Japanese Prints
By John Gould Fletcher
Japanese Prints
Goblins and Pagodas
Irradiations: Sand and Spray
“Of what is she dreaming?
Of long nights lit with orange lanterns,
Of wine-cups and compliments and kisses of the two-sword men.”
Japanese Prints
By
John Gould Fletcher
With Illustrations By
Dorothy Pulis Lathrop
Boston
The Four Seas Company
1918
Copyright, 1918, by
The Four Seas Company
The Four Seas Press
Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
To My Wife
Granted this dew-drop world be but a dew-drop world,
This granted, yet—
Table of Contents
| Preface | 11 | |
| Part I. | ||
| Lovers Embracing | 21 | |
| A Picnic Under the Cherry Trees | 22 | |
| Court Lady Standing Under Cherry Tree | 23 | |
| Court Lady Standing Under a Plum Tree | 24 | |
| A Beautiful Woman | 25 | |
| A Reading | 26 | |
| An Actor as a Dancing Girl | 27 | |
| Josan No Miya | 28 | |
| An Oiran and Her Kamuso | 29 | |
| Two Ways Of Love | 30 | |
| Kurenai-ye or “Red Picture” | 31 | |
| A Woman Standing by a Gate with an Umbrella | 32 | |
| Scene from a Drama | 33 | |
| A Woman in Winter Costume | 34 | |
| A Pedlar | 35 | |
| Kiyonobu and Kiyomasu Contrasted | 36 | |
| An Actor | 37 | |
| Part II. | ||
| Memory and Forgetting | 41 | |
| Pillar-Print, Masonobu | 42 | |
| The Young Daimyo | 43 | |
| Masonubu—Early | 44 | |
| The Beautiful Geisha | 45 | |
| A Young Girl | 46 | |
| The Heavenly Poetesses | 47 | |
| The Old Love and The New | 48 | |
| Fugitive Thoughts | 49 | |
| Disappointment | 50 | |
| The Traitor | 51 | |
| The Fop | 52 | |
| Changing Love | 53 | |
| In Exile | 54 | |
| The True Conqueror | 55 | |
| Spring Love | 56 | |
| The Endless Lament | 57 | |
| Toyonobu. Exile’s Return | 58 | |
| Wind and Chrysanthemum | 59 | |
| The Endless Pilgrimage | 60 | |
| Part III. | ||
| The Clouds | 63 | |
| Two Ladies Contrasted | 64 | |
| A Night Festival | 65 | |
| Distant Coasts | 66 | |
| On the Banks of the Sumida | 67 | |
| Yoshiwara Festival | 68 | |
| Sharaku Dreams | 69 | |
| A Life | 70 | |
| Dead Thoughts | 71 | |
| A Comparison | 72 | |
| Mutability | 73 | |
| Despair | 74 | |
| The Lonely Grave | 75 | |
| Part IV. | ||
| Evening Sky | 79 | |
| City Lights | 80 | |
| Fugitive Beauty | 81 | |
| Silver Jars | 82 | |
| Evening Rain | 83 | |
| Toy-Boxes | 84 | |
| Moods | 85 | |
| Grass | 86 | |
| A Landscape | 87 | |
| Terror | 88 | |
| Mid-Summer Dusk | 89 | |
| Evening Bell from a Distant Temple | 90 | |
| A Thought | 91 | |
| The Stars | 92 | |
| Japan | 93 | |
| Leaves | 94 |
List of Illustrations
“Of what is she dreaming? | Frontispiece |
| Headpiece—Part I | 19 |
| Tailpiece—Part I | 37 |
| Headpiece—Part II | 39 |
“Out of the rings and the bubbles, | 46 |
“The cranes have come back to the temple, | 58 |
| Tailpiece—Part II | 60 |
| Headpiece—Part III | 61 |
“Then in her heart they grew, | 70 |
| Tailpiece—Part III | 75 |
| Headpiece—Part IV | 77 |
| Headpiece—Part IV | 94 |
“The green and violet peacocks | Endleaf |
Preface
At the earliest period concerning which we have any accurate
information, about the sixth century A. D., Japanese poetry already
contained the germ of its later development. The poems of this early
date were composed of a first line of five syllables, followed by a
second of seven, followed by a third of five, and so on, always ending
with a line of seven syllables followed by another of equal number. Thus
the whole poem, of whatever length (a poem of as many as forty-nine
lines was scarce, even at that day) always was composed of an odd number
of lines, alternating in length of syllables from five to seven, until
the close, which was an extra seven syllable line. Other rules there
were none. Rhyme, quantity, accent, stress were disregarded. Two vowels
together must never be sounded as a diphthong, and a long vowel counts
for two syllables, likewise a final “n”, and the consonant “m” in some
cases.
