Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/47

42 Lines with Seven Words in Each, which is almost as rigid as the English sonnet; and the theory of the sonnet can be applied to that Hichigon Zekku without any modification. We generally attach an importance to the third line, calling it the line "for change," and the fourth is the conclusion; the first line is, of course, the commencing of the subject, and the second is "to receive and develop." It seems that Hiroshige's good pictures very well pass this test of Hichigon Yekku qualification. Let me pick out the pictures at random to prove my words. Here is the "Bright Sky after Storm at Awazu," one of the series called Hight Views of the Lake Biwa; in it the white sails ready to hoist in the fair breeze might be the "change" of the versification. That picture was commenced and developed with the trees and rising hills by the lake, and the conclusion is the sails now visible and then invisible far away. Now take the picture of a rainstorm on the Tokaido. Two peasants under a half-opened paper umbrella, and the Kago-bearers naked and hasty, are the "third line" of the picture; the drenched bamboo dipping all one way and the cottage roofs shivering under the threat of Nature would be the first and second lines, while this picture-poem concludes itself with the sound of the harsh oblique fall of rain upon the ground. You will see that Hiroshige's good pictures have always such a