Chapter II: Preface: By His Excellency the Japanese Ambassador (2)

Dickins’s[4] most scholarly and valuable translation keeps one’s attention always in the realm of intellectual interest, and it is his intention to be strictly in accord with the original. His version is partly in prose and partly in this form--

“across the surf he
upon the shipway oareth,
gentle the skies are,
the spring-winds softly blowing--
what tale of days shall
his bark in the cloudy distance
sail o’er the sea-plain
till Hāruma he reacheth.”

With this it is interesting to compare Aston’s translation, which is largely prose. The lines quoted above from Dickins are rendered by Aston[5] as follows: “With waves that rise along the shore, and a genial wind of spring upon the ship-path, how many days pass without a trace of him we know not, until at length he has reached the longed-for bay of Takasago, on the coast of Harima.”

This play of _Takasago_ is often quoted and is much beloved by the Japanese, and some of the verses from it are invariably chanted at the wedding festivals. The beginning of the famous chorus is thus rendered by Aston (p. 209)--

“On the four seas
Still are the waves;
The world is at peace.
Soft blow the time-winds,[6]
Rustling not the branches.
In such an age
Blest are the very firs,
In that they meet
To grow old together.”

Captain Brinkley’s translation of _Ataka_ is in somewhat similar style to the preceding, a mixture of prose and “verse” of short lines like the following example--

“From traveller’s vestment
Pendent bells ring notes
Of pilgrims’ foot-falls;
And from road-stained sleeves
Pendent dew-drops presage
Tears of last meetings.”

To the same school of translators belongs Mr. Sansom,[7] though he is slightly less literal than Mr. Dickins. He renders the exquisite fragment from the _Sakuragawa_ as follows--

“The waters flow, the flowers fall,
forever lasts the Spring,
The moon shines cold, the wind blows high,
the cranes do not fly home.
The flowers that grow in the rocks
are scarlet, and light up the stream.
The trees that grow by the caverns
are green and contain the breeze
The blossoms open like brocade,
the brimming pools are deep and blue.”

All the time we are reading this the magic of suggestion is working, and we would fain let our minds float away into the land of spring; but our attention is brought plumping down to the bodily presentation of the thoughts and our intellect is set at work to see how the lines might have been made to scan, or to run in some form of rhythm. So long as they do just scan and have a passable rhythm, we do not think of the poetical qualities of the translation, but when they jolt us along our attention is constantly diverted from the higher theme to the lesser subject of English grammar and versification.

So that I have endeavoured in my translations to make the lines run smoothly enough to be read aloud without much irritation; and though I have doubtless not fully succeeded, I have tried to give them as much verbal beauty as was possible within the narrow limits afforded me by the literal Japanese meaning. In this my collaborator, Prof. Sakurai, has held the rein on me at times when I would have liked to run away with some poetical conceits, and it is owing entirely to his tireless exertions that the result has a fair degree of accuracy. I must relieve him of too great a responsibility, however, for I confess that here and there where it seemed to me imperative to put in a word or two more than was in the original in order to convey the necessary impression to an English reader, or where several lines of metre would have been upset if he wouldn’t let me have the word I wanted, I have just taken the bit between my teeth and run away from him. But this has happened seldom, and on the whole I think it will be found that the English version bears close comparison with the Japanese.

Now a word regarding the type of verse that is used by those who translate into a recognisable English form. Of these the translations in Prof. Chamberlain’s _Classical Poetry of the Japanese_ of four of the finest and most renowned _utai_ of the _Nō_ are models to be considered by any later translator. Prof. Chamberlain puts the “words” into prose, and the “songs” into rhymed verse.

The chorus at the end of the _Robe of Feathers_ is a good example of this easily flowing verse (p. 146)--

“Dance on, sweet maiden, through the happy hours!
Dance on, sweet maiden, while the magic flow’rs
Crowning thy tresses flutter in the wind
Rais’d by thy waving pinions intertwin’d!
Dance on! for ne’er to mortal dance ’tis giv’n
To vie with that sweet dance thou bring’st from heav’n:
And when, cloud-soaring, thou shalt all too soon
Homeward return to the full-shining moon,
Then hear our pray’rs, and from thy bounteous hand
Pour sev’nfold treasures on our happy land;
Bless ev’ry coast, refresh each panting field,
That earth may still her proper increase yield!”