This method of writing poetry may seem to the reader to suffer from
serious disadvantages. In reality this was not the case. Contrast it for
a moment with the undignified welter of undigested and ex parte[12]
theories which academic prosodists have tried for three hundred years to
foist upon English verse, and it will be seen that the simple Japanese
rule has the merit of dignity. The only part of it that we Occidentals
could not accept perhaps, with advantage to ourselves, is the peculiarly
Oriental insistence on an odd number of syllables for every line and an
odd number of lines to every poem. To the Western mind, odd numbers
sound incomplete. But to the Chinese (and Japanese art is mainly a
highly-specialized expression of Chinese thought), the odd numbers are
masculine and hence heavenly; the even numbers feminine and hence
earthy. This idea in itself, the antiquity of which no man can tell,
deserves no less than a treatise be written on it. But the place for
that treatise is not here.
To return to our earliest Japanese form. Sooner or later this
crystallized into what is called a tanka or short ode. This was always
five lines in length, constructed syllabically 5, 7, 5, 7, 7, or
thirty-one syllables in all. Innumerable numbers of these tanka were
written. Gradually, during the feudal period, improvising verses became
a pastime in court circles. Some one would utter the first three lines
of a tanka and some one else would cap the composition by adding the
last two. This division persisted. The first hemistich which was
composed of 17 syllables grew to be called the hokku, the second or
finishing hemistich [13]of 14 syllables was called ageku. Thus was born the
form which is more peculiarly Japanese than any other, and which only
they have been able to carry to perfection.
Composing hokku might, however, have remained a mere game of elaborate
literary conceits and double meanings, but for the genius of one man.
This was the great Bashō (1644-1694) who may be called certainly the
greatest epigrammatist of any time. During a life of extreme and
voluntary self-denial and wandering, Bashō contrived to obtain over a
thousand disciples, and to found a school of hokku writing which has
persisted down to the present day. He reformed the hokku, by introducing
into everything he wrote a deep spiritual significance underlying the
words. He even went so far as to disregard upon occasion the syllabic
rule, and to add extraneous syllables, if thereby he might perfect his
statement. He set his face sternly against impromptus, poemes
d’occasion, and the like. The number of his works were not large, and
even these he perpetually sharpened and polished. His influence
persisted for long after his death. A disciple and priest of Zen
Buddhism himself, his work is permeated with the feeling of that
doctrine.
Zen Buddhism, as Bashō practised it, may be called religion under the
forms of nature. Everything on earth, from the clouds in the sky to the[14]
pebble by the roadside, has some spiritual or ethical significance for
us. Blake’s words describe the aim of the Zen Buddhist as well as any
one’s:
And a Heaven in a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.”
Bashō would have subscribed to this as the sole rule of poetry and
imagination. The only difference between the Western and the Eastern
mystic is that where one sees the world in the grain of sand and tells
you all about it, the other sees and lets his silence imply that he
knows its meaning. Or to quote Lao-tzu: “Those who speak do not know,
those who know do not speak.” It must always be understood that there is
an implied continuation to every Japanese hokku. The concluding
hemistich, whereby the hokku becomes the tanka, is existent in the
writer’s mind, but never uttered.
Let us take an example. The most famous hokku that Bashō wrote, might
be literally translated thus:
And the sound of a frog leaping
Into the water.”
This means nothing to the Western mind. But to the Japanese it means all
the beauty of such a life of retirement and contemplation as Bashō
practised. If we permit our minds to supply the detail Bashō
deliberately [15]omitted, we see the mouldering temple enclosure, the sage
himself in meditation, the ancient piece of water, and the sound of a
frog’s leap—passing vanity—slipping into the silence of eternity. The
poem has three meanings. First it is a statement of fact. Second, it is
an emotion deduced from that. Third, it is a sort of spiritual allegory.
And all this Bashō has given us in his seventeen syllables.
All of Bashō’s poems have these three meanings. Again and again we
get a sublime suggestion out of some quite commonplace natural fact. For
instance:
There is no flower more beautiful
Than the wild violet.”
The wild violet, scentless, growing hidden and neglected among the rocks
of the mountain-road, suggested to Bashō the life of the Buddhist
hermit, and thus this poem becomes an exhortation to “shun the world, if
you would be sublime.”
