Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/40

28 indefinitely until we are left with a very limited variety of subjects considered fit for poetry, and within that limited variety, a limited number of ways of treating them. Most of the verses may be classified as love- or nature-poetry, and the most frequently employed tone is one of gentle melancholy. The falling of the cherry-blossoms and the scattering of the autumn leaves are favourite themes because both of them suggest the passing of time and the brevity of human existence. There is a religious background to such poetry, the type of Buddhism which taught that the things of this world are meaningless and soon faded, and that to rely on them is to put one’s faith in dust and ashes. But such religious ideas as are found in Japanese poetry are quite simple, and cannot have disturbed the poets very much. Typically enough, it was the anti-intellectual Zen Buddhism which furnished the only significant religious influence on Japanese poetry.

The uncomplicated nature of the subjects favoured by Japanese poets was perhaps the result of the simplicity of the verse-form, or perhaps it was the simplicity of the ideas which helped to dictate the form. In either case, most Japanese poets did not fret at the narrow limits of the 31-syllable tanka; those who did could write “long-poems” (nagauta), although this became an increasingly rare medium, or compose poems in Chinese, as English poets used sometimes to write verse in Latin. For the most part, however, the form and content of traditional Japanese poetry seem perfectly suited to one another, and to correspond with Japanese taste as revealed in other forms of art.

One obvious feature of Japanese poetry, which has been highly praised by critics, is its power of suggestion. A really good poem, and this is especially true of haiku, must be completed by the reader. It is for this reason that many of their poems seem curiously passive to us, for the writer does not specify