JApAnEsE WAkA

notes & translations patrick donnelly & stephen d. miller

etween the early tenth and the fifteenth centuries, the Japanese emperors ordered the compilation of twenty-one anthologies of poetry. These translations are of Buddhist-themed poems from the Shish (1011), Goshish (1086), Kinysh (1125) and Senzaish (1188), respectively the third, fourth, fifth and seventh anthologies. This particular selection of eleven poems circles around the theme of passages. Of the life passages that are common to both our own culture and medieval Japanese culture, the Buddhist poems of the imperial anthologies primarily address two: ordination (taking the tonsure to become a Buddhist nun or priest) and death. The first passage, from secular to religious life, was perhaps less analogous to becoming a priest or minister in our own time than to becoming a cloistered monk or nun. With few exceptions, taking this step meant separation from secular life, which made it difficult to contemplate for men and women of the Japanese imperial court. On the one hand, it was viewed as an important step toward committing to serious study of the Buddhist teachings. On the other hand, this step was viewed as a drastic rejection of the long-established pleasures, rituals and values of the court, especially for young men and women of important families for whom advancement to high rank or service at court was expected. (It also meant, in all likelihood, leaving the thriving capital, Heian-ky, which was so admired that a move to the provinces was felt comparable to dropping off the Earth.) Its not surprising, then, that poems which address taking the tonsure express ambivalence about the huge change it represented. Death was perhaps the most frequent subject of the Buddhist poems in the imperial anthologies, so much so that anthologizers initially gathered such poems with the aishka (lament) poems. Even today in Japan, people turn to Buddhism primarily for rituals having to do with death, whereas they turn to the native kami-religion (Shinto) for birth, and to Shinto (or more recently to nominally-Christian) rituals for marriage. In these poems, death is primarily seen as an urgent incentive to Buddhist study. Two of these poems, Shish 1333 and 1334, comprise a ztka, a poem exchange between two people, of which many are represented in the imperial anthologies. In this instance, the writers explicitly compare the state of mourning after a death to the state of dissatisfaction with worldly life that led some to take the tonsure. One poem here, Senzaish 1199/1202, does address the subject of birthor rather, rebirth into the world of samsara, seen as an

note Waka were not given titles by their authors, but the compilers of the anthologies gave many poems a short prose preface. These prefaces, which addressed the poems thematic content or the occasions of their composition, are now considered aesthetically inseparable from the poems. In our translations, to join preface to poem in a way analogous to English poetry, weve presented prefaces as the poems titles, though in many cases we have tried to retain the prosy character of the prefaces.

inevitable consequence of birth and death, unless enlightenment intervenes to release a person from the cycle. Three of these poems address the theme of passages more literally. The topic of Shish 1329 is how impermanence (muj) manifests in the passage of time: the approaching end of day as a metaphor for the brevity of life. Goshish 1192 and 1193 both allude to the Seventh Chapter of the Lotus Sutra, in which the Buddha teaches a parable about a guide who conjures an illusory city as a resting place for discouraged travelers. Like the poems that address taking the tonsure, the Conjured City poems express an almost humorous attitude toward the difficulty of the spiritual path: the speakers dont suggest theyll abandon the journey, but they do appreciate the resting place. The originals of these poems are waka, the thirtyone-syllable form that was primary in Japanese poetics for over a millennium. Most of the poets were contemporaneous to the compilation of the anthology in which they appeared, though in some cases the compilers of the anthologies reached back to poets from earlier eras. The authors, even the poet-priests, were connected in some way either to the aristocracy or the imperial court. Buddhism came to Japan in the sixth century, but it was several hundred years before poems began to be written on Buddhist themes, in part because of the difficulty of addressing complex teachings in a thirty-one-syllable poem, and also because some Buddhist scriptures seemed to discourage the practice of what we would now call creative writing. In response, Japanese poets learned that they could make a lyric-meditative response to the teachings in waka. They also gradually developed a theoretical basis in which the writing of poems especially those with Buddhist themeswas seen to support the goals of the teachings rather than to create conflict with them. Eventually some poets (such as Princess Senshi) came to assert that waka composition was a path to enlightenment contained within Buddhist practice itself and supportive of it. This reconciliation was achieved under the banner of kygen kigo (wild words and fanciful phrases), relying on the authority of a passage from the writings of the Chinese poet Po Ch-i: May my worldly works conceived in error in this life All the wild words and fanciful phrases Be transformed in the next into hymns of praise That will glorify Buddhism through age after age And turn the Wheel of the Law forever and ever.

