NEW YEAR POETRY-MAKING IN JAPAN.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 840, 11 June 1910, Page 9

NEW YEAR POETRY-MAKING IN JAPAN.

The- New Year in Japan is a period of great racking of brains among tho poets of the country, for it is the time of tho annual Imperial Poetry Competition, which is decided in the following manner:—Early in December a subject is 'announced"by the Court; anyone is at liberty to send in a • rendering, but one only. All classes, of the people enter, and, every year, poems to tho number of fortv'o'r fifty thousand pour in. to the officials of the Bureau of Poetry in the Imperial Household Department. NewYear is for them a period of very hard work, as this vast mass of verso has to. bo painstakingly.sifted, and reduced to some five or six hundred in number.. The selected poems are placed before Baron Takasaki. the head of the bureau, who, in his turn, reduces them to ten, which he lays before the Emperor, who is the final judge. This public competition is a growth of New Japan. In pre-rcstoration times the Emperor gave an annual New Year poetry party, which was restricted to a few Court 'ladies and gentlemen, who could alone enter for tho competition. When the present Emperor came to the throne, ho so far relaxed the rules as to allow anyone to write a poem on the given subject, and try his luck; but, of course, ho is not invited to the poetry ■party, which is still confined to a few oxaltcd personages. This gathering is a very solemn aii'air, and is opened by a public reading; three, times repeated, of. the Emperor's own effort, and then of tho Empress's, followed by the poems of the other members of tho circle and those of the outside public which have so far survived 'the ordeal as to reach tho Imperial presence. The honour of a triple reading is reserved only for the 'poems of the Emperor and-Empress; lesser lights have to be content with a single repetition. Tho reading of these, little snatches of verse, is in itself an art, and every year the Emperor' selects someone, who is particularly skilled, to read all the poems. Last year the honour fell to Prince Nijo, the present head of one of tho five noble families from which, the Empress has always been, chosen. After the grand reader has performed his task, the tale is.taken up by another official, one of four, whose duty is to chant the poem, just recited, to, a certain conventional tune, the chorus being taken up by the other three, this process adds greatly to the effect of the verse, and is reminiscent of tho. chanting of the odes and hymns of Pindar, which were doubtless sung to some set tune. Tho: subject the, year before last was a pine-tree in front of a Shinto temple, and the winner was a young girl studying at tho Peeress's school. Tho Japanese pine is, of course, one of the chief glories of the country, and the tree assumes shapes such as are seen now;here cise. The long moat surrounding tho Emperor's palace in.Tokio is overhung by old fellows who fling their arms out in the weirdest manner, and the contrast between the dark green of the sprawling boughs, the vivid green of the water in the moat, and the grey of the massive- old walls, built of gigantic stones, laid together without any mortar, is a sight worth going far to see., The trees and wall seem to protest in silence against the modernisation'of old Yeclo and the erection of so-called foreign style buildings, which flaunt- their stucco faces and wooden cupolas in increasing numbers all over the city. So long, however, as these ancent trees remain standing, Tokio can never..wholly lose the charm of old Japan, and it is pleasant to observe the care that is. taken of them; no branch breaks off for want of a prop. In the winter tho snow is the great enemy of the- more fragile trees, but the Japanese gardener plants a stout pole by the side of the trunk, rising two or three feet above the crest of the tree. To this pole a cord runs from every branch, nay, from every twig, so that the weight of tho snow is supported without placing any strain on the strength of the tree. Last year the subject for.tho prizo poem again centred round the pinetree —"A pine-tree in the snow." Tho interest taken in the competition was again very, large, and tho museums in tile big towns. arranged exhibitions of pictures bearing on the subject, so that the poets might gain inspiration from the sight. Happening to ho in the Kyoto Museum at New Year time, wo observed three people'taking advantage of tho opportunity; one was a school teacher, another, was'. a small shopkeeper, and the third an evidently well-to-do man. It must not be thought that the chnne'e of winning a handsome prizo induces people to enter, for the intrinsic value of tho reward is very small, and it is a mero token. The honour of having one's poem read by tho Emperor is sufficient recompense, and sheer lovo of poetry impels, thou-, sands of people to commit their ideas to paper. ■. The form of tho poem is governed by rigid, rules. It must contain 31 syllables, neither more nor less, arranged in fivelines, consisting of 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 syllables. Neither must the poot use Chinese words, which renders his task doubly difficult, as nearly all tho abstract wards with line shades of moaning are of Chinese origin. 'The Western poet would be desperately hampered bv such rules, and would fancy himself back in the artificiality of the eighteenth century, when immutable laws laid down what was or was not a fit subject for poetical treatment, when even the kind of language was dictated, and to call "a colli wind" anything but "a gelid blast" was a crime against the canons of the poetical art. lint the Japanese move easily within these limits, for. what they aim at is .sugg'.'stivcuess, and not detail. Even thirty-one syllables are not necessary for tliem, and they can turn out a very pretty specimen in seventeen. Hero is an oiglilcoiitlweiHur.y one, composed by the poetess Chivo: — Asagao ni (5)1 _ Tsuruhe toraretc ... (7) 117 Morai Mizn Oj) ) (literally translated, this means: "Morning Glory by well bucket being taken H'.vay gilt water." Th; l Japanese, reading this, at once pictures to himself ; the lady Chiyo going to her well in the

