<< На главную страницу

L.M. Ermakova

Naming and Seeing Things in Early Japanese Poetry

The main aim of the present article is to reconstruct some characteristics of the movement of Japanese traditional poetry from archaic magic incantations and folklore songs to the developed _classical forms, and to expand some connections between the mythological world view of the ancient Japanese people and the early stages of literature.

It is widely known that the Japanese culture of the early period, still being at the mytho-poetic stage of history, was influenced in almost every sphere by Chinese culture which was at that time much richer and more sophisticated.

But even in the process of growing, the Japanese culture kept some cultural impulses of the previous periods intact, so that this time of growth can indeed be called,  using the poetic metaphor of Humboldt, "the form-creating period of mind".

Many factors can be cited as reasons for this phenomenon. I am going to name one of them here. To my mind, despite the intrusion of the Chinese language into the mythological codes,  historical chronicles,  jurisdictional documents etc., and the huge influence of Chinese prose, poetry and poetical treaties, even despite the early custom of reading ConfuciusЃf canon and Buddhist sutras in Chinese, the poetic tradition, in parallel with the kanshi, Ѓgthe Chinese verseЃh, was active to develop the verse in so-called Yamato-kotoba,  Ѓgwords of YamatoЃh,  that is, words of Japanese language. These words were believed to have koto-dama,  Ѓgword-spiritЃh,  and by that time presumably contained a definite compendium of world view,  sets of rules and norms,  and though these words have undergone a number of changes,  their semantic mutations were to a large extent determined and restricted by the cultural tendencies of ancient ages.

Let us take,  for example,  even the situations in which a folklore song was being incorporated in the myths narrative in both ЃgKojikiЃh and "Nihon shokiЃh1, the first two mythological codes of the ancient Japan. These situations are as follows: acquaintance of a man and a woman, offering a marriage, before a journey, after a journey, before death, before entering a newly-built house, to establish a person's identity, to convey secret information, and so on .

Textual analysis testifes to the fact that most of the above-mentioned situations, mutatis mutandis, are afterwards transmitted to literature. In the first anthology of verse, "Manyo:shu:2, we can note the same situation in which a poetical textis recited.(Or sung, because waka, a verse of 31 syllables, was rather a song than a verse at that time). And the poetic genres of the Heian period demonstrate an even more profound similarity to the mythological narratives.

For instance, in the mythological code "Kojiki", Emperor Jimmu sends Ookume-no mikoto as a go-between to a girl, Isukeyori-hime, urging her to marry him. By singing a song (thus requiring a song in answer) Isukeyori-hime can judge, by the answering song, about the status and limits of authority of the go-between3. In this case a song serves as a label, a means of _classification, in just the same way as the name of a person or his clothes.

A similar pattern can be observed, for example, in "Yamato-monogatari", a prose-poetic literary monument of the middle of the X century. It says:"He sang the verse, and everybody immediately understood that he is Ryo:-Sho:sho:4 (the poet could not be seen by the people present). Or: "Such a verse was written, and everybody recognized his handЃh5.

I have already mentioned the function of ancient songs as a channel through which some secret information may be transmitted or through which two people can communicate in the case if the usual means of communication are being impossible or prohibited. Such is the case in the mythological code ЃgKojikiЃh when a little girl sings a song warning the Emperor of a danger6,  or in _classical uta-monogatari depicting a scene when a man can not address a woman directly, but the exchange of songs between them happens to be allowed and possible.

It is essential that, as far as we can judge from the texts,  the authors of the Heian period themselves to some extent realized the functional difference between verse and prose. For instance, in ЃgYamato-monogatariЃh it goes as follows: ЃgThere were no words said in the letter (about a central personageЃfs fate . L.E.) just this [his song only]". Or, in another fragment of the text: "there was not only this [meaning waka. the verse], there were a lot of words in the letterЃh7.

This distinction between Ѓgwords" (the prose parts) and songs  . that is, waka-poem . can be definitely traced to ancient times when ritual songs were a kind of mediator between gods and humans, as well as a mode of mobilising supernatural forces (the postulate is not only an universal principle, it can be argumented by the quotations from the Japanese mythological records). The traces of this function may be observed in the uta-monogatari genre (uta means a song, monogatari . a narrative; these pieces of literature, like the above-mentioned ЃgYamato-monogatariЃh, consist of separate stories, centred around a poem composition). Usually, in the literary pieces of this genre the poem composed by personage becomes a turning point of the plot, changes the  development of events and the fate of the dramatis personae.

