Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/388

376

that is,

"The moon on an autumn night making visible the very number of the wild-geese that fly past with wings intercrossed in the white clouds." Such a manner of expression may seem strange at first, but its charm grows upon one.

With the doubtful exception of the Nō, or classical dramas, all the genuine poetry of Japan is lyrical. The Japanese have also burlesque or comic stanzas. Even their serious poetry admits of a curious species of pun, named "pivot," in which the first part of the sentence has no logical end, the second part no logical beginning; and also of "pillow-words,"—terms which, often devoid of meaning themselves, serve as props for other significant words to rest on, somewhat after the fashion of the stock epithets in Homer. Acrostics, anagrams, and palindromes are well-known to the Japanese, all such conceits having come in early in the Middle Ages. The introduction of the poetical tournaments known as Uta-awase, which originated in China about A.D. 760, may be traced to the end of the ninth century. It was then that the custom grew up of setting themes on which thirty-one syllable odes were written to order on the spot,—a custom which has lasted ever since, and has done more than ought else to conventionalise Japanese poetry alike in subject-matter and in treatment, and to degrade it into a mere exercise of ingenuity. The poets of an elder day had given expression to the genuine feelings evoked from time to time by their individual experience. Henceforth this was rarely to be the case. The narrow bounds of the thirty-one syllable form contributed towards the same undesirable end. It contributed doubly,—on the one hand by enabling almost anybody to say something in verse, on the other by making it well-nigh impossible for even the truest poet to say anything of value. But the limit of the little