Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/35

Rh unaided talents of man. Tsurayuki listed some of the circumstances under which people have sought consolation in poetry—“when they looked at the scattered blossoms of a spring morning; when they listened of an autumn evening to the falling of the leaves; when they sighed over the snow and waves reflected with each passing year by their looking-glasses; when they were startled into thoughts on the brevity of their lives by seeing the dew on the grass or the foam on the water; or when, yesterday all proud and splendid, they have fallen from fortune into loneliness; or when, having been dearly loved, are neglected”. These remained among the principal subjects of Japanese poetry and required none of them a muse of fire.

The second point made by Tsurayuki was that poetry helped as a go-between in love-affairs. This perhaps needs little explanation for Western readers, familiar as we are with the love-poetry of European languages, but until we read one of the Japanese court-novels such as The Tale of Genji, written about 1000, we are not prepared for the extent to which poetry could be used for this purpose. Whole conversations between lovers were carried on in poems, and a skilfully caught poetic allusion might win a man’s heart as easily as a glimpse of his lady’s face. There is a full repertory of Japanese love-poetry, whether protestations of passion, aubades by parting lovers, laments over faithlessness, or any of the other possibilities in so highly developed a medium. The importance of poetry as a go-between in love-affairs arose from the to us rather strange manner of courtship of the Japanese aristocracy in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, when the techniques of their poetry were being formulated. Since court ladies might not be seen by any other men than their recognized husbands, conversations between lovers, at least in the initial stages, took place with the lady hidden behind a screen. This formalization of the relations