I need not give further examples. The reader can now see for himself
what the main object of the hokku poetry is, and what it achieved. Its
object was some universalized emotion derived from a natural fact. Its
achievement was the expression of that emotion in the fewest possible
terms. It is therefore necessary, if poetry in the English tongue is
ever to attain again to the vitality and strength of its beginnings,
that we sit once more at the feet of the[16] Orient and learn from it how
little words can express, how sparingly they should be used, and how
much is contained in the meanest natural object. Shakespeare, who could
close a scene of brooding terror with the words: “But see, the morn in
russet mantle clad, Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill” was
nearer to the oriental spirit than we are. We have lost Shakespeare’s
instinct for nature and for fresh individual vision, and we are
unwilling to acquire it through self-discipline. If we do not want art
to disappear under the froth of shallow egotism, we must learn the
lesson Bashō can teach us.
That is not to say, that, by taking the letter for the spirit, we should
in any way strive to imitate the hokku form. Good hokkus cannot be
written in English. The thing we have to follow is not a form, but a
spirit. Let us universalize our emotions as much as possible, let us
become impersonal as Shakespeare or Bashō was. Let us not gush about
our fine feelings. Let us admit that the highest and noblest feelings
are things that cannot be put into words. Therefore let us conceal them
behind the words we have chosen. Our definition of poetry would then
become that of Edwin Arlington Robinson, that poetry is a language which
tells through a reaction upon our emotional natures something which
cannot be put into words. Unless we set ourselves seriously to the task
of understanding that language is only a means and never an[17] end, poetic
art will be dead in fifty years, from a surfeit of superficial
cleverness and devitalized realism.
In the poems that follow I have taken as my subjects certain designs of
the so-called Uki-oye (or Passing World) school. These prints, made and
produced for purely popular consumption by artists who, whatever their
genius, were despised by the literati of their time, share at least one
characteristic with Japanese poetry, which is, that they exalt the most
trivial and commonplace subjects into the universal significance of
works of art. And therefore I have chosen them to illustrate my
doctrine, which is this: that one must learn to do well small things
before doing things great; that the universe is just as much in the
shape of a hand as it is in armies, politics, astronomy, or the
exhortations of gospel-mongers; that style and technique rest on the
thing conveyed and not the means of conveyance; and that though
sentiment is a good thing, understanding is a better. As for the poems
themselves they are in some cases not Japanese at all, but all
illustrate something of the charm I have found in Japanese poetry and
art. And if they induce others to seek that charm for themselves, my
purpose will have been attained.
John Gould Fletcher.[18]
Part I
Lovers Embracing
An attack is half repulsed.
Shafts of broken sunlight dissolving
Convolutions of torpid cloud.
A Picnic Under the Cherry Trees
Under the outward spraying branches.
The reedy murmurs of a flute,
The soft sigh of the wind through silken garments;
With the breeze that drifts away,
Filled with thin petals of cherry blossom,
Like tinkling laughter dancing away in sunlight.
Court Lady Standing Under Cherry Tree
Dark purple, pale rose,
Under the gnarled boughs
That shatter their stars of bloom.
She waves delicately
With the movement of the tree.
Of wine cups and compliments and kisses of the two-sword men.
And of dawn when weary sleepers
Lie outstretched on the mats of the palace,
And of the iris stalk that is broken in the fountain.
Court Lady Standing Under a Plum Tree
On her garments;
Autumn birds shiver
Athwart star-hung skies.
Under the blossoming plum-tree,
She expresses the pilgrimage
Of grey souls passing,
Athwart love’s scarlet maples
To the ash-strewn summit of death.
A Beautiful Woman
Must be her name.
Cold and distant.
Many have died for love of her.
A Reading
But saw only hissing waves
So he rested all day amid them.”
He is content with her voice.
Of distant wave-caps breaking
Upon the painted screen.
An Actor as a Dancing Girl
Swirls orange folds of dusty robes
Through the summer.
Falling upon the crimson petals.
Breaking and spilling fiery cups
Drowsily.
Josan No Miya
Towards the swaying boughs.
Bending in parallel curves the boughs of the willow-tree.
An Oiran and her Kamuso
Through the palace garden,
Deceived by the jade petals
Of the Emperor’s jewel-trees.
Two Ways of Love
That subside
Listlessly
As swaying pines.
In circles
That recoil upon themselves:
How should I love—as the swaying or tossing wind?
Kurenai-ye or “Red Picture”
Through the pine avenue,
To the cherry-tree summit
Where her lover will appear.
And sunset;
She is a cherry-tree that has taken long to bloom.