But to my ear such consistently rhymed verse does not convey any suggestion of the sound of the Japanese chants. As Captain Brinkley has it, “by obeying the exigencies of rhyme, whereas the original demands rhythm only (‘the learned sinologues, their translators’), have obtained elegance at the partial expense of fidelity.” It is true that a less formal versifying, such as I have used, does not represent truly the Japanese effect either--nothing can; but it seems less out of harmony with its character than do the rhyming stanzas. Then also I found that short rhymed lines render one liable to strain the sense a little in order to make things fit in. Longer lines, without such regular rhyming, allow one more play, and this enables one to follow the words suggested directly by the Japanese. Since then also Prof. Chamberlain’s own taste has changed and he has “gone over to the camp of the literalists.”

In two of the pieces I have put the “words” into a longer metre to indicate the difference between them and the “songs.” But I find this makes an added difficulty for any one reading aloud, without much enhancing the accuracy of the whole, so that in _Kagekiyo_ I have made no distinction between the various parts of the text. In listening to a Japanese _Nō_ performance one could not really tell where the “words” left off and the “songs” began, and also, as I have previously noted (p. 24), the poems are connected to the prose by irregularly dispersed poetical lines. Finally,

In Conclusion

as none of the prose in the least corresponds to our prose, and as it is not given in the ordinary speaking voice of the Japanese, but is always specially intoned, it seems to me much more suitable and harmonious to render the whole _utai_ in verse of various kinds.

Even this little book has been the task of years, despite its many imperfections. It was undertaken primarily because I delighted in the _Nō_, and the labour of bringing it through the Press was rendered lighter by the hope that it might give pleasure to the English reading public to see, even “through a glass darkly,” something of the beauty of this unexplored literature. I have already described the effect these plays have on the Japanese and on me. That I have caught perhaps an echo of their spirit I am encouraged to think, because on the two occasions when one or other of these translations have been read to audiences it has been reported to me that several of those who heard them were in tears. That strikes the right note. For with all their literary richness and their descriptions of beautiful scenes and of heroic deeds, the ground note of the _Nō_ is human tragedy. Their tragedy is of the fundamental, elemental kind that depends upon the very nature of our being, that turns upon the terrible fact which the trivialities of the material world so readily delude us into forgetting--that we are fleeting as a drop of dew.

MARIE C. STOPES.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _The Sumida River_ formed the subject of a paper read before the Royal Society of Literature. The translators acknowledge with gratitude the kindness of the Council in allowing them to republish the major part of the verse in the form in which it appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature in 1909.

[2] _Trans. Roy. Soc. Literature_, _London_, vol. 29, pp. 156-7.

[3] _Trans. Asiatic Soc. Japan_, vol. 35, pt. 4. 1908.

[4] _Primitive and Mediæval Japanese Texts_, p. 399.

[5] _History of Japanese Literature_, p. 207.

[6] The land and sea breezes, which blow regularly only in fine weather.

[7] _Trans. Asiatic Soc. Japan_, vol. 38, pt. 3, p. 174.

THE MAIDEN’S TOMB

Authorship of the Play

This piece is now commonly attributed to _Kiyotsugu_, and is supposed to have been produced at the end of the fourteenth century. Its exact date is not known, but Kiyotsugu was born in 1354 and died in 1406; yet it is most likely that he was an adapter and not the original author of the _utai_, parts of which were probably written long before his time. The play is still one of the most important of the _Nō_, and is indeed a test piece, as parts of the _Shite’s_ chanting are exceptionally difficult. A foreigner cannot judge of this, but from my own point of view it is perhaps the finest of all the _Nō_.

Outline of the Story

The play is based on a story told--or rather written down, for it was probably told long before then--a thousand years ago in the _Yamato Monogatari_, or _Tales of Japan_. It is the story of the love of two men for one woman, and the fatal consequences thereof for all concerned.

UNAI, a maiden living near Ikuta, was loved by two equally gifted men. On the selfsame day they each sent her a letter declaring their passion, but she could not decide between them, fearing the anger of either rejected suitor. Her father determined that the one who shot most accurately should win her, but in the contest the two men pierced the same wing of the same bird with their arrows. This bird was a mandarin duck, a creature whose lifelong faithfulness to its mate was proverbial in Japan. The girl felt bitterly that she was to blame for the death of the bird and the misery its mate endured, as well as for the strife between the two men. Hence she drowned herself. Then the two men, visiting her tomb, were filled with remorse, and killed each other beside her grave. This, however, only added to the girl’s guilt, and much of the play is taken up with vivid descriptions of her agonising torments in the eight hells believed in by popular Buddhism.

