Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/16

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As one may easily see from the above, the sounds of Japanese are very simple. Each syllable generally consists of one consonant followed by one vowel. The restricted number of possible sounds has inevitably meant that there are many homonyms in the language, and countless words contain within themselves other words or parts of words of quite unrelated meanings. For example, the word shiranami, meaning “white waves”, or the wake behind a boat, might suggest to a Japanese the word shiranu, meaning “unknown”, or namida, meaning “tears”. Thus we have blending into one another three ideas, “unknown”, “white waves”, “tears”. One can easily see how from a combination of such images a poem could grow—a boat sails for an unknown destination over the white waves, a lady watches the wake of her lover’s boat in tears. From such a multiplicity of word associations evolved the kakekotoba, or “pivot-word”, one of the most distinctive features of Japanese verse. The function of the “pivot-word” is to