Recently while looking over a manuscript-collection of verses,—mostly
short poems of an emotional or descriptive character,—it occurred to me
that a selection from them might serve to illustrate certain Japanese
qualities of sentiment, as well as some little-known Japanese theories
of artistic expression,—and I ventured forthwith, upon this essay. The
poems, which had been collected for me by different persons at many
different times and places, were chiefly of the kind written on
particular occasions, and cast into forms more serried, if not also
actually briefer, than anything in Western prosody. Probably few of my
readers are aware of two curious facts relating to this order of
composition. Both facts are exemplified in the history and in the texts
of my collection,—though I cannot hope, in my renderings, to reproduce
the original effect, whether of imagery or of feeling.
The first curious fact is that, from very ancient times, the writing of
short poems has been practised in Japan even more as a moral duty than
as a mere literary art. The old ethical teaching was somewhat like
this:—“Are you very angry?—do not say anything unkind, but compose a
poem. Is your best-beloved dead?—do not yield to useless grief, but try
to calm your mind by making a poem. Are you troubled because you are
about to die, leaving so many things unfinished?—be brave, and write a
poem on death! Whatever injustice or misfortune disturbs you, put aside
your resentment or your sorrow as soon as possible, and write a few
lines of sober and elegant verse for a moral exercise.” Accordingly, in
the old days, every form of trouble was encountered with a poem.
Bereavement, separation, disaster called forth verses in lieu of
plaints. The lady who preferred death to loss of honor, composed a poem
before piercing her throat The samurai sentenced to die by his own
hand, wrote a poem before performing _hara-kiri_. Even in this less
romantic era of Meiji, young people resolved upon suicide are wont to
compose some verses before quitting the world. Also it is still the
good custom to write a poem in time of ill-fortune. I have frequently
known poems to be written under the most trying circumstances of misery
or suffering,—nay even upon a bed of death;-and if the verses did not
display any extraordinary talent, they at least afforded extraordinary
proof of self-mastery under pain…. Surely this fact of composition as
ethical practice has larger interest than all the treatises ever
written about the rules of Japanese prosody.
The other curious fact is only a fact of aesthetic theory. The common
art-principle of the class of poems under present consideration is
identical with the common principle of Japanese pictorial illustration.
By the use of a few chosen words the composer of a short poem endeavors
to do exactly what the painter endeavors to do with a few strokes of
the brush,—to evoke an image or a mood,—to revive a sensation or an
emotion. And the accomplishment of this purpose,—by poet or by
picture-maker,—depends altogether upon capacity to _suggest_, and only
to suggest. A Japanese artist would be condemned for attempting
elaboration of detail in a sketch intended to recreate the memory of
some landscape seen through the blue haze of a spring morning, or under
the great blond light of an autumn after-noon. Not only would he be
false to the traditions of his art: he would necessarily defeat his own
end thereby. In the same way a poet would be condemned for attempting
any _completeness_ of utterance in a very short poem: his object should
be only to stir imagination without satisfying it. So the term
_ittakkiri_—meaning “all gone,” or “entirely vanished,” in the sense of
“all told,”—is contemptuously applied to verses in which the
verse-maker has uttered his whole thought;—praise being reserved for
compositions that leave in the mind the thrilling of a something
unsaid. Like the single stroke of a temple-bell, the perfect short poem
should set murmuring and undulating, in the mind of the hearer, many a
ghostly aftertone of long duration.