The play opens with a traveller Priest passing the village of Ikuta on his way to the capital. It is early spring, and the village maidens are out gathering the first green shoots of the “seven herbs,” which used to be eaten at the beginning of the year as a kind of ceremony. The city folk make this herb-gathering a pleasure picnic, but the poor girls going out of necessity into the biting cold of January are envious of those who are better off in cities. The spirit of the long dead UNAI has joined them in the form of a young girl, but she takes part in the opening dialogue. The “Maiden’s (_i. e._ UNAI’S) Tomb” is one of the famous places in the district, and the Priest asks to see it. UNAI’S spirit remains behind when the village girls have been driven home by the cold, and she conducts the Priest to the tomb, conversing with him, and telling him the story of UNAI. Her spirit’s materialisation as a maiden then vanishes, and UNAI appears as a Ghost, for whom the Priest prays. The Ghost laments over the tomb, and the Chorus gives expression to her longing for the human world. The Ghost expresses her thankfulness for the prayer uttered by the Priest, and recounts her agonising sufferings in the eight hells. The Priest makes some effort, but not a very determined one, to inculcate in the poor Ghost the higher Buddhistic belief that all these things, even the hells, are delusions, and her mind could free herself of them. The play closes with the Chorus telling of her miseries in hell.

Comments on the Play

In its construction, and its presentment of the story as a whole, this play resembles strikingly one of the beautiful tryptic colour prints of Japan, in which an exquisite, softly coloured garden or woodland foreground, shaded with delicate mists, brings into intense relief the vivid figure of an armoured warrior going out to battle. In the opening passages of this play we have the soft, misted foreground, with the tender green shoots of the early spring-time. One sees the thin, frosted ice pushing aside the sprouting plants, and the scene is enhanced and the description of it embroidered by poetic references to the details of the picture. But among the maidens is one, outwardly like others, so that they do not recognise the difference themselves, but yet one who is a tragic figure, a temporary reincarnation of a spirit from hell. Then with the Priest the spirit converses, and paints in vivid colours this central figure, for whom the whole scene forms but the setting.

To us in the West the moral attitude of the play seems very strange. From her initial ‘sin’ in being sufficiently beautiful to attract the love of two men, and her guilt in causing the death of the mandarin duck (in a Buddhistic country no small crime), we see crime after crime laid upon the maiden’s head. And all the time in our eyes she appears utterly innocent of everything save a too ready yielding to a tender conscience, and a willingness to take blame upon herself. Hapless maiden, how different is this treatment of hers from that accorded in the West to charming girls. In Old Japan not all the eight hells would have been accounted sufficient for Helen of Troy.

In its religious attitude we see the popular beliefs of Buddhism contrasted with the higher form of the same religion. The circumstantial details of the hells and punishments were believed in by the common folk, but as the Priest says (on p. 49) all was delusion, both in the world and in heaven or hell, and the soul could escape from its torments by a recognition of this higher fact.

If only thou wouldst once but cast away
The clouds of thy delusions, thou wouldst be
Freed from thy many sins and from all ills.

THE MAIDEN’S TOMB[8]

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

The Maiden UNAI (really her spirit temporarily
incarnated as a maiden) (_Shite_)

Two of the Village Maidens (_Tsure_)

A Priest (_Waki_)

The Ghost of the Maiden UNAI (_Nochi-jite_)

Chorus

THE MAIDEN’S TOMB

_This illustration, from a Japanese coloured woodcut, shows the figure of the maiden Unai (+see p. 35+), who wears a dress resembling that still worn by country maidens, though with the volume of the garment and the size of the patterns both a little more exaggerated than those which are now customary. The designer of the woodcut has put in symbolic and formalized representations of the Mandarin ducks and the flames of hell-fire which were among Unai’s torments._ ]

SCENE

The fields of ONO near the hamlet of IKUTA in Settsu, in the early spring.

