How to Read a Japanese Poem

Steven D. Carter

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780231546850
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

How to Read a Japanese Poem offers a comprehensive approach to making sense of traditional Japanese poetry of all genres and periods. Steven D. Carter explains to Anglophone students the methods of composition and literary interpretation used by Japanese poets, scholars, and critics from ancient times to the present, and adds commentary that will assist the modern reader.

How to Read a Japanese Poem presents readings of poems by major figures such as Saigy? and Bash? as well as lesser known poets, with nearly two hundred examples that encompass all genres of Japanese poetry. The book gives attention to well-known forms such as haikai or haiku, as well as ancient songs, comic poems, and linked verse. Each chapter provides examples of a genre in chronological order, followed by notes about authorship and other contextual details, including the time of composition, physical setting, and social occasion. The commentaries focus on a central feature of Japanese poetic discourse: that poems are often occasional, written in specific situations, and are best read in light of their milieu. Carter elucidates key concepts useful in examining Japanese poetics as well as the technical vocabulary of Japanese poetic discourse, familiarizing students with critical terms and concepts. An appendix offers succinct definitions of technical terms and essays on aesthetic ideals and devices.

Portrait of Man’yō-era poet Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, from Nishiki hyakunin isshu azuma ori, an illustrated text of Hyakunin isshu by the eighteenth-century artist Katsukawa Shunshō.

Courtesy L. Tom Perry Special Collection, HBLL, Brigham Young University.

Chapter 1

ANCIENT SONG AND POETRY

ANONYMOUS, Kojiki 10: “A song that was a signal for the men of Kume to strike down the men of the Earth Spider clan”

Ah, the great pit	osaka no
at Osaka:	ōmuroya ni
so many the men	hito sawa ni
who have come here,	kiiriori
so many the men	hito sawa ni
who here band together!	iriori to mo
Yet the Kume men	mitsumitsushi
so famed for valor—	kume no ko ga
clubs they will take up	kubutsutsu i
and swords with pommels of stone,	ishitsutsu i mochi
to strike all a fatal blow.	uchite shi yamamu

Envoy

You Kume men	mitsumitsushi
so famed for valor:	kume no kora ga
clubs you must take up	kubutsutsu i
and swords with pommels of stone—	ishitsutsu i mochi
for now is the time to strike!	ima utaba yorashi

CONTEXT: This song comes from one of the earliest Japanese writings, Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters, 712). In Nihon shoki (Chronicles of Japan, 720) it is introduced with the following preface (pp. 203–4) concerning the mythical first emperor, Jinmu (whose reign began, according to tradition, in 660 BCE): “When he arrived at the great pit at Osaka, eighty men of the Earth Spider clan, men with tails, waited there in an unruly manner, so the child of the heavenly deity ordered a banquet to be served to them, with eighty stalwarts assigned as servers, each wearing his sword. The stalwarts were told, ‘When you hear the song, cut them all down.’ This was the song that signaled for them to attack.”

The Kume “stalwarts” took their name from a place (near Kashiwara) on the southern edge of the Nara plain, close to Osaka.

COMMENT: Whether the first stanza is addressed to the attackers or describes their action objectively is not clear, but taken in dramatic context the final phrase utaba yorashi (If [you] strike now, it will be best!) suggests a second-person voice. The irregular prosody of the first stanza (5-6-5-5-5-6-5-5-5-7-7) reflects an era before standardization. A symbiotic relationship between chōka and song is suggested by the presence of a makurakotoba, mitsumitsushi—“robust” or “valorous”—a “pillow word” that was formulaically applied to the clan name Kume. And we also see other common syntactic structures, parallelism (lines 3–6) and repetition (9–10 repeated in 3–4 of the envoy). Martial subjects appear often in early records but thereafter virtually disappear from poetry, unless one takes into account the song sections of military tales such as Tales...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Ancient Song and Poetry
• Chapter 2. Long Poems and Short Poems
• Chapter 3. Popular Songs
• Chapter 4. Linked Verse
• Chapter 5. Unorthodox Poems
• Chapter 6. Comic Poems
• Chapter 7. Poems in Chinese
• Appendix 1: Technical Terms
• Appendix 2: Aesthetic Ideals and Devices
• Notes
• Sources of Japanese Texts
• Selected Bibliography
• Index of Japanese Names, Titles, and Terms
• Illustrations