Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/15

Rh interminable, in which case they are left incomplete, at the end of the twentieth or fortieth subtle turn of phrase, as if their authors despaired of ever coming to the end of their task. Again, Chinese poetry is usually rhymed and is based on a complicated pattern of musical tones. In Japanese, on the other hand, rhyme is generally avoided, and the formal rules of prosody reduce themselves to a matter of counting syllables. Although the earliest Japanese poems we know, those preserved in a work of the early eighth century, have lines of irregular length, the preference for alternating lines of five and seven syllables soon crystallized among Japanese poets, and this eventually became the basic rhythm of the language, found not only in poetry but in almost any type of literary composition.

To give an idea of the appearance of Japanese in transcription (with the consonants pronounced as in English, and the vowels as in Italian), I have chosen a passage, ostensibly in prose but in alternating lines of seven and five syllables. It is one of the most famous descriptions in the literature, the beginning of the lovers’ suicide journey in the play Love Suicides at Sonezaki, written in 1703 by Chikamatsu. The young man and the young woman, believing that it is impossible for them to know happiness together in this life, set out in the early morning for the wood of Sonezaki, where they are to kill themselves.