[_The PRIEST enters_]

PRIEST

Far through the country has my journey lain,
Far through the country has my journey lain,
And to the capital I speed my way.

I, a priest, am from the country, from the Western districts
coming.[9]
To the capital, which hitherto my eyes have never seen.

The paths along the coast are manifold,
The paths along the coast are manifold,
That on this journey I have traced, and oft
My way has lain by boat across the sea.
Over the sea and mountains stretching wide
I watched the sun rise up and set again,
And now I reach Ikuta which I know
Only by name as in Tsu province fair,
The hamlet of Ikuta now I reach.

SPIRIT AND MAIDENS

Green shoots we gather, young green shoots of spring,
And here in Ono by Ikuta blows
The morning breeze so chill, so chill and strong
It turns and billows out our flapping sleeves.[10]

MAIDENS

While in the distant mountains, on the pines
The snow has even yet not disappeared.

SPIRIT AND MAIDENS

Oh, near the Capital the time has come
To gather in the fields the shoots of spring.
It makes our hearts glad just to think of that.

SPIRIT

But from the Capital this place is far,

MAIDENS

And we are country folk and therefore live
A humble life here by Ikuta’s sea.
Our lives and work are of the lowliest
And to the field of Ono every year
Without the thought of pleasure do we come.[11]
The footmarks of the many village folk
That go to gather the young shoots of spring
Have left wide tracks across the snowy field.

And tread a path, where else there would be none.
And tread a path, where else there would be none.

The young green shoots that grow on field and marsh
We now must gather. When the snow has gone
They will already have become too old--
Though still the wind blows cold thro’ shady copse
And on the field of Ono lies the snow,
The seven herbs of early spring-time sprout
In Ikuta then let us pluck the shoots,
In Ikuta then let us pluck the shoots.

PRIEST

O good people, will you tell me if toward Ikuta I’m nearing?

MAIDENS

As thou dost know the name of Ikuta
There should have been no need to ask us that!

SPIRIT

Dost thou not know it from the many views
That scattered far and wide portray the place?

First of all, dost thou not know it as the forest of Ikuta?
See, the many clustered tree tops which are true to this its name.[12]

MAIDENS

And there the stream thou hast now deigned to cross,
It is the far-famed river Ikuta.

SPIRIT

In the early breath of spring-time (like the shallows of the river)
Do we gather, ’neath the snowy cloak, the young shoots of the field.

MAIDENS

And this field, too, where little sprouts as yet
Are growing, why as Ono know’st it not?[13]

SPIRIT AND MAIDENS

The sweet wild cherry blossoms that do grow
In Miyoshino and in Shiga too,
The maple leaves of Tatsuta and those
Of Hatsuse--they would be surely known
By those who lived beside the poet’s home.
But we, though living in this place know not
The forest or the copse of Ikuta.
So ask us not, for we know nothing here.

PRIEST

Ah yes. Unfolding now before my eyes
The views I know--the forest, river, sea,
And mist, the scenes of Ono now expand!

And the far-famed tomb of Ikuta, the Maiden’s Tomb, where is it?

SPIRIT

Ah, in truth, the Maiden’s Tomb! That is a place that I have heard of;
Whereabout it is I know not, yea, I know not in the least.

MAIDENS

But prithee, traveller, these useless things
We beg thee ask us not, we prize the time[14]
When we can gather these young shoots of spring.

SPIRIT

And thou thyself, too, journeyest in haste,
So wherefore dost thou tarry with us here?

MAIDENS

Thereon an ancient poem has the words--

CHORUS[15]

I

“A charming hindrance to the traveller
Are they who pluck young shoots in Ono’s field
In Ikuta.”[16] Why ask then useless things?

II

“Thou, Watchman of the field of Tobuhi
That lies in Kasugano, go and see,”
“Thou, Watchman of the field of Tobuhi
That lies in Kasugano, go and see
If it is not yet time to pluck the shoots.”[17]
Thou, traveller, that to the capital
Likewise dost haste, how many days hast thou?
“For his sake do I go to the spring fields
To gather the young shoots, though on my robe
Cling still the cold, unmelted flakes of snow.”[18]
Let us then gather, snowy though it be
And on the marsh the thin ice still remains,
Pushing aside the sprouting watercress,
Let us then gather the green-coloured shoots
Let us then gather the green-coloured shoots.