seem like a bit of a stretch. You even have Komachi trying to halt the surge of tears, mirroring how giri tries to restrain ninjou. I wouldn’t be surprised if I am looking too deep into this, but I can’t help but think that even this surface-level comparison is thought interesting enough to share.

            The Peasant Girl has died. The Emperor knows that he should control his tears so that they become mere beads on his silk sleeves; in fact, he likely shouldn’t even be mourning for this girl at all. Yet he can’t help but drench his sleeves via the stream that pours from his eyes. All that remains of her now is the memory of the brief glance that he was able to see of her.

7.)   Poem #272 by Fujiwara no Shunzei

How is it that ducks / are able to stay afloat / out on the water, / while I feel myself sinking / even here on the land?

            I love this poem because I see it as a great description of how misery can feel at times. Your mind is so heavy that even terra firma seems to struggle to support you when you need to stand as tall as possible. There’s also an element of jealousy in this poem, for Fujiwara is asking how ducks—mere beasts—are able to float on liquid as solids seem to crumble under his feet. Taken metaphorically, Fujiwara is wondering why mindless (or at least dumber) animals are able to achieve a degree of happiness that he’s unable to obtain even a faction of. I think there’s something very relatable in that sentiment if one has personally never felt such great sadness.

            The Emperor’s tears have stopped, but his misery remains. He feels as if his sadness is so great that its weight is liable to collapse the ground beneath his feet. The Emperoer even starts to envy how the ducks are able to glide across the water so carefree, and yet his misery is so great it smothers any wrath that the envy could have caused. It’s as if he is little more than a breathing dead man.

8.)   Poem #297 by Monk Saigyō

Even one who claims / to no longer have a heart / feels this sad beauty: / snipes flying up from a marsh / on an evening in autumn

            In this poem I find my main problem with Buddhism articulated. Monk Saigyō still finds much beauty in this world even though he thinks he should “have no heart” and thus no attachment to this world. Yet while I agree with Buddhism that our hearts are full of evil and that we put too much importance on temporary things, I cannot agree with the solution being to totally give up desires and the world. For our hearts need to be redeemed, not destroyed. This is what Christianity promises to do, and I consider Christianity (in particular Roman Catholicism) to be true; any disagreement Buddhism has with Christianity is Buddhism being wrong. This does not mean that I consider Buddhism evil or worthless—there is much virtue to be found in many of both its teachings and its practitioners—but it does mean that I consider Buddhism to be fundamentally mistaken about how to fix ourselves.

The Emperor has decided to become a lay monk. His heart was broken so he has decided to get rid of it: he wants to have no attachment to the world. Yet he can’t help but still love the sights around him. He can’t help but love the peasant girl he saw so many years ago. Is detachment really the solution to his woes? Only time will tell now.

 

Overall, it was quite fun to write a story using only poems I had chosen to already write about. It may not be a traditional Japanese poem anthology organizing principle but I hope it was enjoyable nonetheless. I’m quite proud of the story too; the idea of an emperor falling in love with someone much lower class only for that love to be crushed by forces not even he can control is an idea I’m glad to have written down, even in this form. My biggest worry is that the story I tried to construct between my poem was too vague to understand, but if that’s the case then I hope either you enjoyed what I wrote in the discussions or that you make your own similar story to organize the poems around in your head.