Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/25

Rh “When I set out on the 27th March, the dawn sky was misty. Though the pale morning moon had lost its light, Fuji could still be seen faintly. The cherry blossoms on the boughs at Ueno and Yanaka stirred sad thoughts within me, as I wondered when, if ever, I should see them again. My dearest friends had all come to Sampū’s house the night before so that they might accompany me on the boat part of the way that morning. When we disembarked at a place called Senju, the thought of parting for so long a journey filled me with sadness. As I stood on the road that was perhaps to separate us forever in this dreamlike existence, I wept tears of farewell.

In such works the Japanese have been happiest, able as they are in them to give us their inimitable descriptions of nature, and their delicate emotional responses, without the necessity of a formal plot. A gentle humour and a gentle melancholy fill these pages. This desire to blend images into images, found throughout Japanese poetry, here takes the form of diverse experiences, whether the adventures of a journey, or the day-to-day happenings at the court, blended into the personality of the narrator. There is a general smoothing away of the rough edges of emotion, as something indecorous and rather vulgar. Much is sadly evocative, very little is shattering, either in these books of personal reflections or elsewhere in Japanese literature. Even in the direct imitations by Japanese poets and artists of foreign works, there is always a disinclination to lose the native lightness and grace. The heart-breaking grief experienced by a Chinese poet on seeing the destruction of his city will find its