PHILOSOPHICAL verses do not form a numerous class of Japanese poems
upon semi; but they possess an interest altogether exotic. As the
metamorphosis of the butterfly supplied to old Greek thought an emblem
of the soul's ascension, so the natural history of the cicada has
furnished Buddhism with similitudes and parables for the teaching of
doctrine.
Man sheds his body only as the semi sheds its skin. But each
reincarnation obscures the memory of the previous one: we remember our
former existence no more than the semi remembers the shell from which it
has emerged. Often a semi may be found in the act of singing beside its
cast-off skin; therefore a poet has written:--
Ware to waga
Kara ya tomuro--
Semi no koe.
--YAYU.
Methinks that semi sits and sings by his former body,--
Chanting the funeral service over his own dead self.
This cast-off skin, or simulacrum,--clinging to bole or branch as in
life, and seeming still to stare with great glazed eyes,--has suggested
many things both to profane and to religious poets. In love-songs it is
often likened to a body consumed by passionate longing. In Buddhist
poetry it becomes a symbol of earthly pomp,--the hollow show of human
greatness:--
Yo no naka yo
Kaeru no hadaka,
Semi no kinu!
Naked as frogs and weak we enter this life of trouble;
Shedding our pomps we pass: so semi quit their skins.
But sometimes the poet compares the winged and shrilling semi to a human
ghost, and the broken shell to the body left behind:--
Tamashii wa
Ukiyo ni naite,
Semi no kara.
Here the forsaken shell: above me the voice of the creature
Shrills like the cry of a Soul quitting this world of pain.
Then the great sun-quickened tumult of the cicadae--landstorm of summer
life foredoomed so soon to pass away--is likened by preacher and poet to
the tumult of human desire. Even as the semi rise from earth, and climb
to warmth and light, and clamor, and presently again return to dust and
silence,--so rise and clamor and pass the generations of men:--
Yagate shinu
Keshiki wa miezu,
Semi no koe.
--BASHO.
Never an intimation in all those voices of semi
How quickly the hush will come,--how speedily all must die.
I wonder whether the thought in this little verse does not interpret
something of that summer melancholy which comes to us out of nature's
solitudes with the plaint of insect-voices. Unconsciously those millions
of millions of tiny beings are preaching the ancient wisdom of the
East,--the perpetual Sutra of Impermanency.
Yet how few of our modern poets have given heed to the voices of
insects!
Perhaps it is only to minds inexorably haunted by the Riddle of Life
that Nature can speak to-day, in those thin sweet trillings, as she
spake of old to Solomon.
The Wisdom of the East hears all things. And he that obtains it will
hear the speech of insects,--as Sigurd, tasting the Dragon's Heart,
heard suddenly the talking of birds.
NOTE.--For the pictures of semi accompanying this paper, I am
indebted to a curious manuscript work in several volumes,
preserved in the Imperial Library at Uyeno. The work is
entitled _Chufu-Zusetsu_,--which might be freely rendered as
"Pictures and Descriptions of Insects,"--and is divided into
twelve books. The writer's name is unknown; but he must have
been an amiable and interesting person, to judge from the naive
preface which he wrote, apologizing for the labors of a
lifetime. "When I was young," he says, "I was very fond of
catching worms and insects, and making pictures of their
shapes,--so that these pictures have now become several hundred
in number." He believes that he has found a good reason for
studying insects: "Among the multitude of living creatures in
this world," he says, "those having large bodies are familiar:
we know very well their names, shapes, and virtues, and the
poisons which they possess. But there remain very many small
creatures whose natures are still unknown, notwithstanding the
fact that such little beings as insects and worms are able to
injure men and to destroy what has value. So I think that it is
very important for us to learn what insects or worms have
special virtues or poisons." It appears that he had sent to him
"from other countries" some kinds of insects "that eat the
leaves and shoots of trees;" but he could not "get their exact
names." For the names of domestic insects, he consulted many
Chinese and Japanese books, and has been "able to write the
names with the proper Chinese characters;" but he tells us that
he did not fail "to pick up also the names given to worms and
insects by old farmers and little boys." The preface is dated
thus:--"_Ansei Kanote, the third month--at a little cottage_"
[1856].
With the introduction of scientific studies the author of the
_Chufu-Zusetsu_ could no longer hope to attract attention. Yet
his very modest and very beautiful work was forgotten only a
moment. It is now a precious curiosity; and the old man's ghost
might to-day find some happiness in a visit to the Imperial
Library.