A Woman Standing by a Gate with an Umbrella
Chrysanthemums are scattered
Behind the palings.
The afternoon.
In my heart is a half fear of the chill autumn rain.
Scene from a Drama
Compliment each other.
She half refuses, hiding fear in her heart.
The daimyo’s attendant waits,
Nervously fingering his sword.
A Woman in Winter Costume
That fall over the earth in winter-time.
In green torrents
Lashed with slaty foam.
And enkindles a lone flower;
A violet iris standing yet in seething pools of grey.
A Pedlar
Packets of merchandise.
His nimble features
Skip into smiles, like rainbows,
Cheating the villagers.
The sorrow of the bleakness of the long wet winter night.
Kiyonobu and Kiyomasu Contrasted
Tall hollyhocks stand proud upon its paths;
Little yellow waves of sunlight,
Bring scarlet butterflies.
Fierce storm-rack scrawled with lightning
Passed over it
Leaving the naked bleeding earth,
Stabbed with the swords of the rain.
An Actor
He sneers for he is bold.
Like a twisted snake;
Coiling itself, preparing to raise its head,
Above the long grasses of the plain.
Part II
Memory and Forgetting
But I cannot forget
A swaying branch—a leaf that fell
To earth.
Pillar-Print, Masonobu
Cloaking the light of his lantern.
But his soul is troubled with ghosts of old regret.
They climb
Upwards
Into his heart.
The Young Daimyo
He had just been girt with the two swords;
And I found he was far more interested in the glitter of their hilts,
And did not even compare my kiss to a cherry-blossom.
Masonubu—Early
Of flying leaves, of parasols,
A riddle made to break my heart;
The lightest impulse
To her was more dear than the deep-toned temple bell.
She fluttered to my sword-hilt an instant,
And then flew away;
But who will spend all day chasing a butterfly?
The Beautiful Geisha
Under the moonlight;
Tarnished silver.
Under the moonlight,
Gold lacquered prows.
Under the moonlight?
No, it is only
A beautiful geisha swaying down the street.
A Young Girl
The curls and the swirls of the water,
Out of the crystalline shower of drops shattered in play,
Her body and her thoughts arose.
To whom she might offer her body
Fresh and cool as a flower born in the rain.
The Heavenly Poetesses
The heavenly poetesses
Float across the sky.
Swift as the wind that shakes the lance-like bamboo leaves;
The stars close around like bubbles
Stirred by the silver oars of poems passing.
The Old Love and the New
The strongest oak.
Can love be altered.
A rosy glimmer yet defies the darkness.
The blinds are being lowered;
She who held your heart and charmed you
Is only a rosy glimmer of flame remembered.
Fugitive Thoughts
Through one great wave that breaks
In bubbles of gold on a black motionless rock.
Disappointment
Puddles stand in the bluish stones;
Afar in the Yoshiwara
Is she who holds my heart.
Trembles and sputters in the rain.
The Traitor
He was a dark cloud travelling
Over palace roofs
With one claw drooping.
Of patient treachery
And the knowledge of his hour.
Than this, he needs.
The Fop
Torn between cloud and butterfly;
Whether he will roll passively to one,
Or chase endlessly the other.
Changing Love
Across the marshes
From burning woods.
It was like the lotus that lifts up
Its heart shaped buds from the dim waters.
In Exile
Through distant hills
Late on a long still night of autumn.
As rain heard beating
Far off in the distance
While earth is parched more near.
I droop over it,
I accept its shame.
The True Conqueror
Lofty as a god
To those beneath him,
Who has taken sins and sorrows
And whose deathless spirit leaps
Beneath them like a golden carp in the torrent.
Spring Love
Two lovers walk together,
Holding together the parasol.
Will break the weak green shoots of their love.
Hers, a cowering flower under it.
The Endless Lament
In long blue shafts
On grasses strewn with delicate stars.
Shatters the courtyard
Leaving grey pools.
Scarlet threads of sorrow,
Towards the snowy earth.
Might wash away my grief!
Toyonobu. Exile’s Return
The winds are flapping the flags about,
Through a flute of reeds
I will blow a song.
And pause like long flags flapping,
And dart and flutter aloft, like a wind-bewildered crane.
Wind and Chrysanthemum
Before the wind.
In the black choked grasses.
He tears off a green and orange stalk of broken chrysanthemum.
And scurry off before the wind.
The Endless Pilgrimage
With draggled wings:
Stopping in sheer weariness
Between the gnarled red pine trees
Twisted in doubt and despair;
Over what snow fields?