morning lo.draw water, but she finds I Hint' morning glory lias in the night I turned itself round the chain, and sho . cannot, therefore, lower tho bucket without destroying the flowers. Does' she, then, commit the crime!' Jj'nr from it. Leaving the blossoms undisturbed, sho inns across to her neighbour's and borrows some water from him. Ono can imagine a Western poet manufacmring a pretty sonnet out of this incident ; but surely there is something very dainty in the Japanese rendering. This quality of suggestion runs not only through (lie poetry, but through their ;rrt. Wo well remember visiting tho studio of a Japanese artist, and asking for information. The artist' replied that lie would be happy to supply it if ho had I ho right to put a question to us first. Wo consented, and then wore requested to spend ten minutes looking at a picture hanging on the wall, after which the question would be asked. We sat down, therefore, on the mats, and gazed earnestly at the picture, which was a largo ono and represented in the left-hand bottom corner the hack of a fox's head, and in the right-hand corner a grape vine with a single hunch of grapes. Tho rest of tho picture was nothing " but atmosphere, painted with great' skill and delicacy, but still containing no tangible object. After the fateful ten minutes had elapsed, tho artist put his question: "Do you want to see the rest of that fox?" Being wise in our generation, our reply was: "Oh, no, we can imagine that for ourselves." "Good," said tho artist, "you have appreciated one of the underlying principles of our art." I Even in tho realm of music this same suggestiveness has its place, for what else is the silent. concert given by the Court Musicians at certain religious festivals, when all tho motions of playing arc performed, but all is silent as the dead? To revert to our subject, the poem for the New Year competition must be composed in the thirty-one-syllablo form known as "Waka." A specimen over 1000 years old may ; bo of in-. tcrest:— Shira-kumo ni (s)\ Hanc uchi-kawashi (7) Tobu kari no ' (5) L 31 Kazu sac miyum (7) Aki no yo no tsuki ' (7)1 That is, as translated liy Professor Chamberlain, "The moon on an autumn night making'visible the very number of tho wild geese that fly past with wings intercrossed in the white clouds." This is, again, a mere picture for tho imagination and gives a suggestion to tho reader. The present Emperor of Japan is a poet of high repute, and is said to have in his note-books somo six or eight hundred thousand of these little verses, and it would bo no exaggeration to say that many millions, of "these short poems, these tiny spots of colour, have been considered worthy of preservation, and are constantly related with infinite relish by people of all classes. The Japanese are peculiarly fond of verbal quips, a quality i which surely would have endeared them to' diaries Lamb, and any foreigner who is so far proficient in tho Japanese tongue as to make a pun at once acquires a reputation as a wit. If he has only blundered into >tho pun, he will he wise to keep that knowledge to himself and take the gifts the gods provide him. This national taste is, of course, 'reflected in their poetry, and if only 'Thomas Hood could be translated into Japanese he would make the sensation of tho century. It is, of course, difficult to give an idea of a pun to those who do not know Japanese, but there is one little ode in which two topeis drinking together admonish one another "to drink fair" with the delightful word gobu gobu, which means five parts and five parts; in other words, half and half., The "Western reader does not need to' bo in the habit of looking on tho wine when' it is red to recognise that gobu miliii, with the stress on tho go, is a very fair rendering of the pleasant gurgling made when the beer issues from the bottle. Of course, there are more stately puns than this, and one can scarcely suspect the dignified Court Circle of descending to, this level. Ono of those most skilled in the play upon words is the Chief of the Bureau of Poetry, Baron Takasaki, who is probably tho most eminent living poet. Amo'ng poetesses the Empress takes a very high place, and her work is much admired. That sturdy old fighter and reactionary statesman, Marshal Prince Yamagata, has a very high reputation in poetical circles, whilst • his political rival, tho astute Prince Ito, could do nothing in Japanese poetry, but was very skilful in ' tho composition of Chinese verse. It often happens that a most matter-of-fact friend, whom one never suspected of an idea beyond the stock market, is discovered to bo in the habit of spending his evenings composing Uta 'or songs, and the love of them pervades every class of society. So far from there being any signs of diminution of the affection for poetry, the interest taken in the New Year poetry competition grows yearly bigger, and more and more poems arc sent to the palace. When ono compares mentally tho small Japanese tradesman composing a delicate little poem on some beautiful object'of nature,, with no end in view but tho hope that it may ho read by the Emperor, with the small English tradosman scratching his head to evolve some Fustian Limerick,. allured by the glittering ( bait of a country cottage and £2 a week for life, the offer of some enterprising firm of cigarette-makers, the comparison is not flattering to the self-esteem of the Occidental. One cannot help feeling that tho Japanese have chosen the better part, and hoping that the new-born industrialism may not strangle their pretty- and _ ancient custom. —Austin Medley, in the "Nation."