with each call of the mountain temple bell as darkness falls I hear today too is gone: sad, knowing that anonymous

Shish 1329 yamadera no iriai no kane no koegoto ni ky mo kurenu to kiku zo kanashiki

Sent to a Certain Woman the Poet Knew When He Was in Mourning and Heard She Had Become a Nun

the I who grieves thought I was the only one to put on black but did you too give your back to a world of hurt? nakatomi no yoshinobu

Shish 1333
sumizome no iro wa ware nomi to omoishi o ukiyo o somuku hito mo aru to ka

A Reply to the Previous Poem

my reason to put on black may seem different but believe me: we wear that color together anonymous

Shish 1334 sumizome no koromo to mireba yosonagara morotomo ni kiru iro ni zo arikeru

Sent to Lesser Counselor Fujiwara Munemasa When the Poet Heard He Had Taken the Tonsure, as They Had Both Long Vowed to Do

if a breeze ripples off the shingle across the lake at Shiga how much freshness must rest in your heart? kint

Shish 1336 sazanami ya shiga no urakaze ika bakari kokoro no uchi no suzushikaruran

A Ceremony at Yamashinadera Commemorating the Buddhas Death

todays tears are the tears of if we had met in that long-gone garden of goodbye priest kgen

Goshish 1179 inishie no wakare no niwa ni aeritomo ky no namida zo namida naramashi

Parable of the Conjured City

without a little coddling a momentary roof under which to rest how could anyone find the true path? akazome emon

Goshish 1192
koshiraete kari no yadori ni yasumezuba makoto no michi o ikade shiramashi

Parable of the Conjured City

go back? halfway there? because the road is long? (though if I imagine theres a place I might rest for a moment it does cheer me) mother of yasusuke no

Goshish 1193 michi toomi nakazora nite ya kaeramashi omoeba kari no yado zo ureshiki

When people were composing poems on the Eight Eta Metaphors, the author wrote this

On the Passage This Body Is Like An Illusion

ignoring the thought when will it end? do I while away my life in this world that is a shimmering mirage of a mirage? kaijin hshi

Kinysh 641/684 itsu o itsu to omoitayumite kager no kager hodo no yo o sugusuran

As the Author Breathed His Last

I entrusted my heart unceasingly to you Amida Buddha: your causeless vow dont break it taguchi shigeyuki

Kinysh 646/690 tayumi naku kokoro o kakuru mida hotoke hitoyari naranu chikai tagau na

On the Essence of the Metaphor Our Bodies Are Like Bubbles on Water from the Ten Metaphors of the Yuima-Ky

this body like foam

keeps returning

to the sad world

on the water that to be reborn

disappears here

Senzaish 1199/1202 koko ni kie kashiko ni musubu mizu no awa no ukiyo ni meguru mi ni koso arikere

over there

former major counselor kint

On the Essence of the Metaphor Like Floating Clouds

this brief body often likened to floating clouds in the end must becomethat kint

Senzaish 1200/1203 sadame naki mi wa ukigumo ni yosoetsutsu hate wa sore ni zo narihatenu beki

about the translators

Patrick Donnelly is the author of The Charge (Ausable Press, 2003, since 2009 part of Copper Canyon Press) and Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin, forthcoming from Four Way Books. He is director of the Advanced Seminar at The Frost Place, an associate editor of Poetry International, and has taught writing at Colby College, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and elsewhere. He is a 2008 recipient of an artist fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review and The Massachusetts Review. Visit his website at http:// web.me.com/patricksdonnelly/site/. Stephen D. Miller is assistant professor of Japanese language and literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is translator of A Pilgrims Guide to Forty-Six Temples (Weatherhill Inc., 1990) and editor of Partings at Dawn: An Anthology of Japanese Gay Literature (Gay Sunshine Press, 1996). He lived in Japan for nine years between 1980 and 1999, in part as the recipient of two Japan Foundation fellowships for research abroad. He was a student of Chgyam Trungpa Rinpoche and is currently working on a study of the Buddhist poetry in the Japanese imperial poetry anthologies. Donnelly and Millers translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Bateau, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Circumference, thedrunkenboat.com, eXchanges, Kyoto Journal, Metamorphoses, New Plains Review, Noon: The Journal of the Short Poem, Poetry International and Translations and Transformations: the Heike Monogatari in N.