 The study of the uta-monogatari texts shows also that a verse (or a song) in the early period of _classical literature was text per se, and prose of that period was not considered in terms of text. It took quite a long time for prose to earn the right to be included in the notion of text.

 Up to the tenth century, as it seems, waka-poems were, just as in mythological times, a special, peculiar type of dlrect speech. This type of direct speech was apt to be used in liminal situations and contained an unusual force. And for a long time, until "the golden epoch" of Japanese literature and even later, Ѓga short poemЃh (waka) still continued to be a ritual or magic gesture in a piece of literature.

Some words in waka-poetry were evaluated even more highly. There existed four early poetical treatises written at the end of the Nara period and the beginning of the Heian, that is in the VIII-IX century. These four treatises are written, for the most part, in Chinese, and imitate, in various aspects, Chinese literary theory. Usually these four Japanese writings on poetry are treated accordingly and analyzed mostly from the point of view of the Chinese influence.

But it is not at all surprising that closer study of the texts allows us to conclude that in these quasi-Chinese treatises, quite visible and remarkable signs of the Japanese mentality can be discovered as well.  For instance,  in one of them, "Yamato-uta sakushiki8, "Codex of creating Yamato songsЃh, written by Fujiwara-no Kisen in the 830's, we read the following passage: ЃgIn the Era of Gods all things bore other names. The poets of the modem epoch do not know them.  That's why these words must be cited here before all"9.  And the author presents a list of such "names of things in the GodsЃf Era". For example, when a poet wants to say "sunЃh, Kisen writes, he must say:"[the thing] that throws out red roots"; when one wants to say "earth", one is to say "[the thing made] of rough metal"10 and so on.

  These names from archaic times appear to be the poetic device which was afterwards named makura-kotoba, a kind of poetical clichйes, set epithets or loci communi. (In the following text I shall use the abbreviation MK to mean makura-kotoba).

MK, as a poetical means, were being interpreted by specialists in various ways. For instance, Konishi Jin'ichi thinks MK were kinds of poetic introductions which served the purpose of actualizing the above-mentioned koto-dama, the word-spirit. According to Tsugita Jun, MK derive from the Norito prayers. Some Japanese philologsts suggest that MK were kinds of proverb etc.

All these suggestions, however true, cannot be proved definitely, and now I am going to add just one more conjecture to the existing explanations, based on the fact that these expressions are called, in Kisen's treatise, "the names of things in the Era of Gods", as well as on some other data.

My suggestion is to consider the words like "sun" or Ѓgearth" in the above-given examples as answers to the riddles. And the riddles, as I believe, are expressed by these poetical clichйЃfs . MK. In other words, I suggest treating MK as two parts of a cosmological riddle11; that is, two parts of a dialogue, consisting of question and answer and used in archaic rites of initiations kind. Such cosmological riddles, as a rule, are quite different from logical riddles - first of all, the person who is to pass the so-called rites de passage, must be prepared and know the answers beforehand. The main aim of such riddles is to verify if the initiated can use the same cultural and linguistic code. Of course, this explanation covers only the most essential part of Kisen's list of Ѓgthe names of things", denominating the stages of evolving of Heaven, Earth, Sun and Moon, sea, rivers, mountains and other elements of landscape, then the appearanceЃ@of Gods, human beings and soЃ@on. Afterwards this mechanism of creating the sacred names of things probably becomes a acknoledged model, according to which Japanese literature in the early period can form even new combinations of two and more words, new pairs, consisting of a word and its enigmatic paraphrase.

Another important point that was inherited by early literature from the mythological world view was, in my opinion, a human ability to see or to look. In "Manyo:shu:", the oldest anthology of verse, we read the following poem:

I shed tears,

And the shining sun

Seems dark to me.

My dress got all wet with the tears,

But there is nobody to dry it.

