Page:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu/218

202 Japanese literature. This must be my excuse for dwelling on it at somewhat greater length here. "The Pivot" (I quote from Mr. Chamberlain's Classical Poetry of the Japanese) "is a word of two significations, which serves as a species of hinge on which two doors turn, so that while the first part of the poetical phrase has no logical end, the latter part has no logical beginning. They run into each other, and the sentence could not possibly be construed." Mr. Chamberlain adds that "to the English reader such a punning invention will doubtless seem the height of misapplied ingenuity. But, as a matter of fact, the impression produced by these linked verses is delightful in the extreme, passing as they do before the reader like a series of dissolving views, vague, graceful, and suggestive. This ornament especially characterises the old poetic dramas, and renders them a peculiarly arduous study to such as do not thoroughly appreciate its nature."

Native critics would no doubt endorse Mr. ChamberIain's favourable opinion of the pivot-word, and it is undeniable that the Japanese, who are an eminently nimble-witted race, delight in these acrobatic feats of language. But the English student will ask whether it is worth while to sacrifice sense and syntax for the sake of such inane, if sometimes pretty, antics. I venture to think that the "pivot" is a mistake in serious composition, and that the partiality for such a frivolous ornament of style manifested not only by the writers of Nō, but by the dramatists and novelists of the Yedo period, is a characteristic sign of an age of literary decadence and bad taste. Such writers as Hakuseki, Kiusō, and Motoöri disdain it utterly.

The authors of the Nō do not pique themselves on originality. They are in the habit of conveying to their