-->
Between 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 Shūishū (1011), Goshūishū (1086), Kin’yōshū (1125) and Senzaishū (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-kyō, which was so admired that a move to the provinces was felt comparable to dropping off the Earth.) It’s 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 aishōka (“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, Shūishū 1333 and 1334, comprise a zōtōka, 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, Senzaishū 1199/1202, does address the subject of birth—or rather, rebirth into the world of samsara, seen as an 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 Shūishū 1329 is how impermanence (mujō) manifests in the passage of time: the approaching end of day as a metaphor for the brevity of life. Goshūishū 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 don’t suggest they’ll abandon the journey, but they do appreciate the resting place.
The originals of these poems are waka, the thirty-one-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 themes—was 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 kyōgen kigo (“wild words and fanciful phrases”), relying on the authority of a passage from the writings of the Chinese poet Po Chü-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.
◊◊◊
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, we’ve presented prefaces as the poems’ titles, though in many cases we have tried to retain the prosy character of the prefaces. —Patrick Donnelly and Stephen D. Miller
with each call
of the mountain temple bell
as darkness falls
I hear today too
is gone:
sad, knowing that—
yamadera no
iriai no kane no
kyō mo kurenu to
kiku zo kanashiki
koegoto ni
* * *
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?
sumizome no
iro wa ware nomi to
omoishi o
ukiyo o somuku
hito mo aru to ka
* * *
my reason
“to put on black”
may seem different—
but believe me:
we wear that color
together
sumizome no
koromo to mireba
yosonagara
morotomo ni kiru
iro ni zo arikeru
* * *
if a breeze
ripples off the shingle
across the lake at Shiga
how much freshness
must rest
in your heart?
sazanami ya
shiga no urakaze
ika bakari
kokoro no uchi no
suzushi karuran
* * *
today’s tears
are the tears
of “if we had met”
in that long-gone garden
of goodbye
inishie no
wakare no niwa ni
aeritomo
kyō no namida zo
namida naramashi
* * *
without a little coddling—
a momentary roof
under which to rest—
how could anyone
find the true path?
koshiraete
kari no yadori ni
yasumezuba
makoto no michi o
ikade shiramashi
* * *
go back? halfway there?
because the road is long?
(though if I imagine
there’s a place I might
rest for a moment
it does cheer me)
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:
ignoring the thought
when will it end?
do I while away
my life in this world
that is
a shimmering
mirage
of a mirage?
itsu o itsu to
omoitayumite
kagerō no
kagerō hodo no
yo o sugusuran
* * *
I entrusted my
heart unceasingly to
you Amida Buddha:
your causeless vow—
don’t break it
tayumi naku
kokoro o kakuru
mida hotoke
hitoyari naranu
chikai tagau na
* * *
this body
keeps returning
to the sad world
like foam
on the water that
disappears here
to be reborn
over there
koko ni kie
kashiko ni musubu
mizu no awa no
ukiyo ni meguru
mi ni koso arikere
* * *
this brief body—
often likened
to floating clouds—
in the end
must become—that—
sadame naki
mi wa ukigumo ni
yosoetsutsu
hate wa sore ni zo
narihatenu beki
◊◊◊
Donnelly and Miller’s translations have appeared 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 Nō.