Japanese Prints

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.

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Granted this dew-drop world be but a dew-drop world,
This granted, yet—

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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 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 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 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:

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:

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 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:

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 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 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.

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An edition of 1000 copies only, of which 975 copies have been printed on Olde Style paper, and 25 copies on Japanese Vellum.