Japanese Love Poems

Selections from the Manyoshu

Evan Bates

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780486145662
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Poesia asiatica

Known as the `Collection of Myriad Leaves,` or the `Collection for a Myriad Ages,` the Manyoshu is Japan's most significant early anthology of poetry. The poems date from the eighth century and earlier, and their simplicity and sincerity offer glimpses of a literary culture beginning to define itself.
The Manyoshu is virtually silent on the topics of war and the martial spirit; explorations of the many forms of love, however, appear throughout the collection's more than 4,000 poems. The poems selected for this volume comprise paeans to conjugal love, celebrations of intense filial piety and the love between brothers and sisters, descriptions of the fierce competition for spouses, and tributes to forbidden attachments. The Manyo poets wrote in a primitively vital and sensuous language as they experimented with form and subject.

Japanese Love Poems

EMPEROR Y

RYAKU

Your basket, with your pretty basket,

Your trowel, with your little trowel,

Maiden, picking herbs on this hill-side,
I would ask you: Where is your home?
Will you not tell me your name?
Over the spacious Land of Yamato
It is I who reign so wide and far,
It is I who rule so wide and far.
I myself, as your lord, will tell you
Of my home, and my name.

EMPRESS K

GYOKU

Presented to the Emperor Jomei by
a messenger, Hashibito Oyu, on the occasion
of his hunting on the plain of Uchi

From the age of the gods

Men have been begotten and begetting;

They overflow this land of ours.
I see them go hither and thither
Like flights of teal—

But not you whom I love.
So I yearn each day till the day is over,
And each night till the dawn breaks;
Sleeplessly I pass this long, long night!

Envoys

Though men go in noisy multitudes
Like flights of teal over the mountain edge,
To me—oh what loneliness,
Since you are absent whom I love.

By the Toko Mountain in

mi
There flows the Isaya, River of Doubt.
I doubt whether now-a-days
You, too, still think of me?

EMPEROR TENJI

The Three Hills

Mount Kagu strove with Mount Miminashi

For the love of Mount Unebi.

Such is love since the age of the gods;
As it was thus in the early days,
So people strive for spouses even now.

Envoys

When Mount Kagu and Mount Miminashi wrangled, A god came over and saw it Here—on this plain of Inami!

On the rich banner-like clouds
That rim the waste of waters
The evening sun is glowing,
And promises to-night
The moon in beauty!

EMPRESS IWA-NO-HIMÉ

Longing for the Emperor Nintoku

Since you, my Lord, were gone,

Many long, long days have passed.

Should I now come to meet you
And seek you beyond the mountains,
Or still await you—await you ever?

Rather would I lay me down
On a steep hill’s side,
And, with a rock for pillow, die,
Than live thus, my Lord,
With longing so deep for you.

Yes, I will live on
And wait for you,
Even till falls
On my long black waving hair
The hoar frost of age.

How shall my yearning ever cease—
Fade somewhere away,
As does the mist of morning
Shimmering across the autumn field
Over the ripening grain?

EMPRESS YAMATO-HIMÉ

Presented to the Emperor Tenji

on the occasion of His Majesty’s illness

I turn and gaze far

Towards the heavenly plains.

Lo, blest is my Sovereign Lord—
His long life overspans
The vast blue firmament.

[After the death of the Emperor]

Though my eyes could see your spirit soar

Above the hills of green-bannered Kohata,

No more may I meet you face to face.

Others may cease to remember,

But I cannot forget you—

Your beauteous phantom shape
Ever haunts my sight!

On the occasion of the temporary enshrinement of the Emperor Tenji

On the vast lake of

mi

You boatmen that come rowing

From the far waters,
And you boatmen that come rowing
Close by the shore,
Ply not too hard your oars in the far waters,
Ply not too hard your oars by the shore,
Lest you should startle into flight
The birds beloved of my dear husband!

PRINCE IKUSA

Seeing the mountains when the Emperor Jomei sojourned in Aya District, Sanuki Province

Not knowing that the long spring day—

The misty day—is spent,

Like the ‘night-thrush’ I grieve within me,
As sorely my heart aches.
Then across the hills where our Sovereign sojourns,
Luckily the breezes blow
And turn back my sleeves with morn and eve,
As I stay alone;
But, being on a journey, grass for pillow,
Brave man as I deem me,
I know not how to cast off
My heavy sorrows;
And like the salt-fires the fisher-girls
Burn on the shore of Ami,
I burn with the fire of longing
In my heart.

Envoy

Fitful gusts of wind are blowing
Across the mountain-range,
And night after night I lie alone,
Yearning for my love at home.

PRINCESS NUKADA

Yearning for the Emperor Tenji

While, waiting for you,

My heart is filled with longing,

The autumn wind blows—
As if it were you—
Swaying the bamboo blinds of my door.

FUJIWARA KAMATARI

On the occasion of his marriage to Yasumiko, a palace...