In this poem, and in some other verses of "Manyo:shu:Ѓh, we find a special kind of simile - here the sun is similar to darkness; in other verses we have such pairs as the flowers and the snow, sea-waves and flowers, tears and sea-water etc. In the medieval treatises, concerning waka and representing a rather high level of literary self-reflection, such figures of speech are called mitate . which means literally: "building by the force of seeing", or "putting a thing somewhere by the force of seeing".

Usually such phrases are translated into other languages as "object A is similar to (or resembles) object B". But it literally means Ѓgto see something as something elseЃh, or, as in the above-cited poem: terasu hi-o yami ni minashite, that is, Ѓgto transform the shining sun into darkness by the means of lookingЃh.

To my mind, this waka device can be traced to the times of the mythological world view.The contents, concerning looking and seeing in the literature of the Nara period, may be divided into several groups,  each group characterized by the various magic abilities of this act.

One group, for instance, is centred around the so-called kuni-mi . Ѓgseeing the country", or"looking at the country". By "country" the poets frequently meant the Yamato district of the ancient Japanese state. Usually the kuni-mi rite was performed by an Emperor who, standing on some high place . a hill or a mountain, looked around his territory. By this act he established the peace and stability of the state and the prosperity of the people of the Underheaven.

Judging from the texts, the act of seeing could not only transform things, but even create them. In the creation myth it is said that two siblings, the first ancestors, Izanagi and Izanami, descended from Heaven to the island of Onogoro-jima and erected two constructions . the Sacred Pillar of Heaven and a Palace of eight hiro in length. In the original text, it is said that they built them by looking or seeing . Ѓgame-no mihashira-o mitatete, ya-hirodono-o mitate tamaikiЃh12.

It is worth mentioning that in ancient times the mode of exploring the existing word by sight was dominant in every culture, and this domInance has determined the specific and important role of seeing and of a glance in the sphere of cult, magic and mantic.

The ability to transform and influence things by the force of glance and seeing can be faound in folklore at least to the end of the Muromachi period. For instance, let us recall a story of the mikoshi nyu:do. Nyu:do is the name of the low rank of the Buddhist monks, and mikoshi literally means "to see something over some obstacle (which prevents a thing being seen)".

The legend says that pilgrims sometimes met the monk at the roadside. If a traveller accidentally glanced at him, the monk grew to an enormous height and immediately attacked the traveller. In the middle ages some artists painted this monk on the screens byobu, depicting him as a one-eyed creature.

 This detail is rather remarkable . because it may reflect a relic of this personage's previous blindness. It is a common type of change which happens at the time when a mythological plot afterwards is being transformed to a legend or to a fairy-tale. E.g., if a hero of a fairy-tale has only one leg or his legs do not serve him, it is usually interpreted by scholars that at the mythological stage this character had been a dragon. Similarly,one eye may mean a mythological blindness. But in the mythological universe, seeing is a synonym for light and blindness  a synonym for darkness and invisibility. The latter becomes a distinguishing mark of an inhabitant of another world.

This monk's [mikoshi-nyu:do] invisibility is a sign of a creature from the dark and invisible land, but he may be made visible in this world by the force of seeing, or light.

It is also remarkable that this force is often used in special, marked zones of space. These points are as a rule situated at the highest points of a landscape or at the border of two spacial zones. It may be possible to suggest, in this connection, that such borders represent the demarcation line dividing the world of people and the world of spirits and the dead.

When, according to the above-mentioned chronicles, Izanami dies and goes to Yomi-no kuni, the Land of Darkness, Izanagi follows her to the realm of the dead. There she asks him not to look at her, but he breaks the taboo and sees her as a corpse covered with worms. In the other episode the daughter of the sea-king, Toyotama-hime, asks her spouse not to look at her during child-birth, but he peeps through a hole and sees her as a sea-monster or crocodile. In both cases this action becomes a cause for various disastrous happenings. Consequently, it may be said that the force of seeing is to some extent a mode of mobilizing (or causing the appearance) some forces from another world. Accordingly, various types of magic usages of this force can be traced in the early waka of "Manyo:shu:".

For instance, there existed an old custom of blotting the branches of a pine-tree before a journey in order to guarantee the success of the trip and oneЃfs safe return home.

In "the long songsЃh, (cho:ka) of"Manyo:shu:Ѓh, to my mind, one can find a clichй, serving the same purpose, but not by manipulating some material theings, but using the force of seeing. The songs are as follows: