Chapter I

"These," said Manyemon, putting on the table a roll of wonderfully written Japanese manuscript, "are Vulgar Songs. If they are to be spoken of in some honorable book, perhaps it will be good to say that they are Vulgar, so that Western people may not be deceived."

*

Next to my house there is a vacant lot, where washermen _(sentukaya)_ work in the ancient manner,--singing as they work, and whipping the wet garments upon big flat stones. Every morning at daybreak their singing wakens me; and I like to listen to it, though I cannot often catch the words. It is full of long, queer, plaintive modulations. Yesterday, the apprentice--a lad of fifteen--and the master of the washermen were singing alternately, as if answering each other; the contrast between the tones of the man, sonorous as if boomed through a conch, and the clarion alto of the boy, being very pleasant to hear. Whereupon I called Manyemon and asked him what the singing was about.

"The song of the boy," he said, "is an old song:--

_Things never changed since the Time of the Gods:_
_The flowing of water, the Way of Love._

I heard it often when I was myself a boy."

"And the other song?"

"The other song is probably new:--

_Three years thought of her,_
_Five years sought for her;_
_Only for one night held her in my arms._

A very foolish song!"

"I don't know," I said. "There are famous Western romances containing nothing wiser. And what is the rest of the song?"

"There is no more: that is the whole of the song. If it be honorably desired, I can write down the songs of the washermen, and the songs which are sung in this street by the smiths and the carpenters and the bamboo-weavers and the rice-cleaners. But they are all nearly the same."

Thus came it to pass that Manyemon made for me a collection of Vulgar Songs.

*

By "vulgar" Manyemon meant written in the speech of the common people. He is himself an adept at classical verse, and despises the _hayari-uta,_ or ditties of the day; it requires something very delicate to please him. And what pleases him I am not qualified to write about; for one must be a very good Japanese scholar to meddle with the superior varieties of Japanese poetry. If you care to know how difficult the subject is, just study the chapter on prosody in Aston's Grammar of the Japanese Written Language, or the introduction to Professor Chamberlain's Classical Poetry of the Japanese. Her poetry is the one original art which Japan has certainly not borrowed either from China or from any other country; and its most refined charm is the essence, irreproducible, of the very flower of the language itself: hence the difficulty of representing, even partially, in any Western tongue, its subtler delicacies of sentiment, allusion, and color. But to understand the compositions of the people no scholarship is needed: they are characterized by the greatest possible simplicity, directness, and sincerity.

The real art of them, in short, is their absolute artlessness. That was why I wanted them. Springing straight from the heart of the eternal youth of the race, these little gushes of song, like the untaught poetry of every people, utter what belongs to all human experience rather than to the limited life of a class or a time; and even in their melodies still resound the fresh and powerful pulsings of their primal source.

*

Manyemon had written down forty-seven songs; and with his help I made free renderings of the best. They were very brief, varying from seventeen to thirty-one syllables in length. Nearly all Japanese poetical metre consists of simple alternations of lines of five and seven syllables; the frequent exceptions which popular songs offer to this rule being merely irregularities such as the singer can smooth over either by slurring or by prolonging certain vowel sounds. Most of the songs which Manyemon had collected were of twenty-six syllables only; being composed of three successive lines of seven syllables each, followed by one of five, thus:--

Ka-mi-yo ko-no-ka-ta
Ka-wa-ra-nu mo-no wa:
Mi-dzu no na-ga-ré to
Ko-i no mi-chi.[1]

Among various deviations from this construction I found 7-7-7-7-5, and 5-7-7-7-5, and 7-5-7-5, and 5-7-5; but the classical five-line form (_tanka,_) represented by 5-7-5-7-7, was entirely absent.

Terms indicating gender were likewise absent; even the expressions corresponding to "I" and "you" being seldom used, and the words signifying "beloved" applying equally to either sex. Only by the conventional value of some comparison, the use of a particular emotional tone, or the mention of some detail of costume, was the sex of the speaker suggested, as in this verse:--

_I am the water-weed drifting,--finding no place of attachment:_
_Where, I wonder, and when, shall my flower begin to bloom?_

Evidently the speaker is a girl who wishes for a lover: the same simile uttered by masculine lips would sound in Japanese ears much as would sound in English ears a man's comparison of himself to a violet or to a rose. For the like reason, one knows that in the following song the speaker is not a woman:--

_Flowers in both my hands,--flowers of plum and cherry:_
_Which will be, I wonder, the flower to give me fruit?_

Womanly charm is compared to the cherry flower and also to the plum flower; but the quality symbolized by the plum flower is moral always rather than physical.[2] The verse represents a man strongly attracted by two girls: one, perhaps a dancer, very fair to look upon; the other beautiful in character. Which shall he choose to be his companion for life? One more example:--

_Too long, with pen in hand, idling, fearing, and doubting,_
_I cast my silver pin for the test of the tatamizan._

Here we know from the mention of the hairpin that the speaker is a woman, and we can also suppose that she is a _geisha;_ the sort of divination called _tatamizan_ being especially popular with dancing-girls. The rush covering of floor-mats (_tatami,_) woven over a frame of thin strings, shows on its upper surface a regular series of lines about three fourths of an inch apart. The girl throws her pin upon a mat, and then counts the lines it touches. According to their number she deems herself lucky or unlucky. Sometimes a little pipe--geishas' pipes are usually of silver--is used instead of the hairpin.

*

The theme of all the songs was love, as indeed it is of the vast majority of the Japanese _chansons des rues et des bois;_ even songs about celebrated places usually containing some amatory suggestion. I noticed that almost every simple phase of the emotion, from its earliest budding to its uttermost ripening, was represented in the collection; and I therefore tried to arrange the pieces according to the natural passional sequence. The result had some dramatic suggestiveness.

[Footnote 1: Literally, "_God-Age-since not-changed-things as-for: water of flowing and love-of way._"]

[Footnote 2: See _Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan,_ ii. 357.]

II

The songs really form three distinct groups, each corresponding to a particular period of that emotional experience which is the subject of all. In the first group of seven the surprise and pain and weakness of passion find utterance; beginning with a plaintive cry of reproach and closing with a whisper of trust.

I

_You, by all others disliked!--oh, why must my heart thus like you?_

II

_This pain which I cannot speak of to any one in the world:_
_Tell me who has made it,--whose do you think the fault?_

III

_Will it be night forever?--I lose my way in this darkness:_
_Who goes by the path of Love must always go astray!_

IV

_Even the brightest lamp, even the light electric,_
_Cannot lighten at all the dusk of the Way of Love._

V

_Always the more I love, the more it is hard to say so:_
_Oh! how happy I were should the loved one say it first!_

VI

_Such a little word!--only to say, "I love you"!_
_Why, oh, why do I find it hard to say like this?_[1]

[Footnote 1: Inimitably simple in the original:--

Horeta wai na to
Sukoshi no koto ga:
Nazé ni kono yō ni
Iinikui?
]

VII

_Clicked-to[2] the locks of our hearts; let the keys remain in our bosoms._

After which mutual confidence the illusion naturally deepens; suffering yields to a joy that cannot disguise itself, and the keys of the heart are thrown away: this is the second stage.

[Footnote 2: In the original this is expressed by an onomatope, _pinto,_ imitating the sound of the fastening of the lock of a _tansu,_ or chest of drawers:--

Pinto kokoro ni Jōmai oroshi: Kagi wa tagai no Muné ni aru. ]

I

_The person who said before, "I hate my life since I saw you,"_
_Now after union prays to live for a thousand years._

II

_You and I together--lilies that grow in a valley:_
_This is our blossoming-time--but nobody knows the fact._

III

_Receiving from his hand the cup of the wine of greeting,_
_Even before I drink, I feel that my face grows red._

IV

_I cannot hide in my heart the happy knowledge that fills it;_
_Asking each not to tell, I spread the news all round._[5]

[Footnote 3: Much simpler in the original:--

Muné ni tsutsumenu Uréshii koto wa;-- Kuchidomé shinagara Furéaruku. ]

V

_All crows alike are black, everywhere under heaven._
_The person that others like, why should not I like too?_

VI

_Going to see the beloved, a thousand ri are as one ri;_[4]
_Returning without having seen, one ri is a thousand ri._

[Footnote 4: One _ri_ is equal to about two and a half English miles.]

VII

_Going to see the beloved, even the water of rice-fields_[5]
_Ever becomes, as I drink, nectar of gods[6] to the taste._

[Footnote 5: In the original _dorota;_ literally "mud rice-fields,"-- meaning rice-fields during the time of flushing, before the grain has fairly grown up. The whole verse reads:--

Horeté kayoyeba Dorota no midzu mo Noméba kanro no Aji ga suru. ]

[Footnote 6: _Kanro,_ a Buddhist word, properly written with two Chinese characters signifying "sweet dew." The real meaning is _amrita,_ the drink of the gods.]

VIII

_You, till a hundred years; I, until nine and ninety;_
_Together we still shall be in the time when the hair turns white._

IX

_Seeing the face, at once the folly I wanted to utter_
_All melts out of my thought, and somehow the tears come first!_[7]

[Footnote 7:

Iitai guchi sayé Kao miriya kiyété Tokakii namida ga Saki ni deru.

The use of _tokaku_ ("somehow," for "some reason or other") gives a peculiar pathos to the utterance.]

X

_Crying for joy made wet my sleeve that dries too quickly;_
_'T is not the same with the heart,--that cannot dry so soon!_

XI

_To Heaven with all my soul I prayed to prevent your going;_
_Already, to keep you with me, answers the blessed rain._

So passes the period of illusion. The rest is doubt and pain; only the love remains to challenge even death:--

I

_Parted from you, my beloved, I go alone to the pine-field;_
_There is dew of night on the leaves; there is also dew of tears._

II

_Even to see the birds flying freely above me_
_Only deepens my sorrow,--makes me thoughtful the more._

III

_Coming? or coming not? Far down the river gazing,_
_--Only yomogi shadows[8] astir in the bed of the stream._

[Footnote 8: The plant _yomogi_ (_Artemisia vulgaris_) grows wild in many of the half-dry beds of the Japanese rivers.]

IV

_Letters come by the post; photographs give me the shadow!_
_Only one thing remains which I cannot hope to gain._

V

_If I may not see the face, but only look at the letter,_
_Then it were better far only in dreams to see._

VI

_Though his body were broken to pieces, though his bones on the
shore were bleaching,_
_I would find my way to rejoin him, after gathering up the bones._[9]

[Footnote 9:

Mi wa kuda kuda ni Honé we isobé ni Sarasoto mama yo Hiroi atsumété Sôté misho.

The only song of this form in the collection. The use of the verb _soi_ implies union as husband and wife.]