"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.]