To what southern province
Hidden behind dim peaks, would you go?
Wherefore we set out;
And where we will find rest
Only the Gods may tell.”
Part III
The Clouds
I could not forbear listening for the cry of those long white rippling waves
Dragging up their strength to break on the sullen beach of the sky.
Two Ladies Contrasted
Are like chants within a temple sweeping outwards
To the morn.
Where a shy lily half hides itself in the grasses;
To the night of clouds and stars and wine and passion,
In a palace of tesselated restraint and splendor.
A Night Festival
In the porticoes
Lit with many a lantern.
Scandal over full wine cups,
Sorrow does not matter.
For the breadth of innumerable countries,
Is the sea with ships asleep
In the blue-black starless night.
Distant Coasts
You can feel it quiver
Over the paper parasol
With which she shields her face;
As she turns to meet it.
On the Banks of the Sumida
By the grey-green swirling river,
People are resting like still boats
Tugging uneasily at their cramped chains.
Like the easy winds:
Sleep on the banks of the river:
The waters sullenly clash and murmur.
The chatter of the passersby,
Is dulled beneath the grey unquiet sky.
Yoshiwara Festival
With golden tails
Parade.
They walk
Violet and gold.
Through the golden dusk
Showered upon them from the vine-hung lanterns,
Stately, nostalgically,
Parade.
Sharaku Dreams
Faces.
Weeping, twisting, yelling, howling faces;
Faces fixed in a contortion between a scream and a laugh,
Meaningless faces.
With faces,
Till you do not know
If these faces are but masks, or you the masks for them.
Faces too shattered by pain for tears,
Faces of such ugliness
That the ugliness grows beauty.
Burning, burning, ever returning.
Their own infamy creating,
Till you strike at life and hate it,
Burn your soul up so in hating.
Faces,
Pitiless,
Flaring,
Staring.
A Life
Green and scarlet,
Falling into darkness.
Like pale iris wilting,
Or peonies flying to ribbons before the storm-gusts.
The sombre pine-tops waited until the seasons had passed.
The snows of changeless winter
Stirred by the bitter winds of unsatisfied desire.
Dead Thoughts
Lifting and hurrying
Dry rubbish about in a corner.
Already broken
Motionless at twilight.
A Comparison
In long slow planes,
And wavers
Over the dark paths of old gardens long neglected.
Mutability
Making them quiver
With faint drum-tones of thunder.
Blue and brown
Rolls the moon.
Of all that city
There is only one stone left half-buried in the marsh,
With characters upon it which no one now can read.
Despair
It clogs my footsteps,
Like snow in the cherry bloom.
Of years like red leaves buried in snow.
The Lonely Grave
Passing my tombstone
Mossy, long forgotten.
Sometimes they will rest in the twisted pine-trees’ shade.
The dust of my body will feel a thrill, deep down in the silent earth.
Part IV
Evening Sky
Of tattered flags,
Saffron and rose
Over the weary huddle of housetops
Smoking their evening pipes in silence.
City Lights
Like loud and yawning laughter from red lips.
Fugitive Beauty
As the dropping of a November leaf at twilight,
As the faint flicker of lightning down the southern sky,
So I saw beauty, far away.
Silver Jars
In little silver jars:
And when you died I opened them,
And there was only soot within.
Evening Rain
I almost thought it was the trees that were talking.
Toy-Boxes
Time plays with:
And there are often many doll-houses
Of which the dolls are lost.
Moods
Fluttering butterflies in the rain.
Grass
My soul is backwards blown.
A Landscape
Sea, brown-grey;
Island, dull peacock blue;
Sky, stone-grey.
Terror
Waving to and fro,
I dare not go.
Mid-Summer Dusk
Waves of heat
Churned to flames by the sun.
Evening Bell from a Distant Temple
Creeps out echoing faintly
The pale broad flashes
Of vibrating twilight,
Faded gold.
A Thought
Blackened, scrawled with fragments of an incomplete song:
My soul.
The Stars
At night she throws her blue veil over the earth.
Men only see her naked glory through the little holes in the veil.
Japan
Hidden away
In the afternoon.
Grey walks,
Mossy stones,
Copper carp swimming lazily,
And beyond,
A faint toneless hissing echo of rain
That tears at my heart.
Leaves
Against the tall and delicate, patrician-tinged sky
Like a princess in blue robes behind a grille of bronze.
An edition of 1000 copies only, of which 975 copies have been printed
on Olde Style paper, and 25 copies on Japanese Vellum.
